ANALYSIS:

The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism?

The US Supreme Court has finally, without any sign of shame, revealed to everybody its true anti-democracy/pro-corporate colors in their recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The granting of unlimited funding of elections to wealthy, highly political corporations, may be the death knell for true democracy. It was a giant step toward totalitarian control over what is already a corrupted electoral process. Pay no attention to the heavily advertised fact that the labor unions will have the same rights. The unions have already been virtually emasculated by corporatism. There is no money any more to compete against the 800-pound gorillas in the funding of political campaigns. Even Republican John McCain joins President Obama in expressing disgust with the Supreme Court ruling.

In what should be a clear rallying cry for massive protests in the streets, the corporate lapdog/cheerleader Chief Justice Roberts and his four fellow right-wingers (who are self-professed “Christians”) on the Court have made another giant stride toward achieving, through legal but unethical means, their corporate puppeteers' goal of what could accurately be described as an “American-style Friendly Fascist” national governing model. These five “friendlies” of the cunning, smiling “Captains of Industry” have been described by any number of democracy-loving observers as exhibiting characteristics of what could be described as having “Christofascist” traits.

The term “christofascism” seems an appropriate label for these five justices because of 1) their obvious belief in a vengeful, punitive god (as opposed to Jesus’ revelation of god as a merciful, compassionate, forgiving and all-loving deity); 2) their anti-democracy leanings; 3) their support of homicidal wars to defend their nation-state against those who have been fingered as enemies by the corporate elite; 4) their trust in totalitarian forms of religion and government; and 5) their far right-wing political and theological ideologies that meet most of the criteria of the definition of fascism (see summary below and also learn more at fascistic.net). Finally, 6) their theologies seem to be in total opposition to the highly ethical, non-punitive, compassionate teachings of the pacifist Jesus Christ.

The US judiciary (and not just Supreme Court justices) has been peopled throughout its history by professed Christians, and has a shameful history of those very "justices" being overt racists, slave-holders, segregationists, Ku Klux Klan supporters, sexists, imperialists, torturers, ruthless militarists, gun-runners and war-profiteers. These were courts that did nothing to overthrow slavery in a timely fashion; nor did it stop the genocide of the Native American population. It consistently allowed the US Congress to break the treaties of the few traumatized and sickened survivors of the Native American genocide. These pro-corporate Supreme Courts typically did whatever was good for business, even if the actions got America into messes that the government then “resolved” by compelling taxpayers to fund bailouts for the criminal companies that were “too big to fail."

The US Supreme Court has ignominiously promoted economic oppression against the poor, favoring inhuman and soulless corporate entities in a multitude of decisions that benefited their interests instead of what was best for humanity. Whatever shadow government makes Supreme Court nominations (usually not the president, with a few exceptions) have usually tried to stack it with anti-democratic pro-Big Business types who would have made the Founding Fathers, pretty pro-business themselves, blush.

There were a few exceptions to the courts' support for tyrants, and once in a while true democracy was upheld. Occasionally there would be a decision that reversed a monopoly or two, or a decision reluctantly giving women the right to vote, or reluctantly freeing the slaves, or reluctantly giving labor the power to negotiate with their Pinkerton thug-defended bosses. But the power to give also implies the power to take away, and the cunning corporate think tanks were always figuring out ways to subvert the court’s decisions—which they have invariably succeeded at doing.

The ideology of the Cheney/Bush-era Supreme Courts should have been obvious to every thinking person nine years ago, with the pre-Roberts court’s infamous anti-democratic 5-4 usurpation of the probably stolen presidential election of 2000.

The anti-democracy, pro-torture, obscenely wealthy and war-profiteering vice president, Dick Cheney, and his figurehead president both meet the criteria that demands that they be indicted as international war criminals for 1) their illegal invasion of Iraq, 2) the subsequent genocide of the Iraqi people and their homeland [90% of Iraqi casualties were unarmed civilians!] and 3) the war for oil in the mid-east. They shredded the US Constitution that they were sworn to uphold. They clearly met the criteria for high treason and should both have been impeached while in office, tried in a court of law and appropriately punished. Following that, they should have been placed on trial at the International Court of Justice for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the peace, the criteria for which are also met. None of this happened because the judicial branch of this nation is broken.

American Friendly Fascism is a critically important topic, but it is one that is outside the capacity of this single essay to deal with thoroughly. So, for educational purposes, I will end with a number of quotes from various famous fascists of history, preceded by scholar Lawrence Britt’s useful and eye-opening summary about fascism. Any similarity between what went on in other fascist societies and what has been creeping in on us—almost invisibly—in America over several decades, but with a rapid acceleration during the Cheney/Bush years, is not unintentional. It is a call to resistance.

"14 Characteristics of Fascism," by Lawrence Britt, PhD

• Powerful Nationalism/Patriotism;
• Human Rights Violations;
• Unification Around Scapegoats;
• Militarism;
• Sexism;
• Press Censorship/Control;
• Strong National Security State;
• “Merger” of Church and State;
• Corporatism;
• Suppression of Trade Unions;
• Anti-Intellectualism;
• Obsession With Law and Order;
• Corrupt Crony Capitalism;
• and Fraudulent Elections

"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is a merger of state and corporate power"

— Benito Mussolini

”Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who COUNT the votes decide everything.”

— Joseph Stalin

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.”

— Adolf Hitler

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923

”The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

— Joseph Mengele, MD, “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz

“It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed, were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.”

— Rudolf Hess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz

“We had the moral right, we had the duty to our own people, to kill this people that wanted to kill us. We can say that we have performed this most difficult task out of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm from it in our inner self, in our soul, in our character.”

— Heinrich Himmler (1943)

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists."—J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI and probable co-conspirator in the JFK assassination, as well as other acts of extra-legal violence.

 

“What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.”

— Adolf Hitler

“The fascist state must not forget that all means must serve the ends; it must not let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called “freedom of the press”...it must make sure that (the media) is placed in the service of the state.”

—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."

—Adolf Hitler, proposing the creation of his homeland security group, the Gestapo

“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord.”

—Adolf Hitler

"Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press—in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years."

—Adolph Hitler

“We stand for the maintenance of private property...We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.”

—Adolf Hitler

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

—Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi "Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment”

“The rank and file is usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

—Joseph Goebbels

"The people want wholesome dread. They want to fear something. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive."

—Ernst Rohm, the chief of the SA, later to be betrayed and murdered on Hitler’s orders during the Night of the Long Knives, 1934

“First we will kill all the subversives, then we will kill their collaborators, then...their sympathizers, then...those who remain indifferent, and finally, we will kill the timid.”

—Iberico Saint Jean (1977), right wing governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, threatening those who failed to show the necessary enthusiasm for Argentina’s newly formed but un-elected government, which gained power by coup d’etat.