LA County Nonpartisan ExaminerCarl HermanPsychological research demonstrates that large-scale dramatic change can escape attention when the change is unsuspected, unannounced, and agents causing the change act as if nothing is different. Two areas of this cognitive study are “change blindness” and “inattentional blindness.” When we include consideration of “cognitive dissonance,” the rejection of facts when they conflict with important beliefs, we can approach an explanation of how educated citizens could accept fascism when it was unsuspected, unannounced, and the responsible agents fraudulently represented the new government as no different from the old. Cognitive dissonance would deter many people to accept the new reality, even when the facts were clear.
The definition of “fascism” has some academic variance, but is essentially collusion among corporatocracy, authoritarian government, and controlled media and education. This “leadership” is only possible with a nationalistic public accepting policies of war, empire, and limited civil and political rights.
Yes, I am making the argument that the US is no longer a constitutinal republic, but a fascist regime that Americans are struggling with cognitive dissonance, change blindness, and inattentional blindness to recognize. Let’s look to history before we consider the US of the present and if we are afflicted with a kind of cognitive blindness to American fascism.
Fascism in Germany
Historically in Nazi Germany, Hitler wrote of the power of the “Big Lie”:
"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so are brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes."
- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf , vol.1, ch. 10, 1925
This psychological factor, combined with German resentment against blame and payment for WW1, the Nazi partial implementation of monetary reform that created full employment and a successful economy in the middle of the Great Depression, set a frame of relative trust in government. Dissent was “re-educated” or crushed in work camps, propaganda and education lauded genuine economic infrastructure improvement parallel to military build-up. The downfall was the result of a critical mass of the public believing their government’s overall trustworthiness, and subsequently their story that the invasion of Poland was defensive against Germany being attacked. Germany framed their War of Aggression as their “War to save Europe;” a noble national defense against Britain and France's determination to keep Germany weak and non-competitive to their goals for imperialistic global domination, and against the rise of Bolshevism in Russia.
The demonized Jews were at first framed as dangerous to German national achievement. Their economic success as a group was framed as parasitism, and influence in the press as self-serving rather than in service to the nation. As a group, they became synonymous to terrorists.
Nazi Germany’s Master Plan
We now know that Nazi leadership’s goals were European domination and partnership with Britain in exchange for non-competition of their empire, and written by Hitler in his unpublished second book in 1928. The Nazi’s saw their goal of a unified Europe under their “superior” governance as a greater good that justified their “creative destruction” of inferior humans. They would lie to the German public as they advanced forward to accomplish what they perceived as a noble future for Germany, Europe, and eventually the world when Britain and Germany’s alliance would eventually absorb or defeat the US around 1980.
Does the US have a similar plan of fascist Nazi Germany for a “superior” American future that is worth wars and lies to accomplish? Let’s explore.
America’s Master Plan?
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) contributed over 20 of the Bush Administration’s “leadership,” including Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and other key positions in Defense and State Departments.
In 1992, then Secretary of Defense Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz produced a paper for the future strategic goals of the US following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The paper was leaked; among the goals was for the US to expand as the world's Superpower through our military to "establish and protect a new order." The report endorsed “pre-emptive” attacks and ad hoc coalitions for military objectives, but as an unrivaled Superpower should act independent of international agreement if "collective action cannot be orchestrated." The strategy included military plans for intervention in Iraq for US "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil."
In 1998, PNAC lobbied President Clinton for war with Iraq, independent of UN Security Council legal authority. In 2000, PNAC issued its report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for the New Century." The report stated the goal of a “Pax Americana,” an American “peace” that would achieve US interests by the method of "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major-theater wars." The US would usurp UN authority: "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations." The US would ensure its dominance through expansion of global military bases, now at over 700.
The report ominously included: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor." This would conveniently happen on 9/11; kicking in plans for invasion and hegemony in Afghanistan, Iraq, rhetoric for war with Iran, and now attacks in Pakistan.
How close is the US to fascism?
We’re there; the US is fascist. As a teacher of US government, I spend a lot of time with these basic definitions. Let’s look.
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