Have you been feeling down? depressed? boxed in? isolated from family and friends? have you been feeling worthless or guilty for no reason? You might just be living in a fascist police state!

FASCISM AND YOU


just what is fascism anyway?

Hmmm. That's a good question. And nobody seems to agree on the answer. But since we all like answers to our questions, we'll start off with this definition, by Wilhelm Reich1
"Fascism is the basic emotional attitude of man in authoritarian society, with its machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical view of life."
Huh? Still unsure about what fascism is? Try out some of these links to get a feel for how different people view the human sickness we call fascism:

Still in need of those dominant, hegemonic, Western-style "objective" definitions? Get your fix with definitions and descriptions from multiple respected sources assembled on a single page! fascism: Definition and Much More From Answers.com
Sure, but you probably want to know how Marxists define fascism. Why not check out the glossary of terms over at the Marxist Internet Archive. Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Terms
Or check out how that old Trotskyist, Leon Trotsky defined fascism in this lengthy article. FASCISM: What It Is and How To Fight It
Okay, maybe you want to check out what an anarcho-primitivist blogger has to say on the topic. "Defining" fascism

And to round out our definition links, here is a definition by postmodern novelist Umberto Eco, in list format no less. Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

Remember:
"...fascism is an international phenomenon which permeates all organizations of human society in all nations." -Wilhelm Reich2
Or as Michel Foucault put it:
"The strategic adversary is fascism ... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us."3
Are you wondering how such a state of being could come into existence? Well, you could locate some of the numerous resources listed at The Culture of Fascism in 20th Century Europe, a page on The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies website The Culutre of Fascism in 20th Century Europe, the home page for a class taught at Claremont McKenna College. Or you could check out this link to the Surveillance Camera Players' production of Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Why not read the book itself, and marvel at the uncanny nature of how much of the dialogue in contemporary right wing talk shows seem to be scripted straight from Reich's analyses of German Fascism. Ah, I believe this brings us to:

FASCISM IN THE US

Individuals that have dealt substantially with the topic:
Up until his death, George Seldes had been reporting about fascism since the 1920's when he chronicled the rise of Mussolini (until the latter had him expelled from Italy for not writing what the Fascisti wanted). Links to writings by and about George Seldes can be found here, including the first two chapters of the book Facts and Fascism, written in 1943, which contains a discussion of American Fascism. Mae Brussell, a housewife turned political researcher, studied, among other things, the origins of international fascism and its manifestations and links in the US. Some of her writings and radio programs broadcasting conclusions drawn from her quite thorough and well-documented research can be found here.
In 1988, John Judge, an "independent investigator, author, and historian" who has "investigated the history of Fascism and political assassination and cover-up from Nazi Germany to John F. Kennedy to Jonestown, Guyana,"4 gave a speech titled "Assassination as a Tool of Fascism. This took place at a conference in San Francisco, whose name was "The Fourth Reich in America", and whose contents can be viewed at the preceding link. Author, photographer, and contracter Dave McGowan wrote a book titled "Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism and the Politics of Illusion." Writings of his, many dealing with the subject of fascism, can be found at the website Center For An Informed America, along with an excellent list of Recommended Reading, also largely pertaining to the subject of fascism.
articles of note on the subject of US Fascism: Back in 2002, James Petras saw signs of a police state in his article, published at zmag.org, titled Signs of a Police State Are Everywhere
Here is an article posted by Sean Donahue (along with follow-up discussion) on the narcosphere at narconews.com, titled American Fascism. And how about an article by Nicholas Klassen over at the AdBusters website, dealing with creeping fascism.
UPDATE Nov. 3: narconews.com : More Demons Loose in Bolivia: The Reappearance of the Nazis: by Luis Gomez UPDATE Nov. 3: New Hampshire Gazette: “Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951” - Federal Documents: By John Buchanan and Stacey Michael (link no longer works; see this article about the author): found through disinfo.com
UPDATE Nov. 6: ECOFASCISM: Lessons From The German Experience: Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
found through Dream's End in a blog entry about peak oil enthusiast Richard Heinberg.

Hopefully, you will find the preceding links helpful if you or someone you know finds themselves enmeshed in a fascist police state.

Footnotes:

1Reich, Wilhelm. Mass Psychology of Fascism. Orgone Institute Press: New York, 1946.

2Ibid

3Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984), French philosopher. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, preface (1972). The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press.

4"The Fourth Reich in America"Conference in San Fransisco

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