I request the honorable gentleman provide specifics rather than vague generalities, such as actual quotes or ads.
Bush vs McCain. Complete with a photo of McCain’s adopted or foster black child. The “unspoken” inferrence was (and excuse my wording) “don’t vote for a nigger lover”. That still works in some circles. Somebody verify please.
Google “push poll” “black child” McCain.
In short before the South Carolina primary, after McCain won New Hampshire, someone (read: Karl Rove) organized a push poll that asked voters “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?’”
A lot of bloggers believe this, but not one provides anything like proof.
I did. No wonder you are too ashamed to link to any of the sites that are returned.
You may have *wished * to forget the Confederate flag issue and Bush’s Bob Jones U. speech too, but they happened all the same.
Two seconds on Google, Bricker. :rolleyes: You no doubt wish that hadn’t happened either.
But it did. Time to deal with the implications - you’re long overdue.
Rick: It’s fact that the pictures of McCain and/or his adopted son circulated in 2000; with a little digging, I can come up with newspaper articles on it. I grant it’s not easy to prove that it was a hush-hush smear campaign, or that Karl Rove and the Bush campaign were behind it – but I will tell you that that is what I heard, admittedly second hand, at the time.
As for the “Solid South” and its shift – there has always been a strain of strong conservatism, founded in what is generally termed “traditional values that the Liberals want to undermine,” throughout the South. That is tempered by what I’ve come to understand is generally referenced as “Southern Progressivism” – a tendency to seek slow, steady reform, moving quickly when critical problems (like the Depression) are at issue, but preferring to seek a better future at a deliberate pace. I cannot and will not try to deal with race relations, but my strong impression is that the average white Southerner was historically not interested in deliberate oppression of blacks, but rather (a) fond of a tendency to keep to oneself socially – as opposed to business, etc., (b) disenchanted with “top-down” ukases about how to handle racial attitudes, and (c) largely unaware of the real problems facing Southern blacks, mostly due to the handful of unreconstructed rednecks in positions of power and the economic realities of the time. A strong patriotic, pro-military strain accompanied this view.
When the Democratic Party after LBJ moved to apparent anti-war status and began to espouse programs that were in reality no more radical than those of the past had been, but seemed that way to some, an appeal to the conservative streak in Southern values by the Republicans worked a significant shift to a two-party system in the Southern states.
Boston Globe good enough or is that too liberal? Sure, there is no concrete proof as that Rove was involved; but you have to ask who benefited?
BTW, McCain’s “illegitimate black child” is actually a Bangladeshi girl whom he adopted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain But that, apparently, was quite enough for Rove to hang his push-polling slurs upon. In South Carolina, this kind of thing still works. :mad:
Hmmm? Every one of those sites is far more reputable than, say, Free Republic or the Drudge Report.
You guys really are too funny sometimes.
So it’s just coincidence that every campaign Rove has been involved in has experienced similar dirty tricks, like suggesting Ann Richards is a Lesbian in arch-conservative Texas or the Swift Boat Vets for (un)Truths or the other documented push-poll crap against McCain or Gore. Yeah, coincidence explains it.
I’m still not understanding why you’d want a cite that America is moving more left-wing to prove that we aren’t headed for fascism.
If the US is more right-wing we could be more authoritarian or less authoritarian. I don’t know first-hand what the right-wing movements are like in Brazil or Europe, but in the US the conservative/right-wing movement has a strong anti-authoritarian streak, a strong distrust of governmental authority especially from the Federal government, a strong anti-tax predjudice. Sure, Le Pen in France could be considered proto-fascist…they are proudly statist…but where is their equivalent in America?
I’m simply challenging the whole “more conservative=more fascist, more liberal=less fascist” thinking I’m seeing here. Where exactly are people worshipping Bush as supreme leader? If Bush isn’t the leader of American fascism, who is? A fascist movement without a supreme leader is an oxymoron.
I’m not the one claiming America is heading down the chute to fascism, others are. Oh, sorry, they are “asking” if America is heading down the chute to fascism. My mistake.
If you wish to draw a meaningful comparison between the current polarization of American society and actual fascism, you might be interested to read this document. It is the only complete translation of Giovanni Gentile’s The Doctrine of Fascism, attributed to Benito Mussolini.
Does fascism in fact require a supreme leader ? Or following my US is fascist outside idea… could the USA be that supreme leader role as a nation… but to the world ? Many americans seem to perceive their country as a leader above reproach.
Also as for the anti-authoritarian “streak” that conservatives have… I feel that the’ve been quite silenced by the drums of war, no ? When the going get tough… the conservatives fall in and bow to the federal govt ?
Forgot to add…
We should analyze if the “slide” of political systems is a valid means of determining if the US is becoming more fascist. After all a commie going centrist is moving to the right as well and could be “labeled” going fascist.
As Lemur just implying “you claim, you prove it” doesn’t help much either… many of us do sincerely feel things are going a bit too fascist to be safe.
And this is why I objected to the premise of the OP in the first place. First define fascism, define which characteristics of fascism are particular to 1930s europe and which are universal, evaluate political trends and match them to characteristics, etc.
Even giving the OP a charitable reading, the exercise is pointless. Surely if you are worried about political trends in the US it is because you don’t like the trends themselves, not because the trends are “fascist”. It just becomes a boogyman word. If you don’t like it, it’s fascist, if you like it, it’s anti-fascist.
Take a step back. Is Russia under Vladamir Putin sliding towards Fascism? What other countries besides 1930s Spain, Italy, and Germany count as fascist? Was Iraq a fascist state? Is Iran a fascist state? Is North Korea a fascist state? How about Egypt? Cuba? Venezeula? Brazil? Mexico? Canada? Sweden? Did those countries ever have fascist governments but now don’t? Did they have “trends” that you felt were fascist, but never developed fascist governments? If so, how worrisome are fascist trends? How often do fascist trending countries develop fascism, how often to they move off in another direction? Can every social, economic or political trend be assigned as either fascist or anti-fascist? Aren’t there lots of trends that have nothing to do with fascism or anti-fascism?
And once we’ve done all this work, what will we have accomplished? Will it tell us whether a national ID card is bad or good? Will it tell us whether a free trade agreement is bad or good? Will it tell us whether a proposed tax increase/cut is bad or good? Will it tell us whether to increase or decrease immigration levels? Will it tell us how to respond to North Korean nuclear brinksmanship? No, every policy, every trend, every event has to be evaluated on its merits, not on whether it is similar to policies, trends, and events in 1930s Germany. Dig hard enough and you can find parallels between every historical period and every other historical period, since human beings have existed in every historical period.
This is why the “Fascism” label is so counterproductive. If America is becocming more authoritarian, why is 1930s Germany and Italy the model we should be looking out for? We’ve had countless dictatorships, one-party states, religious despotisms, absolute monarchies, oligopolies, and general no-goodnik goverments throughout history. And the OP is worried about a recapitulation of 1930s Germany. We aren’t going to recapitulate 1930s Germany, we’re going to make our own mistakes in our own way and go down the tubes in a unique unforseen manner. Why not worry about the parallels between George Bush and Oliver Cromwell, or George Bush and Charles II, or George Bush and James K. Polk, or George Bush and William McKinley, or George Bush and Lorenzo de Medici, or George Bush and Louis the 16th? Most of those comparisons would offer more insight than a comparison between George Bush and Francisco Franco, let alone Adolf Hitler.
John Corrado, thanks for the (civil) response. I realize it may be touchy for some people, and I’m not trying to be insulting.
In other words, although the Civil Rights movement wasn’t the primary reason, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, turning otherwise Democrat voters to Republican voters. Do I have that right? I don’t want to put words in your mouth. (Note also that I’m lumping desegragation and civil rights together as one, although they really share a set/subset relation.)
First off, I’m not talking about Bush, ferchrissakes. Why is it always about Bush? I’m talking about the shift in Southern voting patterns from the late 1960s onward. I think you misunderstood what I was saying; and I might have misunderstood what LonesomePolecat was saying. I’m happy to be corrected. Here’s the original quote:
I assumed that “the South’s devotion to the Democrats” was pre-60s. Once the Democrats came out in support of the Civil Rights movement, the South switched to the Republicans. If that was indeed the case, it would be the Republicans’ lack of support for Civil Rights, construed on my part as racism, that was the cause of the shift. In other words, what does the shift in the South’s voting patterns say about the Republican party? That they were racist, because that was the reason for the shift. Alternatively, one could claim that both parties were racist pre-60s. When the Democrats came out in support of Civil Rights, it left the Republicans holding the title of racists.
Did I have it totally wrong?
While I agree with you to a point, you take it too far. I agree that some guidelines or criteria are needed for what qualifies as “fascism”. I do not agree that definitions (or characteristics) of the “p=blah blah” logical form are necessary. I doubt you’ll find anyone who expects a debate of this type to hold up under a logical positivist microscope. That’s essentially what you’re asking for. I think the social sciences are considered “soft” for exactly that reason.
Furthermore, it is not pointless. If nothing else, it has made me think, trying to identify patterns in history that may be appearing in our current climate. Or exactly what events I consider to be harbingers of authoritarian control. That doesn’t say one way or the other whether I approve or disapprove of “these times”. You seem to be taking the stance – we can’t reach a definitive answer, so the whole exercise is a waste of time. If that’s the case, don’t participate.
Clearly, something is signified by the term “fascism”. You’re right to ask what it is. You’re also right to say that at any given point in history, one can most likely find something that qualifies as an indicator (as I’ve already ceded in a prior post). However, if you can identify one period/place/culture as fascist and another as not, clearly you have some gauge of fascism. If you give an iota of credence to the phrase “history repeats itself”, which I personally do (qualified earlier in that no set of circumstances is ever exactly the same), you’ve already taken the first step in the debate. Now be constructive (which, I should point out yet again, some of your commentary is).
Then, as I asked before, what other countries, governments and time periods qualify as fascist besides 1930s Spain, Italy, and Germany and 2005 America? 2005 Iraq? 1974 South Vietnam? 1950s Argentina? 1950s America?
As for the definition issue, the trouble is exactly the word fascism, since fascism is essentially an extinct political philosophy, killed by WWII. Yes, there were no gas chambers in Spain and Italy, but use of the word neccesarily invokes the gas chambers. If the OP didn’t intend to invoke the gas chambers, she should have used a different word. Dictatorship, junta, empire, political machine, one-party state, who knows? But you simply cannot throw around the word “fascism” and expect people to believe you weren’t talking about the death camps. It is a loaded word, for crying out loud, even when talking about totalitarian dictatorships.