openpolitics.com

14 Characteristics of Fascism-“Lite” in the US

Published: Nov 8, 2020

 

Lawrence Britt: 14 Characteristics

Umberto Eco’s:  2003 article

Transcript:

well howdy there internet people it’s

beau again

so today we’re gonna talk about a

question i got um

because it kind of threw me through a

loop pretty thought provoking

actually when you really get down to it

um it was about systems of government

and it was trying to determine

if there was a uh

a comparable system to social democracy

on the other side and basically

the idea of the question was i

understand that social

democracy is kind of a blend of

socialism and capitalism it’s socialism

light

is there something on the other side is

there something in the right wing

that is a blend

between normal capitalism normal western

governments as we know it

and fascism

leads to an interesting place so

we’ve got our list the one we’ve been

using on this channel which is

uh put out by lawrence britt i think is

his name 14 characteristics

of fascism to be clear i use this one

because

it is it tends to speak to americans

more

it’s more practical there are other

lists

that break down the characteristics

there’s one by umberto echo

but this is more practical rather than

philosophical

so it’s the one that i tend to use if

you really want to get into the subject

you might want to look at the others too

okay so the first one is powerful and

continuing

nationalism now if you’re looking at a

light

version you would just kind of lighten

it up so maybe you don’t have

the marches and parades all the time

but you have like flags everywhere

so much so that it kind of loses meaning

becomes more like a bumper sticker a

sports team logo

than a display of the nation

it’s something that everybody feels is

their

symbol disdain for the recognition of

human rights

so you want to lighten it up maybe it’s

not overt

you know maybe it’s not legislated that

people don’t have human rights

however if you know somebody that’s

accused of a crime gets roughed up a

little bit

nobody’s going to cry over it you know

in this case it’s going to be more de

facto it’s going to be stuff that

just happens rather than it being

institutionalized

identification of enemies and scapegoats

is a unifying cause

now when you’re talking about the overt

version of this it’s

typically an internal enemy

that they get scapegoated if

it’s a light version it would probably

be external

you know well the ones of that group

that are inside the country

they’re different they’re okay but we’re

gonna all rally around the idea

that those on the other side of the line

on the map they’re bad

supremacy of the military so in a light

version you could imagine that

rather than it just basically having

control of the entire government

it uh it

maybe has a place of honor that is

you know really revered and probably

gets the biggest share of the budget

rampant sexism again this would be

something that’s a de facto

it’s a male-dominated society but

there’s not legislation

that backs up a whole lot of it it’s

just

the way it is because tradition

is also a characteristic that uh

goes along with this system but that

gets into the philosophical list

controlled mass media so

rather than it being overt and

the government just basically telling

the news organizations what to say

maybe it’s just more collusion maybe

it’s more of the media

parroting the government talking points

so they can get access

and so everybody’s on the same page

again it’s just de facto it’s just the

way it is in practice

rather than something that’s

institutionalized

obsession with national security

in regimes like this i don’t think you

would find

um a light version i think you would

still have a maze

of agencies that were devoted to

national security and anytime the

government needed something done

that’s the card they would pull because

they would have that

that reverence for the military already

established

so they’d be able to gain compliance

from the population by kind of pulling

that card

we need to do this so we don’t have to

send our troops over there

we just need you to comply and do what

we ask it’s going to keep you safe

religion and government are intertwined

again they’re going to want to keep up

the facade

of some form of liberal democrat

democracy

so it probably wouldn’t be legislation

it wouldn’t be institutionalized

but there would be like little rituals

to show that you were on the right team

maybe you

swear in on a holy text when you take

office

you know there’d be little things that

you would do to demonstrate that

you were one of the good guys you were

part of the club

corporate power is protected and that’s

one of the ones on this list that i

really object to

in the overt form it’s not protected

it’s blended

the government has a lot of control

direct control

of corporate power in that system

if you’re just talking about corporate

power being protected it’s what you have

in the united states

i mean that that’s what it is the the

government looks out for corporate

interest for the sake of the economy

and that’s how it gets framed but it’s

also for their own personal benefit

labor power is suppressed it probably

wouldn’t be as brutal

as you find in the over regimes it would

be more

legislation that just undermines

collective bargaining

makes it harder to unionize and just

undercuts the rights of the worker

disdain for intellectuals in the arts

so it probably wouldn’t be open

hostility

it would just be

something that they didn’t encourage

maybe they don’t fund art

in school they don’t teach the

appreciation of it

and they don’t encourage the youth to be

intellectual so it just goes by the

wayside on itself

all all by itself there’s no reason for

the government to

push against it too hard they’re just

going to let it fade out

obsession with crime and punishment so

you’d probably have a huge prison

population in a regime

operating under a blend like this

rampant cronyism and corruption

so what you’d have is like no bid

contracts

you’d have government officials giving

[Music]

jobs and construction contracts to their

cousins and stuff like that

that’s what you’d find again it wouldn’t

be overt

the last one is fraudulent elections you

probably wouldn’t see any of this

not much because they’d want to keep up

the facade

that it isn’t one of those regimes

so it would just be controlled in a

different manner

perhaps the major parties

would keep everything in house

and really only give you a couple

options

but they’d want to keep that one at

least the appearance

of legitimate elections

sounds really familiar doesn’t it

yeah if you want to know what fascism

light looks like

look out the window the united states

is the blend

um that’s one of the reasons it’s so

important that we watch

for the creep towards the overt

real thing because we’re already really

close to it

we’ve talked about it before on this

channel even our

left wing party in the united states

is center right because the country is

that far right to begin with

if you’re talking about a blend between

fascism

and the idea of western liberal

democracy

it’s the us

that that’s where we’re at already we

wouldn’t need to go anywhere

it already exists um

again i think it’s an interesting little

thought exercise and something i’d never

thought of before

nobody’s ever asked um that’s probably

one of the biggest

dangers to the united states as a whole

is the creep that direction further and

further right

to an authoritarian rule

especially when it’s done slowly

and it’s this soft form of it that we

don’t even realize is there so much so

that we don’t even think about it

because it’s just

the way it is it’s just tradition it’s

de facto

anyway it’s just a thought y’all have a

good day