Wow-
Quite a challenge to put in our lap!
I dunno... The accounts I've read of the rally seem to leave the "pseudo" out of the "pseudo-fascism," what with the "Thank God for George Bush" crap and the embrace of militaristism.
Wally,
But who is the target for their streetfighters? Who do they want to violently eliminate? When did they say they want a non-metaphorical revolution?
Now, I agree that Battle Cry is a lot of trouble. But they do not fit the definition of fascism that our blog-host uses. Battle Cry falls short of the definition, so it remain (for now) "pseudo".
Here are a couple of things they would have to do to go all the way.
1.) For example, if the audience was told that democracy is counter to God's will, and that power must be taken by any means necessary. Then on the stage, the Seals are "killed" by literal Christian soldiers. The crowd cheers.
and
2.) For another example, if the attendees were told to "fight back" against homosexuality, and then they left the stadium and beat up gays, lesbians, and anyone who looked like them. (Or did so a week later, so as not to taint the organization.)
Even if Battle Cry is not yet technically an expression of fascism, does that mean we can sit back and wait until the "pseudo" is officially dropped from the label before taking any action?
I dont think so.
I think that was the poiint of the post.
Great piece. This is the best blog I've ever seen. Thanks for your work, David.
It might be merely semantic difference, but instead of pseudo fascist they seem to me to be proto fascist.
Excellent work though.
David,
I'm the person who took the photos being circulated. Thanks for the review.
I'd like to add a few things to your review and suggest how this even in some ways did meet the threshold to have the "pseudo" removed from the "pseudo fascism".
One thing that struck me when I read Richard's Evan's book "The Coming of the Third Reich" was that the key to the victory of the brownshirts was the attitude of the state towards the conflict betweent he brownshirts and the communist party.
I don't know if you attended James Dobson's big bund rally at Safeco in 2004 but I was living in Seattle at the time and I managed to observe how the city and the local press handled it.
For the most part, the Seattle cops, the local press, and the city government was neutral. The Seattle cops didn't try to stop any of the local gay activists from approaching Dobson's people and the press (especially the Stranger) covered this rally and was generally hostile.
In Philadelphia, by contrast, the police were highly biased towards Luce's crowd and against us. I couldn't make the Friday night event the way Sunsara did because I had been detained by the cops *at the request of one of Luce's security goons/youth organizers*. Luce's guy didn't like my taking photos on the sidewalk in front of the Wachovia center and called in some of the local cops. The cops were relatively civil but suggested that since I was in danger of being beaten up by Luce's people, they had to detain me and check my ID. That was a bit odd.
What's more, I didn't see any mainstream media at the event itself. The mainstream media in Philadelphia seemed either to ignore the event altogether or just publish Luce's press releases. The coverage on local TV was overwhelmingly positive and (I can't prove this and I have to check more) they used Luce's footage, not their own. I didn't see any cameras from the networks or photographers from the local newspapers.
As far as eliminationist rhetoric goes, it was veiled but it was there. They made no secret of their intention to convert Muslims, Jews and Hindus (eliminate those religions) and they compared nonbelievers to pigs, with a demonstration including live pigs.
They were all particularly virulent towards Muslims. Many of them simply seemed to think Islam was satan worship. And note, that I've photographed rallies of Gush Katif settlers in NYC and this seemed every bit as Islamophobic.
Anyway, try to imagine how the press and the local cops would have covered this thing had Louis Farrakhan brought M16s on stage
Dave, this is one of your very best posts EVER. All these years we've been discussing the parallels here between fundies and other authoritarians -- three years ago, I felt like one of about three people in the blogosphere who understood what these people were up to.
Now, thanks to Michelle Goldberg's book, I think *everybody* is getting it.
And Stanley, great response (and photos -- do you have a website with more?). One question: Any thoughts about why the police reactions were so different between Seattle and Philadelphia? Is it just a Right Coast/Left Coast cultural thing? Or could it be that the Seattle police took steps to improve their approach after the WTO riots?
Apparently, I completely missed it when these people came to San Francisco a while ago. I will certainly be prepared for their promised return and bring out my cameras and microphones to document the behavior of the police and the Luce people during the inevitable protests.
I think the main reason for the difference was the numbers. In Seattle there were over 1000 counterprotesters. In Philadelphia there were only about 10 of us.
It's a compelling argument about how street activism/protest helps keep fascism in check. No Seattle politician wants to be seen as setting the cops on gay activists for the benefit of Mullah Dobson.
More galleries here.
http://rogouski.com/gallery/battlecry-1
http://rogouski.com/gallery/batt...tlecry-1?
page=2
But what's really needed at these events is an early 20ish person with a good videocamera who knows how to put people at ease.
Some of the things these kids were saying were insane. One of the "Creative Media" people (a Jewish convert to Christianity) was telling us how God required that we obay our political leaders, that they were put over us by God.
When Sunsara said "how about Hitler?" she said "yes."
Of course when I chimed in with "how about Clinton" she remarked that Clinton had violated his office or something.
Only time I laughed at the whole event.
One of the "Creative Media" people (a Jewish convert to Christianity) was telling us how God required that we obay our political leaders, that they were put over us by God.
I hope some day she realizes how unAmerican that sentiment is. Unfortunately, I doubt she ever will.
As for why Philly media and police were more supportive of the event, that may be because while Philadelphia is predominately Democratic, it isn't very socially liberal. That's my experience, anyway, having lived here most of life.
As an Ex-fundie Xtian and an ex-Pennsylvanian, (an agnostic in CA with great relief after years of PTSD and recovery from fundie programming) this just scared the crap outta me. I don't find it comforting that we have to wait for live executions on a stage or zealot violence spilling from stadia to call these guys fascists. That is has the funding and endorsement of the government means, in my mind, they've crossed the Rubicon and must be stopped.
What can be done strategically, tactically to stop these goons?
What can be done strategically, tactically to stop these goons?
On the simplest level I think it's a matter of driving it into the heads of the Democrats and establishment media that these types of Christian fundamentalist youth groups have nothing to do with the Lutheran/Catholic youth groups you knew when you were a kid.
Think Jim Jones backed up by the power of the state. OK. Maybe Jim Jones was an exaggeration but a lot of these kids were just gone spiritually and intellectually. They just had this bugged out look.
Dean's appearence on the 700 Club was just a disgrace. I think we have to stop depending on the Democrats and build a broad, anti-Bush, anti-authoritarian protest movement.
These people are a good place to start.
http://www.worldcantwait.net
The pic looks like a Nazi rally
I like "pseudo." You can slime somebody but still have plausible deniability.
One: Graham was right. Islam IS a wicked religion. We can see the proof today in Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, to name a few.
Two: The "apocalypticism" of the Hare Krishna movement is supposed to happened over 400,000 years from now.
Three: ALL of the "nine characteristics" can be applied to Christianity and Islam.
Please, this isn't a commercial for Christianity. That sucks too. Let's not have any little ankle biters write back and call me a "racist" or "Islamaphobe." Islam IS Christianity on Crystal Meth. Accept it.
While there are plenty of decent people in every religion or "cult" there are only a couple of decent religions. The Buddhists, the Jains, and the Hindus (mainstream) all believe in reincarnation... they all believe that eventually everyone gets to Heaven (or whatever they call it.) And--excluding a few fringe groups like the Hare Krsishnas--they don't seek converts.
As for the Judaica, Islam, and Christianity... they all pretty-much suck, relative to the number of people they are killing.
Fanorollins@yahoo.com
They were all particularly virulent towards Muslims. Many of them simply seemed to think Islam was satan worship. And note, that I've photographed rallies of Gush Katif settlers in NYC and this seemed every bit as Islamophobic.
There's no such thing as Satan. Islam worships Mohammed, and that is worse.
And how about those "every bit as worse" Gush Katif (your supposed to call it Gaza, or "Palestine" BTW)? Where are they now? Oh, that's right. The Jews LEFT Gush Katif. Amazing what a nation of Laws will do. Now when will the Pakistanis leave Kashmir? Or maybe Morocco will leave Western Sahara? Or Turkey will leave Cyrprus?
Behold the difference between those "every bit as worse" Jews and the other occupiers.
Dang, this is like the brown shirts meet Opus Dei.
I wonder if "Tomorrow Belongs to me" was sung.
Here is a piece that went through their agenda schedule:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/i...y_philadelphia/
There is a bit of sex and gender hate a shame thrown in their rhetoric for good measure!
fanorollins-
"And how about those "every bit as worse" Gush Katif (your supposed to call it Gaza, or "Palestine" BTW)? Where are they now? Oh, that's right. The Jews LEFT Gush Katif. Amazing what a nation of Laws will do."
at the same time as israel left gaza they increased their settlements in the west bank. it didnt get much attention but i can find a link if you would like.
david-
i like your post, but i am completely unconvinced by the sociologists Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins. i havent seriously studied sociology, but it seems to me unlikely that this sort of cultist thinking is a result of a lack of "a consensual and compelling social ethic". that even seems sort of cultish, the idea that our problems would be solved if only everyone in america would agree about what to value (i would also argue that america has enough shared values, and that the differences are healthy as long as there are enough shared). from there they go into a discussion about personality disorders (which i am more knowledgable about), but here again i think i disagree. its a bit confusing really, are they saying that all of these people at the rallies have personality disorders? personality disorders are part of a person's personality, they are fundamental, so i dont think they are easily learned, while i think a cultist mindset is. perhaps i am missing their point here.
while reading your piece, i was reminded of erich fromm's book "escape from freedom" written in response to the phenomenon of nazi germany. if you haven't read it, i would recommend it, i found it quite persuasive. its been many years since ive looked at it, but if i recall correctly, part of it posits that ordinary people (rather than only people with mental "disorders") feel the compulsion to submit to authority and they value this over freedom, which is intrinsically scary and unknown.
Socrates submits to authority as well, and he was a bit of a free-thinker. It's not intrinsically a bad thing---I submit to the Western welfare state not because I like it or agree with it, but because that's the deal---democracy and all that.
Still your point is well-taken about "movements," and Eric Hoffer provides the goods in his longshoreman-philosopher way.
But just because a number of people happen to passionately agree on certain worldviews doesn't mean they're "cults" or sheep. The Founders were one such bunch, and I keep telling myself that the near-monolithic agreement hereabouts is only apparent, not real and thereby cultish in its own right.
Niggling little details department: rather than being a sociologist, as David reported in his post, Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist.
Thanks as always to David for his great work!
Not much time to rebut, as I have to get to work, but there's this from fanorollins--
Islam worships Mohammed, and that is worse.
No. Read any basic text on Islam, and you'll see that you're wring. The statement of faith translates to "There is no G-d but G-d, and Muhammad is G-d's prophet." There is absolutely to sense in Islam that Muhammad is divine or otherwise worthy of worship. As a righteous man, his life is to be emulated, but Muhammad is not worshipped.
You're using ideas from Westerners who never bothered to understand anyone outside of themselves; I'm surprised you aren't mislabeling Muslims as Mohammadeans.
Referring to the cloud of dust,Tom Van Dyke stated "Nothing happening here,folks,just move on along,"immediatly before being trampled by the charging elephants.
>>But just because a number of people happen to passionately agree on certain worldviews doesn't mean they're "cults" or sheep.
Certainly not when they agree on something that has been arrived upon by rational examination of objective evidence from the material world. Faith, however, is no such thing.
As for fanorollins claims that there are very few decent religions, I think he or she is being generous. There is no evidence that there is at least one decent religion.
ifwqifwq,
I think you're misinterpreting what Anthony and Robbins were saying. I'm not really familiar with "ntegrative ethics", myself, but my impression is that it refers to having a basic set of common ethical guidelines that society honors, not requiring everyone to be in ethical lockstep.
are they saying that all of these people at the rallies have personality disorders?
No, they're saying that authoritarian cults are going to be particularly attractive to people with personality disorders.
personality disorders are part of a person's personality, they are fundamental, so i dont think they are easily learned...
I think that's true for adults (and unfortunately, they aren't easily unlearned either), but unlike many other forms of "mental illness" their roots are exclusively enviornmental, so everyone with a personality disorder "learned" it.
... while i think a cultist mindset is.
I think an analogy could be made to PTSD. Studies have shown that one's chances of developing PTSD are strongly tied to a traumatic, stressful childhood. Still, many people with such childhoods will never experience a severe enough trauma to produce full-blown PTSD, and some people with decent childhoods will have an experience that's so overwhelmingly traumatic they'll get PTSD anyway. Similarly, one person may have a PD, but never encounter a cult. Another may not be so damaged, but still end up in a cult due to social pressures or plain old bad luck.
part of it posits that ordinary people (rather than only people with mental "disorders") feel the compulsion to submit to authority
That doesn't contradict what Anthony and Robbins were saying. The difference between people with PDs and "ordinary people" is one of degree. You don't have to be a narcissist to be vain or a sociopath to be callous. Most of us have some problems with our sense of self and others even if they don't rise to the level of PDs. Ordinary people may not have such a strong attraction to authoritarian absolutism, but that doesn't mean they're entirely immune to its siren call.
ifwqifwq --
Beth has it right. Perhaps a useful way of framing it is that Fromm tends to deal with movements on a meta-scale, while Lifton, Robbins, Erikson, et. al. are drilling down to how movements work on an individual level. That immediately recognizes, of course, that no two individuals are alike, and movements and cults are necessarily constituted of a multitude of personal motivations. What they're describing are common traits they found in the psychological evaluations of members of fundamentalist religions, cults, and the like. It's drawn from hard data.
With all due respect, I can't agree that "World Can't Wait" is the place to build an anti-authoritarian movement.
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/
ar...051203143218921
Maybe the kids who join, realize what they've gotten into, and then quit, are worth talking to.
"With all due respect, I can't agree that "World Can't Wait" is the place to build an anti-authoritarian movement."
It is if you think an anti-authoritarian movement is something you have to "build" rather than something you hope to inspire and grow.
That's the trouble with Stalinist anti-authoritarians— sooner or later, the effort to overthrow the old authoritarian order requires a new and improved authoritarian order strong enough to resist the inevitable counter-revolutionaries.
Wouldn't it be nice if decentralized, truly democratic forms of organization were actually more effective than pseudo-fascist, authoritarian organizations at establishing and sustaining a policy in the face of vigorous resistance from opponents?
Thanks, Trefayne. I've been wondering about "World Can't Wait" since I first encountered them. A typical conversation with an activist went something like this:
him: "Help us drive the Bush regime from power."
me: "You're calling for Bush's impeachment?
him: "No, we're going to create a tidal wave of public activism that will drive him from power."
me: "Do you expect him to resign?"
him: "No, we're going to drive him out."
me: "Then are you planning to overthrow the governement?"
him: "No, of course not."
me: "Are you talking assassination?"
him: "No!"
me: "Then you're just going to wait until 2008 when he leaves office."
him: "No, we're going to drive them out of office now."
me: "How?"
him: "With rallies, demonstrations, concerts...."
me: "But how is any of that going to remove Bush from office?"
him: "Here are some leaflets you can pass out. Help us drive the Bush regime from power."
The combination of fervent evangelism and lack of interest in a strategy for actually achieving their goal left me thinking that they were either completely clueless or had some plan or purpose they didn't want to talk about.
The combination of fervent evangelism and lack of interest in a strategy for actually achieving their goal left me thinking that they were either completely clueless or had some plan or purpose they didn't want to talk about.
Funny. This actually sounds like the Democrats.
s9,
You're right. I should have used a better word. They seem to hold the copyright on "build".
Beth,
That was a nicer conversation than a friend of mine once had. Years back, in California, she saw a guy from Refuse and Resist hammer on a table saying he admitted that he wanted power. That was when he wasn't telling her that he knew more about women's oppression than she did. Yeesh!
Heck, why follow Bob Avakian when you can hang out with J.R. "Bob" Dobbs?!? 
Oh well, it looks as if some WCW organizers made a bad impression on some people.
This is certainly possible when you have a decentralized movement that doesn't make you go through any kind of vetting process to get involved.
But something about this line of criticism just has a nasty whiff of Tom Friedman. You want to criticize an organization or push a particular point of view and you immediately think of some person somewhere you've spoke to at some time who validates exactly what you wanted to say anyway.
"I spoke to a cab driver in Caracas and what he said about Hugo Chavez fascinated me........."
But you are correct to notice that World Can't Wait doesn't have any concrete, specific plan to drive Bush out of office. How could it? Who could possibly predict historical events this closely? Who could have predicted the upsurge of Mexican immigrants last Spring or the way Cindy Sheehan's protest caught fire.
But that doesn't mean that the plan of driving Bush out of office via non-violent protest is "clueless" or has some sort of evil hidden agenda. It means just what it says. Look at the Ukraine, for example, or even Solidarity in the early 1980s.
I personally would love to see impeachment but unfortunately the Democrats themselves have declared it "off the table".
http://worldcantwait.net/index.p...1585&
Itemid=184
beth, david, thanks for trying to explain it. i think it is more persuasive now.
"but my impression is that it refers to having a basic set of common ethical guidelines that society honors"
does america not have this? i guess certain sections of society might differ so drastically about basic ethics to create a problem, but then that restricts their analysis to only children of those sections (which i think is quite different from the section of children that develop personality disorders, though they overlap im sure). they are saying that the difference in ethics causes a fragmented self, and that this causes the problems in relating to others. i agree with the second part, but not the first part. perhaps i am being naive
i guess the problem is i have never known anyone that unconventional, unconventional enough that merely their beliefs (rather than anything they do) are enough to cause their children to develop personality disorders. this all seems to me still a bit dubious. i am inclined to think that anyone who survives in society long enough to have children must share a lot of society's values, and that all the differences that are left a child would be able to sort out (over time of course).
the problem i have with their analysis (though i recognize they are more knowledgable than i) as a whole is how the lack of a "'covenant' uniting the american people" creates the fragmented selves. i dont think thats enough, or even a primary cause. this is why i like fromm's analysis better (though it may not be contradictory).
"The difference between people with PDs and "ordinary people" is one of degree. You don't have to be a narcissist to be vain or a sociopath to be callous."
that is a good point. i agree completely, and it makes me question the word "disorder", but i suppose that is a different discussion (www.szasz.com is an interesting website, he talks about this sort of thing).
"but unlike many other forms of "mental illness" their roots are exclusively enviornmental, so everyone with a personality disorder "learned" it."
this is a minor point, but i dont think thats true, or at least its hard to know for sure. for example, schizotypal personality disorder is sometimes thought of as a minor form of schizophrenia (i read an interesting article that said in tribal societies schizotypals were the shamans, and this was evolutionarily beneficial, and is the reason we still have schizophrenia, which is not beneficial, even in tribal society), and so is thought to be at least partially hereditary. i dont think personality disorders are any more environmental than the vast majority of mental illnesses. i could go off on even more of a tangent here, but i wont.
anyways, sorry if this is too long and tangential, so dont feel like you need to respond unless you're interested. i will think about it a bit more.
This is certainly possible when you have a decentralized movement that doesn't make you go through any kind of vetting process to get involved.
Agreed, which is why I was hesitant to bring it up until Trefayne provided evidence that it was more than a handful of "bad apples".
You want to criticize an organization or push a particular point of view
No, just the opposite. My persistent questioning was because I genuinely wanted to get involved in a movement that might actually accomplish the goal they were trumpeting.
and you immediately think of some person somewhere you've spoke to at some time who validates exactly what you wanted to say anyway.
No, there were variations, of course, but that was the gist of every conversation I've had with someone from WCW (not that there have been very many).
Who could have predicted the upsurge of Mexican immigrants last Spring or the way Cindy Sheehan's protest caught fire.
Yes, I heard that lne too (the Cindy Sheehan part anyway), but I really don't see its relevance. I couldn't have predicted Cindy Sheehan's success, but I never would have claimed it was impossible for a protest to influence public opinion. Bush won the 2004 election, and so is constitutionally empowered to hold office until 2008. As far as I can see, the only way he could leave before then would be through death, incapacitation, impeachment, resignation or coup. Since WCW apparently eschews all of those methods, it seems impossible for them to achieve their stated goal. I'm not looking for a guarantee of success, but I do need something a little more persuasive than "life is full of surprises" to convince me it's possible.
By the way, any thoughts on the RCP connection? Is it real? Is it a problem?
(ifwqifwq, I would like to continue this conversation, but really need to get back to work. Hopefully, I'll have some time later on.)
Bush won the 2004 election, and so is constitutionally empowered to hold office until 2008. As far as I can see, the only way he could leave before then would be through death, incapacitation, impeachment, resignation or coup.
So you're saying that the only acceptable method for you would be too pressure Congress into impeaching.
The Democrats have already made it clear they won't. I actually wrote an article about that here.
http://worldcantwait.net/index.p...1585&
Itemid=184
So I guess the best method within your limitations would be to pressure the Republicans to impeach him. I don't see this as impossible. Certainly the few times over the past few years when Bush has been stopped from doing anything has come from Republican pressure, Voinovich on Bolton, the Dubai ports deal, McCain's torture bill.
I think that there might be a point at which Bush becomes so deadly to his own party, they'll force him to resign.
But I wonder if you're still going to be saying this ("Then the As far as I can see, the only way he could leave before then would be through death, incapacitation, impeachment, resignation or couponly.") if Bush decides to drop a nuke on Iran.
By the way, any thoughts on the RCP connection? Is it real? Is it a problem?
I used to feel the same way about Communists in the anti-war movemnt. I was extremely squeamish about it. I remember reading an article by the writer David mentions (Michelle Goldberg) about how the RCP had taken over the anti-war movement. It affected me.
But a few years and a 100,000 dead Iraqis later, I wonder if it was a good decision to me to stick to this kind of dogmatic anti-communism. Then I realized she had written the article a week before congress authorized Bush to go to war in Iraq and I decided fuck it. I don't care who I'm working with, as long as I agree what they stand for.
I wrote a long review of Avakian's memoir if you're interested in reading that.
http://www.rogouski.com/blog/
200..._ike_to_ma.html
Is there a connection? Well, there are people in the RCP heavily involved in World Can't Wait but there are Catholic priests and major democrats too. On Indymedia sites (and places like Infoshop) World Can't Wait is often accused of being a front group for the Democrats.
Would that it were.
But does the RCP set the agenda for World Can't Wait? Not as far as I can see. But if the presence of communists or gays or atheists or anarchists or illegal immigrants or any other pariah group bothers you, stay away. Work for Hillary.
Nobody's going to keep any of them out.
but I do need something a little more persuasive than "life is full of surprises" to convince me it's possible.
Well let's look at a few examples from history.
Portugual 1974:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
His...ory_of_Portugal
Ukraine 2005:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ora...ange_Revolution
Philippines 1989
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Fer...erdinand_Marcos
Are you honestly saying you've never come across any example in history of any head of state being forced to step down from office because of popular pressure?
Or just in the United States? Because you'd probably be wrong there too. Nixon wasn't impeached. The government wasn't overthrown, and nobody shot him. He was forced to resign in the face of overwhelming popular pressure combined with the threat of impeachment.
... By citing Arendt, I am certainly not suggesting that theocratic dictatorship is imminent in America.
David, or anyone else with Goldberg's book, can you tell us what Arendt she cited?
So I guess the best method within your limitations would be to pressure the Republicans to impeach him.
Or convince them. But the politics of persuasion is far more strenuous than the politcs of pressure, which is why the former is in such short supply.
Anyone can yell.
BIW --
She cites this:
Hannah Arendt wrote of how observers have often had a hard time taking totalitarian rhetoric seriously, because they assume it must be masking some other material motive. "Since virtually all of European history through many centuries had taught people to judge each political action by its cui bono and all political events by their particular underlying interests, they were suddenly confronted with an element of unprecedented unpredictability," she wrote in "The Origins of Totalitarianism." "Because of its demagogic qualities, totalitarian propaganda, which long before the seizure of power clearly indicated how little the masses were driven by the famous instinct of self-preservation, was not taken seriously."
Pretty worthwhile observation.
I disagree that the elements described in the article are 'pseudo-fascist'. The eliminationist threat is clearly there, being carried out by the government through considering nuclear holocaust for Iran and the whole War against Islam and the entire third-world.
The USA is already viewed as the Nazi-Germany throughout the world, something that probably doesn't break through the layers of selective reporting and censorship.
furthermore, the Italian fascism under Mussolini didn't have any kind of "eliminationism", not even anti-semitic leanings.
It's possible to conclude that Mr.Neiwert is purposefully obfuscating that his country is not only the hotbed of fascism, but also has revived many elements of the worst form of totalitarianism, based on eliminationist threats against countries (Iraq) and whole cultures.
It's simply false that Italian fascism was not "eliminationist" -- it decidedly was. Its chief objects of elimination, in fact, were communists and socialists.
Please, e.g., see the long and stories career of the squadristi, or "Blackshirts".
As with the SA Brownshirts, the eliminationism also came in the form of extremist vigilantism -- another potential parallel to today.
If the United States' program is one of elimination of entire nations like Iran, they certainly haven't announced it yet. Fascist eliminationism, and its target, usually appear in the early phases, and it is always publicly proclaimed by the top leadership.
How does the threat of nuclear holocaust not constitute eliminationism? I don't get it. How does the publicly announced breakup of a country like Iraq not constitute eliminationism?
The Italian fascists were what you would call "white supremacists", see the Ethiopian affair. But their overall killing record is way below the British one, for example. Churchill publicly advocated gassing Arabs. Mussolini tried to keep the gas attacks on Ethiopia secret.
You will have to re-adjust your cultural biases much more strongly. It's a bit of joke, trying to 'uncover fascism' etc but staying feverishly loyal to the worst of them.
Thank you, thank you, a *thousand* times thank you.
As a survivor of a dominionist group that also qualifies as a coercive religious group (and interestingly, was one of the *very* early promoters of Ron Luce's stuff--both Luce and the church I escaped/was raised in being heavy in the dominion theology "spiritual warfare" movement), one of the things I've repeatedly been pointing out is the fact that these groups are less traditional political organisations and more, well, *cults*--coercive religious groups--with aspirations towards political power.
Having been raised in such groups, and having later walked away, I'm firmly convinced some of the tactics we will ultimately need to fight dominionism and work against dominionism will be closer to the tactics used to fight abuses in, say, Scientology than merely "fighting the right" per se. (Very few people realise dominionism and "spiritual warfare" groups like Ron Luce's "BattleCry" originally sprang from movements in certain pentecostal denominations--movements which have been recognised as spiritually abusive almost since their very founding, and movements which have a history of fully sixty years or more of history.)
Hell, some groups--especially those deep into the "spiritual warfare" crap like the group I escaped and Luce's groups--actually have spiritually abusive tactics that are *identical* to those used in Scientology--one wraps it up in "scripture twisting" from the Bible, the other wraps it up in bad space opera about tyrant aliens. It's the same stuff. (I actually realised the group I left was cultic when I saw lists of "warning signs of spiritual abuse" in regards to Scientology posted--and realised the church I left (which is also the de facto head of the dominionist movement and especially the state affiliate of the American Family Association in my state) would fit every point that was mentioned on how Scientology was an abusive movement.)
One of the things that does need to be done IMHO is preventing the poison from being spread even further and knowing the tactics used by dominionist groups (including the ways in which they are increasingly infiltrating mainstream Christian churches for purposes of hijacking--something they did with frightening success back in the 1970's-1980's with the Southern Baptist Convention, and other churches are being targeted now with almost identical tactics). One of the *biggies* in this IMHO is people educating themselves how cults work, how cults recruit members, realising that "Bible-based" cults do in fact exist (and until the very late 1990s-early 2000s were largely ignored as being spiritually abusive), *listening* to the stories of us walkaways, and educating people how these groups are cultic/coercive and not your great-grandfather's church.
I'm also in line with people who note this is protofascist rather than pseudofascist. A little known fact regarding dominionism is that many of the root movements (again, including the very same denominations that vomited things up like Luce's "BattleCry", Tim LaHaye, etc.) back in the 1930s were actually cozying up to actual American Nazi organisations--on the grounds that the Nazis were anti-communist and "pro-morality". Christian Identity (a racist perversion of Christianity that has been increasingly promoted and has close links with neo-Nazi groups) is essentially a sister movement of the "manifest sons of God" movement that originally spawned "spiritual warfare" movements within the Assemblies of God, International Foursquare and different groups (in fact, it can even be argued that Christian Identity is a split from Foursquare itself) and a lot of modern dominionists (including no less than Tony Perkins and Ron "Ten Commandments" Moore) have known, documentable links to racist groups with close links to neo-Nazis.
Also, one could argue that dominionism in some ways is rather frighteningly close to Franco and Mussolini style fascism.
I've written extensively on this, both on dominion theology/pente-style dominionism in general, and on Luce's group in particular, on Talk2Action and Dark Christianity. For some backgrounder:
http://www.talk2action.org/user/...ogemperor/
diary
Check this out for support of your position:
http://www.pamspaulding.com/webl...gameth-
god.html
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