Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment
RealAu­dio
NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains FTRs 284 and 285 in sequence. Each is a 30-minute broadcast.

1. Com­par­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Repub­li­can right to the fas­cist regimes of Hitler and Mus­solini, this pro­gram fea­tures an edi­to­r­ial by Aldo Vidali. A native of Italy who grew up under the Mus­solini regime, Vidali immi­grated to the United States. “I came to Amer­ica in 1949 and wept when I saw the Statue of Lib­erty.” (“Fas­cism and Amer­ica Today” by Aldo Vidali; 3/12/2001; p. 1.)

2. Although Vidali’s account does not fac­tor in many aspects of the rise of fas­cism in the world and in the United States, the impas­sioned dis­cus­sion is both valu­able and nec­es­sary. (Com­pare Vidali’s analy­sis with the dis­cus­sion in FTR-268 con­cern­ing the book They Thought they Were Free.) Vidali places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the Florida Coup of 2000. “Fas­cism came to power first in Italy in 1922 and soon Hitler, in great admi­ra­tion of Mus­solini, estab­lished Nazism in Ger­many. The Repub­li­can Florida coup used meth­ods remark­ably sim­i­lar to both, includ­ing the cor­rup­tion of the high­est author­i­ties in our nation.” (Idem.)

3. Vidali also high­lights the anti-democratic value under­ly­ing the Repub­li­can rhetoric about the evils of “big gov­ern­ment.” “The new ‘compassionate-conservatives,’ i.e., the extreme right-wing Repub­li­cans, pro­mote greater state auton­omy and fewer fed­eral law. They want us to for­get that WE THE PEOPLE estab­lished a Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect our lives from for­eign and inter­nal ene­mies. Behind repub­li­can anti-federalism–so staunchly upheld by George W—is a shrewd ‘divide and con­quer’ ploy that would allow giant cor­po­ra­tions to con­trol the much weaker power of any sin­gle state. . . . Promises of tril­lion dol­lar tax cuts and the rant­ing of the pseudo-Christian Coali­tion have exerted enough influ­ence to cause many to vote for a return to the dis­as­ter of a Repub­li­can econ­omy where only the rich pros­per.” (Idem.)

4. Vidali under­scores the Repub­li­cans’ scape­goat­ing of the rel­a­tively pow­er­less for the country’s prob­lems. “His­tor­i­cally, these incip­i­ent fas­cist forces first opposed vot­ing rights. Now they pro­pose the abo­li­tion of one man-one vote, the insti­tu­tion of second-class cit­i­zen­ship, the per­se­cu­tion of women, peo­ple of color, those pro­fess­ing other belief sys­tems (or none at all), and homo­sex­u­als.” (Idem.)

5. Much of Vidali’s arti­cle addresses the Chris­t­ian right-wing and their dom­i­nant role in the Repub­li­can party. Vidali cor­rectly notes that these “Chris­tians” are at vari­ance with the fun­da­men­tal teach­ings of Christ. “Most Neo-Christians in this post-Christian era are Chris­tianoids, who use the pul­pits of var­i­ous dis­guised branches of old Calvin­ism to pro­mote an elit­ism that they hope will even­tu­ally replace democ­racy with a plu­to­cratic oli­garchy of the rich and Chris­tianoid lead­er­ship. Their mis­sion state­ment is a mixed blend of early Gnos­ti­cism, the anti-Gnostic Medieval Church, anti-Catholic Puri­tan ide­ol­ogy, anti-Luther/Calvinist Counter-Reformation, and a fas­cist view of the state as the ulti­mate expres­sion of Chris­t­ian faith. Rarely do we find among them devo­tion to the real teach­ings of Christ beyond the most super­fi­cial lip ser­vice. The Chris­t­ian Coali­tion resem­bles Chris­tian­ity as much as the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion rep­re­sented Christ’s love and com­pas­sion.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

6. Vidali com­pares Mussolini’s adop­tion of the Catholic faith through the Lat­eran treaty with the Chris­t­ian Right’s vision for Amer­ica. (For more about the Lat­eran Treaty, see also: RFA-17.) “Aware of the power of reli­gious faith, Mus­solini made his first act ‘The Lat­eran Pacts,’ an his­tor­i­cal agree­ment between the Church and the Ital­ian fas­cist gov­ern­ment which secured the Vat­i­can State and per­pet­u­ated medieval pre-scientific con­cepts of unques­tion­ing obe­di­ence to the party elite and church author­ity. . . . David Bar­ton, a right wing Chris­tianoid of the first order, spoke at the 1993 Con­cerned Women for Amer­ica con­ven­tion about the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist creed. He says that the basis for Amer­i­can laws should be ‘what­ever is Chris­t­ian is legal. What­ever isn’t Chris­t­ian is ille­gal.’” (Idem.)

7. Another major point of Vidali’s argu­ment con­cerns the explicit Repub­li­can rhetoric about nos­tal­gia for the past. “As Alvin Tof­fler noted in Future Shock, a ‘rever­sion to pre-scientific atti­tudes is accom­pa­nied, not sur­pris­ingly, by a tremen­dous wave of nos­tal­gia.’ Right wing Repub­li­can cam­paign rhetoric sug­gests turn­ing the clock back to an ide­al­ized ver­sion of 1950 Amer­ica, for­get­ting that after half a cen­tury the world has irrev­o­ca­bly changed–partially due to tech­no­log­i­cal advances and progress on human rights.” (Idem.)

8. Vidali also com­pares Hitler’s analy­sis of the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of Jew­ish cul­ture with the view­point of the Chris­t­ian Right. “At the Nurem­berg rally, Hitler claimed that ‘alien life and ideas forced on nations by Jew­ish intel­lec­tu­al­ism, which is racially with­out a basis, led to an alien, root­less state and inter­na­tion­ally to com­plete cul­tural chaos.’ . . . Chris­t­ian lec­turer and reac­tionary Wilma Left­wich said that the One World Gov­ern­ment plot is led by ‘sec­u­lar human­ists.’ She says that ‘they’ want to impose mar­riage and child taxes, a sweep­ing two-child fam­ily pol­icy, offer eco­nomic incen­tives for birth con­trol, put fer­til­ity con­trol drugs in the water sup­ply, restruc­ture the fam­ily through the ‘feminist/socialist move­ment,’ and actively encour­age increased homo­sex­u­al­ity.’” (Ibid.; pp. 2–4.)

9. A cen­tral socio-economic ele­ment of Vidali’s argu­ment con­cerns fascism’s appeal to the increasingly-beset mid­dle class. “One of the most typ­i­cal fea­tures of fas­cism has been what Umberto Eco calls an ‘appeal to a frus­trated mid­dle class.’ Sup­port­ers of the extreme right wing are peo­ple wor­ried about their jobs, espe­cially those who haven’t updated their skills or those stig­ma­tized by some as ‘the Great Unwired’ because they are not com­puter lit­er­ate.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

10. Vidali then goes on to make an inter­est­ing point about the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the Gore and Bush votes in the 2000 elec­tion. “The geo­graphic dis­tri­b­u­tion of Repub­li­can major­ity states sup­ports this con­tention, for in the 2000 elec­tion they took the states with less Inter­net traf­fic and lost where peo­ple have daily access to online media.” (Idem.)

11. Vidali also points out the par­al­lels between the eugenic atti­tudes of the Third Reich and those of George W’s Repub­li­can Party. “Today, there is a par­al­lel between the eco­nomic and social milieu of the US and Nazi Ger­many, espe­cially in the debate over health care. Then–as now–the cen­tral issue was who should receive what kind of care, and for how long. In Nazi Ger­many, med­i­cine was con­sid­ered a national resource reserved only for peo­ple who showed the great­est prospect of recov­ery and future pro­duc­tiv­ity. Adher­ents of eugenics–from Nazis to pro­mot­ers of the National Insti­tute of Health’s Vio­lence Initiative–claim that every­thing from criminal/violent behav­ior and alco­holism to ram­pant unem­ploy­ment and labor unrest can be blamed on ‘faulty genes.’ Adher­ents to this social/political move­ment also believe in infe­ri­or­ity of some races and supe­ri­or­ity of others–a view that extends to var­i­ous eth­nic groups and social classes as well. Nazis had their forced ster­il­iza­tion and euthana­sia laws; courts decided a person’s ‘value’ to soci­ety. . . . Today, the ‘com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­v­a­tives’ con­sider leg­is­la­tion that lim­its wel­fare recip­i­ents to five years’ worth of ben­e­fits in a life­time. They are uneasy about aid to the elderly or to AIDS vic­tims.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

12. Lastly, Vidali com­pares fas­cist atti­tudes toward women’s rights with those of the Repub­li­can right. “Fas­cism involves ‘a sys­tem of sex­ual dic­ta­tor­ship devised to impose arbi­trary moral­is­tic val­ues in the indi­vid­ual in the inter­est of state approved author­i­tar­ian mar­riage and fam­ily where the male will is absolute.’ Hitler said that ‘the eman­ci­pa­tion of women is an inven­tion of Jew­ish minds.’ Today, the extreme right wing frets that ‘sec­u­lar human­ists’ are restruc­tur­ing fam­i­lies through the ‘fem­i­nist move­ment,’ and actively encour­age increased homo­sex­u­al­ity. The fear of ‘sex­ual free­dom,’ viewed as sex­ual chaos and sex­ual dis­si­pa­tion by pseudo-Christian reac­tionar­ies like Ashcroft, works hand in hand with a fear of eco­nomic free­dom for ordi­nary cit­i­zens.” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

13. After a read­ing of the Vidali arti­cle, the arti­cle sets forth the views of the Forza Nuova on repro­duc­tive rights. (“Italy: FN Calls for Women to Pro­cre­ate” from a Rome cor­re­spon­dent; The Search­light; March/2001, # 309; p. 27.)

14. “Abor­tion is to be made ille­gal on moral grounds and because ‘Italy needs sons.’ Not­ing Austria’s exam­ple in increas­ing fam­ily allowances, the man­i­festo says that Ital­ian fam­i­lies should be encour­aged to have ‘three chil­dren or more.’ Women should stay at home and pro­cre­ate. Too many women have moved into the work­place and bought their own homes. This has caused scarcity of jobs for the men and a ‘soar­ing in house prices. . . . As for Ital­ian iden­tity, this must remain firmly rooted in Catholi­cism. Other reli­gions are an ‘attack on the Ital­ian fab­ric of life.’ the doc­u­ment states that FN intends to affirm the valid­ity of fas­cism in at least three aspects: the cre­ation of very advanced social leg­is­la­tion held as an exam­ple to the rest of the world; the ‘mar­riage of Italy to Catholi­cism’; and the cre­ation of a national spirit drawn from the Great Roman Civil­i­sa­tion as expressed through the cen­turies. This por­trait of Italy as a theo­cratic white state with no room for diver­sity and women as child­bear­ing instru­ments could hardly work other than as a dic­ta­tor­ship. FN’s ambi­tion is to improve on Mussolini’s record.” (Idem.) Like deja vu all over again.