Peter Turchin Can Fascism Happen Here?

Peter Turchin equates fascism with tyranny, but I don't think that is correct. Fascism is a modern political theory, while tyranny is a political category proposed by Plato, as Professor Turchin notes. The "tyrants" of history were what now call "dictators," although the Latin term "dictator" had a somewhat different meaning classically from the Greek "tyrannos." Thus, equating fascism with tyranny as usurpation of absolute power as sole ruler involves a category error, on one hand, and it also fails to consider the range of meaning of both terms.

Fascism is a totalitarian concept of political theory based on authoritarian nationalism that doesn't necessitate a sole absolute ruler that has usurped power. Being grounded in authoritarian nationalism, fascism as a political theory has elements of tyranny associated with it, but it is not equatable with tyranny as a political category.

In the ancient sense, a tyrant was a military usurper that seized absolute power over the state. Solon was careful to deny that he was actually a tyrant, even though he held that power. In modern times, tyranny is no longer associated exclusively with military dictatorship but is extended by analogy to administrative or bureaucratic tyranny (Mill) and "the tyranny of the majority."

"Fascism" today is most closely associated with the Hitler regime and Mussolini doesn't come to mind, even though he was the originator of the modern term. Hitler was influenced by Italian
Fascism, but Nazism was an separate creation.

Ok, this is nitpicking a bit and the author is dealing the limitations of a blog post. But, I think it is useful to point out for the sake of discussion since "fascism" is a term that getting lot of use now, which risks Godwin's law by conflating "fascism" with "Hitler." But Nazism its a form of fascism rather than being the paradigm case of fascism as often presumed.

So asking whether it can happen here has deeper implications that often considered or admitted. Thinking not is letting one's guard down. And maybe the question is better framed as to what degree has fascism crept in.

Cliodynamica — A Blog about the Evolution of Civilizations
Can Fascism Happen Here?
Peter Turchin | Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, Research Associate in the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, and Vice-President of the Evolution Institute

See also

Wikipedia — The Doctrine of Fascism

Benito Mussolini (with Giovanni Gentile) — The Doctrine of Fascism

Zero Hedge Facebook Security Chief Lashes Out: "Censorship Is Easy If You Don't Worry About Becoming The Ministry Of Truth"

In a furious tweetstorm this weekend, Facebook's Chief Security Officer warned interfering desperate politicians and triggered letfists that the fake news problem is more complicated and dangerous to solve than the public thinks.

Everything changed after 9/11 and the suspension of constitutional rights and civil liberties.  This is just another iteration in the slide down the slippery slope into tyranny.

Zero Hedge
Facebook Security Chief Lashes Out: "Censorship Is Easy If You Don't Worry About Becoming The Ministry Of Truth"

Tyler Durden

Henry Giroux on State Terrorism and the Ideological Weapons of Neoliberalism — Leslie Thatcher Interview

Public intellectual Henry Giroux discusses his new book, America's Addiction to Terrorism, and the terror that "is now such a central part of the political nervous system in the United States that it's become the major organizing principle of society."

Truthout
Henry Giroux on State Terrorism and the Ideological Weapons of Neoliberalism
Leslie Thatcher, Truthout | Interview

Henry A. Giroux is the founder-animator of Truthout's Public Intellectual Project, a member of Truthout's board of directors and a frequent contributor - currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University.

Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created in One of the Freest Countries in the World

A constitutional lawyer in the White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties....

It is of no slight import that the project is being executed in one of the freest countries in the world,and in radical violation of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures," and guarantees the privacy of their "persons, houses, papers and effects."

Much as government lawyers may try, there is no way to reconcile these principles with the assault on the population revealed in the Snowden documents.

It is also well to remember that defense of the fundamental right to privacy helped to spark the American Revolution. In the 18th century, the tyrant was the British government, which claimed the right to intrude freely into the homes and personal lives of American colonists. Today it is American citizens' own government that arrogates to itself this authority....

These exposures lead us to inquire into state policy more generally and the factors that drive it. The received standard version is that the primary goal of policy is security and defense against enemies.

The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.

Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled....

Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim.

In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.

AlterNet
Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created in One of the Freest Countries in the World

Glenn Greenwald — US takes a break from condemning tyranny to celebrate Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia

Irony? I guess it is lost on the president.

The Intercept
US takes a break from condemning tyranny to celebrate Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia
Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald — Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

GG: I’ve been writing for years about the fact that civil liberties abuses and excessive government invasions are really the issue that can bridge the ideological gap and create these transpartisan, transideological coalitions more than probably any other. And then you’ve seen this over the past 10 years. The ACLU has long partnered with right-wing groups like the Christian Coalition to challenge the PATRIOT Act. And I think what you’re seeing is lots of support for Mr. Snowden and for our NSA reporting on the left, groups like Amnesty International and the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, lots of liberals and progressives who have been outspoken in their support of these disclosures, but you also see a lot of support for it on the right, as well, from people who take seriously their rhetoric about limited government and the rights of individuals and the need for safeguarding individual privacy.

Democracy Now
Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden
Interview with Juan González

William Pfaff — Secret Intelligence Court a Precursor to Tyranny

The justification for this secret court—as is usual in the development of 20th century secret police states—is national security. The American case differs from the prominent earlier examples of such states in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, in that this American secret court operates behind a screen of what seem to be guilty obfuscations, which their authors know will not stand up to serious examination. Such obfuscations simply provide the rationales for concealment of this legal mechanism from public, press, and all but a certain number of congressmen and senators, all willing to provide the simulacrum of oversight because of their personal commitment to the belief that the United States makes itself secure by walking on what former Vice President Richard Cheney melodramatically described as “the dark side.”

It is the public who gets left in the dark about this, so as to protect the system.

The “dark side” of international combat or security operations, such as political assassinations, kidnappings, use of torture, or secret and illegal sequestrations or imprisonments, has on the whole seemed to have produced more American national humiliation, disrepute,and political blowback than advantage. It also is not entirely new; it is a characteristic of bureaucracies.

Truthdig
Secret Intelligence Court a Precursor to Tyranny
William Pfaff