Harper's: We Now Live In a Fascist State

[callady]

Harper's Magazine: We Now Live in a Fascist State

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 13:34:38 -0700

The article below appears in the current issue of Harpers and was written
by Lewis H. Lapham

The difficulty doesn't arise among people accustomed to regarding themselves as functions of a corporation. Thanks to the diligence of out news media and the structure of our tax laws, our affluent and suburban classes have taken to heart the lesson taught to the aspiring serial killers rising through the ranks at West Point and the Harvard Business School -- think what you're told to think, and not only do you get to keep the house in Florida or command of the Pentagon press office but on some sunny prize day not far over the horizon, the compensation committee will hand you a check for $40 million, or President George W. Bush will bestow on you the favor of a nickname as witty as the ones that on good days elevate Karl Rove to the honorific "Boy Genius," on bad days to the disappointed but no less affectionate "Turd Blossom." Who doesn't now know that the corporation is immortal, that it is the corporation that grants the privilege of an identity, confers meaning on one's life, gives the pension, a decent credit rating, and the priority standing in the community? Of course the corporation reserves the right to open one's email, test one's blood, listen to the phone calls, examine one's urine, hold the patent on the copyright to any idea generated on its premises. Why ever should it not? As surely as the loyal fascist knew that it was his duty to serve the state, the true American knows that it is his duty to protect the brand.

Having met many fine people who come up to the corporate mark -- on golf courses and commuter trains, tending to their gardens in Fairfield County while cutting back the payrolls in Michigan and Mexico -- I'm proud to say (and I think I speak for all of us here this evening with Senator Clinton and her lovely husband) that we're blessed with a bourgeoisie that will welcome fascism as gladly as it welcomes the rain in April and the sun in June. No need to send for the Gestapo or the NKVD; it will not be necessary to set examples.

<snip>

The early twentieth-century fascists had to contend with individuals who regarded their freedom of expression as a necessity -- the bone and marrow of their existence, how they recognized themselves as human beings. Which was why, if sometimes they refused appointments to the state-run radio stations, they sometimes were found dead on the Italian autostrada or drowned in the Kiel Canal. The authorities looked upon their deaths as forms of self-indulgence. The same attitude governs the agreement reached between labor and management at our leading news organizations. No question that the freedom of speech is extended to every American -- it says so in the Constitution -- but the privilege is one that musn't be abused. Understood in a proper and financially rewarding light, freedom of speech is more trouble than it's worth -- a luxury comparable to owning a racehorse and likely to bring with it little else except the risk of being made to look ridiculous. People who learn to conduct themselves in a manner respectful of the telephone tap and the surveillance camera have no reason to fear the fist of censorship. By removing the chore of having to think for oneself, one frees up more leisure time to enjoy the convenience of the Internet services that know exactly what one likes to hear and see and wear and eat. We don't have to murder the intelligentsia.

Here again, we find ourselves in luck. The society is so glutted with easy entertainment that no writer or company of writers is troublesome enough to warrant the compliment of an arrest, or even the courtesy of a sharp blow to the head. What passes for the American school of dissent talks exclusively to itself in the pages of obscure journals, across the coffee cups in Berkeley and Park Slope, in half-deserted lecture halls in small Midwestern
colleges. The author on the platform or the beach towel can be relied upon to direct his angriest invective at the other members of the academy who failed to drape around the title of his latest book the garland of a rave review.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/harpers101205....

[lebkuchen]

1. link doesn't work for me

does it for you?

[cosmicdot]

3. give this a try

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/harpers101205.cfm

[tk2kewl]

2. link is 404

[RaulGroom]

4. This is it

http://organicconsumers.org/Politics/harpers101205.cfm

[KoKo]

23. Americans have always felt they were the "Chosen Ones." I have hope

that our very arrogance will stop the march of the Bushes before too much longer.

There is PUSH BACK here...and there was dissent over the two stolen elections and there were Marches before the Invasion of Iraq and every year after.

We are out here, and just because our insulated Media doesn't report on us, doesn't mean we aren't making a difference.

Lapham makes great points in his darkest scenario. But, he has help out here. Somehow Mainstream Americans are waking up without any media help to drive down Bush's polls. Some news must be getting through the Fascist Gatekeepers. Not all over us are that dumbed down, yet. We have to hope that the "truth" will come out and set us free.

[niyad]

5. posted it to all my little trolls--they should HATE it (what fun!!)

sadly, the article is too, too true.

[bananas]

6. "Can we make America the best damned fascist state the world has ever seen

"I wish to be the first to say we can. We're Americans; we have the money and the know-how to succeed where Hitler failed"

[cassiepriam]

26. Yep, We can, and have. Are we greatn and oligarchy and theocracy.

to boot. We are so talented.

[dweller]

7. welcome callady

nom'd

please cross post to Eds & Arts. It will stay there for a longer period, thus read more often.

dp

:blush: thought i was in GD... :D

[Mojorabbit]

8. recomended

[hiley]

9. recommend

thanks and welcome to DU!:)

[Carolab]

10. Important article. Time people started discussing this openly. n/t

[Hissyspit]

11. This is very meaningful in light of the of the arguments in front of

the Supreme Court today. They are actually trying to convince the justices that whistleblowers don't have First Amendment rights. I listened to the arguments and my jaw dropped. It was insane.

[loudsue]

13. That's really disheartening to hear.

It will be even MORE disheartening if the Supremes fall for it! But, these days, I'm bracing for being disheartened.

The outrages continue.

:kick:

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. "The society is so glutted...

...with easy entertainment that no writer or company of writers is troublesome enough to warrant the compliment of an arrest, or even the courtesy of a sharp blow to the head."

I wouldn't bank on this. Fascist states aren't known for tolerating ANY kind of dissent indefinitely. They will test the waters slowly and see what they can get away with, just like they did with election fraud. When it becomes clear to them that nothing will come of a few alternative media journalists, or opposition party members, or other anti-fascist political activists just simply disappearing, they will become emboldened and brutal. Sorry, but that's what fascists do.

Yes, it would seem fascism has indeed become fashionable:

[McKenzie]

14. significant and damned important

articulates a lot of what people whom I correspond with believe...a bloodless fascism has set in.

Thanks

[Peace Patriot]

15. The intelligentsia can get quite good at pissing on the American people.

Why don't they try to help us get back our right to vote instead?! Help us throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor'?! Help us expose Bushite corporations tabulating our votes with SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code?!

Give us back our right to vote and we'll state some opinions, goddamit!

"...it will not be necessary to set examples." Oh, yeah? How about Valerie Plame? How about Paul Wellstone? How about Captain James Yee? How about the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay? How about the dead black corpses in New Orleans?

What crap.

[callady]

16. The intelligentsia's

allegiance lies, first and foremost, with their careers and that means with the status quo.

I am not speculating on this I work in the highest halls of Academia and these liberal profs in the Ivory Tower will leave you behind as they discuss at length why you should have rights.

Your right to vote, the least of rights and never deeply meaningful, has been rescinded.

[PATRICK]

24. By intelligentsia

is meant those PAID a lot for their acceptable thoughts. Those ensconced in the positions, new and traditional, that are the episcopal sees of policy opinion. Most of which hare no longer really influential unless they get with the business program anyway.

Unfortunately they educated and networked too many people. The same dissipation and morass has percolated a wider intelligentsia, one not at all intimidated by pathetic gatekeepers or bench warmers of the so-called "establishment. People who can easily see from a few minutes of a C-Span panel discussion the illogic, the nonsense, the arrogance and error of the privileged intelligentsia. And they do love to primp before the camera, totally unaware of how they undermine their facade.

No wonder the destruction of public mass education, especially college opportunities, is a natural by product of the great surrender to to the privileged C student monarch passing out money to his friends and destroying the entire civil society in an attempt to prop up fascism as a viable rule of state.

Beyond the intelligentsia the rot also extends to those who are equally self deluded because of money and comfort and self-affirmation- as they surrender the world to a few renegades according to the natural extension of their spiritual vice.

Without Bush to expose the pathetic nature of the "establishment" or whatever you want to call it, who would have dared seen the rot and void at the center of the American soul, long under siege from determined renegades?

[DaveT]

17. Lapham Is The Best

observer of the big picture of American political culture. His monthly essay is reason enough to subscribe to Harper's.

This particular piece is the most bitter and sarcastic one that I can remember, and I have been a faithful subscriber for more than two decades.

Under his editorship, Harper's has published superbly researched attacks on the 9/11 commission and the vote fraud of 2004. This is remarkable because Harper's is not primarily a political magazine -- it is one of the last general interest periodicals surviving.


For those who have noticed a few flaws in the application of American fascism that Lapham describes in that piece, please keep in mind that you should not take a piece like this too literally.


The key point he is making is that the harsher forms of fascist practice seem to be unnecessary in a country that represses itself. I think he is spot on here, and I go further -- the innovation in fascist practice created by the Gingrich, Limbaugh, Fox and Bush Family Business political machine is that ridicule works better than a billy club in suppressing dissent.

[pelagius]

18. Lapham is usually very dark in his observations and this...

...is about the darkest I've seen him. But the times demand it.

[Beetwasher]

19. Yes, It's the "Kindler, Gentler Fascism"

Indeed.

[grasswire]

21. I, too, have noticed a change in Lapham...

..in the last several months. I told another Lapham fan that it seemed that he had given up hope that America would survive this coup.

And this month's piece is breathtaking. I had to read it five or six times to absorb the unwritten messages.

Ten years ago Lapham asked me to write something for Harper's, but I was so intimidated by his intellect and wit that I never could submit a word for his review. He's simply an American treasure.

[WhiteTara]

25. Thanks for the bio on Lapham

I appreciate the greater understanding. BTW, welcome to DU :toast: I hope you enjoy your time here, I think you'll fit right in.

[gulfcoastliberal]

20. Recommended. We are fascist accoring to Il Duce. nt

[smoogatz]

22. Makes me proud to be his second cousin. But then

I feel that way every time I get the new issue of Harper's.

[mikita]

27. thanks for posting this...

this is a GREAT article to send to skeptical friends who need to read it in "respectable" journals before they'll embrace what's happening around us....

Lapham is one of those writers who can drive it home.

[The2ndWheel]

28. They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after1933,between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.