Wednesday, July 04, 2007

The Word is Gleichschaltung

The Bush Regime has had seven years to consolidate a conservative hold on the federal government. It has successfully changed the balance of the Supreme Court, instituted wholesale outsourcing of government functions to the private sector, politicized federal law enforcement agencies, resumed domestic spying on a massive scale, suppressed unions, and began an aggressive war abroad. Some commentators have called the Regime's neoconservatism, "proto-fascism" because of policy features in common with fascism, particularly in economics were the line between private and public sectors has been blurred. The Regime's attempt to abolish Social Security pension system and substitute a stock market scheme is a leading example. It's relentless agenda for consolidating control of national government in the Executive Branch is currently seen in the battle over the politically motivated firing of federal prosecutors previously considered independent of Executive control.

The Nazi's had a name for the consolidation of state power within their party: Gleischschaltung. This term is usually translated as "synchronization", a program created by Carl Schmitt in 1933-35 for consolidating Nazi control over the administration of justice. A central feature of this plan was the political subordination of prosecutors. Interestingly, it was also Schmitt who advocated using the legal concept of piracy as the means for treating state enemies as beyond the pale and cutting off their access to courts. Regime advisers have perhaps read Schmitt's "The Concept of Piracy"(1937) before building the Guantanamo gulag and denying detainees habeus corpus relief. A series of laws passed by the Nazis after Hitler became Chancellor successfully removed the separation of powers embodied in the Weimar constitution. Its understandable if you are suffering from deja vu. Go buy an iPhone(TM), you will feel better (at least for a few minutes).