Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and Beyond, History Shows There Are certain Steps That Any Would-Be Dictator Must Take To Destroy Constitutional Freedoms. And George Bush and His Administration Seem To Be Taking Them All
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security - remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” - didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.
It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize.
Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a “war footing”; we were in a “global war” against a “global caliphate” intending to “wipe out civilization”. There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. “This time,” Fein says, “there will be no defined end.”
Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler’s invocation of a communist threat to the nation’s security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the “global conspiracy of world Jewry”, on myth.
It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.
2. Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal “outer space”) - where torture takes place.
At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, “enemies of the people” or “criminals”. Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labor activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.
This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA “black site” prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.
Gulags in history tend to metastasize, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalized. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can’t investigate adequately.
But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don’t generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: “First they came for the Jews.” Most Americans don’t understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.
By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People’s Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offenses, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favor of Nazi ideology when making decisions.
3. Develop a thug caste
When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America’s security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution
Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration’s endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.
Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for “public order” on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station “to restore public order”.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
In Mussolini’s Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.
In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state program to wiretap citizens’ phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.
In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about “national security”; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.
5. Harass citizens’ groups
The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens’ groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favor of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.
Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 “suspicious incidents”. The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organizations engaged in peaceful political activities: CIFA is supposed to track “potential terrorist threats” as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as “terrorism”. So the definition of “terrorist” slowly expands to include the opposition.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a “list” of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.
In 2004, America’s Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela’s government - after Venezuela’s president had criticized Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.
Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, “because I was on the Terrorist Watch list”.
“Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that,” asked the airline employee.
“I explained,” said Murphy, “that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution.”
“That’ll do it,” the man said.
Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of “enemy of the people” tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.
James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.
Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.
It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can’t get off.
7. Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don’t toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile’s Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.
Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not “coordinate”, in Goebbels’ term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically “coordinate” early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.
Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalize or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that “waterboarding is torture” was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.
Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were “coordinated” too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.
8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.
Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.
Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC’s Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN’s Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organizations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.
9. Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of “spy” and “traitor”. When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times’ leaking of classified information “disgraceful”, while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the “treason” drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.
Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and “beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death”, according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.
In Stalin’s Soviet Union, dissidents were “enemies of the people”. National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy “November traitors”.
And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realize that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an “enemy combatant”. He has the power to define what “enemy combatant” means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define “enemy combatant” any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.
Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin’s gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo’s, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)
We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. “Enemy combatant” is a status offense - it is not even something you have to have done. “We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we’re going to hold you,” says a spokeswoman of the CCR.
Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn’t real dissent. There just isn’t freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.
10. Suspend the rule of law
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan’s militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state’s governor and its citizens.
Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears’s meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole’s baby, the New York Times editorialized about this shift: “A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night … Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition’.”
Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch’s soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias’ power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.
Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini’s march on Rome or Hitler’s roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.
Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: “dogs go on with their doggy life … How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster.”
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are “at war” in a “long war” - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realizing it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the “what ifs”.
What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.
What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.
Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody’s help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.
We need to look at history and face the “what ifs”. For if we keep going down this road, the “end of America” could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny,” wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
Nicely stated. Too bad few in the U.S. will ever read it, and fewer still would care.
Lady, I’ve been saying it can happen here for a couple of decades. People think I’m being silly, or nuts, no matter how calmly I discuss the subject. Wouldn’t surprise me if those people weren’t also the first to cheer for the new fascist order. Although, some of them will just get this dumb, stupid cow look on their face as their lives are crushed. It’s always been that way.
Everyone who has a child that can read make him or her read this. Print it out and put in all your neighbors mailboxes. Spread the word
Excellent article. We are indeed closer that most think. If the ruling class feel like they have no other alternatives to persue their agenda, you can bet another “attack” or an assasination will happen which will result in the state of emergency needed. What’s presently left of the republic is a sham held in place for convenience as long as it’s business as usual but the fascist program is ready for implimentation should those in power feel the need. It should be noted that Clinton put much of it in place after the Oklahoma City bombing. The so-called Patriot Acts built on that.
Ms. Wolf fails to show true appreciation for Cheney’s brilliance. As he goes about using the US military to try to steal oil and other resources here and there, murdering, maiming, and impoverishing untold hundreds of thousands of people along the way, he knowingly angers enough people so that eventually some of them will, through a terrorist attack, create the preconditions for total fascism. Cheney will be laughing himself silly when that occurs.
Yes, we’ve essentially known this since 2004 when Dr. Laurence Britt codified the 14 points of fascism - http://www.ellensplace.net/fascism.html
Now, what we need, is a twelve step program to end fascism — worldwide this time.
Yes, some of us have been warning about this since Bush1 and before. In fact, Eisenhower saw it before most of us.
Bush1 actively and illegally planted false propaganda into U.S. media through his Office of Political Diplomacy, while at the same time illegally using U.S. taxpayer’s money to lobby Congress in favor of the Contra War and other issues.
The huge expansion of corporate lobbyists has added to the problem, inducing our Congressional representatives to line up on “K” Street with their palms out and minds open to selling their Congressional votes for campaign contributions.
The so-called “think tanks” have been infiltrated with minions of the military-industrial complex, and countless new so-called “think tanks” that favor the corporations and special military interests such as Israel have been formed.
We are well on the road to fascism now, and even a complete change to a Democratic Congress and President might not even slow it down.
Our only hope is a responsible and free Press, dedicated to the fundamentals of democracy… only the fascists are buying that up as fast as they can with their new-found wealth and the help of their cohorts already in the government.
International journalism groups are now ranking America 30 or more countries down from the most honest news coverage.
Want to help the fight? DEMAND the TRUTH from the media.
All true, but don’t forget Step #1-
have people stop using cannabis. When they
make dreaming and art illegal, all there is to live for
is power and money.
The Posse Comitatus Act seems to be flirtable and skirtable with post-9/11 coordination entities like NorthCom (apparently including Canada and Mexico as well), and resorting to private police forces.
Perhaps there are ways that creative, kinder and more gentler fascists can introduce their pathological need to control people without our even recognizing it as such. For instance, they may avoid fascist symbolism. They might also slip other things under the door — like setting up protest camps at the major political conventions, as a sort of automatic arrest. Or cubicalizing a generation of post-industrial workers (a sort of labor camp in its own right, though at least we get to check out at night). They need to institutionalize it, go slowly, make sure they don’t personify anything.
It’s easy to point at individuals like Hitler and symbols like the swastika. But what if the individual was hidden, or it was a group effort? What if there was no symbol or uniform? And what if the camps were mostly abroad in places we don’t like to visit anyway? Would middle-America even recognize it? Is all this a real scenario now, just imagined, or something that’ll occur in the next few years? When we finally do see it, then what? Will they have fully prepped us to their expected trade-off: “security” without liberty? And if middle-America doesn’t take the offer, then what? Lots of questions.
But I have to comment on the pot calling the kettle black here. This is a UK article, and they’re arguably the most surveilled society in the world (check point #4 in the article). The US is catching up, though. Possibly the new fascism will be an Anglo/North American cooperative effort.
I as well as most of my family have been saying the same thing for the last 5 to 6 years! It is obvious we have a President in office who doesn’t have the remotest idea of what the Constitution is for. Who has literally no respect for our laws or style of government. To be honest about it, he shouldn’t even be in office he isn’t fit to govern anyone. He and the Republican heirarchy are bent on destruction of this country! The longer George W Bush is in office the more he resembles Adolf Hitler. Except he hasn’t started exterminating people yet! But, I have no doubts given enough impetus he would.
The “end of America” came for me in 1988 when I left America. I left because the country that I thought I lived in was a fraud. I felt that if I didn’t get out I would become just another sheep in the United States of Everything.
Hoa Binh
Don’t think this administration didn’t have a hand, passively of actively, in their own Sept. Reichstag Fire. There are no limits to the crimes they are willing to commit.
Excellent article, but it avoids another topic, that overarches everything said here, that most want to avoid - organized religion. Read Chris Hedges ‘American Fascism’ for more info.
This article says in many paragraphs what Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Karl Rove, said in one:
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Hermann Goering
I think the article is entirely too optimistic, we are already there! It seems pertinent to note that anything humans do, that is of a procedural nature, evolves or is improved over time with each new instance of implementation. There is a tendency to learn from past mistakes or take advantage of new technologies. Many of the elements on the list have become less important. With the convergence of news (press), entertainment and marketing, the media conglomerates have virtual control without most people even realizing it. They don’t even have a need to hide the truth, it’s hidden in plain sight by all the distraction. I believe that Gore Vidal noted this to some Russian diplomat of the soviet era, he asked why the Kremlin was so intent on squelching dissent and censoring information, that they should take lesson from the U.S. where everything is in the open but nobody pays any attention, and that was probably 30 years ago. Ronald Reagan told us 25 years ago that the business of America was business. This only makes sense in a corporatist society.(which is what Mussolini said fascism should be more appropriately called) We will probably never see marshal law, that would be too drastic and might actually set off some alarm bells. I believe we are moving toward what I call “corporate feudalism”. Most people have a vague idea of whats happening, even as they can’t put a name to it, and are simply trying to position themselves so that when the gates close they are inside the wall. The multinational corps are beholden to no single nation and actually are now pitting them against each other for tax breaks, subsidies and favorable legislation to locate or do business in any particular one. Case in point: an alien being arriving on this planet would probably surmise that Halliburton was controlling the U.S. military and was on a foraging expedition for more resources. Duh!! Cheney-Halliburton-U.S. tax dollars-Halliburton-Cheney.
Mussolini was considered the “Father of Modern Fascism”, and Mussolini described fascism as a union between big business and government for the betterment of both… (but not necessarily the individual).
Mussolini said: “Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity…”
Mussolini labelled “individualists” as the much dreaded “liberals”… thus artists, intellectuals, writers and other free-thinkers became the enemy.
When one studies the differences between Nazism and Fascism there is very little difference with the exception of Nazism focusing more on race than government as the ultimate right to power.
Of course, many of the hard-line supporters of Bush & Company also adhere to the “Master Race” philosophy, although they are less prone to voice that belief openly… so far.
The news media has been seduced by this administration, and has blithely spread their propaganda far and wide… ignoring blatant lies, sidesteps and discrepancies in order to curry favor with the power figures and planners of the Washington D.C. cocktail party circuit.
If we ever hope to get the TRUTH from these “reporters”, we will have to pressure them for it.
I never understood until now how such a civilized country like Germany fell into the fascist dictator trap willingly! But, I now understand how it happens. All it takes are some fanatical people with their own agenda who are willing to overlook what they know is wrong just to see their chosen party in power! People who no longer have a good clear picture of what democracy is all about. People who can be subverted by the unscrupulous. People who allow a national tragedy to cloud their normally rational thinking. The vast majority of whom are complacent people who don’t think it can ever happen to us! At one time, I was one of those people! But, the last 6 years have become living proof that it can if you don’t guard against it!
provoice,
It seems that Mussolini used an old trick to get the public to identify the public’s interests as the same as his interests. Mussolini did care about one individual, himself, and the state was his own personal instrument, and he could be enforcing his will, and maximizing his own individual rights, while getting others to give up theirs for what he had convinced them was the “public good.”
The real argument should not be about whether the state is supreme or the individual is supreme, but about the extent to which each individual’s interests are represented by the state. In fascism, only the interests of the economic and government elites are represented. That sounds exactly like the world Cheney and his trained monkey are trying to create.
This story says in many paragraphs what Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Karl Rove, said so eloquently in only one:
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Hermann Goering
I have made several posts lately saying to the effect of Gonzalez will never go, because he knows too much, and his stonewalling is all a diversion. Futher, Bush is destroying our military, while enabling mercenaries, who will not want to give up their privileges at the end of the bush term. Same with religious beneficiaries to government largess. After a couple of these posts, I received a phone call, a recorded message of only one word; goodbye. Everyone needs to speak out, loudly and often. I’m sure some like me will receive unwanted attention, but if the noise is loud enough, if there is indeed a problem, our response will be overwhelming.
People in the United States have little interest in democracy anymore. It is easier to just go along for the ride, and you can always count on people to do what is easy.
ricg
I live in New York, and I’ve heard my share of liberal idiocy, arrogance, and ignorance (for American educators - MEMORIZING chronology of events during other periods in history, not to mention analysis of events could help, among other things, seeing the world in a evolutionary way. No, we don’t have Gestapo today, but we might have tomorrow): “No, it can’t happen here. We are just different, each thinks differently (repeated 8 million times). Our history (i.e. the best and the brightest) … is just wonderful).
I haven’t read the article yet. I would state that the nation with it’s fascist behavior in the workplace (with its mobbing, Kommandanten and Kapos, it’s constant monitoring)is ready for a pleasant moment in history
Welcome to the Fourth Reich…America started its slide into fascism when Bush uttered the asinine phrase “You are either with us, or against us”.
The fascist trap is indeed already set, if not already sprung, in America. I agree with the one who commented that this article may be too optimistic. As Morris Berman asked in his great book, “Dark Ages America,” where are the levers of change? I don’t see them.
If anything, our government is now like a fully formed hurricane getting ready to move over the superheated waters of numerous social challenges facing us: peak oil, climate change, resource wars, collapse of the US economy.
These fascists hardly need to bother concocting Reichtag fires - there are so many already burning to choose from.
It is time to move beyond calculating the odds that the worst will happen here. It is happening - has happened. Furthermore, it’s time to abandon the hope of collective action. If it comes (despite the gravitational pull of TV, Internet, shopping, and-yes- cannabis) it is certain to be too little, too late.
The play now is to rethink the size of the world. Time to build a lifeboat right where you are. Grow some food, network with neighbors, withdraw your personal allegiance to the greatest extent possible. From that footing, we might actually enact grassroots change.
http://hydrocarbonman.com
“I received a phone call, a recorded message of only one word; goodbye. Everyone needs to speak out, loudly and often. I’m sure some like me will receive unwanted attention, but if the noise is loud enough, if there is indeed a problem, our response will be overwhelming.”
The rejects who are in all likelyhood are spying on progressive sites and blogs and our comments such as these, and spying on Americans simply because we are democrats, are part of the facist system and the one-party takeover. They hate freedom and diverisity. I would say their hearts are filled with anger, but they have no heart at all; just a shallow and empty bitterness towards freedom loving Americans. They are mindless drones who are brainwashed into the bidding of the corperate elite- the .01% marginal faction which is trying to takeover. They are the traitors to America and to freedom
ahro,
I think you are missing something.
I can assure you it started much earlier.
I know it’s easy and pleasant: “It’s Bush,” and it’s much harder: “It’s us.”
By the way, Umberto Eco wrote his article in 1994? 95?
Why is it that linguists who memorize so much, also understand so much?
Huey Long of Louisiana saw this coming in the 1930s. When asked if fascism would ever take root in America, he responded that it would, but we’d call it anti-fascism. The Busheviks have given us secret prisons for suspects who are denied legal protection, tapping phones without warrants, etc. in the name of democracy.
eurobelle,
you are right, but Bush just made it so obvious that even a blind man can see……
At best–
we are an oligarchy headed toward fascism. Another important point in democracy lost is the takeover of the independent judiciary, one of Hitler’s key moves. Tell me shrub et. al. are not on track to squelch our independent judiciary. Remember also that Hitler was a frontman for some of Germany’s bigmoney powerelites. The analogies to that smirkingassholechimp and his corporate supporters just go on and on…
thank you Ms. Wolf for your analysis. Perhaps it will make a few more americans aware. Meanwhile, i may be following namvet67.
The piece gains it’s poignancy by the fact impeachment is about to be debated in this country, or more correctly the debate about a debate is going on right now.
Regardless of who said what first Naomi Wolf presents a valuable time line of Bush admin. activities for framing the context for the argument to impeach. This, against a scathing backdrop that indicts Bush admin. behavior as that as anything but about freedom - one of the last clarion calls of the Neocons besides the al Qaeda Suddam non-link link.
I agree that we are already a fascist state. There is no dividing line between corporations and government, citizens receive information from a corporate, tightly controlled, very unfree press, and we are now in an eternal war.
One thing I would add to the list, an uninformed, uneducated, distracted populace. We are no longer involved with national affairs. We just don’t care. This that the fact that we no longer have a free press in this nation, make me very afraid for the future.
Live (and ski) free or die!
When I was a little boy I found a package of carrot seeds. I was so excited I ran to my dad and asked him if I could plant them. He said “Yes, but first you will have to create a garden”. He looked all around for a suitable spot. “Here”, he said, “plant them where these weeds and rocks are”. So, I picked out the rocks, chopped up the weeds and worked the soil. When I was done he said, “Now go over to the barn and get some strong smelling cow dung and work it into the soil”. I did just that. “Son, your garden is ready, now plant your seeds”. Today we have only one option: plow up and reseed the three branches of weeds, rocks and dirt with better nutrients.
There is another aspect to fascism that Ms Wolf doesn’t mention directly: the intimate relationship between political and corporate interests - some might even say the take-over of government by corporate interests - while preserving a pretense of democracy. Unfortunately, this was a feature of the European tragedy too. Hitler could never have built Auschwitz without a lot of corporate help (and profit). Contemporary examples of the conflict of interest between politicians and business are legion.
The infrastructure for a new kind of post-Orwellian totalitarianism is certainly there. The computer networks will serve the function of secret police. Any of us who posted to websites such as this one are vulnerable. It would be easy to google up a list of “enemy subversive thinkers” — that’s us. No need to put us into gulags or concentration camps; just deny us access to the services necessary for survival (www.netbomb.net). Public toilets could do urinanalysis to detect unauthorized substance use and use DNA to identify the user.
The fact that they haven’t started doing much of this yet is more of a tribute to the confused faith-addled incompetence of the Bushistas. We should be thankful they’re as confused and stupid as they are. If a tyrant with some brains got ahold of the machinery that is currently available, dissent of any kind could be eliminated in a few days, or hours.
Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), environmental issues will trump fascistic evil. No matter how much control they have over people, the effects of global warming and pollution and all the other stuff will overwhelm them (and, unfortunately, us also). The digital gestapo will be no more immune to the effects of environmental collapse than the rest of us, though they will try to blame us for it.
I don’t think its quite this bad yet. There are a few folks left that do more than watch TV and go to the mall.
They are a bunch of stinkers though.
As for the tools available to implement a fascist state, I suppose most here are aware of DARPA’s research into bee-sized flying robotic recording devices. If that doesn’t suggest nightmare scenarios, I do not know what will.
Two missed points:
One: with very few exceptions, fascists systems never survive very long, and the larger the population, the shorter the reign.
Two: unlike every moment in history mentioned, American citizens are well armed and generally pissed off. Although sheep-like usually, when threatened directly, the bullets will start flying.
Fortunately, since Cheney/Bush has destroyed our military, there aren’t enough troops to patrol Camden, let alone impose martial law.
What we got here is corporfascism. The “monied corporations” Jefferson warned about- Eisenhower’s “Military Industrial Complex”. They haven’t taken away enough to get enough of the people angry enough- just yet. But they (the GOP) have already caused much damage- almost too much- especially to the environment in the post deregulation era (deReaganulation)
I personally agree with those who have said fascism has already arrived. The republican party is America’s version of the Nazis and the democrats are still sitting on their collective stools waiting for some bell to ring to come back and join the fight.
It’s more than time for a change…..
frank1569
Are you suggesting that it was the Germans that overthrew Hitler?
Do you really imagine mainstream americans risking their lives for ideals? The fascists will probably never threaten white, Christian Americans who go to work, go to the mall, and come home and watch tv.
A lot of people I consider “activists” won’t miss a day of work to go protest. We are all caught in the web of our debt and overworked, overscheduled lives that doesn’t leave us any wiggle room to fight for something we believe in lest we risk losing everything.
BUT, unlike in Hitlers Germany, WE ARE AN ARMED CITIZENRY. And, if this fascist state ever tries to materialize, a lot of you will give thinks to the National Rifle Association.
One other point about classical fascism (I would argue that what we have is the 21st century version): the complete takeover of all governmental agencies, including the military. Interestingly, we have seen the retired generals who have been most outspoken, at least with regard to the expansionist war with Iraq.
The historian Robert Paxton has also written on fascism. He would include extreme nationalism and militarism as hallmarks of fascism, as well as a masculinized culture that glorifies war and warriors, while relegating women back into the “traditional” role of mothers (of the nation, of course).
The cooption of the middle and lower middle class is also an important factor. Their extreme insecurity is assuaged by grandiose nationalism, although they are exploited as soldiers in expansionist wars, and economically by corporate interests that are joined to the state, either through outright corruption, as we have, or through syndicalist (corporatist) economic structures.
Like peacemaker above, I always had trouble understanding German’s descent into fascism, but now I can see it quite clearly.
“A lot of people I consider “activists” won’t miss a day of work to go protest. We are all caught in the web of our debt and overworked, overscheduled lives that doesn’t leave us any wiggle room to fight for something we believe in lest we risk losing everything.”
That’s partly how the elites do it. They not only keep us distracted and numb, they also wear us down by keeping us busy. We’re working two jobs and going school and spending what little free time we have watching tv or medicating ourselves. Most Americans are treading water. It’s not that a lot of them won’t miss work, they can’t afford to.
“A lot of people I consider “activists” won’t miss a day of work to go protest. We are all caught in the web of our debt and overworked, overscheduled lives that doesn’t leave us any wiggle room to fight for something we believe in lest we risk losing everything.”
A very important point.
Do you think it’s deliberate.
I know that greedy bastards want to exploit and exploit, but is it possible that in addition to plain sick greed, there is something else - the desire to keep people “busy.”
Europeans, for example, know that a person can be productive only 35-40 hours, and most of them don’t work more.
Americans work all these countless extra hours probably not productively, but also away from other activities, such as thinking, networking, learning, protesting.
I have a knife. But seriously, you’re probably right.
iwarrior,
somehow I didn’t notice your post, or was busy typing my own -
similar
I know a number of people who actually could live without working, but somehow they see a sense of life in working, working, working (so stupid).
I know when my shooting moment comes - when I hear once more
“I love my job.”
Find another love. I think the elites would have failed without mass collaboration.
By the way, is there a term for this uniquely American
illness - “love of job,” or even better “love of boss?”
I think we can call it tentatively
arbeitophilia (mixed languages) needs work
“Fascism is on the march today in America. Millionaires are marching to the tune. It will come in this country unless a strong defense is set up by all liberal and progressive forces… A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government, and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. Aboard ship a prominent executive of one of America’s largest financial corporations told me point blank that if the progressive trend of the Roosevelt administration continued, he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism to America.”
former Ambassador to Germany William Dodd, 1938
I wish I could afford not to work. I hate my job. Unfortunately, many Americans, the ones who should be out in the streets raising hell, are one check away from sleeping under a bridge. I don’t think it’s that people love their jobs or their bosses. The people are under the thumbs of the companies they work for. People wouldn’t play the lottery or dream of being independently wealthy if they loved to work.
The funny thing about all of this is that our fascist path could all be changed in one or two elections. You people need to have more faith in our democracy.
jobs are very overrated - surely money is a necessity but it doesnt have to be a job - take a weeks work as s surveyor and then write an essay the next week - restore some fuirniture on the side and learn the birds in the trees behind your house. working all the ttime at the same stupid job is how you are kept in check - you keep the whole she-bang a going if you keep a-going to the job - mussolini is reputed to have said, as was referenced above, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
if you ask the flora and the fauna ofthe average suburb totalitarianism is now!!!!!
quit your job for a better world, now!
build a barn with your neighbor
plant corn in the football stadium
fill the offramp with soil and raise some cane
Let’s change things by getting the dirty rats out of Washington!
http://www.IMPEACHBUSH.org
“The funny thing about all of this is that our fascist path could all be changed in one or two elections. You people need to have more faith in our democracy.”
You’re right. If only enough people cared to vote, and if enough of those people who did vote didn’t vote against their best interests.
Montemerrick-You have a point, but can most people afford to do what you suggest? I’d like to quit my job too, but I have bills!
Most people can’t afford to work when they feel like it. Now if we all quit our jobs at the same time, that would be one thing.
you mean to say that we are not the world’s number one good guys of history any more?
On March 23, 1924, in his “Speech to the Mayors of Italy’s Counties, Gathered for the Fifth Anniversary of the Foundation of the Fasci,” Benito Mussolini declared:
“Sirs, one must be either for us or against us. […] Those who are not with us are against us. The political situation in Italy has never been simpler. […] We will not give an inch. […] We have a great Italy to build.”
yeah quit at the same time
well i guess it just depends on what you value and need.
i get by on very little - and if work starts to take up my time i get quite miserable - so i dont work - i live very cheaply and i am quite happy to drive an ancient car and not all that often - i am quite happy to live in a “dump” (although i dont feel that way about it) i am quite happy to fend for myself - i call it freedom - i call it wilderness - doesnt mean i dont get stressed about the bills - i do - but i got stressed about them wheneve3r i had a fulltime job too - working doesnt cure money stress - it makes it worse - plus life is miserable which has to be the first and most important sign that the path is wrong. imagine if food was like your job!
“Who appointed you the anointed in deciding what someone elses best interests are? This is the reason you are resisted in the first place.”
All I know is that the right doesn’t have my best interests at heart as a working person. They do try to pander to me though. If you are not wealthy, they aren’t looking out for you. They act like they do, but they don’t. They tell you they’re keeping you safe from terror, yet they’re trying to bust open the piggy bank of social security. They’re taxing you while they give breaks to people who don’t need them. They’re killing the planet while acting as if it isn’t being harmed. They’re engaging in illegal, immoral, and expensive military rampages while millions upon millions do not even have health insurance.
A lot of working and poor people will vote elephant because they’re pro-life, pro-gun, etc. Meanwhile, the elephants truly only care and cater to a small group of Americans, those with a lot of money. Unless you are upper-middle class, they don’t care about you.
When America becomes a land where War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength…
PATRIOTISM is TREASON.
Montemerrick, I wish I shared your outlook on life.
If you are getting by, then godspeed to you.
I think for me, while being in the workforce for the bulk of my adult life hasn’t been a pleasant road, I think it helped at the very least to make me far more politically concerned than I was when I was just a student living off of mom and dad. I was very apathetic towards politics until I started actually working for a living. Then I started to see why it all matters and how working and poor people are getting the shaft. It was a splash of ice water on my face. And it’s not just the things that happened to me. I got to know people that had to manage on minimum wage jobs. On the other hand, I got to see corporate greed firsthand. I knew people that made six figure salaries in figurehead positions with so little responsibility, they’d be out getting paid to golf.
There is a danger when comparisons are made to nazi germany and european fascism in WW2, however aptly, to a particular stage in their development. They said then that ‘it can’t happen here’ and joe conason says ‘it can happen here’. Well the truth is in this far more modern and electronic, computerized world of ours, that it can’t happen here…but something else could! Rather than black shirts and storm troopers, we should fear the unobtrusive fascism whereby true equality becomes myth because an unaccountable and unknown elite has access to powers that they restrict to themselves. Who watches the watchers who are watching us when we aren’t even allowed to know that they are doing it? Nor know who is doing it nor even what they are doing really? Who are these people? The truth is…__________(deleted)!
Thank you for saying way more than what I was thinking. So here’s my next question. If Congress has the duty to stop this — to impeach and indict those responsible — but they fail to act, are they not guilty of obstructing justice?
mtn goat -
it doesnt really matter what the proconsumer crowd thinks cause the grizzlies know they are full of sh*t and grizzlies are never wrong - neither are the mountains or the rivers or the tall and thirsty douglas firs nor the salmon nor the nose that hates machines - them that resist what the mountains want will get theirs in the end - its the most basic kind of morality - if you throw the glass against the wall it breaks. hardly matters what the left or the right think - if you can call any of it thinking.
MCCARTHYISM…
How is comparing Americans to Nazis and all this hysteria and paranoia about our possible descent to a Fascist dictatorship any different than McCarthyism and fear of the threat of Communist Totalitarianism from within?
I love the concept of Republicans as the “thug caste.” Since when is the “thug caste” wimpy and gay?
ATL
I don’t have time, but I’ll give a “quick try”:
We don’t have power.
We are good analysts.
Something very ugly is happening in THIS COUNTRY, not in Siberia
I suggest you see reality, not Rush’s et. al. offer
Ask for help if your educational, intellectual background/abilities don’t allow you to see/understand clearly.
ATL
OK,
There striking similarities, and we just understand
the direction this country is going.
If the ruling group commits so many crimes and still is in power, there is a problem. The nature of society and the nature
of the crimes indicates that the direction is fascist.
Eurobelle,
Thanks for the name-calling. I am progressive, liberal from Cambridge, Mass. and very well-educated.
I think the current administration are a bunch of criminals and perhaps the sleaziest in American history.
But I do see a thin line between many extremists, whether McCarthy, David Icke or Naomi Wolf apparently. As matter of fact you can find similar articles on David Icke’s site next to the ones about how Skull and Bones members are a reptilian race and like to slaughter and eat babies at Bohemian Grove every year.
Anyway, this thin line between various radical theorists and the damage and violence radical theorists have inspired gives me pause when I read an article like this is all that I’m saying. I am just weary of keeping things in perspective and not letting paranoia crap cloud your mind and distract from more realistic concerns and solutions.
Wary not weary, perhaps a little weary too. I haven’t finished my coffee yet.
ATK,
As a well educated from Cambridge, Mass. individual you should be more careful with your terminology.
The suggestion that everyone in Combraidge, Mass. is educated and more importantly can think is funny.
There is a difference between “liberals” and “progressives”
or at least I hope there is, otherwise we are really doomed (one-party system doesn’t work).
I am sick and tired of liberals in general, and their main concern to be nice, nice, nice (to the right only)
Usually, they don’t have any problem destroying the left and the entire world as a consequence.
Yeah
I still prefer liberals to … and to pretenders.
Seeing the present criminals as criminals is not enough.
Even a blind person can see this.
We can see deeper.
Some have argued that it’s the liberalsd that really keep the system chugging along for the Rethugs. They come in every so often, patch things up, bail out a fleeced program with taxpayer money, help subsidize workers, etc. that companies are too cheap to treat decently themselves, etc.
Read Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath”. It describes these “wonderful” government camps for laborers where people had running water, committees, some dignity, etc. And yet, by going about the problem this way, all you really do is force the taxpayer to take up the bill on egregrious labor practices, perhaps even encouraging worse. That’s the essential weakness of liberalism, perhaps, in a nutshell: it inadvertently may sometimes aid its detractors. No coincidence, probably.
Better to take on the problem directly, to ask why so few have so much. And how it is that the banks penalize the poor by charging interest, and reward the rich by granting it — only exacerbating the wounds. Progressive populism is something altogether different.
Perfect.
I agree with “some” and with you.
Many of us have seen the signs and reacted with alarm; this is why I, like many others, want impeachment proceedings brought against Bush and Cheney. Naomi Wolf has made a great contribution by identifying these 10 steps that show the ominous parallel between what is happening here and what happened in so many infamous authoritarian states in the past century. Her analysis needs to be widely publicized.
I finally scanned the article, which is good, but IMHO still superficial, not analyzing the structural flaws and and changes which took place in decades preceding Bush.
Wolf is probably right about similarities of steps. I don’t know anything about Thailand, but I see a difference between a military coup, and the situation in this country.
The process is slow, and the fact that the population is accepting everything (is ready to accept everything) suggests that some important developments preceded Bush.
Naomi mentions some (mostly educational); not surprisingly, she didn’t notice “wonderful” American workplace.
Among other things, purges in the non-profit sector preceded to a significant degree Bush.
Progressives: Speaking truth to power, advocating for the welfare of the many and against those who would care only for the few.
McCarthyites: The powerful crushing those who would speak the truth, advocating for the few and against those who would care for the many.
How can anyone possibly compare the two?
I am back with the second, much harsher opinion which stresses the superciality of the article.
My admiration goes to those those who two decades ago saw a problem with American workplace and knew that such society had to end ugly.
To say in 2007:
“There is a problem. Hitler had camps, we have camps …” is easy, moreover, it’s misdirecting - we had sort of camps in years preceding Bush. But one has to have this experience, or at least show interest.
Kivals,
I realized the ATL is a pretender. Now when I actually read the article, I have no doubt about it - there is nothing radical in Naomi’s piece.
eurobelle,
You are probably right about the alleged pretender. Most of the con trolls sound so juvenile and this one did not so it threw me off.
I wonder if the Governors in this country have gotten together with Constitutional experts to discuss the very issue of the Executive declaring Martial Law? Are States bound to obey this Executive Order if there is no breakdown of government function within the State?
What are the Constitutional rights of States under these circumstances?
It is saddening to see that the country I grew up in is no longer a freedom based democracy. What is also saddening is that even when all the pieces are put together the state of denial that some hold. For those who believe that an armed populace forstalls a fascist regime, tell me what good does a .38 pistol do against a cluster bomb? We live in an era where you don’t need ground troops to pacify a population when it can drive it back to the stone age. Another sad thought is that a large majority will accept the new regime as long as they are not the ones oppressed. Get with the pogrom! So where does that leave us? Try open revolt and with our media you are the enemy. Try to create change from within and you end up just as corrupt. Pogo was right, we have met the enemy and it is us.
Well I beg to differ. What “democracy” are you referring to? We began as an oligarchy and a plutocracy if there is a difference. Freedom is not really a political issue since we must first see that we are not free. We have never seen that. The solution lies elswhere and we must see that first. How can we have a “democracy” if we don’t apply the principle of freedom to ourselves first, in the workplace as well as the forum? Freedom and democracy are first personal projects. Deep acceptance of the fact that we are slaves may bring personal courage first but who has it?
- Wait a moment, I am certainly right, but in totally different way Sam suggests.I won’t let Sam to kidnap me.
-“It is saddening to see that the country I grew up in is no longer a freedom based democracy. “ I keep hearing this, and I keep asking: “Why did you turn a better country into a worse one” – a totally wrong direction.
- I am irritated. For some reasons, I view Naomi as a person with an impressive range of interests – from her own body parts to her own civil liberties. Did I miss her analytical pieces of health care, wage slavery, Katrina, prison system etc.? Help ….
If my sainted mother were still alive (she would be 86 this coming October), she would be terrified for the remaining future of her two adult kids (me, now almost 50, and my late sister, who would be 43 this past April 12th), and my later father (who would have turned 88 this past March), would be equally concerned, but duly quiet, as was his nature.
What now feels like eons ago, when I was still in my 30’s, I took my mother and father to the USS NC ship in Wilmington, NC. There, we saw a memorial to all of the men who died in NC in WWII.
Driving home, mother was in tears, saying “I had no idea so many…” as her voice broke off. Father, relatively silent, serving in WWII as an 82nd Airborne paratrooper, essentially implied that they both knew, more or less, how many, having been through it. I countered, “No father, she means she had no idea how many just from NC.” Mother concurred.
As we went more down the road, mother said, “You know dad, when we’re gone, there will be no one left to remember.” Innocently enough, he disagreed. Agreeing with mother, I said, “No, father, she’s right. You and she, your generation, is the last one that lived through it. To me, and my generation, it’s merely ancient history that we were taught about, in school. We might know of it, but we cannot remember it, as in having been through it.”
At the time, mama’s heart felt concern was only that there would be no one left to give the men who lost their lives in WWII their due respect and remenbrance.
But on a side line, she had many a time said, “We must never forget. It can happen anywhere, anytime, even here.”
How true.
And saidly, because we were not the ones living through it, we are not atuned to seeing it happen, right before our eyes.
I can’t deal now with Sam, but I resent his Rovian twisting and turning.
Violence is not the answer. Our glorious revolution in 1776 changed the form but not the substance of tyranny.
I still have no desire to deal with Sam, but I’ll restate some of my remarks.
I think the article is missing the analysis of the causes of the disaster (yes, Naomi missed some history classes)
I think it would be nice, if Naomi adds to her vocabulary, such words and concepts as exploitation, and workers right as human rights. It is indicative that she doesn’t mention the destruction of the unions.
Like many others have already said, I have seen this coming for some years now. I first became aware of politics while living in Europe for almost 8 yeas. There was much more political talk among the young, and when Saddam Hussein was gassing people back in the 80’s. the streets were filled with posters pasted to walls telling of the USA’s aid in supplying the deadly toxins to Saddam. The day Reagan bombed and tried to kill Ghaddafi, I was teaching two students: one from Lebanon and the other from Syria. I felt embarrassed to be from the US.
The other thing I noticed was how much better educated they were – especially in matters of government. The teenagers wee informed and opinionated. Back in the states, were oblivious, or at least the majority of the people were. America was being dumbed down. I cold go on with more examples but I’m tired of writing.
The last thing I want to say is the only reason I support the right of each citizen to carry own a gun is for hunting and protection. With Blackwater becoming a growing paramilitary force in the States, we are all going to need guns if things ever each that point.
any sharecropper knows that slavery nevver ended - any wage slave knows the same - lots of folks bemoaning the fate of the US - lots and lots more (native americans, maybe mexicans, many arabs, lumumba’s congo, allende’s chile and the list goes on, have been waiting for this a long damn time - not to mention the mountains and rivers and salmon and grand banks and four corners and our own bodies with their toxic loads - truly, but for the fact that it has taken too long to die its own natural death and therefore cost so many species their existence (this is no joke! consider the wreckage and the ruin!) this final spiral into oblivion that the USA is on would be cause to rejoice.
Dear Sam,
I’d like to remind you that every fascist ruler talks about national unity not, about division.
I know history is not taught in American school.
As far as the rest is concerned, go and report to Rove that I wasn’t nice to you.
Something else, Sam.
We know already that you have no knowledge of history.
So, my lesson #1
-no justice, no peace, no unity.
lesson #2
-in such polarized in economic, legal, political etc. terms society talk about unity is amusing. Continue dreaming.
I am laughing. Loudly.
Regarding point #7, it is interesting to note that Ward Churchill, a professor who had legimitately earned tenure at a public university, was essentially fired for commenting that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were largely brought upon America by itself, in reprisal for decades of global economic and military irresponsibility. In contrast, Pat Robertson, who declared that the 9/11 attacks were a retributive act of God, divine justice for our tolerance of homosexuality, was rewarded by having the reins of the U.S. Justice Department turned over to his disciples, graduates of his “university.”
To everyone, if you are not a bozo, get off the bus. Of course we are in a fascist state. Any debate about it is beating one’s gums. So, what next?
Frankly, I am sick and tired of this hypocrisy.
I can provide a long list of Ph.D.s who were fired because
they weren’t a-ses kissing collaborators, and something tells me that a number of those who are shocked, shocked now, were instrumental. They probably don’t recall now; this doesn’t change the reality and the memory of the victims. These remember.
For victims it doesn’t matter whether their careers and lives have been destroyed because of Bush, or because of a trustee, supervisor and/or colleagues. Similarly, for institutions it doesn’t matter whether they have been destroyed because of Bush or because of a trustee etc. It’s indecent to limit one’s indignation to Bush & Co. It’s wonderful to live a privileged
life, it’s less wonderful to live this privileged life in time of general abuse.
It’s also naive to expect solidarity.
You make good points, and almost surely it’s as bad as you point out, but comparing the worst excesses of communism to fascism is the fallacy of the false equation. Get real! The worst communist excesses were nothing compared to those of the fascist, and any real progressive should know this. As Alexander Cockburn has pointed out, Joseph Stalin probably only had at most a few hundred thousand people killed, not good, but in no way did he ever consider wiping out people of a certain race, color, creed, ancestry or national origin the way Nazis thought nothing of wiping out all the Jews, Gypsies, etc, and did their damnedest to achieve, but the “terrible” Red Army and Red Air Force got in their damn way, as did some other folks.
But what is absolutely needed, and Cindy Sheehan has called for it, is an real independent of the 9/11 attacks, which hasn’t come close to happening so far. The establishment’s 9/11 conspiracy theory doesn’t get it.
What a magnificent article !
“The worst communist excesses were nothing compared to those of the fascist, and any real progressive should know this. As Alexander Cockburn has pointed out, Joseph Stalin probably only had at most a few hundred thousand people killed”
Communism wasn’t fascism, but Cockburn’s statement, if indeed he said it, is embarrassingly demagogical. I have no doubt he knows better.
One can be intelligently and decently progressive, no need to
lie.
I hope you are not planning communist future.
Can I suggest Social-democracy instead?
I’ve been using the “F” word for Bush and his merry gangsters for thirty years and it is quite refreshing to hear someone
ditto - its good to use words to describe and the “F” word describes these monsters best. War Crimes against Humanity.
That’s for sure!
But will there still be NASCAR, Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey,n beer? cable tv an church on Sunday?
The zombies won’t notice.
Watch as we are yet again herded like sheep into choosing between the 2 corporate candidates in 2008
any candidates planning to actually represent the people will be declared “unelectable” by the corporate owned media well before 2008 (not allowed to debate, rarely, if ever, seen or heard in their media
so we can’t support a candidate who shares our values…we must select between the 2 bought-and-paid-for whores our corporate masters will declare as our only real choices…..”A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush”…”you’re wasting your vote”…”he’s unelectable”….let them use their influence to filter me into supporting one of theirs again ?
I’d rather die than contribute to their rigged control of our country again. I refuse to passively participate in the corporate ownership of our country. I’m not voting for their candidates….ever again
TheCommonGoodIllinois@yahoo.com
I live in a state with large military bases and very pro-military politicians and economy–especially outside the metro area of the largest city which is a good deal more economically diverse than the rest of the state. A disturbing, now prevalent trend I’ve seen creeping since Collin Powell spewed his first war-trigger whoppers re bogus satellite images of Saddam’s tanks approaching the his neighbor’s border before Oil War One (and Kuwaiti babies thrown out of incubators–remember that Bush 1 corporate PR fabrication?) is the stench of pervasive cultural militarism in Bush’s Amurka and the intellectual laziness and personal cowardice of “mainstream” liberals to resist this.
Twice in the last 48 hours I’ve been confronted by Republicans claiming (1) No matter what crimes Bush has done he has protected “us” from terrorism, and (2) “All I know is that me and my buddies are fighting for Bush in Iraq so’s my little daughter won’t never have to grow up and be forced to wear a burkha.”
I began to respond with some facts and was interrupted on both occasions by “mainstream” liberals (one an old hippy who long ago fell on his New Age blissed out buttocks so he doesn’t actually have to engage in any activism) in the immediate vicinity who sprang to the Republicans’ defense to “restore harmony in the debate” as the hippy put it before he began gushing about how the soldiers fighting over in Iraq are the “real heroes,” etc. with zero discussion of the real bloody viscera of the war and its hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian victims–U.S. and Iraqi. This is the old 1960s “if you don’t support the war you don’t support the troops” canard that the Boomer hippy generation–once THEIR asses were no longer in the draft line–utterly failed to learn from.
By corporatist media design NONE of these neo-con dupes or lazy liberals have ever heard of the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate (leaked in early 2006) compiled by over a dozen U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies that stated that Bush’s war policies, far from reducing the threat of terrorism, have substantially increased it. This was confirmed earlier this year by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruikshank of the New York University’s Center on Law and Security in their exhaustively documented study on the increase in terrorist numbers and terrorist incidents worldwide since Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003:
http://www.lawandsecurity.org/publications/Iraq_Effect_Full_Study.pdf
Lazy liberals giving cover to Right-wing militarist bull-crap because they are too effing lazy and fearful of disrupting their navel-gazing blissful emotional equilibrium by researching the facts (and thereby being forced to confront the blood and guts horror Team Bush is promulgating on the world–in Somalia now, too, although one hears precious little about it in Amurkan Big Media) is what I’m on about. The smelly squatting, cosmetically surgically enhanced bulk of the Boomer ’60s generation has cruelly betrayed subsequent generations–especially with regard to passively allowing the spread of rampant militarism and the looming destruction of a sustainable biosphere for human beings. The environmental threat alone makes the PNAC terror wars pale in magnitude, potential suffering and mass extinctions of human, animal and plant populations. There is the fascism of political systems and there is the timid inward withdrawal of the fearful that is the servant of the now dominant, withered spirit of the times in Amurka: The culturally pervasive fascism of the mind that gives countenance to the outward spread.
Oh, of course, the criticism of Alexander Cockburn’s remark was wrong. Joseph Stalin was certainly not near the tyrant Adolph Hitler was and never supported genocide against anyone. Actually were it not for Stalin, we’d still be fighting the Nazis today or be under the Swastika, ya’ll!
Oh, of course, the criticism of Alexander Cockburn’s remark was wrong. Joseph Stalin was certainly not near the tyrant Adolph Hitler was and never supported genocide against anyone. He stood up to fascism by supporting the Spanish republic when no country but Russia would, at least not with anything but lip service
AD,
I don’t know which fairy tales you read, and it doesn’t matter.
Can I recommend you familiarized yourself with history (history?, history? what’s that?)?
Ah, if I understand it correctly, our brilliant educators
(lead by someone else in this free country) only now are planning to introduce history. They are probably still not sure, whether the students should actually know something or just have fun, fun, fun.
This albeit earnest article reflects more fear than anything. Perhaps those sharing those fears can take comfort in the 200,000,000 guns owned by American citizens - no one should think it will be easy to subjugate this population, nor any with a history of freedom. This is the actual, if simplistic rationale behind GWB’s foreign policy vision; i.e. the world will be a safer place when democracy prevails.
Fears are understandable and warrant sympathy. Fearmongering, when deliberate, is malevolent.
As for the communist / fascist comparison in some of the comments: communist regimes have wrought more devastation by far than all other death-dealing, including plagues. Estimates ( by Russians ) of Stalin’s tally range from 50,000,000 to 70,000,000 alone. Globally the number is estimated at over 100,000,000. To me, these regimes are/were indistinguishable from fascism; both subjugate and dominate their populations, those in power thinking the masses unentitled to rule their own destinies.
TGRF,
I know how I will die - from laughter.
Can I recommend you familiarize yourself with the history of your own country. You might need go back to school - they are introducing history now.
“easy to subjugate this population, nor any with a history of freedom.”
A slogan is a slogan is a slogan.
Can I suggest you manipulate somewhere else.
TGRF,
I