Miscellaneous

The New Fascism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 1-2

Genre: Talk

Track: 1

Dictation Name: RR319A1

Location/Venue: Fairfax Christian school in Fairfax Virginia

Year: 1977

[Tape Introductory Speaker] The following was recorded on Thursday May the 19th, 1977 at Fairfax Christian school in Fairfax Virginia, and is Dr. Rousas J. Rushdoony speaking on the New Fascism; being introduced by Bob (Thoburn?)

[Audience Speaker] [Very quiet audio, there may be errors] By Dr. Rousas John Rushdoony, noted author and lecturer; the other evening I was introduced (?) chamber of commerce, (?) you don’t really need to be introduced since you are already a member of the organization, and I said to somebody: “I need all the introduction I can get.” But the speaker tonight really doesn’t need any introduction for many of us because he is very well known, but some of you perhaps have never had the privilege of meeting Dr. Rushdoony or hearing him, and I think he is a really outstanding speaker (?) I know he writes these books faster than (?) can publish them, it is certainly faster than I can get them read, and digest it and put it into practice; but he is carrying on a very important work in the United States. He is the president of Chalcedon which is (?) in California, (?) basically one of applying Biblical principles to every area of life. I am intensely interested in the Christian school movement, and greatly indebted to him and his book Intellectual Schizophrenia, Messianic Character of American Education, and many other books in the educational field, and in the political field I have found ideas that he has developed based on the Bible have been very important in setting forth the solutions to problems that face our (?).

His most recent book is Revolt Against Maturity, a book dealing with Biblical Psychology, and before that just a couple months ago, God’s Plan for Victory, a powerful little book, I know that David sold about 1,500 copies of that little book in just one week, and it is very reasonably priced, and it is a book dealing with eschatology, the doctrine of the future. Dr. Rushdoony is a future oriented person, as over and against the existentialism that abounds so much today, and it has been a privilege for me to know him and I am so thankful that he could be here tonight to speak to us on the subject of the New Fascism, and then we will have opportunity afterwards for if you have questions. Dr. Rushdoony?

[Rushdoony] The year 1660 is a turning point in the history of the Western World. At that date, approximately, the era of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation came to an end, and the foundation of western culture and civilization shifted from a Christian foundation to a humanistic and political one. The shift was in some ways barely discernible, in other ways dramatic.

Perhaps one way of illustrating the difference dramatically is that in England earlier you had Cromwell. Whether or not you regard Cromwell highly, his central function and focus was theological, a Christian concept of society. With Charles the Second, a humanistic emphasis was basic. Again, in Spain, whether or not you are partial to Philip the Second, the fact is that Philip the Second had seen his faith as basic to state practice, so that when he built his palace there was a chapel at the center. But by 1660 Spain shifted to a radically humanistic emphasis. Things (?) from an intense concern with theological issues, with Louis the 14th now, instead of a chapel being at the center of his bedroom and his private diplomacy was now basic. The men that were heads of state in one country after another no longer saw the basic motivation of man and society and the foundation of culture in Christianity. And as a result before too long the Enlightenment was born.

Now the culmination of the Enlightenment was in the French Revolution. With the French Revolution we entered into an era which we have not entirely left, but which took another turn after 1918. With the French Revolution, man was now openly, militantly dedicated to a humanistic culture, to a humanistic foundation for society. In the French Revolution at one point the death of all Christians was decreed, the abolition of Christianity and Orthodox Judaism, the belief militantly proclaimed that now on humanistic foundations without any interference from Christianity, a brave new world would be constructed.

The failure of the French Revolution did not dampen that hope. Europe saw in the years that followed a series of attempts at major revolution. It saw also the growth of an extensive socialist movement in every country throughout Western Europe. All we have to do is to recall the kind of socialist vote that existed in his country prior to WW1 to realize that in our country it was far weaker than in Europe, but we didn’t begin to appreciate the extent to which Western man was committed to revolution.

The popular foundations of that revolutionary movement were very extensively dampened by the Russian Revolution. Now that may come as a shock. The Russian Revolution did create a socialist government and a militant international conspiracy; one such as had not existed previously. The threat now was organized subversion, but the popular roots of that movement began to wane. The horrors of the French Revolution did not dampen the ardor of western man. Everywhere there were people that felt that whatever the excesses it was necessary, to overthrow the chains of bondage, of capitalism, of the past, of kings, of rulers that were a part of the old order.

The Russian Revolution left a different reaction. It is hard for us to recall at this point, but the initial phases of the revolution was very extensively welcomed in the Western World. It meant the fulfillment of the kind of hope that President Wilson was proclaiming of a new world order. But very quickly the direction of the Russian Revolution began to terrify the Western world. The great numbers of workers, who previous to WW1 had been members of the International, members of Socialist parties, began to drift away from these parties, and an extensive Democratic, Socialist movement began throughout Europe. These were all attempts to have their socialism, but to disassociate themselves from the violence and the terror of the Russian Revolution.

However, at the same time, there were other Marxists who began to see that Western man was beginning to fear the open consummation of the Marxist dream. The radical implications of it. The far reaching confiscation of private property, the drastic reordering of every area of life constituted too great a shock. Western man in 1917 and 18 was even on the lower level far more prosperous than he was at the time of the French Revolution, he had more to lose. As a result, there was emphatically not an appeal to the kind of drastic revolutionary program that the Soviet regime instituted.

The result was fascism. Fascism in effect offered western man this alternative: “You can eat your cake and have it too. You can forms of private property, of free enterprise, of historic western culture with socialism.” This fascism hoped to accomplish by maintaining the façade, but through controls, through regulations, to so govern society so that while the façade of private ownership of property and corporations remained, they were all to any practical intent socialistically controlled and governed.

At this distance, it is impossible for us to realize how popular a man internationally Mussolini was. He was highly praised by western statesmen, scholars, theoreticians; Churchill lauded him, Roosevelt’s NRA was extensively an imitation of Mussolini, in fact one could call Mussolini the unacknowledged patron saint of Western politics since WW2. However, Mussolini personally fell by the wayside, first with his attack on Ethiopia, and then by joining with Hitler in WW2.

As a result, Mussolini is extensively treated as a buffoon, slandered, and regarded as inconsequential. Now without having any regard whatsoever for Mussolini I still must say that unless we appreciate what Mussolini did, what he propounded, we cannot understand what it is we are confronting today in Sweden, in London, in France, in Italy, and in Washington. It is the new Fascism. No longer labeled as Fascism, but employing basically the same ideas.

AMTRAK of course, and the postal service, are pure fascism. The fact that of all the regulations which so govern your property that you no longer are the owner of it- you never were anyway- testifies to the extent that we are fascists.

Let me add parenthetically why I made the statement that you no longer own your property, you haven’t for generations. When this country was settled, in terms of the divine right of kings, all the lands were claimed by the British Crown. They were granted in Fee Simple and Socage to all those who possessed them. This means they were granted as tenancy. The right to sell them, to use them, all these rights existed by the person who bought the property; but in terms of fee simple and socage, you were a tenant under the crown which had the right to expropriate it, to tax it, to limit its use, to use you for any purposes it chose- to grab you- and to treat both the land and you as property.

Now, another concept of property that goes back to ancient English practice is allodial ownership, which is ownership by the individual entirely without such controls. Gradually, as we shook ourselves free from the British crown, title to property in this country became allodial. However, in all the old statues there were still the relics of the language of fee simple and socage.

Now in his commentaries on American constitutional law, writing around 1825 to 30, Chancellor Kent, one of the greatest of the judges and constitutional lawyers in American history, said that in spite of the relics of his older language, American property holdings were essentially allodial. But the remnants of this were there, the legal relics. After about 1870, I believe 1871 in the famous Munn case, when Illinois began to control commerce within the state, it did so by reference to this older type of law, the relics of it, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it. Then, after 1933 under the New Deal, the Supreme Court by that time had taken this idea of Fee Simple and Socage away from the state to the Federal Court, so that we are all tenants now of the United States, and our property belongs to them, which we use as tenants, subject to their taxation, their expropriation, their regulations and so on.

So, the legal background was there for precisely the kind of thing that Italian Fascism had promoted. The expropriation of all property in fact, but the fiction of private ownership, so that people aren’t alarmed, not disturbed, not unduly concerned.

Now this development is a very important legal fact, but it is also a human fact, a theological fact. A social order is a reflection of the life of a people and their faith. The laws on the statute books are meaningless if they are not first of all in the hearts of the people. Now basic to any kind of society that has Soviet Marxism and Italian and German Marxism, and American Welfare Economics which is the New Fascism, which you find in Sweden and Britain and elsewhere, basic to the success of any such social order is a fundamental reversal in the theology of a people.

Basic to Christian faith, something once common to every order of worship was the confession of sins. Now the confession of sins in many liturgies still exists as a relic, but as a living reality it is no longer present. It is replaced instead by another point of view, whereby men see themselves not as sinners but as victims. Not as sinners but as victims.

Now this is a point of tremendous and far reaching social consequences. When men begin to change their religious faith to the point where they no longer see themselves as sinners, they no longer see that the problem begins with man, they no longer see man as a person whom by his own will has done that which is wrong; they are no longer capable of saying in the words of scripture: “All we like sheep are gone astray.” Rather, they become then prone to saying: “I am the victim.” It becomes necessary then to identify the victim, and the consequences of that are (definite?), it creates social warfare.

You cannot have any form of socialism, national, international or any other form, Fabian, without the theory of the conflict of interest. Now basic to Biblical faith is the belief in the harmony of interest. In terms of Biblical faith, all things are created by God. God has established the fundamental order of the universe. All things, therefore, serve an appointed purpose in terms of God’s sovereign decree, so that scripture says even the wrath of man shall praise Him, and we are told at the moment when man at his most evil attempted to overthrow the order of creation and the order of God by the crucifixion of Christ, that there the evangelist stopped to comment: “They knew not that they did this in fulfillment of scripture.” The absolute and the ultimate harmony of interest, so that even the sin of man is used to promote it.

Now, if you believe in the harmony of interest, you will believe first that your interests are in common with the word of God and the law of God, and that your interests are not hostile to that of other men, but that you have a common interest together. You cannot have the free market and a free society apart from the concept of the harmony of interest. But the minute you develop the theory that man is a victim, not a sinner, you develop a belief in the conflict of interest and you reduce history to conspiracy. A conspiracy by the Fascists or a conspiracy by the Communists. So immediately these things begin to predominate in the mind of man. And mind you, this is not to say that conspiracies are not real. But if the fundamental fact of the universe is the harmony of interest, nothing can over rule that fact. But when men see themselves as victims they are going to be governed by this belief, therefore, in the absolute conflict of interest. So you have then the conflict of capital and labor, of the farm and of the city, of one race against the other, of one color against the other, and so you promote social warfare, class warfare, race warfare. And you don’t stop there; you have the war of the generations, conflict between the generations. And then of course you have the war of the sexes, the Woman’s Lib movement is an example of carrying the theory of the conflict of interest into this area, and the Woman’s Libbers have a radical concept of this kind of conflict and total warfare.

I had a very highly intelligent and extremely brilliant woman- and I say this knowing her- who none the less, because of her dedication to this belief in the conflict of interest, came up with one of the most appalling comments I have ever heard; but there is a book written on that thesis. Her statement was: “All men are either potential or actual rapists.”

Now of course that is a logical application in the faith of the conflict of interest. Then you believe that all men are in conspiracy against all women. And when you have this belief in the conflict of interest, you therefore create social warfare, and this idea is one of the root causes of so much of the social unrest of our time, not only in society at large between race and race, class and class, between the generations in family, between old and young, and between man and woman; it is one of the most destructive doctrines ever devised by the mind of man, and it rests on a very simple moral and theological fact: if you define man as a victim rather than a sinner, then his only explanation for the evil in the world is the environment, the human environment, the economic environment, the social, the political, the environment in some form. And the consequence is as a result, social disaster.

Now at the same time that you have this theory of a conflict of interest, what do you have as a parallel development in our culture? Because now the primacy, socially, is on man, and we have a humanistic civilization; the things that are important, the things that are worth fighting about, the things that are worth splitting hairs over are things that have to do with man. Man and his concerns. But theological concerns- why get so fussy about them? Let’s be ecumenicists, let us soft pedal the centrality of doctrine. Let us say, for example, that the authority and inerrancy of scripture is not of any importance, that there is a possibility for many theories of the atonement, that a number of concepts of justification have equal validity, or if we don’t grant that we should be tolerant of them, and on and on. And in the moral realm you begin to say of course that we must be tolerant of the practices of others and grant them their freedom for the practice of abortion, the practice of homosexuality, and so on. So you develop in the religious realm syncretism. Syncretism. What is syncretism? Syncretism is the attempt to hold two differing faiths at one and the same time.

Now, when you give the primacy to man, you demote ideas; you demote religious concerns, because you’ve said: “All that is important is man. You must not crucify man on theological propositions. You must not crucify man in terms of moral imperatives, the imperative is the freedom of man.” And as a consequence, whatever ideas, whatever faiths, whatever moral standards the man affirms are in essence then syncretistic.

As a result, men, because of this syncretism, are ready to believe in the possibilities of the New Fascism. The New Fascism was only able to succeed because by the time of WW1 the groundwork had been laid for syncretism. The idea of fascism was in essence absurdity; how can you maintain private property, the free market, a republican form of government, and at the same time have Marxist socialism? But that is in essence the theory of fascism, that these extremes can be brought together, it involves believing in miracles, really. But it is basic to the mentality of those who are syncretistic, they have destroyed verity, they have destroyed absolutes, and they do not realize what happens when you destroy them. The extent to which this destruction is underway is too seldom appreciated by any of us.

Let me cite a book written by a professor at one of our most conservative universities, Princeton; the professor in the philosophy department. Well what revolution has come out of a philosophy department? Well, big ones usually do. Out of Kant came Hegel and Marx, and Dewey. Walter Kaufmann wrote in 1973 a book that very few lawyers took note of, and I don’t know if any theologians noted it, or men in politics; but abook of incredible importance, a book that is making its way in one circle after another and reorganizing the thinking of our culture. The title of the book was Without Guilt and Justice. Without Guilt and Justice.

What is its thesis? A very logical one, up to a point. Dr. Kaufmann says that we now know that God is dead. Therefore it is time we cleaned house, time we abandon theological concepts and ideas that are obsolete, that are no longer meaningful in a world without God. And two of these central ideas are guilt and justice. If there is no God, then there is no good or evil, right nor wrong, and hence no guilt. And if there is no God, then the idea of justice is a theological myth. Justice implies that there is a correct order, that there is an absolute righteousness in the universe. So he says, we must dispense throughout our legal system, our legislative structures, our schools, and our personal lives and thinking; totally dispense with the idea of guilt and justice. And having said this, we would expect Dr. Kaufmann to go on and say there is an absolute antithesis then between Christianity and our kind of culture which makes no room for anything except total anarchy. But, contradictorily, he then goes on to spend the rest of his book saying that having abolished guilt and justice totally from our society, then we would have true morality, true integrity, and true honesty. He is not able to explain with any satisfactory sense what these ideas can mean without God.

But you see the consequences of it, when you dispense with these ideas as Lenin did; then the Terror is possible and he could speak of the necessity of Terror. When you regard these as a myth as Mussolini did, but didn’t really act on them to any appreciable extent, but Hitler did to a fair degree, then there is no law to restrain him. So that you have men seeing themselves as victims rather than sinners, ready to blame the world, and opening the flood gates of all hell by their abolition of absolutes in the moral realm.

But at the same time, the façade is maintained. Mussolini was most consistent there, and those who are the best practitioners of the new fascism try to maintain the same façade. Thus, Mussolini who was a practicing atheist all his life, championed religion. Not long before his death he declared and I quote: “We are Catholic by conviction. I am a Catholic by conviction because I believe in the Catholicism is the religion which possesses a doctrine capable of resolving all the problems of life, individual and social, national and international, and in the conflict between the spirit and materialism it sustains and desires the primacy and the victory of the spirit.”

The priest who heard those remarks promptly asked him then to come back to the fold of the church, and Mussolini indignantly refused. It was for the consumption of the people, to maintain the façade that fascism finds necessary. In Sweden, the socialist order there works militantly against Christian faith, and yet has an established church, a Lutheran church, in which all things are tolerable except faith.

In the United States the New Fascism has lived very much at peace with the Reverend Billy Graham. It has always had a good word to say for Evangelical Christianity, and at the same time we have seen a progressive destruction of Christianity through such steps as abortion, the extension of so-called rights to homosexuals in a number of states, and many another piece of legislation, some of them directed at the life of the Christian school.

Fascism thus, you see, offers men who are blinded by their own belief that they are not sinners but victims into accepting what is ostensibly a compromise philosophy: Marxism and Freedom, but which in reality promises to be the most fearful form of slavery the world has ever seen. In fact, the evidence increasingly indicates that the old Marxism in the Soviet Union is more and more veering towards the New Fascism in its methodology. It wants to create the forms of ownership. It is slowly replacing the Terror with the mental health hospitals for dissidents. It is trying increasingly to borrow the façade that is characteristic of the New Fascism, which no longer calls itself Fascism, but Democracy. Welfare Democracy, Social Democracy, any number of like names.

What can you do with the New Fascism? In essence, nothing can be done until men begin to change their basic perspective, until first they see themselves not as victims but sinners, until first they reestablish their spiritual foundations, and then in terms of a genuinely Christian faith move out into one sphere after another, politics and education, religion, every area of life; to reconstruct all things in terms of the Christian faith.

The strength of the New Fascism is that it moves in terms of men’s self blinding; men having blinded themselves deliberately to these things are unready and unwilling and unable to wake up to them, short of a new faith. And this is the key.

Thus as we face the New Fascism, we have to wage war against them in all fronts and in every possible way. But we have to recognize emphatically that the roots of that struggle in every area have to be in essence theological, religious, Christian. Short of that, nothing can be done.

Earlier this evening I was commenting on my little paperback, Freud to one of you, and I observed that in the writing of that book I came to greater personal respect for Freud and a greater dislike for his ideas. Why the respect for Freud? Because he recognized that even as he was carrying the implications of humanism to their logical end, he was also declaring the death of humanism; that humanism had no future. That it was basically possessed by a will to death. Now this aspect of Freud is soft-pedaled by most scholars, but Freud again and again made clear that he saw only the will to death governing man, and therefore really no hope in the future. In effect, Freud was there echoing what Wisdom, speaking long ago in Proverbs 8:36 declares: “All they that hate me, love death.”

We are living in an essentially suicidal age. One has only to examine our foreign policy to have evidence of that. Our world is in various forms plunging towards a cliff, to a point of no return. There is one thing that can turn it around and change it, and it will continue to stagger to its collapse more surely than Rome ever did; nothing will be able to turn it around, short of a renewal of Christian faith and its application in every sphere of life, in the churches, education, in politics, economics, the arts and the sciences, across the board. Thank you.

[Audience Leader] Thank you Rush, now we will have time for questions, and if any of you have to leave before we are finished we will understand; and John is going to pass some cards around, so if you would like to get the Chalcedon Report, (?) no charge for it, it is a little monthly paper that Dr. Rushdoony’s organization puts out, he writes for it each month, and Dr. Gary North has an economic commentary on the Bible, and a book review and so forth, and it is sent to you monthly, and there will be no charge for it; of course you are always welcome to send in contributions. So if you are not on the mailing list and would like to receive that, he will pass a card out, and that card may have some (?) on the other side, ignore that… (laughter)