Mr. Moderate

In my last post, I described why the Republican Party is a modern-day fascist party. In this post we will look at John “Il Duce” McCain and his current campaign for President of the United States and compare that with the advent of past fascist regimes, particularly that of Benito Mussolini. The key parallel is control over the media (or “press” in the days of Mussolini) and the use of intense propaganda to gain consent from the people to near-dictatorial powers for the leader.

Mussolini was himself a journalist, so he well understood how control over journalism could be used to wield propaganda as a weapon against any opposition. Accordingly, as Mussolini’s power grew within Italy in the 1920s, it became impossible for anyone to become a journalist without a certificate of approval issued by the fascist party. The United States of today is, of course, far larger and much more diverse than was Italy in the 1920s. While no single authority over journalists now exists, there are certainly spigots of control which do still exist. Among those are the great concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few media barons such as Rupert Murdoch and the fact that a single entity, the Associated Press (AP), distributes most news stories to most of the media outlets across the nation. The AP is controlled by its member media outlets, the majority of which are controlled by a small group of “media giants” (corporations which own vast empires of newspapers, radio stations, television stations, and other media outlets). While the level of control has not yet approached the veto power of the fascist party in Italy during the 1920s, there is now (in 2008) enough control to ensure that right-wing biased propaganda has wide distribution while left-wing biased propaganda is largely prevented from reaching most of the public.

And, of course, unlike Mussolini, John McCain himself is not in charge of this media propaganda machine. It isn’t even clear that there is a single individual who exercises effective control over this right-wing instrument of power. But it is blindingly obvious at this point in time that the media is widely engaged in promoting a victory by John McCain in spite of the fact that he ought to be on the losing end of the popular vote, probably by a 2-1 margin.

In some sense you can say that the modern fascists have learned not to concentrate so much power in the hands of one person, who will then most-likely go insane. And the modern fascists seem quite content to remain so far behind the scenes that most people would claim they don’t actually exist. But of course they do exist, and the results of the 2000 and 2004 elections for President of the United States clearly demonstrate their existence. There is just flatly no way that the Alfred E. Newman of Presidents (George W. Bush) could have been twice elected to the oval office without substantial help from the press. And there is no way that John Sidney McCain will be elected the next President of the United States without a strong stream of propaganda from the fascist-controlled media.

The motivations for this are obvious: to protect the wealth and power of the fascists themselves. Under the Republican Party, the wealth and power of the fascist elites are safe. Under the Democratic Party, there is some risk of loss. But only some risk, as most of the Democrats also answer to those same fascist masters given that so many fascists contribute large sums of money to both sides of the aisle in Congress.

The real danger to the fascists is the “people powered” campaign of Barack Obama. Obama owes nothing to the fascist elites, and they will lose both power and wealth if Obama becomes President. So, the fascists have set up a walking corpse, John McCain, as their candidate for President, and an easily manipulated woman governor, Sarah Palin, who is already a committed member of the right-wing fascist movement, to become President should McCain die in office.

All fascist regimes have been extraordinarily bad for the people previously subjugated to them. I have no reason at all to believe things will be different under this group of modern fascists. Accordingly, I’m voting for Obama, come Hell or high water!