The S-word and the F-word
by Cathy Young
My column on the brouhaha about Obama as a “socialist” appears on RealClearPolitics.com (and on Reason.com) this week. Short answer: Yes, Obama’s proposals advance and enhance the welfare state and government involvement in the economy (and yes, I think this is a bad thing); no, this is not any sort of radical departure from the existing system (as my Reason colleague Veronique de Rugy has noted, Obama’s budget “simply expands the Bush policies of bigger government and increased centralization”); and to compare this to Communism by invoking, as Mike Huckabee and others have done, the decrepit ghosts of Lenin and Stalin verges on obscenity.
Now, we have a debate between my friend Ron Radosh and The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg on whether Obama’s policies are leading us toward “fascism American style.” Rick thinks Ron has “lost his marbles” for merely entertaining the idea. Ron responds that “Hertzberg’s understanding of the term fascism shows little historical knowledge.” He writes that the analogy has a respectable provenance on the left:
[T]he use of the term fascist comes from the pen of a ranking social-democrat who was involved in the same political circles as Rick Hertzberg. I am referring to the late Bertram Gross, the man who wrote the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978, a key social-democratic piece of legislation actively supported by Michael Harrington, as well as major New Deal pieces of legislation from 1941 to 1945, including the Roosevelt Full Employment Act. He also created the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under Truman, for which he served as its Executive Secretary.
Despite all his service to Presidents from FDR to LBJ, in 1980 Gross wrote a widely discussed book, called—–Friendly Fascism, the term he used to describe what he thought the United States had become, as he saw it moving away from his beloved social democracy to something else. America, he wrote, was moving to a greater concentration of power and wealth in a new Big Business-Big Government partnership, a new form of corporatist fascism.
Gross called America a friendly form of fascism particularly to distinguish it from the classic evil fascist states he opposed, as well as the reactionary proto-fascist regimes the US supported in the Third World. In his eyes, the future America was fascist, and nothing was taking place that could prevent its development. He notes that America’s fascism would consist of an alliance of big business with government, to produce a new corporate authoritarianism that Gross thought subverted constitutional democracy.
Now Gross may have overreached, and he may have been wrong. But Hertzberg, a journalist who has consistently and one could say uncritically supported Barack Obama- and who like many of his peers relentlessly criticized and attacked Bush-is hardly one to complain when critics today raise intelligent questions about where Obama is leading America.
In failing to note my main point-that we need a thoughtful analysis of the direction in which Obama is taking our nation, and diverting it to an a historical one about “fascism”- Hertzberg shortchanges his readers. He certainly has a right to defend and promote and support Obama and to believe all Americans should unite behind him; I would be surprised if he changed his position- but he should think carefully before making the charge that those who feel otherwise have lost their marbles.
So who’s right and who’s wrong? I think Ron’s marbles are quite safe, but I have to quibble with his argument in one respect.
I’m all for thoughtful and critical analysis of the direction in which Obama is taking us. I just think that the use of the word “fascism” is not conducive to such an analysis; indeed, it tends to short-circuit rational debate because of the emotional reaction it evokes on both sides. On an emotional level, there is no distinction between evil and non-evil fascism, since non-evil fascism is an oxymoron. Like, say, “concentration camp,” it is a word that cannot be separated from its historical associations.
So my suggestion would be to leave “fascism,” friendly or not, out of the discussion.
Cathy Young is a columnist for RealClearPolitics.com and a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her writing also appears frequently in The Boston Globe, Newsday, The Weekly Standard, and other publications. She blogs at www.cathyyoung.wordpress.com. This column has been cross-posted to Real Clear Politics and her own blog.
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