It can’t happen here...can it?

Huey Long [a populist Louisiana governor and senator in the early
1930s] once said that when fascism comes to this country, it’s going
to be wrapped in an American flag. You’ve commented on
tendencies toward fascism in this country. You’ve even been
quoting Hitler on the family and the role of women.

The Republican convention—fortunately I saved myself the pain
of watching it on television, but I read about it—struck such chords
that I began looking up some literature on fascism from the 1930s. I
looked up Hitler’s speeches to women’s groups and big rallies. The
rhetoric was very similar to that of the “God-and-country” rally the
first night of the Republican convention.
But I don’t really take that similarity too seriously, because the
levers of power are firmly in the hands of the corporate sector. It’ll
permit rabid fundamentalists to scream about God and country and
family, but they’re very far from having any influence over major
power decisions.
That was obvious in the way the campaign developed. They were
given the first night to scream and yell. They were even given the
party platform—it was pre-Enlightenment. But then when the
campaign started, we were back to business as usual.
But that can change. When people grow more alienated and
isolated, they begin to develop highly irrational and very self-
destructive attitudes. They want something in their lives. They
want to identify themselves somehow. They don’t want to be just
glued to the television set. If most of the constructive ways are cut
off, they turn to other ways.
You can see that in the polls too. I was just looking at a study by
an American sociologist (published in England) of comparative
religious attitudes in various countries. The figures are shocking.
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in
religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in
resurrection, in God doing this and that—it’s astonishing.
These numbers aren’t duplicated anywhere else in the industrial
world. You’d have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among
old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American