Fascism: Why Not Here?

8 Can It Happen Here?

177 CAN IT HAPPEN HERE? ——8—— AMERICANS ENJOY A SENSE OF POLITICAL SECURITY that many around the world have reason to envy. The Constitution, ratified more than two centuries ago, rules over an active and partisan government whose leadership and philosophy change with the shifting fortunes of various interest groups, demographic categories, and innovative movements. The Constitution balances the powers of the three branches of government so exquisitely that only a few amendments have been needed to keep its principles aligned with the tremendous social and technological changes that have taken place since its adoption. Americans take for granted the provisions of the Bill of Rights, and for most people, most of the time, they can have confidence those rights will be protected. Americans are so assured of the stability of their government and the solidity of the rule of law that many overlook, or forget, or never learned of the lapses that have occurred. In fact, the Constitution has not stood inviolate and constant over the full course of American history. Even setting aside its fundamental, initial shortcomings regarding the status of women and blacks—resolved only after more than a century and only in legal terms—there have been quite a number of occurrences in which the provisions of the Bill of Rights have been significantly trampled. Moreover , most of these cases have had the acquiescence and even enthusiastic approval of the bulk of the citizenry. Thus examination of the question, can it happen here? must begin with the recognition that Americans have already had occasional flirtations with authoritarian and populist repression. 178 ❙ FASCISM: WHY NOT HERE? AMERICAN SELF-REPRESSION The first major attack on the Bill of Rights came in 1798 in the form of the Alien and Sedition acts. Facing the threat of war with France, President John Adams saw an opportunity to use the citizenry’s patriotic fervor to advance the aims of his Federalist Party by silencing its Republican critics. The Federalist-dominated Congress passed the measures, which, in addition to providing for the arrest of foreigners who were subjects of enemy powers, criminalized criticism of the administration. The Sedition Act’s centerpiece was the threat of fine and imprisonment for publishing or uttering “any false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government of the United States . . . or the President of the United States, with the intent to defame [them] or bring [them] into disrepute.” Whatever the political or ideological intent of the measure, in practice it accomplished little but the prosecution of several Republican newspaper editors and politicians. But though passage of the Alien and Sedition acts is among the most egregious compromises to constitutional principle, it doesn’t serve as a good cautionary example of American tendencies toward fascism. In those times, the Constitution was just being tested, and American political parties were just taking shape. It is significant, too, that there was widespread protest over the measures, both in Congress from the Republicans and among the citizens and the media of the time. Most newspaper editors ignored the law, assuming correctly that the government couldn’t put them all in jail. The outcry probably cost Adams the following election, which brought the Republican Thomas Jefferson to the presidency. Thus the Alien and Sedition acts might well be viewed as an early test of the strength of the Bill of Rights, enacted only a few years earlier, rather than as a failure to uphold its principles. Further, it is impossible to think of this episode as an early move toward fascism, which was not invented until the twentieth century and, in fact, could not have emerged until the modern age. Still, the political maneuverings surrounding the acts displayed some of the key methods by which citizens might be persuaded by opportunistic politicians and other elites to surrender some of their most basic freedoms: the invoking of an external threat as a cause for radical action, the scapegoating of foreigners to increase nationalistic fervor, and the labeling of opponents as traitorous in times of foreign threat.1 There were no further significant attacks on the Bill of Rights until the Civil War. Local or state authorities harassed abolitionists now and then, but Americans and their leaders apparently had been shaken by the struggle CAN IT HAPPEN HERE? ❙ 179 over the Alien and Sedition acts or had come to a reasonable consensus on what the Bill of...