Fascism American Style

From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style

By Ellen Taylor, Oct 13, 2025

https://popularresistance.org/from-the-flag-to-the-cross-fascism-american-style/

[IF TWO-PARAGRAPHS IS YOUR LIMIT, PLS JUST READ THE LAST 2, & POEM.]

… a new book, From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style …  delves into the structural foundation of fascism, how to identify it, and ideas about organizing to resist it. …

The book is subtitled Fascism American Style. It is crucial for every one of us to recognize its features in order to learn how to step outside the system of mainstream politics to resist it.

The opening interview is by Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist, author and Harvard Divinity School graduate Chris Hedges, who grew up “in the church….steeped in the Bible.” Hedges compares the role played by religion and the powerful magical imagery it commanded in the German prototype with similar features of American fascism today. They both developed in wastelands of despair. One derived from the economic catastrophe of WWI, and the latter from deliberate government policies. These created wage stagnation, a cruel healthcare system, profit-seeking privatized utilities, inexorably rising food prices, addiction, job loss and replacement by machines, evictions, and the resultant rage at the simultaneous spectacle of millionaires growing swiftly into billionaires.

In Germany, fascism was intimately intertwined with the German Evangelical Church. Its leaders substituted an image of the Teutonic warrior and the Aryan cult for the Chosen People of God. And they substituted Hitler as the Messiah—an all-powerful embodiment of the dictatorial Führer Principle—for semitic Bible figures. Known as the “Nazi church,” the Martin Luther Memorial church in Berlin features Nazi images, including a Nazi storm trooper carved into the baptismal fountain.

American fascism mirrors Goebbels’s admonition that to manipulate people you must rely on emotion, not reason. Stimulating anger and resentment at every opportunity, it uses simple terms and frequent repetition in its persuasive oratory. The MAGA movement has become a cult of true believers with a cult leader and unitary executive who can break laws at will, unchecked, and do no wrong.

Hedges also notes a darker theme in American Christian nationalism: End Times. Half of the U.S. population and a significant number of Congress members and other government office holders believe the Apocalypse is upon us. The U.S. ambassador to Israel discusses the Rapture with rabbis.

Hedges writes, “These people really hate the world outside the Church and want to see it destroyed. They share an apocalyptic vision that is very frightening.”

This is a shocking statement. But I have personally heard it from the mouths of loggers, who asked why we were trying to stop a timber harvest: “Why do you care about these trees? They’re all going to be burned up anyway, because the world is about to end!” The prospect of Apocalypse, strengthened by our helplessness in the face of catastrophic climate change and increasingly ferocious wars, has dispirited even less magically-minded people and has weakened the resistance to fascism. Hedges concludes that  “these people who have been marginalized and pushed aside, especially through deindustrialization, will either be reintegrated into American society or we are finished.”

In his interview, Richard Wolff, University of Massachusetts Professor Emeritus of Economics and author of the book Understanding Capitalism, quotes German playwright Bertolt Brecht: “To understand fascism you have to understand capitalism from whence it springs.” Capitalism generates vast inequalities, which inevitably evoke anger and resentment among the poorer and oppressed. The propertied class, anxious to protect its wealth, then creates and arms the police, the military, and ICE. “When that process goes far enough, you call it fascism…under capitalism, fascism is always lurking.”

Wolff points out that only three percent of the U.S. population consists of employers, whereas the rest of us are employees. The minority three percent have turned our political system into a contest between two political parties, both of which they finance. Both parties praise capitalism and prevent all third parties from succeeding. Wolff sees both parties easily falling prey to fascism. He holds out hope for popular movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter and Palestine support organizations, if they can recognize that they share common goals and can cooperate to develop strategies.

[Emphasis added by rlm]

Epilogue (regarding that three percent)

Ye are many – they are few,

And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

And these words shall then become
Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again — again — again–

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number–
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you–
Ye are many — they are few.’

Percy Bisshe Shelley

 

Typical Trump Tactics

Ryabkov may have had a flashback to US betrayal at Geneva, 9-10 Jan 2022, in saying the spirit of Anchorage is “exhausted”. Superiors have corrected him; asked Belarus Pres Lukashenko to call for calm and brand Tomahawks typical of Trump’s zig-zag tactics.

Intel Roundtable

Intel Roundtable: back-story re Nobel Peace Prize; White House whining; more “theater” on Tomahawks & Ukraine; can one trust Netanyahu? Reason Putin, Ushakov, Peskov treating Trump w/kid gloves is that he is “NOT OKAY”; autism & circumcision. A smorgasbord

Tomahawks That Will Never Get to Ukraine

Scott Ritter & I discuss Tomahawks that will never get to Ukraine; also Moscow’s proposal that US adhere to the quantitative limits of New START for a year after it expires Feb 5 2026. IMPORTANT: “These are two separate matters,” says Ryabkov (min 57:00ff)

Putin’s Future

IF there is growing political ferment in Russia such that Putin might be replaced, Putin at Valdai seemed oblivious to it. Could, of course, be hubris – the tragic flaw that fells oblivious leaders. But not likely. He is cautious; good if he stays around.

Trump Amenable to Extending START Treaty

Trump: Extending New START Treaty for a year, as Putin has proposed, “Sounds like a good idea to me.” Kirill Dmitriev reacts: “Judging by Trump’s remark, the probability of such an outcome is quite high.” Re Tomahawks, I sense red herring in that kerfuffle