Neo-fascism and the religious right.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union's communist system, most Americans breathed a sigh of relief that the danger of totalitarianism had largely passed. There was a similar relief when fascism of both the German and Italian varieties was defeated during World War II.

However, few Americans ever examined the roots of fascism or its implications as they did communism. The reason is that communism by its very existence was an alternative to capitalism, and the business and news interests that determine the nature of American politics and economics have steadily proclaimed the danger and disadvantages of communism.

While there is no immediate danger of a fascist movement taking control of the United States, it is well to examine the characteristics of European fascism and note any parallels in the United States.

Fascism, in other words, is not an unforeseen coup or sudden act by a militant force in society. Acceptance of it can be cultivated by gradual accommodation.

Broadly speaking, there are certain prerequisites for fascism. One is that millions of people, especially those in the middle class or aspiring to enter it, become unemployed or only marginally employed. They become victims of the recurring crises of capitalism, which to soem degree affect everyone. These crises--recession, depression, inflation, the failure of banks and other savings institutions, large-scale bankruptcies and property foreclosures --have occurred in all major capitalist societies.

A second characteristic of pre-fascist rule is the weakening of confidence in political democracy and its institutions.

A third characteristic is monopoly capitalism protected by the state and interconnected with the government. This is evident in the United States in the military-industrial complex (which President Eisenhower warned about) by which the political, strategic, and economic interests of the huge arms industry, the civilian and military employees of the Pentagon, the intellectuals in scientific laboratories and universities, and journalists close to the CIA and Pentagon operate. Seymour Melman, professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University, pointed out that 120,000 Pentagon employees supervise and control an industrial complex of 35,000 industrial firms plus over 100,000 subcontractors employing 3.25 million Americans in military-serving industry. Furthermore, since 1951, the yearly fresh finance capital funds budgeted for the Pentagon have exceeded the combined net profits of all U.S. corporations. The lobbying influence of these corporations and those in the Pentagon who want to mintain a buge war machine have triumphed in the post--Cold War era over those who want to cut the military budget.

This government-military monopoly system has its counterpart or political origin in imperialism: the desire to be a superpower and to maintain an extensive chain of overseas military and naval bases and client states, such as South Korea and a number of nations in the Middle East and Central America. According to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, "The Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus found that, in addition to maintaining nearly 100 major bases in 16 foreign countries, the U.S. currently has or is negotiating agreements with 38 countries to allow the U.S. to deploy troops and equipment."

The first result of this monopoly-capitalist military and government alliance is the scuttling of any efforts to reduce and limit arms worldwide except for nations that are insufficiently deferential to U.S. interests. They become outlaw nations under pressure to reduce their armies or are threatened with attack.

The second inevitable result is the failure of government to allocate enough money for education, health, housing, and other social services, thus creating ever greater instability within the United States.

Given the above preconditions of fascism which characterized pre-fascist Germany and Italy, the crucial missing step in the United States thus far is the creation of a well-organized extreme right-wing movement with not only a clear political and ideological content but which is also capable of terrorist action against minorities they despise.

Fascist movements in Europe prior to World War II were led by men who claimed to be Christians and who merged religious emphases with nationalism and severe discrimination against minorities, homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews, and communists. They engaged in government sponsorship of religion. All of these moves violated genuine Christian values.

In the United States today the only large movement publicly proclaiming similar values is led by religious radicals such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Randall Terry. They are organized in various political groups, such as the Christian Coalition, which infiltrated the Republican Party and publicly advocates government sponsorship of religion; Operation Rescue and the Lambs of God, which engage in terrorist tactics to intimidate women, physicians, and their families; and the Coalition on Revival, which advocates execution of adulterers, homosexuals, and others and which links various radical groups together.

This movement readily accepts monopoly capitalism, the military-industrial complex, the United States as a military superpower and arms merchant, the curtailing or ending of social services such as public education, and the rejection of universal health coverage. Its political agenda, which is ultraconservative, is hidden by two emphases for which they are better known.

The first of these is "family values," which depend on a patriarchal family where the wife and children are subordinate to the husband, just as the major radical right groups are nearly all led by men. Pat Robertson tells women, "The husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." Singleparent families--whether through divorce, desertion, or other causes--do not qualify. The movement is clearly anti-feminist.

Other values deemed precious to most other Christians as well as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other religions are ignored when it serves the political purposes of the radical religious right wing. Among these values are truth, obedience to law, honesty, civility to opponents, respect for differences, and abhorrence of atrocities and terrorism.

For example, the leading radical right religious groups have supported as their candidate for the U.S. Senate an admitted liar who lied to Congress and other officials, as recorded in his federal court trial, United States v. Oliver North, as well as in Jeffrey Tobin's excellent book Opening Arguments. The Reader's Digest has also detailed some of North's lies and his misuse of other people's money for his own profit.

There is an important chapter on Oliver North in Out of Control, written by Leslie Cockburn with the assistance of other CBS personnel. That chapter discusses North's career from altar boy at Sacred Heart Church to the present, including his psychiatric treatment in 1974 after roaming around naked in a Virginia suburb brandishing a 45-caliber pistol, and his plan for suspension of the Constituion and the imposition of martial law. During the war in Vietnam, he returned to the United States to appear on William Buckley's TV show "Firing Line" to protest press coverage of the bloody My Lai massacre.

The Peers Inquiry, the army's internal investigation of that massacre, according to Cockburn, said:

One participant recalled how "we were all out there having a good time. It was kind of like being in a shooting gallery." He told of a machine-gunner methodically ripping a woman in half at the waist with bullets, and of a baby barely able to crawl being used by a soldier for target practice. "He fired at it with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him."

North whitewashed such atrocities as he did the contra atrocities in Nicaragua, which included the bayoneting of infants and the raping and beheading of young girls and women. According to Cockburn, North "remarked to at least two close associates, 'If it weren't for those liberals in Congress, we wouldn't be doing half of what we do illegally.'"

It is obvious that, in the name of anti-communism, North was able to justify atrocities and violations of law. Every lie--even drug trafficking that would finance forays against actual or alleged communists--could be rationalized. Covert action was the approved way of denying access by the American people to what was happening in our foreign policy.

It is also obvious that the radical religious right cares little about family values or Christian values when it runs candidates who will ruthlessly serve radical rightist policies. Its lack of civility is evident in the use of character assassination of public officials in an effort to undermine legitimate government authority. According to Anthony Lewis in the July 15, 1994, New York Times, Pat Robertson, referring to the suicide of Vincent Foster, asked on his TV program, "Was there a murder of a White House counsel? It looks more and more like that." Lewis adds, "Jerry Falwell went further. He sells a videotape that, without evidence, calls [President Clinton] a murderer. It shows Gary Parks, the son of an Arkansas investigator who was killed, saying, 'I think Bill Clinton had my father killed to save his political career.'"

Another religious extremist, Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, told a New York Times staffer, "Bill Clinton is a tyrant; he's a monster." Terry, whose terrorism is inflicted upon women and medical personnel at abortion clinics, is not an isolated extremist. He is supported fully by James Dobson, who stated in Children at Risk, "Nor are the Operation Rescue participants in violation of any moral law...."

Anthony Lewis also noted that "Dr. Steven Hotze, a Texas Republican who won party office with the help of the Christian Coalition, wants to execute homosexuals." This is not an isolated voice, for the execution of homosexuals, adulterers, and certain others is advocated by the Coalition on Revival, a secretive inner circle whose steering committee includes many of the nation's radical religious right leaders.

A second way in which the radical religious right advances and conceals its far-right political program is by seeking state sponsorship of its religious views. It does this by attacking separation of church and state when it insists that the government sponsor specific forms of worship in public schools and allow religious displays on government property so as to demonstrate that the United States is a Christian nation rather than a pluralistic nation composed of many varieties of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others. It has steadily attacked the Supreme Court and government for not permitting its partisan religous prayers in public schools.

The radical religious groups encouraged the Bush administration's attack on the establishment clause of the First Amendment in the case of Lee v. Weisman. That case was argued before the Supreme Court on November 6, 1991. At issue was an appeal by Providence, Rhode Island, school officials of a lower court ruling that the inclusion of prayers in a middle-school graduation had the unconstitutional effect of advancing religion. The Bush administration and the school officials asked the Court to permit the government to sponsor expression of religious belief so long as no one is coerced into participating.

Charles J. Cooper, an assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration who represented the Providence school committee, argued that the Constitution did not keep a state from designating an official religion so long as no one was forced to practice the official religion. This case was therefore not confined to whether prayers may be used in graduation ceremonies but was intended by the Bush administration to destroy existing precedents that prevent state and federal governments from sponsoring religion and religious exercises.

The same radical religious groups, after the Supreme Court decision forbidding government-sponsored graduation prayers, persisted in seeking prayers under school auspices. The purpose of these radical religious demands is not to improve morality or end secularism but to merge the power functions of the state with a particular religious expression and therefore lay the groundwork for a theocracy. These groups want to establish an official religion or "Christian" endorsement of American nationalism rather than the existing separation of church and state wherein various religious groups worship in their own way. A universal monotheism in which one god is the god of people in every nation is contrary to a government-sponsored political worship of a right-wing interpretation of that deity.

The appeal made by radical religious forces to "family values," early American colonial religion, and a harmonious Christian nation with government-sponsored religion has a certain appeal to those who are frustrated by the crime, social disorganization, and division in our society, and by despised minority groups wanting equal protection under the law.

In 1970, an international seminar on fascism in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, concluded:

The ideology of neo-fascism can best be summarized as a mixture of sentimentality and brutality. Sentimentality because it glorifies the simple, intimate, human forms of living together--the family, the folk community ... and so on. On the other hand, we of course know that a harmonious folk community of this kind can only be established by using force to suppress oppositional tendencies. And that is why this ideology of the simple, harmonious forms of living together is confronted by the ideology that oppositional forces must be regarded as enemies of the state and thus treated as criminals.

The same seminar on fascism also concluded:

There are only friends and enemies, only angels and devils; an ideology of this kind contains no differentiation or nuances. It aims at combatting all forms of emancipation--of women, of workers, of Negroes, Asian people, or Jews ... and favors building up super- and subordination.

The mere existence of an extreme right-wing party, even if it does not ultimately control the government, has its value to those in power in the political and economic system. They tend to want to make concessions to conservative and authoritarian religious forces in order to gain the fundamentalist vote, whether those concessions weaken or destroy certain constitutional values such as separation of church and state or equal protection of the law. In so doing, they take the country further down the authoritarian religious road that sacrifices long-held democratic values.