9/11 and The New
Fascism
September 12, 2016
Richard Dolan
It has now been fifteen years since America’s lurch into neofascism. No,
there was no formal announcement, no statement from the President
congratulating us for living under the protection of a fascist police state.
And yet here we are. A situation, by the way,
into which America dragged its allies and much of the world as well. A nightmare from which we cannot seem to awaken.
For those too young to remember, there was a BeforeTime. It surely wasn’t
ideal: the poisoned pill of national security and empire was swallowed long
before 9/11 and had already worked its way into the American and global system.
But it was a time when Americans lived with the assumption that they still had
rights. The 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle were a case in point, when more
than 40,000 demonstrators shut that city down, at times
even preventing the World Trade Organization from properly convening. The
global anti-globalist movement reached a crisis point during those four days,
and it surely seems in retrospect that our handlers at the top of our food
chain decided that wasn’t going to happen any more.
Less than two years later, the hammer came down. A distinctly American
form of insanity followed, egged on by the confluence of power held by the
national security crowd and its voice of propaganda. That is, what we call the
mainstream media: all the major TV and radio networks from Fox to NPR, and
newspapers like the Washington Post, New York Times and the rest of the crowd.
Everyone piled on with one voice: revenge and protection against the threat of
“terrorists,” and oh yes, we might have to sacrifice some privacy and other
rights--temporarily--in order to get the job done. Enter the USA PATRIOT Act.
Everyone knows this litany, or at least that is what I used to tell
myself. But in an age when no one seems to know anything beyond their Facebook
feed (or, God forbid, their Instagram page), in which history and political
theory has vanished from the American classroom and psyche, it has to be
acknowledged that not everyone knows it. We still have many sleepwalkers among
us.
Even so, there are also many who are in various stages of waking up. That
9/11 was a false flag is finally becoming something that more and more people
are talking about, usually quietly but sometimes openly. There are studies, websites, and books galore that anyone can look at. The histrionic denials from the
establishment against such silly “conspiracy theories” (a phrase coined by the CIA in 1967, by the way) are obvious and fool only the most
simple minded. And yet, despite this, the propaganda machine continues to spin
its false narrative on behalf of the national security/homeland security state.
People have learned to duck their heads and do little more than quietly
grumble, knowing that somehow things are wrong, but unable usually to put their
finger on the problem.
There is much talk in America today of the threat of authoritarianism and
fascism, particular if one of the Presidential candidates wins the election. That is, we are
told, if Trump wins, you had better watch out. Well, indeed, anyone who engages
in such military and police state ass kissing should be feared. And yes indeed,
I fear that. The reverse side of it, of course, is that his opponent Hillary
Clinton is a proven regime changer and destroyer of nations (Honduras, Libya, Syria) who is every bit as much of a neocon as Dick Cheney.
The truth is, fascism doesn’t look like a podium pounding demagogue. It
looks like a government that can read your emails and texts at any time, that
can GPS you 24/7, that propagandizes you, scares you, and tosses in the
occasional false flag at you to keep you in a constant state of fear and submission.
Sorry to say, but the barn door opened fifteen years ago and those horses have
long left the stable.
What we need is a fresh understanding of what America has become. Of what
the true structure of power in this world looks like. Of why propaganda and
false flags are being used against us.
The short answer is that there are two basic reasons: neoliberalism and
neoconservatism. These are not opposites but instead go hand in hand. They are
the twin ideological pillars of America’s ruling class.
Neoliberalism (or “new” liberalism) is not your classic liberalism in
which the defense of human rights is the paramount objective. It is nothing
other than the ideology of globalization. It is, in fact, the defense of
transnational corporate rights.
Neoconservatism is its necessary counterpart. It is not the old
conservatism of your grandfather; not the defense of “traditional” values and
rights or any such thing. It is the “new” conservatism. Rather than conserving
the classic American republic, neocons defend Empire.
For Empire is a necessary component to the globalist, neoliberal vision.
After all, if you are pushing an anti-human neoliberal agenda upon the rest of
the world, you will need to knock some heads. That is America’s role as global
policeman. And just as American cops these days are famous for knocking their
fellow citizens around, so too is the American GloboCop well known for
enforcing the neoliberal corporate agenda on everyone else.
In such a situation, where jobs are being siphoned away at home and the
demands of the oil empire and petrodollar system require global enforcement, an
Empire will need to deceive and lie. After all, you can’t have the U.S.
President announce to the world that America will invade Iraq because Saddam
has begun selling his oil in euros. You can’t say that you are going to induce regime change in Libya
because Gaddafi is about to roll out a gold-backed dinar that will threaten American and French financial interests.
People might resist such blatant Empire maintenance. Instead, you create fictitious charades of weapons of mass destruction or non-existent carpet bombing of the Libyan people and get the job done. No matter
if you turn entire nations into smoking heaps of rubble that will never recover
in your lifetime. At least you continue to keep your party going for a little
while longer.
Orwell once told us, “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is
a revolutionary act.” It’s also true that in an age of corporate globalism
enforced by the American Empire, lies and deception are precisely how the power
elite gets what it wants. It is how that elite controls us for its enrichment.
It’s bad enough that we pay these people to be lied to, that we pay them to
destroy entire nations in our name. It’s even worse that so many of us are even
now not awake to that fact.
But as bad as things are, they can improve. Look around. You will see
signs of it everywhere. People who are waking up. People who realize that their
newspapers and TV news are lying to them. On this fifteenth anniversary of the
tragic death and destruction of 9/11, we are best served not by blind
nationalism and more games of follow the leader into the next war. Instead, it
is our job to strip away the illusions we have been fed and to begin the
arduous but rewarding job of telling truth to power.
