I don't like the character or the people who pull his strings, but "George Bush" really isn't fascist. In my book, fascism has a mass element that the Bush regime lacks. If you rent "Triumph of the Will" you will see Hitler & the Nazi party presented as both leader/s and emodiment of the German nation. Whether or not the Nazis actually did embody or represent the German nation, i think it's significant that they would pretend to do so. There are no such pretensions in the Bush crowd. There are only condescending, faux-populist gestures like Bush's fake Texas accent and his pre-literate aura.
You see, the German masses were crucial to the Nazi project as cannon fodder, as workers, and as agents in the social reproduction of cannon fodder and workers (mothers, wives). This is why there was an expansion of social welfare during the Nazi years. A similar process unfolded in Japan, but without the dictator.
Contrast this to today's America, where people just don't matter. Workers? They live in China. Health, education, babies, all those are your personal responsibility. The US now has a capital intensive, and out-sourced military, partly because its rulers are afraid a conscript army would revolt like it did in Vietnam. If our GIs can't or won't do it, we'll rent some kids from Uzbekistan or Poland or some place.
|