The American fascist ideologist Lawrence Dennis argued in the 1930s that fascism was a worldview that could be imposed by a movement, which did not have to really understand the fascist idea. In trying to comprehend the foundations of the Bush ideology, scholars and analysts linked the Bush ideology to fascist thinkers; ideologues of the Bush regime propounded fascist ideas, without necessarily claiming to be fascists.

Faith, however, transcends ideas. Bush’s religious faith stands above and informs his sense of unshakable convictions. Bush told Bob Woodward: ‘going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s will.’ 
 
Bruce Barttlet, a republican who worked for Bush senior told Ron Ruskin that people close to Bush commented on how Bush talks about this ‘Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do’¦Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis.’ (NYT Magazine, Oct.17, 04). 

In the temporal realm, influential mortals have provided the intellectual foundations for the ideological assertiveness of the Bush regime. They all share a common worldview.

In the summer 2004 issue of Daedalus, constitutional law professor Sanford Levinson writes that Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi German philosopher, is the real source of inspiration of the Bush regime. Prof. Alan Wolfe of Boston College described Schmitt as the intellectual guru of the Bush administration.
 
Schmitt’s major philosophical contribution to politics is contained in a 1932 influential book entitled The Concept of the Political.

Schmitt argued that in major human endeavours the ultimate distinctions are framed as duality: in morality there is good and evil; in the arts there is beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable. But politics is a different realm; its ultimate distinction is between friend and foe. And this comes before the State, and before any notion of justice or morality.

Critics describe Schmitt’s views as ‘consciously embracing evil.’
 
A protégé of Schmitt, Leo Strauss, has also been described as having a powerful influence over the thinking of the Bush regime. Jeffrey Steinberg described Strauss as the ‘Fascist godfather of the neo-cons.’  Citing an article by Richard Lacayo, (Time magazine , June 17, 1996) that named Strauss as one of the most influential and powerful figures in Washington, Steinberg argued that if Strauss’s influence was awesome in 1996, it is even more so today.

Strauss, who admired Nazi philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, believed that morality and ethics had no place in politics and advocated a decidedly Machiavellian approach to politics and foreign policy in which deception and manipulations were common tools of the craft.

Strauss’s influence on the neo-cons has been documented in S B. Drury’s book, Leo Strauss and the American Right, in which the author argued that Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured.

Strauss has directly influenced some of the leading ideologues of the Bush administration: Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war, and Abram Shulsky, the director of the Special Plans Operation Pentagon office set up by Douglas Feith to produce its own evidence to bolster the case for war. Both Wolfowitz and Shulsky studied under Strauss at the University of Chicago in the 1970s.

Shulsky has co-written, with Gary Schmitt, an article entitled ‘Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence,’ in which they marshal Strauss major themes to criticise the American intelligence community for its susceptibility to empiricism and the dominant social sciences notions of evidence and proof.

A senior advisor to Bush explicitly espoused the fascist notion of the superman as subject of history transcending the limited rationality of the masses, dispensing with justifications for his actions, and creating and imposing his own reality. 

This advisor told Ron Susking that traditional notions of proof and discernable reality are no longer adequate today because: ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.’ (NYT  Magazine, Oct 17,04).

In addition to God and the fascist philosophers, two other sources have been directly linked to Bush himself. The first is Karl Rove, Bush’s principal political advisor- described by some as the ultimate Machiavellian operative. James Moore, co-author, with Wayne Slater, of the 2003 book Bush’s Brain, the subject of a documentary in 2004, wrote: ‘Rove is probably the most powerful un-elected person in American history.’

Moore also claimed that, ‘Karl Rove led the nation to war to improve the political prospects of George W. Bush. I know how surreal that sounds. But I also know it is true.’ (Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2003). It was also Rove who, echoing the Straussian advice, reportedly told the president to emphasise the permanency of the external threat by saying that the war on terror was a long-term crusade.

Bush acknowledged an intellectual debt to Natan Sharansky, the fanatical right wing Israeli Likud minister who criticised Sharon for being too soft on the Palestinians. As Housing Minister Sharansky aggressively expanded Jewish settlements, advocating human rights for everybody except for the Palestinians. When he resigned in May 2005 to protest the withdrawal from Gaza, a member of the Knesset described him as ‘a warmonger for the occupation.’

Bush reportedly consulted with Sharansky and received inspiration from him for the inaugural speech of his second term, setting out what the Washington Times described triumphantly as ”a new, expansionist and far more aggressive global mission.’ (January 21, 05.)

Prof. Safty is UNESCO Chair of Leadership and President of the School of Government and Leadership, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul. He is author-editor of 14 books including From Camp David to the Gulf, and Leadership and Democracy, IPSL Press. New York, 2004.

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