Resist Socialism!

by Dennis Green

All during the Cold War, Americans feared the brand of socialism known as “Communism.” Income redistribution, and a nation organized along the lines of extreme equality. But today, if there is any socialist threat, it is the radical and authoritarian form of National Socialism known as “Fascism,” which seeks to organize the state around corporate values, a strong and authoritarian central government, and racism, and rejects individualism as antithetical to the collective will of the people.

Few Americans today, only those over 70, remember the rise of Fascism in both Italy and Germany, culminating in the Nazi regime under Adolph Hitler, with his storm troopers, his blitzkrieg and his concentration camps leading to the Holocaust. These Fascists believed that it was essential to have the will and the ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong.

If some of these features begin to sound hauntingly familiar, you’re right. America, since the late Sixties, has come to resemble more a Fascist state practicing national socialism than the “Red Commies,” “Pinkos” or “Fellow Travelers” feared in the Fifties and early Sixties. Current events push us even farther in that direction.

Since Richard Nixon took us off the Gold Standard in 1971, the dollar has been a “floater.” That is, with its value tied to nothing but the credit worthiness of the United States Treasury, its ability to borrow and print more money, our economy has been vulnerable to one balloon and recession after another, which simply strengthen the positions of corporations. The so-called “TARP” bailout for financial and banking corporations in 2008 was only the most recent example of a bubble bursting and the Fed essentially nationalizing those corporations.

In recent memory, the bailout of Chrysler and of the Savings & Loan industry are further examples of this radical trend. Even President Obama has gotten into the act, basically nationalizing Chevrolet and now faced with the prospect of keeping British Petroleum alive so they can stop their spill, clean up the horrible mess and compensate the victims. What is that $20 billion “slush fund” if not a nationalization of its assets?

The Tea Party Movement has it all wrong. It’s not that government is taking over the corporations — rather that the corporations have already taken over our government. Goldman-Sachs alumni dominating Treasury and the Fed, corporate lawyers elected to Congress, and more corporate lobbyists swarming over Washington than termites on an old wooden house.

In California, we are told by two former corporate CEOs — Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina — that knowing how to run a big business qualifies them to manage our government affairs. Fiorina neglects to mention that her management style almost drove Hewlett-Packard into bankruptcy. And people who know government, and its ways, say that corporate management — which tends to be authoritarian — is far from the democratic process.

Racism in America today most often takes the form of a cry against “Immigrants!” While at the same time exploiting their labor…

Nearly all of the Fortune 500 corporations pay very little in taxes to the government, and many of them profit from various subsidies, low royalties for access to national resources such as timber, oil and coal. As we’re learning from the BP Oil Spill, powerful corporations have their way with government, with the environment, and with us.

Eisenhower warned us about the growing “Military/Industrial Complex,” for that was an example of national socialism. He had fought Fascism and the Nazis in Europe during World War II, and knew what it looked like when corporations begin to control the military, and a nation keeps going to war for no apparent reason except to demonstrate its own power.

Resist Socialism! National Socialism, that is. It’s in control of the United States of Beneton, but we can still take our country back.

©2010 Dennis Green