SHELDON WOLIN

Sheldon Wolin is smart. I'm not quite sure what to make of this article, though (via Eschaton, where the link is introduced in the context of an extended quote on the rise of Italian fascism). Wolin claims that the Bush administration is pushing a "kind of fascism," or as he puts it in the middle of the piece, "inverted totalitarianism." I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to mean, and I doubt that a newspaper piece is going to tell me anyway. The only reason that I can tell that Wolin chooses "inverted" as a tag for totalitarianism is that he wants to claim that what we really have is a form of totalitarianism, just with manifestations that are the opposite of forms that appeared under mid-century varieties of totalitarianism (e.g., citizen apathy instead of mobilization, not "abolishing the parliamentary system" instead of abolishing it). At some point, however, the comparison becomes so strained that the only thing that is left is an assertion that there is a comparison. The difference between abolishing Congress and not abolishing it is quite significant. Just think of the fact that a myriad tiny factors could have made the 2000 election go for Gore, and think also of the fact that we really do not expect the Bush administration to call out the army if they lose the next election.