OUR FASCISM, AND THEIRS: IN THE BIZARRO WORLD OF THE NEOCONS, IT'S ALWAYS 1939 by Justin Raimondo

"There is a fascist threat to America, all right, but it isn't coming from overseas."


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September 4, 2006


Our Fascism, and Theirs

In the Bizarro World of the neocons, it's always 1939


by Justin Raimondo


The administration's new theme, designed to sell the Iraq war and the larger "war on terrorism" as an historic struggle against "fascism" – or "Islamo-fascism," as the president and his blogger fan club would have it – is not merely a very bad joke. As an analysis of where we are and what we are facing, it is worse than useless to compare Osama bin Laden's scattered, ragtag legions with the massed might of the Wehrmacht: it is a delusional inversion of reality. Listen to Rummy as he tries to convince us it's 1939:

"It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

"There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed: 'Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!'"

He's talking about Sen. William E. Borah, the "Lion of Idaho," a staunch opponent of U.S. intervention in World War II – along with the overwhelming majority of the American people at the time. This majority included, I might add, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who – at least in his public pronouncements – declared his total opposition to U.S. intervention in the European conflict. When Hitler invaded Poland, the president gave a press conference the next morning in which he echoed Borah's hope that American involvement could be avoided. Questioned as to whether the U.S. could stay out of the war, he said, "I not only sincerely hope so, but I believe we can, and that every effort will be made by the administration to do so."

Was Roosevelt, too, a victim of this "strange innocence"? Whatever else one may say about him, "innocent" is hardly [.pdf] the word that comes immediately to mind: he was, in fact, a coldly calculating politician and champion liar who, step by step, embroiled us in a worldwide conflagration that killed millions, handed Stalin half of Europe and much of Asia, and ensured the Soviet mutant a half century more of monstrous life. In any case, the president that Rumsfeld and the other 1939ers would liken to our reigning chief executive echoed Borah's hopes for peace, however insincerely.




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