The American right has found a new trope to describe the still-youthful presidency of Barack Obama. After attempting to paint him as a “socialist” and a “Muslim” as terms of its contempt, it is now the f-word that is emerging with vigor. “Fascist” that is. Or “socialist-fascist”. Highly visible on the right-wing blogs, it is a word that has of late begun creeping closer to the mainstream.
Last month, a writer for the conservative American Spectator talked about “the whiff of fascism” emanating from the White House over the pressure on the head of General Motors, Richard Wagoner, to quit. He was not alone. In a recent Washington Post column, the conservative writer Charles Krauthammer, served up an echo of this view, opining: “Some find in this descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism,” before adding — with the most weasely of disavowals — that he “has his doubts”.
While there is nothing new about vulgar political abuse what is interesting here is what appears to be an emerging attempt in some quarters of the right to repackage Obama for the conservative radio soundbite. For in the midst of a global economic meltdown that has made millions of Americans jobless, the old scare words of the American right’s lexicon of political abuse, like “socialist”, are no longer sufficiently alarming. Other words, apparently, are necessary.
The increasing use of the f-word in political invective to describe Obama does not have its roots exclusively on America’s right. Ironically, it was comments made by David Plotz, deputy editor of the online magazine Slate — and an avowed Obama supporter — early in Obama’s run for the presidency that supplied some of the ammunition. Plotz described the candidate’s mode of delivering speeches as “slightly fascistic”, and his comment has continued to reverberate among some right-wing commentators.
But there is something more at work here. For while it has been the figure of Obama himself who has become the focus of the most recent name calling, the increasing use of the word “fascist” by right-wing bloggers and others reflects a subtle shift in US political culture, not least the attempts by some on the right to reclaim the word.
Where once the charge of fascist was largely the mainstay of left-on-right political invective, it has more recently been reinvented as a verbal weapon for Republicans to fire at Democrats.
That attempt began with Liberal Fascism, a book by Jonah Goldberg, contributing editor at the conservative National Review. Much quoted by those who would have us believe that the new president is a Mussolini in waiting — for his policies if not his rhetoric — Goldberg’s aim was nothing less than to persuade that American liberalism had long embraced elements of fascism, beginning with Woodrow Wilson.
The usage of the word in this context, needless to say, is loose and nonsensical — not least when applied to America’s first black president, a figure who hardly conforms to volkisch notions. But that does not mean it can be ignored in a political culture that uses dangerous demonizing to powerful effect.
Instead, what its appropriation represents is a lazy shorthand that equates the powerful and necessary interventions in America’s economy — set in motion under George Bush, lest it be forgotten — with large and authoritarian government, a jarring nerve in its constituency. To that end, it has attempted to summon up the specter of fascism’s hostility to capitalism, imagining the recent state interventions in large, troubled corporations as the predecessor to the creation of new Kruppses.
But if there is a certain ridiculousness about the attempt to label Obama as the Il Duce for our times, it is still worthy of scrutiny. Not least because it demonstrates both the utter exhaustion of any meaningful political critique in large areas of the American right, as well as how strands of corrosive confrontational political rhetoric emerge and are adapted for wider use.
It does not matter that the argument proposed by Goldberg and his admirers about the nature of US Democratic politics is tendentious. What matters is that a conveniently damning label can be found, even if “Yes we can” in its feel good generalization is hardly the same as the slogans that Mussolini wrapped himself in: “Believe, obey, fight” or “Order, authority, justice”.
It is important for another reason too. Because political name calling has a function in the democratic process. It signifies not only the fears contained within the accusation — in this case of an overpowerful, centralized government under a charismatic leader — but also expresses the ideals the opposition aspire to.
Name calling also has the capacity to frame the future debate by providing the shorthand upon which politics so often depends. And it matters in this case because the US society already regards Obama as one of most divisively partisan figures in America’s political history.
