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Don't Buy the ShortcutsAugust 29, 2009 "Wolf, wolf!" and "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" are pretty good ways to get people's attention -- until, as the original stories point out, they're overused. Then we go "Oh, yeah?" and maybe glance briefly upward before going back to whatever we're doing. Quite a few lefties like to cry "The fascists are coming! The fascists are coming!" A few of them are convinced we're already living in a fascist state. I don't believe that most middle-class white people are living in anything close to a fascist state, but the day-to-day lives of, say, illegal immigrants (and anyone that might be mistaken for one), and anyone who the authorities think looks like a terrorist, and people of color who some authority thinks are in the wrong place -- well, it's not hard to see how fascism can insinuate itself into a society that claims to be liberal. Long time ago, the late, great professor Jack Reece started his Modern European History lecture on the subject by asking, "What is a fascist -- other than someone you don't like?" He then, with assistance from us, proceeded to break European fascism down into its component parts. In the process we identified the warning signs that fascist movements have been so good at exploiting. I look around now and you bet I see plenty of those signs: great inequality, a sense that not only is the deck stacked but there's no way to unstack it, a continual stream of flawed information drenching people who haven't been encouraged or educated to analyze it critically, lack of faith in the future. Everyone's got ideas about how to remedy this, from improved education to publicly financed elections to a reformed tax policy that reduces economic inequality instead of exacerbating it, and so on. Good ideas all, but very often there's an important one missing. Local, real-time, face-to-face organizing. Successful unions are built on strong locals, the women's movement at its height was built on small groups, the anti-nuke movement had its affinity groups, the Communist Party had its cells, and the civil rights movement had its churches. To me one of the scariest signs that fascism is genuinely possible in this country is the widespread assumption that elected leaders have the power to fix -- or wreck -- things singlehanded. Look at the people who turned against President Obama when he'd barely been in office a month: He hadn't cleaned up the gargantuan mess that the Bush administration dropped in his lap, so throw the bum out! If Dennis Kucinich / Ron Paul / Cynthia Kinney had been elected, everything would be fixed by now. These people aren't looking for a leader, they're looking for a savior who's going to wave a magic wand and solve all the country's problems in a few months. This mindset is a prime prerequisite for fascism. Anyone can promise to solve all the country's problems in a few months, but only someone with dictatorial powers can actually do it. And their idea of a solution probably won't look much like yours or mine. Most people who've ever worked on the local level -- in political groups, cultural groups, organizational groups, any kind of groups -- know this. We know that accomplishing anything worthwhile takes a lot of hard work, compromising, talking, swearing, and teeth-gnashing. We also know that sometimes people we don't 100% agree with or don't especially like turn out to be invaluable allies. Local organizing. It's key.
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