On the Road to Fascism

by Liberty and Power

At least one Obama voter has moved into the critical camp. Hat tip and link, Thaddeus Russell.

Robert Scheer: I don't think the idea of nationalizing, as it's now being called--which means bailing out these banks, setting them straight, then letting them go private again, which is the model that everybody is using, and the people who get screwed are the people whose retirement funds had common or preferred shares and they get wiped out, and these bankers come out richer than ever at the other end--that's not a leftist idea and it's not socialism. This is what we used to, in Comparative Economic Systems, call fascism. It's putting government at the service of the big financial interests. That's what happened in Italy, that's what happened in Germany, that's what happened in Japan. . . .

Tony Blankley: What I don't understand is how my colleagues on this show, who I believe were for Obama, are now saying he's leading a fascist regime. Did he mislead them a few weeks ago when he was still running? . . .

Robert Scheer: To answer your question, I am disappointed in Barack Obama and I'm not quite sure what he's doing.

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More Comments:

William Marina - 2/24/2009

Most of the world's major government's are now Corporatist to one degree or another, certainly in the United States.
Robert A. Brady's, Business as a System of Power (1943), a favorite of C. Wright Mills, was part of a study begun as early as 1934, at the height of the New Deal. Below are links to the book on the Internet.
New dealers in Japan under the American occupation in 1946, brought Japanese Corporatists from Manchukuo to run the Japanese Finance Ministry which they proceeded to do for the next half-century and beyond.
To what extent any such Corporatist political economies can be labeled Fascist, is a matter of opinion. Today's poll shows Obama popular with a wide swath of the nation, as well as abroad.
Herbert Hoover to some extent wrote in the 1920s seeking a different road for America, as WA Wms pointed out many years ago. What seems evident is that Obama appears willing to continue to extend this long-term trend, rather than reverse it! It is amazing that someone like Scheer would appear shocked at this! For almost a century this approach has become institutionalized in the US.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ekVq9rkLSGoC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=business+as+a+system+of+power&source=bl&ots=0wEUjHApfN&sig=0oV4JHmx-tlv2vH0ANjRi0-htfQ&hl=en&ei=1KmjSa_2KuHAtgfs4s3XBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

http://www.archive.org/details/businessassystem00bradrich