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IS AMERICA BECOMING FASCIST? http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/fascism.htmResearch: NEW Mark Medish: Four more years for Big Brother?, openDemocracy, July 27, 2004 "Is it far-fetched to compare America under the Bush administration to a political order defined by "doublethink" and "newspeak"? Orwell wrote his masterpiece in 1948 and reversed the last two digits. Was it his only mistake not to have called it 2004? Orwell's dark vision was largely informed by his insight into the inner workings of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. But it was also a prophetic warning of the potentially corrosive impact of the looming cold war on western democracies. Life in the society of Oceana that Orwell describes had three organising mottoes. Each does seem to have its eerie echoes today: War is peace . . . Freedom is slavery . . . Ignorance is strength . . . 1984 is not the present-day USA. But the risks are not pure fiction. What Orwell perceived was that the three dark mottoes go together. External conflict, internal ignorance, and the self-enslavement of buying manipulative media reinforce and need each other. It is not that it will happen, but we would be complacent to believe that it can't happen here'." (7/29) Thom Hartmann: The Ghost of Vice President Wallace: "It Can Happen Here", Common Dreams, July 19, 2004 "'The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, 'are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power...They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." (7/23)
Dennis Rahkonen: Will there actually be a 2004 presidential election?, Dissident Voice, July 18, 2004
Just as the contrived Reichstag Fire allowed Hitler to push through his Enabling Act that consolidated German fascism, it's a virtual certainty that a cowardly Congress would do essentially the same if the Sears Tower went up in flames before November, or a lethally poisonous substance were released at the Mall of America. Can we count on the American people rising up to thwart a fascist coup? Despite my progressive's faith in populist good sense, that salvation is illusory. Toby Keith would probably sing a country song celebrating our descent to tyranny, and little American flags would flutter from cars in the figurative funeral procession of our freedom's death. It's logical to deduce from how our entire culture has decided to meekly accommodate itself to America's worsening Enron-Abu Ghraib depravity that we'd rather go to Hell than seriously rock the boat that's delivering us there. The unnerving truth is that, should they actually decide to implement it, there's nothing to prevent Fascism American Style." (7/19)
Jerry M. Landay: The Apparat: George W. Bush's Back-Door Political Machine, Media Transparency, March 18, 2004
There exist "at least 350 tax-exempt, ostensibly non-partisan organizations within the right-wing's activist front, many operating at regional, state, and local levels. They have penetrated the three branches of the federal government, and dominate the political debate. They guide and oversee the agenda that directs White House action (or inaction). Two of these organizations housed the planners who invented the Iraq war. Rob Stein, an independent Washington researcher, follows the money flow to the radical activist establishment. He estimates that since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations he tracks that constitute the core of the radical machine." (7/19)
Normon Solomon: The news media's political 'f' word, Progressive Trail, , July 1, 2004
"About three-quarters of a century ago, the Louisiana populist Huey Long commented: "If fascism came to America it would be on a program of Americanism." Well, fascism hasn't arrived in the United States -- millions exercise crucial freedoms of speech and press every day -- but we should recognize that the U.S. government's response to 9/11 has included some fascistic elements. Consider, for instance, the assessment by Stuart Taylor Jr., a careful mainstream journalist specializing in legal issues. His article in the June 12 edition of National Journal focused on memos and reports within the Bush administration about guidelines related to interrogation and torture. "These warped analyses are not just the work of a few lawyers carried away with clever circumvention of the law," Taylor wrote. "They reflect an attitude deeply entrenched in the Bush White House -- including Bush and Dick Cheney as well as (White House counsel Alberto) Gonzales -- that whenever the president invokes national security, he enjoys near-dictatorial powers and is quite literally above the law." Taylor's conclusion should give chills to anyone who hasn't been numbed by the soothing prattle of corporate media or the complacent view that it won't matter much whether Bush gets four more years in the White House: "These perversions of the law would allow Bush to seize, imprison, and torture anyone in the world, at any time, for any reason that he associates with national security. Little did the Framers suspect that their Constitution would be twisted by a president to claim powers more appropriate to Roman emperors, Russian czars, and King George III." . . . Anyone who was paying close attention to the actions of the Ashcroft Justice Department in the wake of 9/11 has seen that elements of fascism can be implemented in the USA, particularly in times of crisis. The assumption that it can't happen here makes more likely the possibility that it will." (7/6)
S. Rowan Wolf, Ph.D: Creeping fascism, Online Journal, June 19, 2004
"There is a pervasive belief in the U.S. that what happened in Nazi Germany could never happen here. The belief goes beyond the Holocaust, to the transformation of a democracy into a fascist state; to the transformation of protection of individual freedoms into a police state with massive surveillance. Yet it is happening, and the people submit. Even as voices rise, most still feel that much of the actions of the last three years were necessary... So why does this tactic of framing the leader as a father and protector of the "real" national values work? It works because it plays upon the racism and ethnocentrism embedded in the culture. This is particularly true in the US which styled itself for so long as the true white democracy—reserving rights of citizenship and social participation for "whites." This creates (still) a sense of entitlement and protection. The tactics of fear work within this rubric of entitlement and protection because whites are being protected from "them." Included in them are those "traitors" who challenge the system and who challenge the entitlements (the perpetual enemy within). The dreams of grandeur work because the embeddedness of entitlement, purity, morality and "rightness" embedded in the nationalism it creates leads naturally to a belief in national entitlement and right within the world. The world is rightly 'ours' and all that is in it is 'ours.'" (7/3)
David Sarasohn: Putting hoods on the heads of Congress, The Oregonian, June 12, 2004
" 'In light of the President's complete authority over conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the President's ultimate authority in these areas,' says the memo, prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by a working group appointed by the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II. . . . "In wartime, it is for the President alone to decide what method to use to best proceed against the enemy." . . . The word that the president of the United States can't be bound by any treaties or laws against torture -- even signed by the president -- is not going to help our international reputation, already at Death Valley levels. But the claim that there's nothing Congress can do about it suggests that we're all living in a different country." (6/29)
Randolph T. Holhut: How dictatorships are born: Bush thinks he's above the law, The Smirking Chimp, June 17, 2004
"Now that the orgy of Reagan worship is over, we can turn our attention to other matters, such as how many members of the Bush administration will be facing war crimes charges. Hyperbole? Not when you look all the material that's come out over the past few weeks showing how the Bush administration actively looked for ways to circumvent international law when it came to the detention and treatment of prisoners in its "war on terror." . . . Not only did President Bush's legal staff conclude that the Geneva Conventions against torture didn't need to be adhered to by the president, they also concluded that anyone working for the U.S. government who tortured prisoners at the president's direction were immune from prosecution by the Justice Department. . . . The president is above the law, as are Attorney General Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. They are permitted to set up their own set of laws, the Constitution be damned. This is how dictatorships are born." (6/23)
Andrew Greeley: Is U.S. like Germany of the '30s?, Chicago Sun-Times, June 11, 2004
"Can this model be useful to understand how contemporary America is engaged in a criminally unjust war that has turned much of the world against it, a war in which torture and murder have become routine? Has the combination of the World Trade Center attack and a president who believes his instructions come from God unleashed the dark side of the American heritage? What is this dark side? I would suggest that it is the mix of Calvinist religious righteousness and "my-country-right-or-wrong" patriotism that dominated our treatment of blacks and American Indians for most of the country's history. It revealed itself in the American history of imperialism in Mexico and after the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. The "manifest destiny" of America was to do whatever it wanted to do, because it was strong and virtuous and chosen by God. Today many Americans celebrate a "strong" leader who, like Woodrow Wilson, never wavers, never apologizes, never admits a mistake, never changes his mind, a leader with a firm "Christian" faith in his own righteousness. These Americans are delighted that he ignores the rest of the world and punishes the World Trade Center terrorism in Iraq. Mr. Bush is our kind of guy. He is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism. They have in common a demagogic appeal to the worst side of a country's heritage in a crisis." (6/15)
John S. Ashton: Go ahead, try and tell me they are not the Nazis, Moderate Independent, May 30, 2004
"Deem whoever you want a terrorist and round them up. Lock them up without having to prove they even did anything for as long as you feel like without letting them talk to a lawyer or even their own family. Send them off to camps. And then, forget even the most basic human rights and morality and flat-out torture these "suspects." The Bush/Limbaughians have spoken. According to a just released ABC News poll, "most Republicans, 55 percent, say physical abuse is acceptable ..." And this number is not just Bush-brand Republicans but all Republicans, including moderates. When you just pull out the pro-war Bushies, it gets even better." (See also: Harley Sorensen: Are Parallels to Nazi Germany Crazy? and Reader Submission: The Bush Hitler Thing). (6/1)
Chris Rowthorn: Democracy in the United States is clinging by its fingernails, The Smirking Chimp, May 24, 2004
"Imagine for one moment what is becoming an increasingly likely scenario in the United States: another large-scale terrorist attack somewhere on American soil. This might be a dirty bomb in New York City, a bio-terror attack in Washington, or a thermonuclear device in either of these two cities. What would the Bush administration do in the face of such an attack? First, the Bush administration would ram the Patriot Act II through Congress. This, in and of itself, would basically spell the end of American democracy. The Patriot Act II contains all the provisions necessary to turn America from a relatively free democracy into a Soviet-style totalitarian state. Most importantly, it would allow the government to declare anyone it wished to be `an enemy combatant’ and strip them of their rights as a citizen. It also contains provisions that would effectively repeal the fourth amendment (the freedom from unreasonable searches) and the fifth amendment (the right to a grand jury and the freedom from testifying against oneself). But passing the Patriot Act II would only be the start." (6/1)
Matthew Fox: Mel Gibson's Passion and Fascism's Piety of Pain, Matthew Fox.Org, May 2004
"Piety as pain, pain as piety. This movie opens a door on fascist piety which is pain-driven. The piety of fascism is inevitably a piety of pain and suffering (thus the complete fascination with redemption and total refusal to entertain grace and original blessing) and it manifests itself in full bloody form in this movie. Gibson is allegedly a member of Opus Dei, a secretive Catholic sect of wealthy men whose spirituality is deeply fascistic. Its founder, a Spanish priest named Escriva, whom the Pope rushed into canonization two years ago in record time, was a card carrying fascist who actually praised Adolph Hitler and who was also deeply sexist. Two of his Opus Dei members served on Franco's cabinet. The present pope has taken this religious order under his wing (his own press secretary is a member of Opus Dei) and has appointed many Opus Dei bishops and cardinals (especially in Latin America after decimating the liberation theology and base communities there)." (6/1)
Molly Ivins: How Fascism Starts, Working for Change, May 20, 2004
"There is more than sufficient evidence pointing to the culpability of those at the top. But at the same time, the Pentagon is putting out the word that it was 'only a few bad apples,' six low-level soldiers who have already been charged, with no one else involved. This just stinks of cover-up. Damned if I think these six low-level soldiers should be hung out there to take the blame for a set of explicitly written and signed policies made by people wearing expensive suits, getting paid big bucks and bearing some of the highest titles in the land. You can read all the memos and documents for yourself. It's important to know how fascism starts." (See also Mike Hersh's "Bush/Cheney Fascism Failed America"). (5/25)
Brian Cloughley: Where are you heading, America? Counter Punch, May 16, 2004
"The parallels with 1930s Germany are ominous . . . Have you read the USA PATRIOT Act right through, and examined every one of its amendments to existing legislation? Has anyone done this, apart from its authors and a few agitated souls in media, academia and some Congressional offices? It is 342 pages long, and went through the legislative process of the United States like a hot knife through butter. Senators voted 98 to 1 for the Act, and the House endorsed it by 357 to 56, but not one of those who approved its terms could possibly have had time to read it and cross-reference its details before endorsing it. This was governance by misplaced trust, because the Patriot Act is potentially the most dangerous piece of legislation in US history. The Act alters 15 Statutes. The prerogatives, personal authority and dominance of the president of the United States have been extended to include drastic and quasi-imperial powers that threaten the liberties of all Americans." (5/18)
Benita Singh: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies, Yale Daily News, November 6, 2003
How'd we miss this one, a bill that, among other things, limits what one can teach and say about American foreign policy? "Portraying academic institutions, particularly area studies programs, as hotbeds for anti-American sentiment, proponents of the bill proposed the creation of an advisory board that has the final word on curricula taught at Title VI institutions, course materials assigned in class, and even the faculty who are hired in institutions that accept Title VI funding. Using the Solomon Amendment as precedent, the advisory board will also ensure that programs receiving Title VI funding encourage students to enter careers in government, including those related to national-security, by requiring that recruiters from U.S. government agencies be given regular access to students. And just like the unjust and detrimental Solomon Amendment, HR 3077 suppresses the free-speech rights of academic institutions as it threatens to remove Title VI funding from any center that engages in or abets a boycott of national security scholarships." (See also Joel Beinin's "Thought Control for Middle East Studies"). (4/6)
Rev. Rich Lang: George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism, Smirking Chimp, March 8, 2004
"We are not dealing simply with politics when it comes to the Bush administration. The progressive left, which often pays little attention to Christianity, and the moderate middle, which thinks 'these things will balance out,' will be making a huge mistake if they overlook the religious ideology at the core of Mr. Bush personally and the movement he represents. And we are talking about a 'movement' (a movement of 'the people' not just the elites). We are seeing today the emergence of a 'fascist movement'. It is bankrolled and organized by Corporations, and articulated through the ideology of neo-conservatism. But the troops come out of the right wing church. And that church, drawing upon the Holiness/Holy War Biblical narratives of Apocalyptic-Dominionism theology, is growing in this country. This is not a battle between intellectual and institutional elites. It is far more intimate than that. It's a battle in our homes, our families, friendships, neighborhoods and within our faith communities. Let me make a rather audacious prophecy: Whoever controls the interpretation of scripture will control the future of this nation. In other words it's the vision of Pat Robertson or Martin Luther King." (See also Maureen Farrell's "On a Mission from God: The Religious Right and the Emerging American Theocracy" ). (3/10)
Katherine Yurica: New Dominionist Bill Limits the Supreme Court's Jurisdiction: The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004, Yurica Report, February 19, 2004
"Although the claim by its sponsors appears to be that the intention is to prevent the courts from hearing cases involving the Ten Commandments or a Nativity Scene in a public setting from being reviewed, the law is drawn broadly and expressly includes the acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law by an official in his capacity of executing his office. John Giles, Alabama President of Christian Coalition said, 'The greatest unbridled abuse by the federal judiciary for over forty years has been in the area of redefining the acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law... We define this as judicial activism, making law from the bench. These unconstitutional rulings have gone unchecked by other branches of government'." (2/24)
Robert Kuttner: America As a One-Party State, American Prospect, February 1, 2004 issue
"f President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history... We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First, Republican parliamentary gimmickry has emasculated legislative opposition in the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems)... Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split... Third, the federal courts, which have slowed some executive-branch efforts to destroy liberties, will be a complete rubber stamp if the right wins one more presidential election. Taken together, these several forces could well enab (1/19)le the Republicans to become the permanent party of autocratic government for at least a generation." (1/19)
Kurt Nimmo: Bush's police state: Going after the left, not al-Qaeda, Dissident Voice, January 4, 2004
"In an apparently ludicrous turn of events, the FBI warned local law enforcement across the country to be on the lookout for the latest al-Qaeda manual -- the Farmer's Almanac. "The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning," reports the Bush Ministry of Disinformation, Fox News Division. "It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways." ... If the police discover anything "suspicious," they are to report it immediately to their local Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), according to the FBI bulletin released on Christmas Eve. JTTFs are new and relatively unknown. They are essentially the FBI's vanguard -- a crucial and emerging link between the FBI, various federal agencies, state law enforcement, and local police departments ... In other words, the connecting tissue of the evolving surveillance state." (1/6)
Ariel Dorfman: Could It Happen Here?, The Nation, September 30, 2003
"I am not suggesting that the United States and its allies are turning themselves into a gigantic police state such as Chile endured for so many years -- not yet, at least. But that suffering will have been in vain if we do not today in other zones of the world heed the deepest significance of the catastrophe the Chilean people started to live thirty years ago. We also thought, we also shouted, we also assured the planet: It cannot happen here. We also thought, on those not-so-remote streets of Santiago, that we could shut our eyes to the terrors that were awaiting us tomorrow." (See also Andrew Sarchus' "American Fascism"). (1/6)
Andrew Gumbel: U.S. Anti-War Activists Hit by Secret Airport Ban, Independent (U.K.): August 3, 2003
After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports... The ACLU's senior lawyer on the case, Jayashri Srikantiah, said she is troubled by several answers that the TSA gave to her questions. The agency, she said, had no way of making sure that people did not end up on the list simply because of things they had said or organisations they belonged to. Once people were on the list, there was no procedure for trying to get off it. The TSA did not even think it was important to keep track of people singled out in error for a security grilling. According to documents the agency released, it saw 'no pressing need to do so'. It is not just left-wingers who feel unfairly targeted. Right-wing civil libertarians have spoken out against the secret list, and at least one conservative organisation says its members have been interrogated by security staff."(8/14)
KEEPERS
Henry A. Wallace: The Danger of American Fascism, The New York Times (via Truthout), April 9, 1944
What Truman's vice president wrote nearly 60 years ago, about the forces then operating in the United States, has resonances to today's politics" The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism... Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself... They follow power and the dollar wherever they may le... American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery." (8/22)
Bernard: Talking' about the F-Word (Redux), AmericanPolitics.com, June 24, 2002
Dear Readers: This article was first published on the Common Dreams web site in December of 2001, in the wake of 9/11, when the grim outlines of police-state-like tactics were first starting to appear on the American horizon. It might be useful to compare and contrast -- whoops, it turns out there isn't much to contrast -- between then and now. Doing so may help us understand the forces we're facing and how to respond as Bush&Co. continue their move toward a more militarist society. At appropriate points, I've added <[ in double brackets >] some observations from our contemporary situation. Reading the essay this way might serve as a reminder that those of us warning then of the due-process dangers ahead faced epithets like "paranoid" and "conspiracists" -- much like those today who are connecting the dots that take us from Bush&Co.'s pre-9/11 knowledge and the Administration's manipulation of a frightened Congress and citizenry that have followed.
Sheldon S. Wolin: A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy, Newsday: July 18, 2003
"No administration before George W. Bush's ever claimed such sweeping powers for an enterprise as vaguely defined as the 'war against terrorism' and the 'axis of evil.' Nor has one begun to consume such an enormous amount of the nation's resources for a mission whose end would be difficult to recognize even if achieved. Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel. The drive toward total power can take different forms, as Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union suggest. The American system is evolving its own form: 'inverted totalitarianism'. This has no official doctrine of racism or extermination camps but, as described above, it displays similar contempt for restraints... " (7/21)
Sartre: Continuity of Government Commission, ZDNet: July 2, 2003
"The commission is an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Brookings Institution project headquartered at AEI. It is funded by the Carnegie, Hewlett, Packard, and MacArthur foundations. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford are the honorary co-chairs of the commission and Lloyd Cutler and Alan Simpson are the chairmen. The commission includes members who have served in government at the highest levels. Their first report is now available. Here are some of their proposals" -- for how the government could function in the wake of a major terrorist or natural upheaval -- and they'll knock your socks off." (Phyllis Schlaffley: Surprising Assault on Democracy). (7/7)
Paul Krugman: Toward One-Party Rule, New York Times: June 27, 2003
"In 'Welcome to the Machine,' Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation" from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America... Mr. Confessore suggests that we may be heading for a replay of the McKinley era, in which the nation was governed by and for big business. I think he's actually understating his case: like Mr. DeLay, Republican leaders often talk of 'revolution,' and we should take them at their word." (6/30)
Bernard Weiner: Germany in 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism, Liberal Slant: June 9, 2003
In "Defying Hitler," award-winning German author Sebastian Haffner takes us into the beginnings of Hitler's rise to totalitarian power in Germany in 1933, and the lessons we can learn that are staring us right in the face 70 years later. "When Hitler's in-your-face brand of 'beyond' power -- with its meanness and arrogance and menace, throwing opponents in jail, beating them, even killing them -- met the traditional democratic culture, those on the other end often had no tools at their disposal to combat the new hardball politics: 'It was then that the real mystery of the Hitler phenomenon began to show itself: the strange befuddlement and numbness of his opponents, who could not cope with his behavior and found themselves transfixed by the gaze of the basilisk, unable to see that it was hell personified that challenged them'." (See also, Dave Lindorff: Bush and Hitler ... compare and contrast, Thom Hartmann: When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History and Harley Sorensen: Are Parallels to Nazi Germany Crazy?). (6/23)
Jimmy Breslin: A fate sealed under secrecy, Newsday, June 22, 2003
"On March 1, give or take a day, in Columbus, Ohio, the FBI arrested an American citizen they say is Lyman Faris. There wasn't a word uttered. He vanished. No lawyer was notified. He made no phone calls and wrote no postcards or letters. He was a United States citizen who disappeared without a trace into a secret metal world... This government's kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated the laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and using our new Patriot Act, turns it into Fascism... There is not even the beginnings of anger about an American kidnapped by his government, over freedom being taken from us all, and bet me you won't see it back. The newspeople are comfortable with being known as the "media." That is a dangerous word; all evil rises around those afflicted with it." (6/23)
Laurence W. Britt: Fascism anyone?, Free Inquiry, May 13, 2003
"Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities. Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances." Britt lists fourteen criteria of Fascism. (5/16)
Bev Conover: Aliens in our own land, Online Journal, May 7, 2003
"The United States of America that we thought we knew is gone, finished, kaput and we only have ourselves to blame. Most of our fellow citizens, who continue to mouth platitudes to freedom and democracy, have not yet been bitten by the police state that grows more powerful by the day with the blessings of Republicans and Democrats alike... We no longer have a country that operates on the consent of the governed, if, indeed, we ever did. But we did have the illusion, perhaps foolishly so in the face of the reality that has come to pass. We the people are now superfluous to the decisions made by the ruling elite in Washington, the state houses and city hall." (5/12)
Jonathan Turley: Appetite for Authoritarianism Spawns an American Gulag, Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2003
"Last week, the United States confirmed it is holding children under the age of 16 at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba... The camp's children are among 664 detainees from 42 countries. Some were captured in Afghanistan; others were rounded up elsewhere. Many have been held without trial for more than two years. The Bush administration has argued that these detainees are not "people" under the Constitution but, rather, legal nonentities it may hold, release or even execute at its sole discretion. Recent reports indicate that the Justice Department has no intention of trying the vast majority of these prisoners... The administration has simply decided to hold hundreds of people without trial or judicial review at the president's whim. There is a term for that type of prison: gulag." (5/5)
Elaine Cassel: The Other War: The Bush Administration and the End of Civil Liberties, CounterPunch: April 26, 2003
"What is terrorism? Government agencies and departments use varying standards. But the USA Patriot Act defines terrorism as 'acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of criminal law' that 'appear to be intended to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.' This definition is so broad that practically any act of civil disobedience could be construed to violate the law... And the prohibited activity that lands a group on the government's list need not consist of violent acts directed at people; anything that is intended to destabilize a government or 'influence' its policy by coercion can be termed terrorism. Flooding a congressional office with e-mails critical of government policies, and jamming a server in the process -- is that an act of terror?" (4/28)
Tim Robbins: A Chill Wind is Blowing in This Nation, Transcript of the speech ... to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Common Dreams, April 16, 2003
"We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope - hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism. Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us -- right and left, pro-war and anti-war... Let us try to find our common ground as a nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us -- like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball." (4/18)
Thom Hartmann: The real war - on American democracy, Smirking Chimp, April 12, 2003
"For example, Americans wonder why the Bush administration seems so intent on crippling local, state, and federal governments by starving them of funds and creating huge federal debt that our children will have to repay... Juicy deals for Bush administration insiders are just a by-product of the real and deeper war against democracy. The neoconservatives are perfectly happy for us to think they're just opportunists skirting the edges of legality and morality, but this is far more dangerous than simple government corruption... What we are seeing now in the neoconservative agenda is nothing less than an attempt to overthrow republican democracy and replace it with a worldwide feudal state." (4/14)
Carla Binion: A whiff of fascism, Smirking Chimp, April 7, 2003
"During election 2000, Bush paid campaign operatives posing as ordinary voters shoved people and banged on doors at the Miami-Dade canvassing offices in an effort to stop the Florida vote count. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said he detected "a whiff of fascism" in their tactics... Traits of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism, belligerent militarism, meshing of big business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy, subversion of democracy and human rights, disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight corporate/government control of the press. Today all of those conditions exist in our country to a degree." (4/11)
Richard L. Clinton: It can't happen here - or can it?. The Oregonian,
April 9, 2003
"Two old friends of mine -- a Jewish couple in their 80s, both retired university professors who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and eventually became U.S. citizens -- made a stunning remark to me a few months ago: 'You know, all our lives we have blamed our parents and our parents' generation for allowing Hitler to gain control. Now we're beginning to see how powerless they must have felt to stop what was happening all around them.'" (4/11)
Ernest Partridge, Despotism by Accident, The Online Gadfly, September, 2002
For a half century civilized people have asked, "how could the Germans, the most cultured and educated nation in Europe, have allowed themselves to sink into barbarism?" For an answer, just look about as what was once unthinkable, becomes ""thinkable,"" then possible, and eventually inevitable. This is how democracy ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
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