I recently described compulsory voting as “fascist” to a friend the other day, which got me thinking about the term and wondering just how well I understand it. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that Mussolini used it to describe putting the state ahead of the individual to such a degree that any needs the individual had that didn’t get met by meeting the state’s needs… that was just too bad. But there’s some debate over what “fascism” means, and it was this paragraph that got me:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

What part of that isn’t a description of the years in the US since 9-11? Breaking it down bit by bit:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline,

Family values going to hell, weirdos runnin’ around expecting to have rights just like normal people - check.

humiliation,

Bin Laden got us with out pants down! Oh, noes! Yeah, loss of life and property damage and stuff - yeah, really sucks! But mostly people think our national penis is small! Argh!

or victim-hood

Well, we are victims! In fact, we’re the biggest victims ever, and anybody who says we can’t torture people and stuff is just an unfeeling bastard!

and by compensatory cults of unity,

Hey, you’re either with Bush or you are against every decent worthwhile thing in human experience. It’s your choice.

energy, and purity,

And in these awful days where terrorists run amok, one of our biggest concerns is female virginity! There’s nothing at all creepy or objectifying about purity balls. They help remind fathers that hymens are their property, and it’s their duty to protect those fragile membranes from, you know, terrorists and foreigners and, um, that boy that works at 7-11.

in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants,

What would you call a group of people to whom it makes complete sense to go after Hussein because he might have WOMD when we had almost cornered Bin Laden who, you know, actually committed mass destruction?

working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites,

That would be Bush, Cheney, and most of the cabinet. And then some.

abandons democratic liberties

Hey, we’re at war here! In order for us to protect your liberated American way of life from terrorists who want to destroy it, we’re going to have to… well, destroy your liberated American way of life. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it works.

and pursues with redemptive violence

Action Item: kill Hussein. Check! Now we’re even for Bin Laden. Um, just trust us on this.

and without ethical or legal restraints

We prefer the term “Patriot Act.”

goals of internal cleansing

But it really was the gays and the feminists that made God abandon us! We have to punish the weirdos so God will protect us again.

and external expansion.

Welcome to the United States Territory of Iraq. Be sure to visit Halliburtonville (formerly Baghdad) and observe as we violently force freedom on people whether they want it or not.

I came across this tidbit in an article I was reading online tonight:

Explorer Captain James Cook, who gave this plant the botanical name of “intoxicating pepper”, first discovered kava kava. Kava has been used for over 3,000 years for its medicinal effects as a sedative, muscle relaxant, diuretic, and as a remedy for nervousness and insomnia.

My first thought was a sarcastic “Wow, Captain Cook predates Jesus!” because, obviously, if it’s been in use for 3,000 years and he was the first to discover it, he must have lived 3,000 years ago.

Of course, this isn’t what the writer means. The writer means “Of the Anglo sect of humanity from whose perspective I write and you are forced to read, Captain James Cook was the first to encounter this ancient herb.” Kava had no existence before it was found by whites: after being found by them, its prior existence became a simple “history”, suitable for books and encyclopedias. No more alive in today’s world than the Spanish Inquisition.

After my initial sarcasm, however, I was sobered by the realization that I’d grown up hearing similarly idiotic statements and I’m not sure at what age I stopped accepting them without thinking. “Christopher Columbus discovered America! And a bunch of people living on it! Who, um, somehow had no idea it was there until he pointed it out to them!” And for a nice added dash of Anglo privilege, let’s not forget the man’s real name was Don Cristoval Colon - but if that’s what we’d learned in the first grade, we’d have immediately recognized he wasn’t of Anglo descent and perhaps gotten the dangerous idea that people other than English speakers could contribute to society (or whatever it was he did). As an added bonus, we gloss over the fact that he thought he was on the other side of the world and the natives he met were therefore Indians. Instead of getting a good laugh for that one, we just didn’t make the distinction for about 200 years - and when we did suddenly realize how unfair that was of us, we didn’t bother to consult the people we’d been calling Indians. We just came up with the name “Native Americans” and patted ourselves on the backs for being so PC. “American Indians” saw it a bit differently, however:

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we will call ourselves any damn thing we choose. –Russell Means

Freedom, sure - but you’ll also need history privileges if you want to make it stick.