ABSTRACT
This chapter shows why we should all “be very afraid,” as the Security story shifts us toward a more authoritarian and potential neo-fascist American order. Capitalism has always had authoritarian elements, since it is based on an upstairs/downstairs architecture in which economic and political power are hierarchically stratified by class. The authoritarian strains seem counteracted in a thriving economic order, but as the inequality gaps of income and wealth increase, elites move toward the Security story that requires an increasingly powerful state and military to counter the manufactured enemies now essential to winning the loyalties of the “forgotten” working people downstairs.
The core of this chapter looks at how Hitler developed successfully a fascist Security story in the Weimar Republic of German during its deep economic and cultural crises of the 1920s after World War I, and then into consolidation of a fascist order and Security rule in the 1930s and1940s. The fascist Security story had four key steps to enshrine Nazi rule. The first was creating an all-powerful leader to secure the nation against overpowering enemies abroad and at home. The second was enshrining a culture of brutal violence preparing the population for the mass violence necessary to crush manufactured enemies. The third was showing how foreign enemies—the Allies after World War I—had subjected Germany to humiliating surrender and reparations destroying the German economy and nation. The fourth was showing how the true nation—the white German Aryan race—was being threatened by Jews, Slavs and other racialized domestic imposters and parasites who had to be destroyed to preserve the honor and spiritual greatness of the Aryan nation.
In the final part of the chapter, we show how the US is taking the four steps leading to authoritarianism and some possible neo-fascist order. These include an authoritarian leader, a culture of brutality, a hyping of foreign terrorist and Islamic enemies (as well as European, Chinese and Canadian/Mexican enemies and immigrants) and a fueling of war against domestic enemies, part of a broader culture war in which elites ally and promise economic and cultural protection and honor to the white “forgotten” working classes. We show these threaten a frightening authoritarianism in America, detailing the remarkable parallels with similar Security story patterns in Weimar and Nazi Germany and the US. But we show this is a long-term problem and danger, with the new Security story dangers developing in presidencies long before Trump, most recently with Reagan, Bush I and II, Clinton and Obama. The lesson: Be Very Afraid of the very Security story that in the name of security is bringing insecurity, violence and poisonous cultural warfare in a capitalism of extreme inequality.
