Eric Zuesse

In U.S. elections between the two political Parties for federal offices — Congress, and the Presidency — the choice that’s offered to the voters is almost invariably between two fascists; so, the meaning of “fascism” is first crucial to understand, in order to understand today’s America, and that it’s fascist:

Benito Mussolini, who originated fascism and named his Party after that ideology, alternatively referred to it as “corporationism,” and meant by that term, as he explained it (quoted in George Seldes’s excellent 1935 book, Sawdust Caesar, about Mussolini and fascism) Corporationism is disciplined economy, and from that comes control, because one cannot imagine a discipline without a director. Corporationism is above socialism and above liberalism. A new synthesis is created. It is a symptomatic fact that the decadence of capitalism coincides with the decadence of socialism. All the Socialist parties of Europe are in fragments.

On 26 April 2015, I quoted more extensively from the documents that are presented in the Appendices to that book, and placed those documents within the context of understanding the U.S. regime while it was being led by Obama. Subsequently, on 20 August 2017, I updated that report, and headlined "Trump’s Fascism Versus Obama’s Fascism”, and concluded that “Trump’s foreign policies seem to be mainly aiming to out-do his predecessor’s. But, in no way is Trump yet the nazi that Obama proved himself to be.” (That “nazism” reference was subsequently further documented by me here.)

However, those articles, on America’s increasing post-WW-II fascism, focus almost entirely upon America’s takeover by what U.S. President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.” There's almost no discussion in them of the U.S. federal Government’s domestic policies. So, in this regard, I would recommend especially two articles, one of which documents the military-industrial complex’s takeover of the Web and of America’s ’news’media, and the other of which documents the resulting takeover of U.S. retailing by U.S. international corporations, at the expense of ever-increasing inequality both of income and of wealth in the U.S. — an increasingly two-class society: the top 5%, who in 2013 owned 62.4% of all wealth, and everybody else (the poorer 95%), who owned the remaining 37.6% of all wealth. (See page 146 here, for the international comparisons on that. Also see this, summarizing that study.)

The first of these two articles about domestic U.S. policies, Nafeez Ahmed’s masterful 22 January 2015 “How the CIA made Google”, tells, in remarkable detail, the origin of the military-industrial complex’s takeover of the then-emerging digital economy — the internet, Google, the ‘news’media, and, more broadly, of Americans’ emerging fascism-accepting political attitudes and beliefs — the manipulation of the public mind (mass mind-control), starting with the mathematician William Perry’s service as U.S. Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton. Whereas the anodyne CIA-edited Wikpedia article on Perry presents him by deceptive phrases such as “Perry did everything he could to improve relations with Moscow,” and ignores the deeper reality to the exact contrary (which followed through on President G.H.W. Bush’s lie issued on 24 February 1990), Ahmed recognizes this deeper reality (which I documented at the present link). Perry was doing everything he could — and not just in the former Yugoslavia — to expand America’s empire up to Russia’s borders. Furthermore, the liberal tradition (as I have documented in my recent “Liberals Don’t Respect a Nation’s Sovereignty”) is just as supportive of foreign conquests as the conservative tradition is; and, so, Perry’s favoring expansion of the American empire toward a hoped-for ultimate conquest of Russia itself, was no violation of the authenticity of his (or of his then-boss, President Bill Clinton’s) being a Democrat (liberal) instead of a Republican (conservative) — both the (post-FDR) liberal Party (today’s Democrats), and the conservative Party (the Republicans, after the assassination of Lincoln in 1865, and most especially after 1897) in the United States, embody the American aristocracy’s ceaseless quest, for foreign conquests; and this fact is reflected in, for examples, both Obama’s and Trump’s continuations of George W. Bush’s invasions (“permanent war, for permanent ‘peace’”). But the real turning-points for modern times, were the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, and then Bill Clinton’s destroying FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act and unleashing Wall Street. It didn’t start with President George W. Bush — he merely raised American fascism to its present high pitch.

That article by Nafeez Ahmed concerns domestic policies which were pursued more for their foreign-policy objectives than for their domestic-policy objectives, but that’s normal for domestic policies — the chief motive behind them is usually their foreign-policy objectives, because the aristocracy in every country is more concerned about that than about domestic affairs. The aristocracy’s ‘news’media always hide this fact from the public, because the public are as narrowly focused on domestic effects as the aristocracy are focused on foreign effects (mainly conquest — empire); and, so, the aristocracy’s politicians always try to sell policies by focusing more on their domestic effects, than on their foreign ones.

The other of these two articles about domestic policies, is Greg LeRoy’s 11 September 2017 "Tax-break auctions for Foxconn, Apple, and now Amazon’s HQ2”, which opens: “Amazon’s stunning announcement that it will build a second headquarters that could eventually employ 50,000 has triggered a frantic bidding war that may see the company win billions of dollars in tax incentives and other subsidies. But it’s the third such episode in three months. Wisconsin enacted a $3 billion subsidy deal for Foxconn and the State of Iowa with a Des Moines suburb awarded $213 million to Apple.” Furthermore, his analysis indicates that “the average cost is $658,000 per job,” and that “deals of this size are only going to large companies. That helps explain why, in two detailed analyses, we found that small businesses are severely shortchanged.” When he examined small-business startups, he found that, “when compared to the levels in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, startup density is in a long-term decline.” America’s taxpayers are shelling out $658,000 per new job that’s produced by these tax-subsidies to megacorporations; and, meanwhile, all of America’s non-oligopoly firms are scraping by, and fewer and fewer new businesses are being created.

This is a dream-economy, for anyone whose ideals are similar to Benito Mussolini’s. This is the “disciplined economy, and from that comes control, because one cannot imagine a discipline without a director.” And, it “is above socialism and above liberalism [the term that Europeans used for referring to what in today’s America is called “libertarianism”]. A new synthesis [between (Marxist) socialism and libertarianism (free-market capitalism)] is created.”

Everything points in the same direction, toward increasing dictatorship in America — dictatorship by the rich, against everyone else. That’s the “disciplined economy,” which was Mussolini’s ideal.

An essential part of this is that the nation’s ‘news’media lie, they intentionally deceive, routinely and systematically — not just by many blatant falsehoods, but also by a far higher number of strategically-determined but widespread omissions in virtually all ‘news’-reports, regarding certain types of facts — especially in international-affairs news (the aristocracy’s main obsession) — that the entire aristocracy don’t want the public to know. A particularly good example of this is that America’s ‘news’media never even yet have reported, at all, that the “Maidan” demonstrations in Ukraine during 20 November 2013 till 20 February 2014, were pre-organized by the U.S. CIA inside the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine, starting by no later than 1 March 2013, and were organized as being the public cover for a brutal and bloody coup with U.S.-paid snipers, which was carried out between 20 and 26 February 2014, to culminate the operation (but was planned at the same time, starting by no later than 2011 inside the Obama Administration) to take over Ukraine, on Russia’s very doorstep. It’s as if, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union were to have perpetrated a coup and taken over Mexico; but Americans keep being told that the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President in February 2014 was a ‘democratic revolution’ there.

And, so, the public’s trust in the news media, and in all of the country’s institutions, is internationally ranked near the bottom and going lower all the time. The public is increasingly alienated from its government — including from its press. And, for very good reasons — not only for false or otherwise bad reasons. As the liberal wing of the U.S. aristocracy said, in the person of its Warren Buffett, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” He told this to the conservative Ben Stein reporting in the artistocracy’s New York Times, on 26 November 2006, but that newspaper won’t let readers access the article online, and instead prefer to charge anyone who seeks to see whether or not the quotation is authentic — it is. And the statement is true. And, every fascist regime is ruled, directly or indirectly, by the aristocrats who financed its rise to power. In the United States, for a long time, there was an effective competition between the fascist Republican Party and the fence-riding Democratic Party; but, now, both Parties of the U.S. aristocracy are unequivocally fascist, because, after the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the billionaires developed a stranglehold over both Parties, no longer just on one. The result has been the American dictatorship: the liberal fascist Party of Democrats, versus the conservative fascist Party of Republicans, both of which Parties represent the two competing wings of the U.S. aristocracy, differing only in the business-plan of how the U.S. aristocracy will exploit the public (who have no effective representation, in this corrupt country). Whereas some countries are more corrupt than America at the bottom, America is the world’s champion in its corruption at the very top, and that’s the reason why the U.S. is overall the most corrupt of the economically advanced nations.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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