Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis
The word "fascism" is starting to surface with increasing frequency in the rhetoric of both the right and left nowadays: Rush Limbaugh accuses Dick Gephardt of planning a "fascist" state, while antiwar protesters accuse President Bush of being a Nazi.
More seriously, however, many observers are beginning to see warnings signs that real fascism -- not the imagined or distorted version created by gross misuse, but the frightening phenomenon that always lurks in the background of mass politics -- is creeping up on us.
David Neiwert, a journalist with a long background in neo-Nazi and hate groups, examines these concerns in an essay now appearing on Cursor, "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism." His conclusion: Fascism has not arrived in America, but the conservative movement in general and the Republican Party particularly has been creating the conditions that can give rise to it.
Neiwert surveys the academic study of fascism and compares it to real-world events since the early 1990s. He provides a model for that explains how fascist ideas and memes are creeping into the mainstream with increasing regularity: through supposedly mainstream "transmitters" -- such as Limbaugh, Fox News, and Pat Robertson -- who pick up extremist notions and present them in a nice Republican cloth coat.
http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction.php