Similarly, in the firststage the family is the prototypical social unit, in the second the state risesinto societal prominence, and in the third the whole human race becomes theoperative social unit.

In organic periods, social stability and intellectualharmony prevail, and the various parts of the body social are in equilibrium.In critical periods, in contrast, old certainties are upset, traditions are under-mined, and the body social is in fundamental disequilibrium.

the Theological orficticious; the Metaphysical or abstract; and the Scientific or positive. ... Inthe theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings,the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects . . . supposesall phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings.In the metaphysical state . . . the mind supposes . . . abstract forces, veritableentities (that is, personified abstractions) . . . capable of producing all phe-nomena. ... In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vainsearch after Absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, andthe causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is,their invariable relations of succession and resemblance.

Historical com-parisons throughout the time in which humanity has evolved are at the verycore of sociological inquiry. Sociology is nothing if it is not informed by asense of historical evolution

as when social differences have been ascribed to the politicalinfluence of climate, instead of that inequality of evolution which is the realcause.

Though the human race as a whole has progressedin a single and uniform manner, various populations "have attained extremelyunequal degrees of development"

But "experimentation takes place whenever the regularcourse of the phenomenon is interfered with in any determinate manner.

Hence, ob-servation can come into its own only when it is subordinated to the staticaland dynamic laws of phenomena/* But within these limits it remains indis-pensable

They are,first of all, the same that have been used so successfully in the natural sciences:observation, experimentation, and comparison.

Theintellectual reorganization now dawning in the social sciences "requires therenunciation by the greater number of their right of individual inquiry onsubjects above their qualifications.

Once men recognizethe overriding authority of science in the guidance of human affairs, they willalso abandon the illusory quest for an unfettered "right of free inquiry, or thedogma of unbounded liberty of conscience."

All investigationinto the nature of beings, and their first and final causes, must always beabsolute; whereas the study of the laws of phenomena must be relative, sinceit supposes a continuous progress of speculation subject to the gradual im-provement of observation, without the precise reality ever being fully disclosed.. . . The relative character of scientific conceptions is inseparable from the trueidea of natural laws.

The new positive science dethroned the authority of perennial tradition.Comte's oft-repeated insistence that nothing is absolute but the relative lies atthe very core of his teaching.

But at the same time, men will also be enabled to act deliberatelywithin given limits by curbing the operation of societal laws to their ownpurposes.

The discovery of the basic laws of society will cure men of overweeningambition; they will learn that at any historical moment the margin of societalaction is limited by the exigencies of the proper functioning of the socialorganism.

When this was the case, a Hobbesian model of society,in which only power and the willing acceptance of power permit a semblanceof order, seemed appropriate and plausible. But things are different oncesociology can teach men to recognize the invariable laws of development andorder in human affairs.

sociology

Every scientific theory must be based on observed facts,but it is equally true that "facts cannot be observed without the guidance ofsome theory."

namelyco-operation and the possession in common of the land and themeans of production produced by labour itself

Along with the constant decrease in the number ofcapitalist magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantagesof this process of transformation, the mass of misery, oppression,slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this therealso grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantlyincreasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by thevery mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The mono-poly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of productionwhich has flourished alongside and under it

as soon as the capitalist mode of productionstands on its own feet

At a certain stage of develop-ment, it brings into the world the material means of its own de-struction. From that moment, new forces and new passions springup in the bosom of society, forces and passions which feel them-selves to be fettered by that society. It has to be annihilated; it isannihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the indivi-dualized and scattered means of production into socially concen-trated means of production, the transformation, therefore, of thedwarf-like property of the many into the giant property of the few,and the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil,from the means of subsistence and from the instruments of labour,this terrible and arduously accomplished expropriation of the massof the people forms the pre-history of capita

In so far as it is not the direct trans-formation of slaves and serfs into wage-labourers, and therefore amere change of form, it only means the expropriation of the im-mediate producers, i.e. the dissolution of private property based onthe labour of its owner.

With the development of capitalist production during the periodof manufacture, the public opinion of Europe lost its last remnantof shame and conscience. The nations bragged cynically of everyinfamy that served them as a means to the accumulation of capital.Read, for example, the naive commercial annals of the worthyA. Anderson.

The loans enable the government to meet extra-ordinary expenses without the taxpayers feeling it immediately,but they still make increased taxes necessary as a consequence.

It wasnot long before this credit-money, created by the bank itself,became the coin in which the latter made its loans to the state,and paid, on behalf of the state, the interest on the public debt

to dealings in negoti-able effects of all kinds, and to speculation: in a word, it has givenrise to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.

According to one of the lists laid beforeParliament, the Company and its officials obtained £6,000,000 be-tween 1757 and 1766 from the Indians in the form of gifts.Between 1769 and 1770, the English created a famine by buyingup all the rice and refusing to sell it again, except at fabulousprices.

The barbarities and desperate out-rages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region ofthe world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue,are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce,however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame,in any age of the earth.' 4

Hardon their heels follows the commercial war of the European nations,which has the globe as its battlefield. It begins with the revolt of theNetherlands from Spain, assumes gigantic dimensions in England'sAnti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the shape of the OpiumWars against China, etc

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous popu-lation of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunderof India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the com-mercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterizethe dawn of the era of capitalist production.

These fetters vanished with the dissolution of the feudalbands of retainers, and the expropriation and partial eviction ofthe rural population

The money capital formed by means of usury and commercewas prevented from turning into industrial capital by the feudalorganization of the countryside and the guild organization of thetowns.

Thedemand for wage-labour therefore grew rapidly with everyaccumulation of capital, while the supply only followed slowlybehind

Thisis an: essential aspect of so-called primitive accumulation.

hus were the agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated fromthe soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, andthen whipped, branded and tortured by grotesquely terroristiclaws into accepting the discipline necessary for the system ofwage-labour

Even at the beginning ofthe reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1777 providedthat every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, ifwithout means of subsistence and not practising a trade, shouldbe sent to the galleys.

The spoliation of the Church's property, the fraudulent aliena-tion of the state domains, the theft of the common lands, theusurpation of feudal and clan property and its transformationinto modem private property under circumstances of ruthlessterrorism, all these things were just so many idyllic methods ofprimitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistagriculture, incorporated the soil into capital, and created for theurban industries the necessary supplies of free and rightlessproletarians

hese estates were given away, sold at ridiculousprices, or even annexed to private estates by direct seizure

he poor-ratewas declared perpetual by 16 Charles I, c. 4, and in fact only in1834 did it take a new and severer form.

he device of King Henry VII,' says Bacon, in thetwenty-ninth of his Essays, Civil and Moral, 'was profound andadmirable, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard;that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them asmay breed a subject to live in convenient plenty and no servilecondition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners andnot mere hirelings.

And this is what distinguishes centralizationfrom concentration, the latter being only another name for repro-duction on an extended scale

Moreover, all progress in capitalist agricul-ture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but ofrobbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soilfor a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility.

Thus it destroys at thesame time the physical health of the urban worker, and the in-tellectual life of the rural worker

Bythe destruction of small-scale and domestic industries it destroysthe last resorts of the 'redundant population', thereby removingwhat was previously a safety-valve for the whole social mechan-ism.

Thechildren and young persons, therefore, in all such cases mayjustifiably claim from the legislature, as a natural right, that anexemption should be secured to them, from what destroysprematurely their physical strength, and lowers them in the scaleof intellectual and moral beings.'

That monstrosity, the disposableworking population held in reserve, in misery, for the changingrequirements of capitalist exploitation, must be replaced by theindividual man who is absolutely available for the different kindsof labour required of him; the partially developed individual, whois merely the bearer of one specialized social function, must bereplaced by the totally developed individual, for whom thedifferent social functions are different modes of activity he takesup in turn

At thesame time, it thereby also revolutionizes the division of labourwithin society, and incessantly throws masses of capital and ofworkers from one branch of production to another.

As soon as they get too old for such children's work, that is atabout 17 years old, at the latest, they are discharged from theprinting establishments. They become recruits for crime. Attemptsto procure them employment elsewhere come to grief owing totheir ignorance and brutality, their mental and bodily degrada-tion.

It appears, for example, in the frightfulfact that a great part of the children employed in modern fac:.tori es and manufactures are from their earliest years riveted to themost simple manipulations, and exploited for years, without be-ing taught a single kind of skill that would afterwards make themof use, even in the same factory.

As RobertOwen has shown us in detail, the germ of the education of thefuture is present in the factory system; this education will, in thecase of every child over a given age, combine productive labourwith instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods ofadding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method ofproducing fully developed human being

They are, inreality, declaring that consumption and the other pulmonary dis-eases of the workers are conditions necessary to the existence ofcapital.1

What could be more characteristic of the capitalist mode ofproduction than the fact that it is necessary, by Act of Parliament,to force upon the capitalists the simplest appliances for maintain-ing cleanliness and health?

Here is yet another dazzling vindication of the free-tradedogma that, in a society of mutually antagonistic interests, eachindividual furthers the common welfare by seeking his own per-sonal advantage!

here also comes atime in every industrial cycle when a forcible reduction of wagesbeneath the value of labour-power is attempted so as to cheapencommodities.

feverish production, aconsequent glut on the market, then a contraction of the market,which causes production to be crippled

A new and international division of labour

By constantly turning workers into'supernumeraries', large-scale industry, in all countries where ithas taken root, spurs on rapid increases in emigration and thecolonization of foreign lands, which are thereby converted intosettlements for growing the raw material of the mother country,just as Australia, for example, was converted into a colony forgrowing wool. ss A

All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, takentogether, number 1,208,442; those employed in textile factories andmetal industries, taken together, number 1,039,605; in both casesless than the number of modern domestic slaves.

The number of workers they employ is directly pro-portional to the demand created by these industries for the crudestform of manual labour.

Machine produc-tion drives the social division of labour immeasurably furtherthan manufacture does, because it increases the productive powerof the industries it seizes upon to a much greater degree

The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist application of machinery do not exist, they say, be-cause they do not arise out of machinery as such, but out of its capitalist application!

Hence, after the introduction of machinery, society possesses as much of the necessaries of life as before, if not more, for the workers who have been displaced, not to mention the enormous share of the annual product wasted by non-workers.

Crippled as they are by the division oflabour, these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade that they cannot find ad-mission into any industries except a few inferior and therefore over-supplied and under-paid branches

But in any case, since machinery is continually seizing on new fields of production, its 'temporary' effect is really permanent

The whole system of capitalist production is based on the worker's sale of his labour-power as a commodity. The division of labour develops this labour-power in a one-sided way, by reducing it to the highly particularized skill of handling a special tool

He is in revolt against this particular form of the means of production because it is the material foundation of the capitalist mode of production.

Factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost; at the same time, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity

They reason that since Communism promotes militant atheism, what noblercause could there be than to fight those who deny God? And, since Communistatheists hate America and plot its destruction, what more patriotic cause isthere than to thwart those who would wreck this nation? For such Catholics,the Birch Society provides an opportunity to combine piety and patriotism ina single endeavor.

The large majority of the Catholic hierarchy may have been clearly disturbed by this behavior.

De Gaulle was perceived as anagent of the Bilderberger-Communist conspiracy whose “betrayal” ofFrench Algeria “fit in very well with Bilderberger plans

The linkage of William Morgan, Dr. William Wirt, and Joe McCarthy, asthree Americans who were killed for trying to expose the conspiracy, pointsup the continuity of the opposition with which Welch historically identifies

The Illuminati are credited with founding the Communist conspiracy inthe nineteenth century and with being behind it ever since.

Communism is sometimes used as anothergeneric term for the total conspiracy; but as a specific phenomenon relatedto Moscow or Peking, it can only serve as a related subplot

Of this low-educated group, those who were pro-McCarthy more often mentioned Jews as being Communist than did thosewho were anti-McCarthy.

those who were favorable to Jewishcandidates— were much more likely to be pro-McCarthy than those whowere against Jewish congressional candidate

But McCarthy did not; tothe contrary, he relied heavily and publicly on several Jewish advisers,such as Roy Cohn and David Schine. The evidence of surveys furtherindicates that McCarthy’s supporters were not any more anti-Semitic thanhis opponents.

McCarthy’s main targets were never the North Korean or Chinese orRussian Communists— not even seriously, Communist spies in America—but rather the American establishment

Clearly, many who approved the Senator forhis anti-Communist activities were not prepared to back him or candidateshe favored in elections.

In pursuance of this discovery, he publicly humiliated a Generaland demeaned the Secretary of the Army

It is simply that insofar as thismidwestern political tradition was laced with such tendencies as oppositionto the effete eastern elite, and attraction to the concept of direct democracy,it affected the nature of McCarthyism.

“To many Americans, especially those in the lower classes who were not actively in touch with eventsin the political world, McCarthy was simply fighting Communism. Supportfor McCarthy meant opposition to Communism.”3

Nonmanual occupations thatrequire the highest education—that is, professional and executive or managerial positions—were the most anti-McCarthy

Libraries around the country wereunder pressure, to which they did or did not give in, to remove arbitrarilysuspect books and magazines from their shelves

n Washington, McCarthy conducted a lengthy and public investigationof the personnel of the Voice of America, which resulted in the discoveryof no Communists, but the discharge or resignation of some thirty employees

Partly,McCarthy and his associates were able to do this because there weretraitors, there were spies, there were some significantly placed Communistcells in America.

Indeed, McCarthyism was more conspiracy style than conspiracy theory,more technique than theory of any kind.

It was in this sense that McCarthy’s enemy, and that of many of hiscohorts, was Communism itself rather than any singular group of conspirators.

His traitors were pure: leaders who had sold outto a foreign power on an individual basis

Likewise, conspiracy theories, by their nature, are anti-intellectual andinvariably focus on some overeducated secret elite

Did not populism allege to protect the people and their government from conspiracies, from cells of conspirators, who, contrary to the people’s will andthrough the complacency or collusion of their rulers, were enabled to gaincontrol of society?

enator Taft, though privately contemptuous of McCarthy’s methods, stated publicly that “the pro-Communist policies of the State Department fully justified Joe McCarthy in his demand for an investigation.”9

How can we account for our present situation unlesswe believe that men high in this Government are concerting to deliver us todisaster

But, more than that, hewas in the position to matchmake the classic manage de convenancebetween the preservatist political elements and the less privileged mass basewhich any right-wing political movement in America require

The Communists, before 1934, argued that all non-Commu-nist parties, including the Socialists, were “Social Fascists” ; that is, theyobjectively were paving the way for fascism. The principal organ of thepostwar ultraright, The Freeman, contended that all welfare states andplanning measures were “objectively” steps toward the development of atotalitarian Communist state

It is not that McCarthy invented this device

It was Senator Joseph McCarthy who presumably put together a singlepackage to attract these disparate elements in the population by personifying their fears in the name of anti-Communism.

Where once we warred against Fascism, which is identified with the “right,” we now warred against Communism, which identifieswith the “left.” And just as the Communists were able to secure considerable influence during the period of liberal ascendancy, right-wing extremistswere able to make respectable headway during the conservative revival.

Where once we warred against Fascism, which is identified with the “right,” we now warred against Communism, which identifieswith the “left.” And just as the Communists were able to secure considerable influence during the period of liberal ascendancy, right-wing extremistswere able to make respectable headway during the conservative revival.

he Communists,by concealing their real objectives, by acting positively for liberal causes,by being the best organizers of the left, were able to penetrate deeply intovarious liberal organizations and into the labor movement

The depression emphasized the need forsocioeconomic reforms and helped to undermine the legitimacy of conservative and business institutions. It was followed immediately by a warwhich was defined as a struggle against Fascism

Historically,this ideological conflict developed just as the Catholic populations in mostof these countries were producing sizable upper and middle classes of theirown, which in economic terms were under pressure to abandon their traditional identification with the lower-class party.

The identification of Catholicism with the left in the English-speakingcountries, as compared with its linkages with the right in westernEurope, is related to the fact that the Catholic church is a minority churchin the English-speaking countries and has been the church of the minorityethnic immigrants who have been largely lower-class. As a lower-statusgroup, Catholics have been successfully appealed to by the out-party, bythe party of the lower class

The apparent decline of American power in the face of a pattern ofworld-wide Communist thrusts created a common anxiety in the nation

of the fundamentalist Protestant churches

The former isolationist group, especially its German base,was under a need to justify its past and to a certain extent to gain revenge.The opportunity now to identify internationalist forces in American societywith Communism would obviously have an appeal to this submergedcurrent in American society.

strongest common characteristic of the isolationist-voting counties is theresidence there of ethnic groups with a pro-German or anti-British bias

Most Americans saw themselves asinvolved helplessly in a series of expensive and extensive counterreactionsto these activities, which became a massive commitment in 1950 when wefound ourselves engaged in a formal, costly, and frustrating war withNorth Korea

Russia’s influence had been established swiftly across easternEurope, where necessary by military coups and fabricated revolutions.The Chinese Communists had seized power in 1949

“race question” which was to erupt a decade later. But the uneasy shadowof this change was already beginning to hang over the new status of theurban working class.

The novelty of their new style of life madethem more sensitive to the impingement of remote events

They are squeezed harder than large business, since their competitiveposition does not allow them to pay increases in wages as readily as canbig firms

with individuals, still wealthy, who have grown up in an old traditionalistbackground, with the values of tolerance associated with upper-class aristocratic conservatism

new wealth led to a rise of status insecurity

contingent, subjective natureof identity and membership

may not be objectively real,

Whereas earlier social divisions were grounded in differences ofreligious sect or White ethnicity (native nationals, along with people of Irish,Jewish, Levantine, Southern and Eastern European origin), decolonizationand civil rights laws opened the way for immigrants from Africa, Asia, andLatin America

rendered advantage relative to Blacks—a sort of consolation prize

valuable asset

Tea Party

Thepolitical reaction to such change is often an “all out crusade” to stop theforces of progress (Hofstadter, 1967).

In America, the transi-tion of the Roosevelt-Johnson Democratic Party to its modern coalition ofurban liberals, minority groups, and what remains of labor organizations hasbeen understood as a matter of rights and identity politics (Edsall, 1989), therise of Wall Street’s influence (Greider, 1992), and the rapid decline in unionpower (Hacker & Pierson, 2010). In Britain, since Tony Blair and NewLabour turned away from the party’s socialist roots, it has been decimated bythe loss of White working-class support and internal debates over immigra-tion, identity politics, and foreign interventionism.

Fascism aims todestroy this distinction or to fuse the distinction between public and private. Youare a fascist at home and at work; your identity exists in the State.

at fascism was a his-torical moment tied to a historical moment

but no feature of the pastwill produce the same legacy across a given national space

separates fascism from other mobilizing ideologies

This shift suggests that he might be moving in the direc-tion of a mechanism-based, narrative understanding of fascism

nativism and nationalism, rather than on the fascist movement of the 1930s, is abetter way to understand the different political legacies that pose challenges todemocracy today, not only in the U.S. and europe but globally.

In these qualities, he is essentially American.

Nationalism can be benign or toxic depending upon the historicalmoment (berezin 2021a). but fascism in its ideal form demands obliteration ofthe self—a demand that leads to failed aspirations, extremism, and a tendency toviolence.

The major fascist articulation of the relation between work and social integra-tion appeared in the 1927 Labor Charter, which described a way of workingbased upon principles of hierarchy and order. Instead of joining labor unions,workers were expected to join occupational corporations or groups that definedtheir place in a productive universe.

[If] one is truly Catholic, andhas a religious sense, one remembers always in the highest part of one’s mind, towork and think and pray and meditate” (berezin 1997, 51).

As Gentile (1928) described it, fascism aspired to community and coherence—to eliminating the boundary between the state and the individual. Liberalism,with its soulless individualism, was as much fascism’s enemy as Marxism was. Nomatter what form it takes, Trumpism, with its affinity for isolationism, oppositionto free trade (Mutz 2021), and antipathy to government regulation, makes nocommon cause with collectivism.

Although Mussolini (1932) coined the term fascism to denote a collectivistsystem of government in his Italian Encyclopedia article, he did not do the theo-retical thinking around the concept. In fact, most of the Encyclopedia entry waswritten by Giovanni Gentile, an Italian philosopher and Mussolini’s minister ofeducation. He had laid out the details for this new political philosophy in an aca-demic article in Foreign Affairs (Gentile 1928), one of many legal and philosophyjournals that thrived in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s wherein professors ofvarious disciplines aimed to convey the meaning of fascism to a general and aca-demic public. 2

scholars have not tended to focus upon critical exegesis of fas-cist texts and ideas. And since they never considered fascism seriously as a sys-tem of thought, why would they? It lacked coherence, and its contributions tosocial and political life were, as noted above, seen as metaphors for evil anddestruction.

The epistemic plasticity of theterm presents a challenge, not an invitation, to theoretical complacency.

even a half-hearted attempt to control thevirus in March 2020 would have whittled away, if not erased, biden’s margin ofvictory. Trump’s own pollster told him that citizens’ primary interest was the virusand urged Trump to focus his campaign energies there (Dawsey 2021). butTrump did not listen and instead turned a vehicle of political unification into onethat intensified already existing polarization (Sides, Tausanovitch, and Vavreck2022).

As a concept, fascism tends to act as a “bridging metaphor”(Alexander 2003)—that is, as a code word for evil, violence, and authoritarianbehavior, whether it be political, cultural, or social. Definitions of fascism tendtoward reductionism even when sophisticated scholars offer them.

In its place, a growth industry in public com-mentary on fascism developed. Academics (for example, ben-Ghiat 2020;Churchwell 2020; Finchelstein 2020; Snyder 2017; Stanley 2018) and publicintellectuals became laser-focused on Trump’s resemblance to a host of past andpresent authoritarian political leaders with a weak attachment to democracy.Adding to this analytic commentary, politicians and pundits deployed “fascism”as a political expletive (de Grazia 2020; Kuklick 2022)

That’s Our Problem,” in which I argued that the com-parison between Trump and his supposed european counterparts was flawed(berezin 2016). european populists are career politicians who deploy a standardnationalist script to address any number of political issues.

“epistemic plasticity”

They never had much traction in the U.S., as they all assume solidarity anda collective approach to social and political life that is absent from Americanpolitical culture and practice

citizens relate to contemporaryevents and the paths of action that they might pursue

Trump’s presidency laid bare the fissures that are embeddedin American democracy and begged a reconsideration of whether American insti-tutions and democratic norms are up to the task of resisting authoritarian rule

The failureto value democracy, rather than the desire to embrace fascism, is the great dangerthat Trump poses.

Trump’s initial denial of the virus, rants against science and the “China”virus, and his pitting of states against states eventually ensured his electoraldefeat

The purpose of this article is to not to enter the definitional game but ratherto ask whether focusing on fascism is politically useful for thinking aboutAmerica’s political future. Thinking about fascism in our present momentrequires, in my view, a focus on four issues: first, a hard look at salient featuresand outcomes of the Trump presidency; second, a view of fascism that focuses onhistorical methodology and the question of comparison across time and space;third, a revisitation of empirical evidence that asks what was happening ineurope in the 1930s—particularly Italy, where fascism began; and last, the ques-tion of political strategy—what is to be done?

Whereeuropean political culture is characterized by secularand religious solidarity rooted in national state institu-tions, American political culture lacks collectivism andsolidarity and is susceptible to nativism, a distinctlyAmerican impulse that is unmoored from institutionalarrangements

Fascism as an analytic device in theAmerican context, therefore, obscures dangerous ten-dencies in American politics and culture.

Indeed, participants were faster to pair White athletes and Amer-ican symbols and Black athletes and foreign symbols (M
751ms) than when the concept–attribute pairs were combined in theopposite order (M
823 ms)

However, African and White Americanswere not strongly differentiated on explicit measures of ethnic–national association. Yet African Americans were implicitly as-sessed to be less associated with the concept “American” thanwere White Americans

In answering this ques-tion, they were specifically instructed to consider individuals fromeach ethnic group who were born in the United States, lived in theUnited States, and were U.S. citizens

Items capturing a nativist definition of the Americanidentity loaded on Factor 2—that is, was born in America, havespent most of one’s life in America, and have American citizen-ship. Factor 3 encompassed civic values such as equality, democ-racy, or striving for self-improvement. Factor 4 was composed oftwo items referring to religious orientation. One item did not loadclearly on any of the four factors—the ability to speak English.

In Westerncultures, White racial identity and male gender are treated ascultural expectations. Evidence for this “White male norm” hy-pothesis comes from experiments showing that membership innonnormative groups receives greater attention than membershipin normative groups because of its incongruence (Stroessner, 1996;Za ́rate & Smith, 1990).

The standing of variousgroups in present-day American society cannot be dissociatedfrom the facts surrounding their immigration, nor can it be untiedfrom the daily experience members of each group have of theirown and other groups.

It isinteresting to note that the conscious learning of group pride canovershadow the effects of covert acculturation when measuredthrough explicit self-evaluations but still emerge on measures thattap less controllable responses.

Yet, on implicit measures, members of disad-vantaged groups internalize the social standing of their group andreveal either negative attitudes and beliefs toward their own groupor, in weaker form, simply do not show the in-group-favoring biasthat advantaged group members do

It is ourcontention that conscious assumptions of egalitarianism in viewingsocial groups will influence explicit reports, whereas deviationsfrom this principle will emerge on assessments that cannot beconsciously controlled—these are instead dominated by the historyof intergroup relations within the United States, the actual hierar-chy of social groups, and an internalization of that hierarchy inunderstanding who prototypically represents the nation

uch tools are particularlyrelevant when assessments of implicit social cognition purport toreveal a different picture than responses based on more delibera-tive processes.

We posit that a modern American dilemmaexists, and it is the tension not only between abstract ideals andconcrete reality as noted in the 1930s but between one’s ownconsciously stated beliefs and less consciously elicited responses.

In the present research, we focused on a singlefundamental dimension of equality—the degree to which the qual-ity “American” is given to Americans of varying ethnic origin.

nstead of promoting unityand solidarity, expressions of patriotism or national identity couldgo hand in hand with a relative exclusion of ethnic minorities fromthe national identity (Li & Brewer, 2004)

Spe-cifically, Asian American participants displayed a significant im-plicit preference for their ethnic group (in-group favoritism)

AfricanAmericans, perhaps because of the presence of other minoritiesviewed as less American than they, do not internalize the beliefthat resides in the minds of White Americans in the same manneras Asian Americans do

in which mem-bers of minority or disadvantaged groups do not always claimpositive outcomes for their own groups, thereby contributing to thestatus quo that retains existing hierarchies

Not surprisingly,Asian American targets (M
4.03, SD
1.48) were described asless native than African American targets (M
5.91, SD
1.04)and White American targets (M
5.56, SD
1.21).

AfricanAmerican targets (M
3.93, SD
1.35) and Asian Americantargets (M
3.75, SD
1.64) were perceived as being moreegalitarian than White American targets (M
2.97, SD
1.36).

For example,members of disadvantaged (often minority) groups do not showin-group favoritism to the same extent as members of advantaged(often majority) groups do (Nosek et al., 2002a), and under somecircumstances, members of disadvantaged groups even show out-group favoritism (Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002;

Second, byusing well-known individuals in both categories, White foreigners(e.g., Hugh Grant) and Asian Americans (e.g., Connie Chung), wedid not simply ask that participants believe Asians and Whites tobe American citizens but gave them known Asian Americans andWhite foreigners

This study design was based on the assumption that in thedomain of sports such as track and field, Black (compared withWhite) athletes will be viewed as better exemplars of the category“American.

The only two items that did not show a reliable differencewere capturing pride elicited by these athletes, t(59)
0.13, ns,d
0.02, and their association with the American flag, t(59)
1.63, p  .11, d
0.21.

The order of presentation of the 12 items was randomized across partici-pants. This measure was tailored to capture the relative inclusion of Blackathletes and White athletes in the national identity

In Study 2, anofficial or political image of the United States was activated, andit could be argued that symbols such as the Capitol are linked tothe political arena, Mt. Rushmore to the contributions of presi-dents, and currency to economic resources, all more associatedwith White America, thereby producing the American
Whiteeffect obtained in the previous study

The important point is that Asian Americans were notmerely viewed as foreigners; they were also excluded from theconcept “American” when the occasion for inclusion was rela-tively easier.

Second, they held and highlyvalued a nonexclusionary definition of American identity. In con-trast to these egalitarian abstract principles, when consideringAmericans who hold U.S. citizenship and were born in this coun-try, the view is that some ethnic groups are simply less Americanthan others—not in rights and liberties but in the degree to whichthey embody the concept “American.”

About a tenth of the sample (11.6%) ex-pressed the view that priority should be given to African Ameri-cans.

tudy 2 compared the extent to which ethnicgroups are associated with the concept “American” using bothimplicit (Implicit Association Test [IAT]; Greenwald et al., 1998)and explicit (self-report) measures. Studies 3 and 4 were designedto ease the association of Black and Asian Americans with thecategory “American” by using Black athletes (Study 3) and fa-mous Asian Americans (Study 4).

Given that White Americans, as a group,have been immersed in American society for an extensive periodof time and constitute the numerical majority, they are more likelyto be thought of as prototypical or representative of the category“American” than members of other ethnic groups

What are the qualities deemedessential to being American? Who is (most) American in publiclyexpressed values?