In an article entitled 'Fascist America, in 10 easy steps', Naomi Wolf raises the alarm about where the US is going. She sets out what she tells us is 'a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship' and then goes on to argue, point by point, that it's starting to happen. There are some signs of confusion - or is it prevarication? - on Wolf's part. Thus, the primary agents of closing down America's open society are, at first, George Bush and co:
It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society.But later it turns out that the menace cuts across party lines:
... we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani.Then, despite her talk of dictatorship and her several allusions to fascism, Wolf has a couple of qualifying sentences registering a different awareness. Thus:
Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.These sentences might be taken as showing that Wolf doesn't fully believe her own case. And yet...
[I]t can happen here. And... we are further along than we realise.Again:
[O]ur experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.Again again:
[I]f we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment...To this projection Naomi Wolf devotes - and the Guardian allows - some 4,700 words. OK, so here are nine words of my own on which, if there are any takers, I'm willing to wager a large sum of money:
Dictatorship in America ain't gonna happen any time soon.I think those nine words will stand up better than Naomi Wolf's. The reason I think so has to do with what she allows under the heading of the resilience of American 'democratic habits'. If you take this as covering laws, institutions, practices, the entire culture, then dictatorship - to say nothing of fascism - isn't coming to America in a drip-drip fashion. It would take a major political upheaval, involving a society-wide conflict. It may even require a violent right-wing mass movement as its agency.
It is one thing to point to lamentable developments there have been under the Bush administration - such, precisely, as a 'prison system outside the rule of law' and the use and condoning of torture. But talk of the danger of dictatorship and fascism is light-minded posturing.