Dear Mr. Herbert:
Your recent columns on the gestapo tactics of the Florida state troopers in focusing onAfrican-Americans were needed to expose these fascist characteristics of the Bush Administration at both Federal and State levels.
Why is it in this nation that even an infinitesimally small taint of communism in a policy immediately brings cries of subversion, but even an obscene amount of fascism escapes its obvious label in our mainstream political discussions?
Is it because we don't know our own history when before WWII some of our most powerful citizens and corporations supported the Nazi's rise to power as a bulwark against Communism?
While we have been irrationally fighting the bugaboo of Communism and drifting closer and closer to fascism, Scandinavian countries have used rational capitalism to advance their citizens' standard of living to the highest in the world while retaining the benefits of rational socialism.
Regards,
HGL
Link to Bob Herbert, New York Times Columnist
On fascism from Britannica Online
Martial virtues are celebrated, while liberal and democratic values are disparaged. Fascism arose during the 1920s and '30s partly out of fear of the rising power of the working classes; it differed from contemporary communism (as practiced under Joseph Stalin) by its protection of business and landowning elites and its preservation of class systems. The leaders of the fascist governments of Italy (1922–43), Germany (1933–45), and Spain (1939–75)—Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco—were portrayed to their publics as embodiments of the strength and resolve necessary to rescue their nations from political and economic chaos.Link to Britannica Online
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