Authoritarian Nations – They Grow Slowly and Imperceptibly

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Andy Hailey

Many Americans can’t see it coming – Some are unwittingly glorifying it.

I’ve been reading, viewing, and writing about authoritarianism in America since 2005. I’ve watched it take control of the Republican party and infect the Democratic party. I’ve come to understand it’s built into our 400 year old predatory economic system. That our authoritarian economic system is remaking our democratic political system into its own authoritarian image. That our authoritarian policing system was created by our authoritarian economic system to punish those who threaten the wealth of the profit looters. That our authoritarian military system, as a mega-expansion of our internal policing system, has become another punishing tool of our economic system to obtain and protect foreign economic resources. That we now have an authoritarian (DJT) executive branch of government supported by its authoritarian legislative branch, i.e. the US Senate. Both branches are working to convert our federal court system into another authoritarian system to protect and empower the profit looters, CxOs of the world.

I’ve also learned about the history of America as seen from the eyes of the American worker. Workers have been abused by our authoritarian economic and policing systems for over 140 years. This abuse rises and falls depending on worker/citizen interest, resistance, and interest/abilities to participate in the political system.

Slave patrols rounding up the wondering property of slave masters.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy of WWII, and other countries since, were run by authoritarian political systems that also created their own authoritarian policing systems and that coerced their complementary authoritarian economic systems into financing their political and policing systems.

In America, our march to an authoritarian state has taken a different path. Unlike Germany and Italy, where the political system used the economic system to enforce its hegemony, America’s movement to the extreme right has been driven by our centuries-old authoritarian economic system, which is described as Inverted Totalitarianism. This economic takeover of our government was first attempted during our Civil War and again in 1933 by the “Wall Street Putch,” with Prescott Bush, when the oligarchs tried to replace our elected President with a military coup of disgruntled WWI veterans led by Marine General Smedley Butler, who actually exposed the plot.

That violent, failed, fascist takeover of America in 1933 has been replaced by a decades-long stealth approach detailed in Democracy In Chains by Nancy MacLean, which under current national leadership has become more blatant . The goals of our current profit looter American fascist leaders are to have a constitutional convention in order to rewrite the US Constitution to give corporations veto power over new government laws, eliminate majority rule with national voter suppression, and neuter the Federal government by eliminating agencies, services, and social programs which were set up to protect and empower citizens. The new constitution will cast in concrete what has mostly been put in place and will finish off what remains like privatizing Medicare and Social Security.

In my lifetime I’ve lived under two opposing forms of government:

Post depression/post WWII and pre 1980s government was closest to “of, by, and for the People.” It was a government with the moral purpose of equally protecting and empowering ALL the People such that 1) People’s individual freedoms are maximized and 2) Economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices are minimized. In other words, a government with a goal of maximizing equality.
Now our government is closer to one whose focused purpose is protecting and empowering only successful white men (blue eyes, blond hair) such that their individual freedom and wealth are maximized without concern for any resulting injustices inflicted on the majority of citizens. In other words, a government focused on maximizing inequality. Economic inequality is now at levels not seen since the late 1920s and Time reports the theft of $50 trillion since 1975.

What follows is my description of our current broken and interrelated political, economic, and policing systems as the right-wing authoritarian extremists push us closer to complete Inverted Totalitarianism.

The economic and policing systems were authoritarian at birth. Capitalism grew out of the authoritarian feudalism by replacing the lord/surf structure with the employer/employee structure. As we have seen during the pandemic, capitalism is oriented to protect and empower the profit looters at the expense of all others.

Protecting the profit looters required goons to stop unionizing in North America and protect their slave property in the south. They needed a policing system for protecting their property (human or brick & mortar). The policing system has advanced into legalized abusing and killing with “qualified immunity.”

Union members face off with state troopers

Empowering the profit looters required an end to government oversight and regulations intended to protect and empower their customers. That was going to take some planning, including some favorable SCOTUS rulings in 1976 and 1978 assisted by the justice who wrote the Lewis Powell Memo and a lot of money. They had lots of money but needed more. Then comes Reagan’s Neo-liberal, trickle-down, economics that provided tax breaks, lucrative war contracts, and large corporate welfare subsidies. This self-enrichment by the wealthy is called legalized looting Profit looters (DJT) now occupy the White House, own the US Senate and, together, they are stacking the federal courts with corporate lackeys.

In summary, a 400 year-old authoritarian economic system gave birth to our authoritarian policing system to put property – and state’s – rights over human rights. This legalized massive profit looting that has stealthily stolen ownership of the citizen’s government and is maneuvering our government to turn it into a fascist-like totalitarian state.

Beware the “lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”

Many are well versed in authoritarianism as it relates to Nazi Germany and what can be said about its growth in America. Professor Altemeyer has studied it, helped John Dean write about it, and wrote about it himself, Progressive Thom Hartmann provides a review of the book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, by Milton Mayer and then suggests reading the book: