BRATTLEBORO-In "The Lottery," a suspenseful short story by North Bennington resident Shirley Jackson, all the villagers gather every June, as they always have, participating in a ritual to ensure a good harvest, a beneficial year, and remove bad omens.
They do this by collectively stoning to death one member of the village, who is chosen by lottery. Then their village carries on, thinking they've done what is needed to improve their lives. Until the following June.
Political historian Heather Cox Richardson recently wrote of a publication by the U.S. government in 1945 for soldiers, "Fascism!," which describes the fascist system of "government by the few and for the few."
According to the pamphlet:
• "The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state."
• "Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he's told."
• Fascists "permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law." They "make their own rules and change them when they choose."
• Fascists "maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of 'blood' and 'race,' by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security."
• Fascist "propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and 'realistic' to be pitiless and violent."
I see present-day connections between this pamphlet and Jackson's story, which was written and set in 1948.
As Jackson wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, she set "a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."
In my opinion, there is a portion of our nationwide village that is reacting along these brutal lines - that is, other-ing their neighbors - and that sees divisive fascist practices as the remedy to their unhappiness.
Through "skillful manipulation of fear and hate," they're repeatedly told they've been wronged, that they're deprived. That people with differences in circumstance, geography, skin color, or education, for example, are to blame.
If we respond to that argument, we're reacting from natural herd-instinct gut-level feelings of loss and grievance: that "others" are profiting while we miss out. In search of a "promise of security," people with these powerful feelings of deprivation can easily be steered into a blame game, akin to the ancient rite of scapegoating. In light of that perceived loss, a fascist "government by the few and for the few" might look like a win.
I get it. I don't agree with it, but I get it.
A way of looking at the world which throws anyone under the bus who seems to have advantages we don't share, or which denigrates folks with varied backgrounds, causes immense suffering and breeds violence.
Evident in the civil rights movement was the "pointless violence and general inhumanity," Jackson pointed out. Meanwhile, fascists build and solidify their power, with "no civil liberties, no equality before the law." Total self-interest is their aim. No one else matters.
We now have fallen prey to a fascist "well-planned 'hate campaign'" that pits races, religions, and economic groups against one another. The 1945 Army pamphlet says fascists "seized power while these groups struggled." That hate campaign's goal is to exploit and magnify small grievances in order to break down local and national unity - ritually stoning whoever is deemed the source of our unhappiness, over and over again.
I voted to care for all my neighbors. To celebrate the diversity that built this current country and continues to invigorate and attract new Americans.
MaryDiane Baker
Brattleboro
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
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