Nationalism and Fascism: Old Ills, Future Evil

This is just one cursory chapter in what's going to become a long-term project for me. That paper posted two days ago got an A, believe it or not.

Read. And please, give me feedback.

My interest in this topic began with the reading the series currently being run by David Neiwert at Orcinus. He's simply a one-man American fascism-watching machine, although many on the Left have raised the alarms of seemingly eerie comparisons to the state of the Union today to the Weimar Republic of Depression-era Germany. I had raised my own alarms earlier this year in my beginnings of my research into this topic when I blogged about fundamentalism, and I think I was warrented. I fear though, that those of us making these alarms are mere "Cassandras," and it may already be too late. I also fear that this trend is not just native to the United States, and if and when the world undergoes another round of the evil that destroyed Europe 70 years ago, it will be global and reactionary to whoever first dove into the fascist pit.

The new fascism, when it comes (and I'm beginning to conclude that it WILL make an appearance, if not in this country then someplace else), will not resemble the fascism of old. It is highly mutable: as researcher Robert Paxton(The Five Stages of Fascism) who I, David, and several others cite has stated. American fascism will be pious and anti-minority. Western European fascism will be secular and anti-Islamist. Hell, one could extend this to any region of the world...Indian fascism will be Hindu, anti-Muslim, and anti-Western. Islamic fascism is obviously very fundamentalist, and viruently anti-Western (their wrath would be focused at the United States). I'd like to posit that Chinese/East Asian fascism would be very coporate in nature, but I don't really have much evidence other than a gut feeling. And so on, and so on.

My fear, sadly, is that that it may already be too late. There's a way out...keep your eyes open. Keep watching. I sure will.