American Fascism

We’ve offered that American political rhetoric suggests that we have some genocidal inclinations, but our case studies show that states with genocidal tendencies usually have non-democratic governments. A question this raises is whether the United States presents a connection between genocide and authoritarianism. In her 2007 book, The End of America, Naomi Wolf argues that the United States is, indeed, on the road to authoritarianism. (Here’s her interview with Amy Goodman on the subject http://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/28/the_end_of_america_feminist_social)

Wolf argues that security steps taken by the Bush administration post 9/11 mirror steps taken by dictators to impose authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. She studied the processes by which Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and others built dictatorships and used them to develop a “blueprint” consisting of ten steps that each “would-be” dictator took.

The blueprint begins with “invoking an internal/external threat”. Wolf notes that governments try to find a real threat which they can exaggerate and manipulate in order to justify extreme measures. In Turkey, it was the Young Turks’ wartime fear of espionage and sabotage. In the United States, it was terrorism and Islamic extremism.   

The second step is to establish a network of unaccountable prisons where torture takes place. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 essentially legalized torture in prisons like Guantanamo Bay, where the United States detains suspected terrorists and tries them outside the American legal system. An important element of these prisons is that they house people on the margins of society who are unlikely to arouse anxiety in the general population. Most Guantanamo Bay detainees have brown skin and Muslim names, making it harder for American citizens to relate to them. Wolf compares this to Nazis imprisoning Jews and Gypsies, who constituted a tiny minority of the population and so were “other” to many German citizens.

After 9/11 the US government implemented a system which allowed the government to authorize surveillance of ordinary citizens, the fourth step towards creating a closed regime. The federal government also had “watch lists” with the names of thousands of American citizens. Most were critics of the Bush administration or members of suspect citizen groups. These watch lists fulfill the seventh step in the dictator’s blueprint: going after individual citizens.

Wolf proves that governments who want to monitor and control their citizens often use the same means to do it. The steps taken by the United States government since 9/11 parallel many of those taken by twentieth century dictators who eventually committed genocide. Her argument is important because for a “democratic” nation to commit genocide it requires not only the rhetoric and moral justification for it, but also an institutional structure that allows the government to strip citizens of their basic rights. The United States’ authoritarian inclinations after 9/11 add to its genocidal potential.