The Coming Fascism?

While working this morning, I read about a disturbing "game" that is available on the Internet. The game's objective is simple: shoot Mexicans coming across the Mexican-U.S. border. Lovely, huh? This comes a day after I hear five minutes of one of those ultra-right radio talk shows that blasted Mexicans, not illegal immigrants. And that comes a day after I read an article full of lies about the negative economic impact that illegal immigrants have on jobs, the U.S. economy and American culture. All of this reminded me that we are living in dangerous times. Fascist times.

I recently read a George Orwell essay about how hard it is to define "fascist." There are all types of fascists, he writes, conservative fascists, social fascist, Communist fascist, Catholic fascists. But, at least in my opinion, are the prototypical fascists symbolized by the goose-stepping Nazis in Germany. Hypercapitalism, unchecked government leaders, scapegoating, militarism, hypernationalism are a few characteristics of Nazi Germany.

Nearly all of those characteristics are present in modern America:

American corporations run the show in this country. What's good for business is what's good for America, or so the thinking goes. (Let's not mention that the corporations little under-the-table donations to make sure that regulations that would limit their growth would not go through.)

Until recently, whatever the president wanted he got. Tax cuts for the wealthy? Sure thing, George. Money for an unnecessary war? Sure thing, George. Create an unwieldy bureaucracy that is supposed to protect our nation from terrorist attacks and natural disasters and then place buddies to head this bureaucracy and the departments within? Sure thing, George. Why? Because with a far right House of Representatives and a right-wing Senate, anything that the right likes goes through.

I'm going to skip scapegoating for a second.

I already mentioned militarism. But this current administration has pushed constantly for more war and if not more war, more war toys. Bush has actually tried to start building new types of nuclear weapons, while people in his administration have floated the idea of nuking Iran if they don't comply with American orders.

Hypernationalism is the idea that no matter what, MY country is right. Couple that with xenophobia, or fear of strangers or foreigners, and you have a country that hates everything outside of these borders - Mexicans and Arabs come to mind.

So, other than fascism, what does hypernationalism + xenophobia + a far-right Senate + a radical House + a country at war + a declining economy + an increase in the number of poor people equal? The need to scapegoat. More and more the people with power and the powerless are blaming Mexicans - from what I hear and read, the blame is not limited just to illegal immigrants - for problems in this country.

Take this comment from one of the biggest bigots out there:

"It's one thing to wave a Mexican flag at a restaurant or at your house. It's another thing when you bring it into the public discourse," said Joseph Turner, executive director of Save Our State, a California nonprofit group that opposes illegal immigration. "When you come to our country, you'd better adopt our values, our culture, our customs and our language. Period."

And here, you have one of those radical Republican congressmen equating illegal immigrants who come to this country to work to terrorists:

"Fighting the war in Iraq is critical to this war on terrorism. Fighting the war in Afghanistan is critical to this war on terrorism. But I have to think equally important is making sure that our borders are secure. That is as big an issue as we have today in the area of fighting the war on terrorism. We can't be effective on that issue unless we have the resources and the people in order to take care of securing the border."

Sometimes the right wing pulls a handful of legitimate cases out of the bag. An illegal immigrant recently killed four people while driving drunk. Forget about that man driving drunk, but instead he killed the four people because he was an illegal immigrant. Or there are those hyped-up cases of illegal immigrant drug dealers. But although those cases probably total in the hundreds, the truth is that they are an extremely small sample of what most illegal immigrants do - come to the U.S. to work, follow the laws, pay taxes hopefully become citizens and give their children better lives.

Truth is, those comments, especially the first one are so off the mark when it comes to the true nature of immigration that you have to wonder if the person saying it is crazy. This article quoted a Princeton University professor:

sociologist Douglas S. Massey reports that 62 percent of illegal immigrants pay income taxes (via withholding) and 66 percent contribute to Social Security. Forbes magazine notes that Mexican illegals aren't clogging up the social-services system: only 5 percent receive food stamps or unemployment assistance; 10 percent send kids to public schools.

As far as adjusting to our society? Numerous studies have shown that the children of Mexican immigrants are pretty much in step with the rest of the country and that the grandchildren of the immigrants are earning their diplomas and college degrees at a great rate. A study by USC Professor Dowell Myers showed that "90 percent of [immigrants] who have been in that state for more than 20 years have escaped to middle or upper income classes."

With the FACTS, not scapegoating, it's hard to understand why the hate. Illegal Mexican immigrants can also be thanked for affordable fruit and clothing, not to mention all the other marginal jobs they take in order to "make it" in this country and help their families at home.

But those people, the scary thing is that they are either in charge or have influence with those in charge, will never admit this. Because of this, we cannot walk idly down the street toward fascismm. We need to, like "Rage Against the Machine" sang, "Take the power back." That means supporting Democratic candidates, especially in Republican districts.

Democrats need to gain six seats in order to gain a majority in the Senate. They need to gain at least 17 seats in the House in order to gain a majority there. Although Republican numbers are low, many people will continue to choose that party for "moral" reasons - gay marriage, abortion - and walk down that street toward National Socialist Republic of the United States (fyi, Nazism is known as Nationalist Socialism). If those two issues are your major ones, I urge you to bite the bullet this time and fight the immediate battle and create some checks and balances in our government. Find out if there will be a contested election in your district - don't waste your energy fighting a losing or winning battle. Then go here and look for contested House elections and do what you can to help. Donate. Volunteer (if possible), but fight these battles to win.

If the hatred toward immigrants doesn't matter to you, or you think the noise is just being caused by a small segment of this country, don't forget that most Germans during Hitler's reighn were not anti-Semites, but look at what happened because they didn't speak up. I just want to end this blog with this famous poem by Martin Niemoller:

When the Nazis arrested the Communists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
When they arrested the trade unionists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
When they arrested the Jews, I said nothing; after all, I was not a Jew.
When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.