Is Fascism a Danger in America?

Chris Rowthorn, an American Journalist based in Kyoto, Japan, has a disturbing essay published on the left-wing "Smirking Chimp" website. He realizes that "for most Americans, it seems absurd or even hysterical to declare that we are living in a fascist state." Nevertheless, he proceeds to assert that,

At this point, it is clear that America is in the early stages of fascism; it hasn't yet metastasized into the outright jackbooted fascism of Nazi Germany. But the country is poised like a boulder at the top of a slope, ready to roll into the abyss. In fact, it will take a miracle to keep this from happening. Consider the factors that could easily unleash outright fascism in the United States: the accelerating collapse of the US dollar; the follow-on effects from the subprime loan debacle; soaring energy prices (peak oil); catastrophic weather events caused by global warming; and, of course, the one thing that Bush's entire foreign policy seems almost guaranteed to bring about: another large-scale terrorist attack on American soil. Any one of these by itself could trigger outright fascism. Combine two or more, and American fascism is 100% certain.

Rowthorn is not alone in raising the specter of fascism. Chris Hedges brought it up in his book American Fascists and Naomi Wolf makes a readable and succinct case for it in her latest book The End of America.

Others, more cautious about using the word fascist, are issuing warnings that are equally alarming. Naomi Klein chronicles the rise of "disaster capitalism" in an outstanding new book entitled The Shock Doctrine. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War Era, recently gave a speech that says "a coup has occurred" and warns about the possibility of a "police state."

The terms of political debate in this country are clearly shifting.