Fascism.

Editor,

I have often wondered just how in the 1920's and 1930's fascists acquired so many and such enthusiastic supporters.

I had read about the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity that swept Europe in the face of social unrest after 1917 and of course when the Great Depression hit, but there seems to my mind not to be an inherent logic in such a turn to authoritarianism that made that turn inevitable. And of course it wasn't inevitable. And that is the point.

Opportunists hungry for power, demagogues like Rudolph Giuliani and Patrick Lynch, whom I like to refer to as Il Duce because he fits the role so well, take advantage of the public's fears to assume positions of authority that their personalities, politics, and personal ambitions portend.

Limbaugh, Faux News, all the usual suspects in the American fascist camp, share the same motives, use the same tactics, and proffer the same solutions: scapegoating, violence, exceptionalism, and a pervasive myth of a morally superior America being undermined by a despicable enemy within greatly imperiling the loyal, true-blooded, patriotic Americans the fascists stand to defend.

So now rather than to read about fascism rising in a different place and time, the process is going on all around me. What is interesting is that the outcome is not carved in stone. The battle is still being fought. But I caution anyone who cares that authoritarianism versus democracy is the name of the struggle, and the current instance of it started in 1980 with the ascendency of Ronald Reagan.

Re: "When Officers Die and Protests Get the Blame" (12/23/2014)