Discovering American fascism

Most Americans do not understand what is happening here. A slight majority of voters elected a man who has authorized others to destroy much of the Federal apparatus.

I believe that his purpose is to establish a fascist dictatorship. He is far from alone in this project. This article is the first in a series.

Feel free to Comment on the events I found significant, or to add any that impacted you.

In 1949, George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 was published. It was known to most American college students in the mid-1960s - I was one - but I don't think I actually read it before the 1980s-1990s. Unconsciously, I labeled it "it can't happen here", and never connected it to the real world. Naive fool.

In 1962, the American Enterprise Association, already decades-old, changed its name to American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Two years later, many of its senior staff were part of Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign. With strong influence from the John Birch Society, the Goldwater campaign was a high-water mark for far-right politics in America. Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. That 1964 election – not coincidentally – consecrated the passage of the South from "conservative Southern Democrat" to "conservative Republican". 

That shellacking caused conservatives and libertarians to do some serious re-thinking. (Just for the record, the Democrats, with George McGovern, would take an even worse hammering in 1972, without equivalent soul-searching.)

The Heritage Foundation, source of many conservative/libertarian policy ideas, was founded in 1973.

In 1981, America elected Ronald Reagan. He was not a thinker. He was an a not-very-good actor, and an excellent public speaker. His most famous line, "government is not the solution; government is the problem", has become Indisputable Conservative Truth. It's a nonsense statement, given even a moment's thought. Reagan is a Saint for American conservatives. Immaculate. 

In 1982, the Federalist Society was created as "a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order", with the purpose of putting conservative/libertarian judges on judicial benches everywhere . Five sitting Supreme Court justices are former members. The importance to this organization, for the perpetuation of control of the nation's institutions cannot be overestimated. 

(Now… a brief word about myself. I'm a straight male White protestant. That's about as far from "often a victim of discrimination" as one can get. I was born in the Midwest. I'm not gregarious. None of the few people I have ever called "friend" was Black - that not by choice, but happenstance was just as effective for preventing me from understanding lots of things for a long time.

My first computer arrived sometime in the 80s. My first search engine was Alta Vista, so I had to be online already in the early 90s. Newsvine was created in 2005… and I found that glorious attempt at civilized conversation almost immediately. Those conversations were an education – almost always teaching me things other than the apparent topic. 

For example, we spent hours discussing "the US is not a democracy; it is a republic". The egregious stupidity of this statement, its incomprehension of the very simple ideas we had all been taught in fifth grade, left me groggy. In my defense, I was very naive. It simply did not occur to me that for many people "truth" is of no value.

Many years later, I realized that this was my first encounter with an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth loyalty test". The proponents of "America is not a democracy" were not concerned with the textbook accuracy of their position; they wanted to demonstrate their loyalty to the "correct conservative/libertarian dogma", to both their allies and their adversaries. 

From the point of view of the "intellectual leaders" of the conservative/libertarian movement, this kind of loyalty test – we see new variants of the same thing constantly, here on NT – this adhesion of was an important tool for locking in their adherents. By swearing to a dogma that simply was not true, an adherent put themselves in a situation where "Truth" was no longer determined by fact and reason, but by fiat from the movement's leaders.

The Koch brothers founded Americans for Prosperity in 2004, to funnel money to conservative/libertarian organizations and campaigns. Americans for Prosperity avoided media awareness until it contributed heavily against Barack Obama in 2008. The Koch brothers' wielding of their wealth for blatant political manipulation was nothing new, of course, but its scale was eye-popping for many, including me.

In 2007, the Tea Party burst on the scene. But that's a story for another day…….