"The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence." --Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Somehow there's few things more sickening than infantile Leftists crying "fascist" and "genocidal" at people and events they don't like, tossing off references to these evils-of-Evil with the abandon of detergent advertisers using the word "revolutionary."

Bad enough that unspeakable horrors like those visited upon European Jews and Rwandan Tutsis be diminished by equation with, say, U.S. racism (no matter how odious that is). Worse how cries of "wolf!" disarm....

But there are things more sickening. How about the obscenity of Christian ultra-rightists publicly gloating at the funeral of Matthew Shepard (the gay college student viciously beaten to death in Wyoming), actually carrying signs like "God Hates Fags" and "No Tears for Queers."

Or the public high-five's among the self-anointed righteous over the sniper-murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian--an obstetrician labeled a "baby-killer" by those hearing God's voice--who gargled his own blood crying "help" to his children as he lay chest-shot on his kitchen floor.

Or the celebration organized by the Ku Klux Klan after this summer's Texas murder of 49-year-old James Byrd Jr., a Black worker dragged by a chain from the bumper of a pickup truck, leaving body parts strewn along a three-mile path.

Anomalies?

Of course we're supposed to believe that these are isolated crimes by a few fanatics, give the government more repressive power in the form of "hate crime" legislation, and then get back to important matters like the sex life of celebrities.

But while these "incidents" are neither daily nor widespread, they still represent a real and growing phenomenon. After all, there's been more than three political murders.

Add the bomb and arson attacks against women's clinics and gay/lesbian targets. Toss in last year's ominous assaults against striking San Francisco transit workers by outraged "yuppie" commuters hurling scalding coffee, bottles, spit and obscenities.

And take the national platforms given to the ultra-right columnist and Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, a demagogue whose every utterance drips with implied violence, a man who has openly professed admiration of Adolf Hitler.

Say hello to the first tendrils of emerging American fascism.

Europe

No question genuine fascist movements have already emerged in other imperialist countries, especially France (where a violent, demagogic ultra-right party has won mayorships and seats in Parliament) and Germany (where immigrants are afraid to walk the streets at night for fear of lynching).

Of course neither France nor Germany is poised for Nazi rule. Neither is the U.S. -- and nor is it as far along as Europe, thanks to the current persistence of relative prosperity here.

So right now is not la hora fatal , the zero hour-- at least if you're not Byrd, Slepian or Shepard.

Hallmarks

But the political murders, the attacks, and the vitriol have all the characteristics of fascism -- belligerent economic resentment, for starters.

Resentment from workers marginalized by vanishing well-paid jobs and by the demands of new technologies; from small proprietors crushed by mega-corporate competitors, extortionate insurance expenses and government regulations; from 80-hour-work-week farmers ruined by inexplicably-collapsing prices

It's the fury of MBA's staring into the abyss of corporate downsizing, while high school graduates--fucking bus drivers, for crissakes--dare walk off their jobs for better treatment.

But it's carnal resentment that especially marks fascism. Carnal resentment of ever-copulating minorities, rutting homosexuals, and women liberated by equal pay, abortion, and birth control to get it any time they want. Even carnal resentment of the 'moral depravity' of the elites (cigar, anyone?).

With both wallet and cock--oops, morality-- threatened, no wonder the most important characteristic of fascism--violence--erupts. Why, it's self-defense, really.

And it's a holy crusade, blessed from above.

Class war

For it's the source of these ideas that makes them classically fascist, that gives force to what would otherwise be merely Neanderthal notions like going back to segregation, or ending fluoridation.

Today U.S. capitalists --facing shrinking markets ("global over-capacity") and falling rates of profits-- are driven to improve their competitive position and cut their costs. Hello downsizing, elimination of welfare, terrorization of immigrants, intimidation of women, outlawing of affirmative action, and wide-ranging attacks on democratic rights from urine-testing to the invasion of bedrooms -- which all weaken the working class and drive down expenses.

Hired politicians fall over themselves to campaign against "over- regulation," expensive entitlements, "aliens," abortion, minority "special privileges," drugs, and immorality. Little wonder some take matters to logical conclusion and murder the "baby-killers," start sexual-orientation cleansing, or take out now-justified frustration on "privileged" Blacks.

Point is that fascism never rises from the bottom, it is always created from the top. And while the U.S. ruling class today emits only the occasional ultra-right odor, no doubt that the rough beast that slouching from the capitalist economy's coming wreckage will be a fascist one.

Counterpunch

Yet America's impregnation with fascism is still embryonic. Now is a good time to prepare-- say, by reading the French anarchist Daniel Guerin's classic Fascism and Big Business, Leon Trotsky's Fascism: What is and How to Fight it, or Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism (the first edition if you can find it, before Reich's later delusional additions).

But now is also the time to respond -- to turn out against political murders, just as thousands did nationwide after Matthew Shepard's killing, to take back space and initiative from the ultra-right.

For hearing hysterical Leftists cry "fascist" at average Republicans may be sickening, but seeing them find salvation in "hate crime" legislation --which only gives the source of fascism more repressive power--is just as bad.

But there are things more sickening--much more

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