Many people, particularly those who have some modest level of success or security and some hope to increase it, convince themselves they have done so solely because they are inherently better than anyone else. They have a better work ethic, they are more reasonable, they alone can defer gratification, plan for the future, love their god, their country and their families. They are the ones with a true sense of responsibility; they have the patent on liberty and the copyright on freedom and they remind you every day. They are doing well because they and those like them are intrinsically superior to the rabble.

When that success and security are threatened, whether by historical forces over which they have no control, by their own shortcomings, or even by the greed and rapacity of those to whose status they aspire, they panic. They refuse to accept they are mere victims of history, that they cannot measure up themselves; they have lived their whole lives under the myth of their own civic and personal virtue and superiority over others. Neither can they tolerate the concept that those very classes they wish to join are indifferent or even hostile to them as a result of an imperative to maintain their own hegemony in a time of diminishing resources and opportunities. They must create an enemy, someone lacking their qualities who wishes to plunder their loot. This justifies their righteous rage and whatever they may be forced to do to stop those looters who plot and scheme continuously against them.

They will devise an external threat dedicated to their own destruction--an imaginary alliance of those under them who they despise and fear, and a small but highly influential subset of the subconsciously hated elite, who are conspiring together to take away what they have earned from hard work and intrinsic virtue. The problems of their world are due solely to those who envy their success and are incapable of duplicating it themselves.

Every event and circumstance is interpreted through this filter, every fact evaluated with this ideology. They see their opponents everywhere, and it is so important to justify their own decline as the result of this imaginary enemy that they develop a pathological fear and hatred not only of their alleged rivals, but of any circumstance or observation or voice which contradicts their preconception. They have a reason for their problems, a convenient target for their anger, and scapegoats on which to vent their greed, hatred, fear, and ignorance.

This is fascism, the reaction of a middle class that feels itself economically threatened and about to lose what they have achieved, or what they had hoped to achieve. They need an enemy, a Jew, a Bolshevik, a Liberal or a Bourgeoise, a foreigner or an inferior race or religion or minority to explain their decline, and on which to vent their frustration. And there will always be opportunists and demagogues who will exploit this frustration for their own benefit.

This is fascism, the dictatorship of the middle class.