Fascism: American Style

1,287 words

Albert Finney portrays Political Machine Boss Leo O'Bannon in the Goebbels Award winning film, Millers Crossing (1990) [1]

Albert Finney portrays Political Machine Boss Leo O’Bannon in the Goebbels Award winning film, Miller’s Crossing (1990)

In recent years, I have encountered a handful of passionate, self-identifying Fascists who have demonstrated that they have absolutely no idea what the term actually means. For some it means a Conan the Barbarian style ethos guiding atomized individuals in a lawless society in which one earns the right to go to the 7-11 by packing a pistol. For another it means a state apparatus which finds inventive ways to apply Biblical punishments to homosexuals. (I hope ISIS does not prove disappointing to him.) America’s anti-fascists think it is synonymous with the Military-Industrial Complex. All of these people would be sorely disappointed and surprised had they lived under any Fascist regime of the past.

Americans who aspire to a certain kind of Fascism do not need to look to Mussolini or the Hispanic countries for inspiration. There are plenty of homegrown examples in big cities where Irish and Italian politicians are comfortably in charge. There is, in fact, an ethnic Catholic way of bringing Order out of Chaos (to borrow a phrase}.

Historians will tell you that Fascism is incredibly fluid and hard to pin down. Is it Modernist or Traditional? Socialist or Capitalist? Catholic or Pagan? Racio-nationalist or patriotic? Anti-Semitic or neutral? The fact is that Fascism is more of a mindset than a doctrine, one of populism and authoritarianism, which adapts to the problems of the time and place and makes no attempt to transplant a foreign form into a new setting.

Mayor Daley's two commandments for lower tier members of the Chicago Machine [2]

Mayor Daley’s two commandments for lower tier members of the Chicago Machine

The Fascist mindset is the result of two things. One is a reaction, not necessarily to the rise of the Left, but to the rise of the special interests. These special interests will fight to the death over very narrow areas of policy-making power, which others see as a minor concern. Multiply this by every narrow area of policy-making and government becomes a market in which residents are butchered for lobbies of every kind, from right to left, from capitalists to public sector employee unions. Asymmetric Interest Theory tells us that the special interest lobby will win every time . . . unless there is an authoritarian figure keeping all parties in line.

The second aspect of the Fascist mindset is not the result of a strong nationalist sentiment, as many believe, but is in fact the creative response to the problem of a void of nationalism. When very few citizens are dedicated to the identity to which the state’s borders correspond, chaos and corruption will follow. Italy was a very young country filled with regionalists and amoral familists [3] when Mussolini adapted socialism to their unique circumstances and created a new nationalism. The South American countries were filled with rather recent immigrants, former slaves, colonized peoples, and  rootless cross-breeds. From Pinochet to Chavez [4], South American “Fascists” emphasize military discipline, nationalism, and their favorite strand of Catholicism to invent nationalistic solidarity in societies where there is no history of solidarity.

Large, ethnically diverse American cities in the late industrial era facing Negro invasion, Jewish subversion, and special interest lobbies seeking their piece of the pie have governing problems closer to those of Italy and South American countries than the governing problems of relatively homogeneous colonial settlements facing lack of infrastructure, long winters, and Indian raids. While Chicago and similar cities are full of “90 Minute Patriots,” when it comes to the powerful, their sense of Chicagoan civic duty (or “Chicagoan Nationalism”) will never check their personal greed and ambition. That is why the iron fist of a political boss is needed to remind people when they have spent enough time at the trough. The difference between a Machine Boss and a corrupt politician lies in his ability to do this. The Boss’ system is sustainable; the corrupt politician is grabbing money from the register while the store is on fire.

The Party Boss’ relation with the people is mediated through a system of representation within the Democratic Party. Client-patron relationships are created which are fluid and depend on the lower rungs of the ladder maintaining stability and receiving appropriate benefits as a result. The “carrots” could be city jobs, contracts, envelopes of cash known as “street money,” frozen Christmas Turkeys, and other smaller payoffs. The “stick” is being thrown into outer darkness of the political process. The legend is that anyone not registered as a Democrat and staying in line would never get their sidewalk fixed in a Machine-run city.

In these cases, the machine boss selects people to fill elected positions in a way that balances the interests of a stable coalition of diverse groups within a city. Expectations are set regarding the performance of various groups within the coalition, and if all goes well, the spoils are dispersed in a way the coalition members find acceptable. It is easy to underestimate the genius required to conceive of and maintain such a system. The presence or absence of these kinds of Party Machines is why Chicago is not the hellhole of Detroit, nor did Pittsburgh descend to the levels of Cleveland, nor did Boston or to a lesser extent Philadelphia sink to the level of Baltimore. For more information on the struggle of our rnemies to bring these down, see E. Michael Jones book The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing [5].

To get a sense of how well the senior Mayor Daley, of Chicago’s Daley Machine played defense on behalf of the White middle class and working class, see how his rival from Obama’s neighborhood, a liberal cuck married to a Jewess, Leon Despres accidentally recounts how awesome Daley was (you won’t find this kind of candor from the Daley Machine veterans because they are too professional to speak loosely):

Ultimately, Fascism is a creative defense mechanism for societies in crisis which lack a rich and settled common identity. More rooted societies have numerous historical movements that Fascism’s potential constituents can rally to for redress of their grievances. Peoples with a healthy sense of nationalism don’t need new flags and uniforms or marches in formation to mobilize the people or encourage sacrifice for the collective. This is why National Liberation Movements have no need for the symbols of the Right and resist dilution when allying with the International Left. National Liberation Movements arise in societies where the rootedness and identity are so strong that they survive without reference to or support from the State.

Some may say that the US is such a society . . . whether or not that is the case, the limitations of Fascism should be addressed here as well. Fascism is a form of defense. In its American form it is a sort of holding pattern for riding out a crisis. Our enemy cannot be fought to a stalemate in which we all agree to go home and recommence battle the following day. This idea is natural to the Indo-Europeans who once sent champions to battle one at a time and would cease hostilities as soon as the sun set. The Semitic opponent is not honor bound; in fact their holy books instruct them to wake up early and kill the opponent in his sleep. Therefore a more strident aggressive approach is needed to expel the culture distorters and recreate A Nice White Country from scratch. This is the prerequisite for preventing the end of the White Majority in the US and Canada.

I am not aware of an American version of a more aggressive political system that might address this problem, but there is such a system we can look to in Europe and, though transplantation would be ineffective, it may certainly provide inspiration.