Not Quite the ‘End of America'?

 Naomi Wolf, The End of America. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007.

By Laura Brunner

Naomi Wolf's newest book The End of America is a call to arms for American citizens to oppose the abridgement of civil and political rights that has taken place in the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001. It is a warning to citizens against complacency as the U.S. undergoes a shift toward fascism (xiv). The book is packed with patriotic rhetoric and national mythology that appeals emotionally to even the most cynical American (my sister says that every American has a love/hate relationship with her/his country). As a reader, I definitely wanted to be convinced by the book. Wolf oversimplifies some very complex social and political changes, however, and the depth of her research falls considerably short of the book's grandiose aims.

She argues that she is looking at something unprecedented in U.S. history, and so has to look outside to the histories of other countries, where the restriction of individual rights has lead to fascism. According to Wolf, shifts towards fascism have all begun with the consolidation of power through legal means, and have eventually resulted in an unchecked executive operating autonomously above the rule of law. She examines the rise to power of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, looking for elements that resemble the contemporary American situation. She calls her findings ‘historical echoes' and emphasizes that they are not proof of growing fascism in America (6). The reader is left with evidence that is circumstantial at best. There are many questions: What is the actual link between these historical echoes and what's actually happening now? Has someone studied Hitler's methods? Who are the architects of this fascist shift? Presumably it is people in the Bush administration, but what motivates these people? What is the actual point the book is trying to make?

Wolf traces ten steps which have historically taken place during the closing down of open societies during the transition to fascism, and identifies their emergence in contemporary American society. The steps are: (1) ‘invoke an internal and external threat,' (2) ‘establish secret prisons,' (3) ‘develop a paramilitary force,' (4) ‘surveille ordinary citizens,' (5) ‘infiltrate citizens' groups,' (6) ‘arbitrarily detain and release citizens,' (7) ‘target key individuals,' (8) ‘restrict the press,' (9) ‘cast criticism as “espionage” and dissent as “treason”,' (10) ‘subvert the rule of law.' This ten-step structure lends the book an instructive tone, and the feel of a political pamphlet à la Thomas Paine. However, the list format also chops up the argument and makes the work feel less cohesive. It weakens the book's ability to deal with cause and effect, to show the inter-relation between these points, and separate the major from the minor themes.

The idea of invoking an internal and external threat deserved more careful analysis than the book offers. The threat of terrorism is the justification for restricting individual freedoms, as well as the reason that citizens feel compelled to accept it – they are trading freedom for security. Rhetorical appeals to this threat are used to justify most of the other steps she identifies. In other words, it is the causal factor. Not covered in this section of the book, or anywhere else, is the role xenophobia plays. The Nazis began by using Jews as a scapegoat for economic and social issues, played on the anti-Semitism in German society, and ended up with death camps. A deeper analysis of this point would have provided more support for one of Wolf's minor points: minority segments of society tend to bear the brunt of the effects of fascism and this makes it more readily acceptable to the majority. This really should have been one of the foundational points, not a satellite, of the book; it certainly would have made the supporting research more meaningful.

Many of her other points are still quite compelling. I was deeply disturbed by the research she presented on Blackwater troops, unaccountable to the U.S. Military court system and also available for hire, without the need for Congressional approval, in covert operations. These forces operate outside the rule of law and have been responsible for the murder of civilians both in Iraq and in the U.S. during the Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. I was also shocked to learn that the U.S. military had deliberately targeted and fired upon journalists in Iraq, killing several reporters. At the same time, the U.S. government has authorized the killings of plenty of innocent people in the past, for example, in Vietnam, or the Kent State shootings in 1970; as a reader, I was not convinced that these points constituted conclusive evidence of a fascist shift.

The validity of Wolf's argument depends on her ability to prove that this point in history is different from all the other points in American history when there have been prior restrictions on individual rights. She mentions the examples of curbing free speech during World War I, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Wolf makes the claim that the present is different: first, because the war on terror is a war with no endpoint (as if any war, whether it is the cold war or World War II, has a foreseeable endpoint); second, because of the use of torture (yet one thinks of Alice Paul being force fed in prison, or the CIA's covert use of torture throughout the latter half of the twentieth century). This is where the argument falls apart: Wolf asserts that this point is different in history because freedom has always been restored in the past after a certain period. Blatantly missing is an in-depth historical analysis of the processes through which U.S. society has normalized after these periods. This would have allowed for a sophisticated comparison between those processes and what citizens, politicians, and activists are, or are not, doing now to ensure that freedom and individual rights are restored. She mentions, but does not provide evidence for her view that the checks and balances which have protected freedoms in the past are being eroded. One could argue that freedom and normality have never truly been restored after these periods and that the U.S. is undergoing a much longer decline in its democracy.

Overall the book suffered from lack of cohesion. There was some interesting research, and a few compelling points, but they did not work together as well as they could. Wolf has one valid point: our rights are being curtailed, and we cannot trust that our society will normalize automatically without our involvement. While I agree that the current abridgement of political and civil rights in the U.S. is disturbing, there is nothing in the book that convinces me that this is actually the ‘end of America' or that, in ten years' time, Americans will not just forget about this period of their history and move on.