Kafka, Orwell and now facism

Clearly I am on a mid-20th-century kick here, but a friend forwarded me this piece published in the spring by Chris Hedges on truthdig.com and I've been thinking about it ever since. Hedges question is an interesting one, "Is America yearning for fascism?" At first, as I read it, I thought that Hedges is way over-stating his case. I get tired of liberals ranting about their sense of betrayal by the Obama administration. It seems unproductive and ridiculously ideological. But several elements have stayed with me, and I think Hedges' question needs to be taken seriously. 

One is his quotation from historian Fritz Stern: "In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented." In other words, the conditions for fascism are laid culturally long before any leader gives it form. Are we laying that foundation now? I think of it every time I hear someone say that we need more "border security." We have done nothing but add militarization at the border for more than a decade. Such comments stem from a seemingly insatiable desire to attain an imagined level of safety and insularity. In the phrase "border security," I hear a dream for ultimate control that, to me, has fascist intonations.

Here is Hedge's summary of how fascism emerges:

The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.

The image of the "thugs and demagogues" has stayed with me to chasten my too-easy assumption that Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are too ridiculous to be taken seriously. "We can laugh at these people," says Hedges, "but they are not the fools. We are."

Hedges doesn't mention it, but for me, immigration is the exact location we need to pay attention to. In an interview I did last year with Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok, he pointed to the crossroads at which we find ourselves, 

It's not merely that the country is changing; it's that the die is cast—nothing will prevent this country from becoming a genuinely multiracial democracy in which no racial group dominates. Even if we were to seal the borders today, whites would still lose their majority. 

But something can prevent us from becoming a "genuinely multiracial democracy," and that is if we choose paths of violence and fear on this road. Frankly, this is already happening.