Magellan's Log: Is It Fascism Yet?

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Is It Fascism Yet?
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Are we there yet? If not now, when?

You decide. Perusing the 20th century's various experiments in fascism, we've come up with 20 salient characteristics that pretty well sum up a society where the wheels have come completely off.

Bear in mind, fascism is not like pregnancy. You can’t be a little pregnant, but your country can be a little—or a lot—fascist.

As we venture ever deeper into the peculiar wilds of the 21st century, you may want to keep this checklist at hand and refer back to it occasionally to see how we're doing.

Of course persons in highly developed countries don't need to waste their time here since, as we know, it can't happen ~~here~~ there.

Still, if you insist on doing the checklist, just rate each item on a scale of 0 to 5, where 0 indicates no fascist tendency and 5 indicates, well, we don't really want to think about that, do we? Let's just say that Nazi Germany would score an easy 100.

For fun we've entered our rating for our own highly developed country in parentheses after each item.

1. Absolute Nationalism. [ 4 ]

2. Image of a Tough, Powerful, Protective Father-figure. [ 3 ]

3. Disdain for Human Rights. [ 3 ]

4. Strongly defined Enemy as the Essence of Evil. [ 5 ]

5. Minority Scapegoats. [ 4 ]

6. Unquestioned Expansion of Military Budget. [ 5 ]

7. Overt and Covert Sexism, Racism, Homophobia. [ 4 ]

8. Control of Mass Media. [ 3 ]

9. Obsession with Homeland Security. [ 5 ]

10. Permanent War. [ 5 ]

11. Overt and Covert Union of Government and Religion. [ 4 ]

12. Unlimited Tax and Regulatory Benefits for Corporate Entities. [ 5 ]

13. Repression of Organized Labor. [ 3 ]

14. Disdain for Artists and Intellectuals. [ 4 ]

15. Excessively Harsh Criminal Punishment. [ 4 ]

16. Widespread Cronyism and Corruption. [ 5 ]

17. Fraudulent Elections. [ 1 ]

18. The Big Lie (If the government says it, it’s true and real). [ 4 ]

19. Potemkin Power (If the government shows it, it’s true and real). [ 4 ]

20. Rubber-stamp Congress and Courts. [ 4 ]

Our rating for our own particular highly developed country, somewhat to our surprise, turns out to be a whopping 79. Hmmm. We must've made a mistake in addition. The USA 79 on the Fascist Scale? No, no. It can't happen here.

END