Back there in the stone age of 2014, I began to notice a disturbing movement that had begun to appear on the American scene in various incarnations. Writing in The American Spectator, I called it the New American Fascism. And I made a list of what I was seeing then – now a full six years ago. Here is a condensed version.
They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced…
August 8, 2008: The New York Times reports a left-wing activist sent a “warning” letter to 10,000 GOP donors. The Times says: “the newly formed nonprofit group, Accountable America, is planning to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.”
October 15, 2009: ESPN reports that Rush Limbaugh will be dropped as a limited partner in a bid to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams franchise. He was forced out by liberal owners and the Obama-supporting head of the NFL Players Association.
Rush took to his radio show to respond. He said, (in retrospect with stunning foresight of what was coming eleven years hence) this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
“This is not about the NFL, it’s not about the St. Louis Rams, it’s not about me. This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative.
Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”
October 16, 2009: I reported this:
“…. a carefully planned, well-funded systematic assault on talk radio and Fox News that involves at least seven major liberal American religious denominations. All of whom are apparently planning to spread the gospel that talk radio and Fox News personalities are spreading hate speech. This message will be spread to their parishioners’ children, in adult education materials, in sermons, and through lay leaders…
…And to back it up, they are trying to invoke the legal authority of the FCC. After having a cozy, private lunch with a sympathetic FCC Commissioner on September 30.”
November 10, 2009: Lou Dobbs, who had been a mainstay at CNN since its beginning in 1980, abruptly quits CNN. The New York Times reports the story and includes this:
“More recently, his coverage of immigration provoked protests by Hispanic groups. On Wednesday one of the groups, Presente.org, which had called on CNN to fire the anchor, declared a “victory.”
Roberto Lovato, a co-founder of the group, said, “We are thrilled that Dobbs no longer has this legitimate platform from which to incite fear and hate.”
June 2011: I reported this of the conservative activist group True the Vote:
“True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht, an organizer in Houston Tea Party groups, receives notice from the IRS that her taxes for 2008 and 2009 are to be audited. Engelbrecht begins a still on-going odyssey in which she, her husband, and associates are investigated by the IRS, the FBI, the Department of Labor.”
June 30, 2011: Glenn Beck leaves his Fox TV show. Glenn had been targeted by the Leftist group “Color of Change.”
December 8, 2011: Color of Change begins a campaign to intimidate corporate contributors to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. I reported:
“In a May 2012 interview in the NonProfit Quarterly — which ironically titles itself as ‘promoting an active and engaged democracy’ — an activist with Color of Change says:
‘We’ve successfully pushed 13 major corporations—major household names like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Procter & Gamble—away from ALEC, and we’re continuing to push on all of ALEC’s corporate sponsors to leave….we have been very clear that we will hold corporations that refuse to leave ALEC publicly accountable.’”
February 17, 2012: Pat Buchanan, the conservative commentator and former aide to presidents Nixon and Reagan as well as a former presidential candidate himself, is fired by MSNBC. He had been targeted by Color of Change and the left-wing Media Matters.
February 29, 2012: The Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy begins. Angered over his criticism of Fluke, a campaign from leftist groups like MoveOn.org and Media Matters begins demanding to have Limbaugh advertisers drop the show. Seven do — and a backlash against the fire-Limbaugh campaign begins. One advertiser asks to come back, Limbaugh refuses them. Limbaugh recovers, signs for a new contract.
March 20, 2012: Mark Stevens, the CEO of the business advisory firm MSCO – and a Limbaugh advertiser – comes under attack for not withdrawing his advertising from the Limbaugh show. I report this, bold print supplied for emphasis:
“…Steven’s employees were being assailed as sluts. Threatening e-mails arrived from senders calling themselves a ‘Citizen of the Internet’ or ‘Policeman of the Internet.’ Stevens, angered at the leftist bullying, takes to Fox’s Stuart Varney show on Fox Business to respond. Stevens calls those bullying advertisers ‘political terrorists.’”
April 20, 2012: I report:
“Obama for America, the website of the Obama re-election campaign, runs a list of eight major donors to the campaign of Obama opponent and soon-to-be GOP nominee Mitt Romney. It calls one, Frank Vander Sloot of Idaho, a finance co-chair of the Romney campaign, ‘litigious, combative, and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.’ Vander Sloot is also investigated by an individual connected to the Democratic Party. The news launches an assault on Vander Sloot’s company. He loses 200 customers in the first two weeks of the controversy, going through what he calls a ‘living hell.’”
July 25, 2012: The Idaho Press reports that Vander Sloot has become the target for two federal audits, one by the IRS and the other by the U.S. Department of Labor.
December 18, 2013: Phil Robertson, the Robertson family patriarch of the popular A&E Network’s Duck Dynasty show, is suspended by the network for comments he made on gays and other subjects in an interview with Esquire magazine. The comments reflected Robertson’s well-known beliefs in Christianity. After a battle, Robertson stays.
February 24, 2014: “A group called CredoMobilize is written up by Fox’s Howard Kurtz. Headline? ‘Heating up: Climate change advocates try to silence (then-Washington Post conservative columnist Charles) Krauthammer.’”
“Credo activists are getting signatures that, in Credo’s own words, urge the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times to begin ‘implementing a formal policy of refusing to publish any letters to the editor or other content that denies climate change.’”
February 27, 2014: The Rutgers Faculty Council passes a resolution demanding the school’s Board of Governors rescind the offer to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of an honorary degree.
March 14, 2014: “Sam Adams brewery announces that it will not sponsor the Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade because of the parade requirement that no outside agenda is allowed. Gay groups had complained that they ‘could not abide by those conditions’ — so the boycott was on.”
April 3, 2014: “Mozilla, the Internet search engine, fires CEO Brendan Eich because of a 2008 contribution of $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 which banned same-sex marriage. The Proposition, taking the same position as then-Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama, is passed.”
April 8, 2014: Brandeis University announces that it has withdrawn a previously extended offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam and herself once a Muslim. Fox News reported that:
“…Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group, said, ‘It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views.”
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
April 9, 2014: “DropBox, the online site featuring the sharing of photos, documents, and videos, announces that it will appoint former Secretary of State Rice to its board of directors. An immediate online protest is launched against CEO Drew Houston…”
A site appears calling itself “Drop DropBox” and issues this threat:
“Condoleezza Rice should not be on the Board of Directors of Dropbox and her selection shows that Drew Houston and the senior management at Dropbox are ethically short-sighted. Tell Drew Houston: unless you remove Condoleezza Rice from the Dropbox Board, I, and/or my organization, will stop using Dropbox and move to an alternative cloud storage provider.”
Rice stays.
Now.
All of this was between 2008 and 2014. Time has moved on – and what I called the New American Fascism has metastasized. Today, it is called the “Cancel Culture”, and it has and is running rampant across the country, targeting anybody and everybody who is seen as disagreeing with the leftist view of whatever. Statues are being toppled, conservatives blocked from speaking to college audiences, buildings are stripped of the names of those for whom they were originally named. Corporations willingly lend themselves as agents of the New Fascism to silence everything and anything from Facebook to Fox News hosts to newspaper editors who dare to publish a diversity of thought on their editorial pages.
For a description of what is at work with the New American Fascism, I checked in with the late Austrian economist and chronicler of socialism, Ludwig von Mises. Mises wrote this – decades ago between the two world wars – in his classic Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Mises said of the Left and its followers that they are:
“ …utterly…intolerant zealots…they entirely disregard the possibility that there could arise disagreement with regard to the question of what is right and expedient and what is not. They advocate enlightened despotism…convinced that the enlightened despot will in every detail comply with their own opinion…They are utterly intolerant and are not prepared to allow any discussion. Every advocate (of the Left) ….is a potential dictator. What he plans is to deprive all other men of all their rights, and to establish his own and his friends’ unrestricted omnipotence. He refuses to convince his fellow citizens. He prefers to ‘liquidate’ them. He scorns the ‘bourgeois’ society that worships law and legal procedure. He himself worships violence and bloodshed.”
This is an exact description of the New American Fascism today. Which is to say, in reality, there is nothing new about it.
Let’s end where we started, with President Trump’s Mt. Rushmore speech, bold print for emphasis supplied:
“In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.
Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.
…The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination, and exclusion.”
Said the President: “They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced.”
Indeed we will not.
