What Exactly, is Fascism

In 1995, Toni Morrison published an extremely, extremely insightful article titled, "Racism and Facism" in The Journal of Negro Education. For those of you who are tech savvy and who have access to a college library, please use J-Stor, EbscoHost, or Academic Search Premiere to check this article out. Published more than 10 years ago, this article is scary in its accuracy.

Earliear this week, the NAACP challenged the TEA Party on its overt and covert racism and racist attitudes toward the President. Also, during this same week, I went into Wal-Greens for some oh so delicious salsa chips that they sale, and I heard the song, "Cult of Personality" playing on the loudspeaker. I was horrified by that song. Never, never in my life, even after surviving Reaganomics, have I heard so much disrespect toward the leader of the free world internally.

In response to the charge by Jealous and the NAACP, most TEA Party members claim that they are not racist at all. They simply don't like the socialist policies of Obama and the rest of the Democrats. These people use the rhetoric of fear, throwing around big words like fascism and racism, but absolutely do not know what they are talking about. The beauty of Toni Morrison is that she marries the calling of someone a fascist or a racist with covert racism...

Also, the beauty of Morrison is that she defines fascims for us, something that neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin can do. Here's how Morrison defines it:
"Conservative, moderate, liberal; right, left, hard left, far right;religious, secular, socialist -we must not be blindsided by these Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola labels because the genius of fascism is that any political structure can become a suitable home. Facism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing -marketing for power."

Morrison goes on to link Fascism with unconstrained greed and rampant, global capitalism. She defines Fascism as dominance and control of entire populations by deregulation and abusive financial practices. As I reread her article today, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. As I read, I heard a newscaster say BP lobbied the British government to release a convicted Libyan terrorist with 200+ murders on his hands just so the company could drill oil off the coast of Libya. Another Senator came on immediately after, claiming that continuing to pay unemployed people unemployment benefits makes people lazy.

On Both Sides of the Aisle

I must admit, when I go to vote, I vote based on my bank account. Since I'm not a six-figure wage earner, I vote Democratically for most elections. However, that does not mean that I don't listen to and understand Republican view points. Hell, I even like the way they get things done. They have an agenda and they stick to it, regardless.

Republicans are the REAL gannsters. They stick together much closer than any mafia, and are much more organized than the Bloods, Vice Lords, or Crips. They set an agenda and they go after it. Everyone else is either for them or against them. They pull their friends along and reward them handsomely for their loyalty. They run the country like drug empires, with policies benefitting a select few while destroying a whole populace. On top of that, they wrap it up in scripture, I tell you. Now what separates Republicans from vastly organized drug lords?

But seriously, Black people need Republicans as well. We shouldn't be one-party voters. We need people on both side of the aisle to effectively agitate for African American interests. For instance, many struggling African Americans want something done about welfare. It is too easy to fraud the system from state to state, and the laws are not written to favor those who really need the assistance: the elderly. I can already tell you that welfare reform is not something Democrats will touch, not now not ever! Republicans, on the other hand, may just try to reform welfare as an entitlement issue, if they ever get back around to making policy instead of running the country like they are drug lords.

However, Republicans, since Barry Goldwater, have done a horrific job at branding itself as a party for the people. It has been a party of exclusivity. Though African American leaders such as Frederick Douglass and even Dr. King were Republicans at the time of their deaths, we can all agree that their Republican Party is not the same as this new pack of gangsters we see today. These gangsters do not even take their own African American members seriously. How many times have they turned their backs on Chairman Steele, while allowing Rush Limbaugh to say anything he wants? Rush Limbaugh, an entertainer and college dropout, is indeed the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

In the meantime, I will continue to listen to and take into account Republican points of view. I like some of them, and would be willing to support POLICY issues, not the hate-filled rhetoric of exclusivity that I am hearing. African Americans, though we are statistically behind white voters financially, cannot afford to be one-party voters.

A Country of Contradiction

Perhaps, Americans find it difficult to call our politicians liars because of who we all are. This Independence Day reminds me that we live in one of the greatest democratic experiments in the history of mankind.
With that said, we should all take this week to reflect upon who we are as Americans. As Americans, we are a people riddled with complex contradictions and traditions. We are largely a conservative country politically. Yet, we believe in the freedoms of speech and religion, and the right to bear arms. We have the largest population of church members in the free, industrialized world. We have the largest amount of poverty, homicides, teen pregnancy, and drug addiction. To speak of sex is not polite conversation, and there are no federal policies demanding sex education in America's classrooms. Yet, sex sells. Period. Sex is ubiquitous. We teach abstinence only in some classrooms and pass out condoms at the end of the class.
Americans believe largely that we should be free to be who we are, and we should be able to serve our country and pick a partner of our choosing, unless that American happens to be gay. No marriage and no patriotic military service.
America, land of the brave, home of the free, unless of course, that American is Black. Though 40+ years after the end of Jim Crow, Black people remain at the top of all terrible statistics, like the incarcerated population is mainly Black. Is it because Black people are naturally predisposed to crime, or is it because they are monitored more closely and given harsher sentences than their white counterparts. Ask any Black person about DWB, and you get enough stories to fill a book.
Many of our Republican lawmakers claim to be ardent followers of the Word concerning abortion and gay rights. I guess they didn't read those parts in the Bible about a rich man and a camel. Or, they completely ignored the parts where Jesus talked about poverty and allowing our fellow Christians to suffer in poverty. On top of that, most Republicans blame the poor for being "lazy," not the industries who receive tax breaks to take their jobs out of the country...jobs the working poor would have been working.
Let's face it, I could go on and on and on. I hope those in power take some time to figure out who we are as Americans. Is our power structure a conglomerate of business? Are our soldiers simply the tools of free enterprise? Are we citizens simply a collection of workers and tax payers?