Face it... Americans are too comfortable with the idea of Fascism.

[MFrohike]

68. Not relevant in America

No humiliating loss in a war, bullshit conspiracy theory about it, and external actors imposing unrealistic demands of repayment. Genocidal madmen are sadly never unique, but the circumstances of the Nazi rise were unique, at least at this point in history.

I see comparisons with the Nazis to be self-defeating because they've been made too many times in the past. The New Left flogged the word fascist to death and wore out the Hitler comparisons on Lyndon Johnson (which was a supreme irony considering his successor). Not only that, but the comparisons aren't terribly valid because Hitler was not an agent of the Junkers or the industrialists. He was an independent actor with a political party (private army as well) who had his own ideas of cooperation with the wealthy of Germany. He made his deals with the industrialists and Junkers to rein in the SA and prevent the second Nazi revolution, then used the power they gave him to outflank them with the power of the state. It's just too different from today.

We have plenty of Americans who've spoken against the power of entrenched wealth and centralized power without feeling the need to cite every murderous regime of the last 100 years. Justice Brandeis firmly declared that we had a choice between economic concentration and democracy. Sam Rayburn helped break the stranglehold of the utility holding companies that allowed electric power to be spread all over the country. Harry Truman was heavily involved in the investigations of railroad companies' abuses toward their customers as well as overseeing government contracting in WW2 with the Truman Committee. These are just three examples. I realize I've digressed a bit away from civil liberties, but I was trying to address what I thought was your larger point.