Geoff Price - The Rise of American Fascism (pdf)

Geoff Price - The Rise of American Fascism (pdf) - roflcopter2110

The Enlightenment era of the 18th and 19th century created a whole new world of ideas for mankind. The new ideologies that developed out of The Enlightenment, combined with the sweeping changes ushered in by the development of democracy, science, and industrialization, resulted in a highly ideologically polarized world in the 20th century. All of these changes challenged traditional world-views and institutions. Laissez-faire capitalism had expanded rapidly in America during the late 19th century, but laissez-faire capitalism reached a world-wide stage of crisis in the early part of the 20th century, both moral and practical, resulting in two primary outcomes: The rise of the socialist movement to overthrow capitalism, and the development of fascism to use the State to prop it up.

Fascism, though, embodied more than just that, because the once revolutionary institution of capitalism had now become the potential "victim" of the next revolution. Capitalism, once independent from the State and aligned with liberalism, then became aligned with elements of conservatism. The State and Capital together reached back into the Old World, grasped onto the Church, and called on the name of God Almighty to save them from revolution. This is fascism. The rejoining of Church, State, and Commerce into a unified and mutually supportive relationship for the maintenance of power.

The rise of fascism took a different, non-revolutionary, path in America than it took in Europe. European fascism was certainly more extreme and malignant, but it has to be repeated that the term "fascism" has an unfairly negative connotation today because of its association with the Axis powers. Describing the post Second World War American State as fascist isn't an attempt to stigmatize it, but rather to understand the qualities of the modern American State, for better or for worse, and to understand the many different factors that contributed to the establishment of the greatly more powerful American Federal Government during World War II and to what ends that power would be wielded in the second half of the 20th century.