Is the USA now a fascist state?
Last edited Thu Apr 24, 2014, 08:54 AM - Edit history (1)
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism as it is the union of state and corporate power" ~ Mussolini
And he invented fascism so he should know. Given that a report a few days ago found that the USA was now an oligarchy and that the FCC yesterday capitulated entirely to the two-tier internet that corporations want, is it now accurate to call the USA a fascist (i.e. corporatist) state?
Remember that tanks in the streets, racism, genocide, etc are not required for a nation to be fascist.
Why or why not?
EDIT: If you can't be bothered to explain why not beyond simple denial, DON'T RESPOND.
= new reply since forum marked as read
that are the problem....sheesh. For crying OUT LOUD! Can we EVER give that a rest. There is ALOT that is wrong....the handful of Blue Dog Dems left is hardly the problem. The Liberal Caucus (the biggest caucus mind you) rules the party in the House AND we have the majority in the Senate.....BUT we have the Supreme Court AND the House Republicans working in tandem at WAR with the American Middle Class....
and YOU find opportunity to punch Democrats because of it
(THAT is the problem)
I dont blame her.
Like I tell everybody, I dont blame a rabid dog for being rabid.
In other words, people like the Koch Bros, Scalia, McConnell, Ryan, Rove, Clarence idiot Thomas, Limbaugh, Hannity, it makes sense they hate America but they do it to make money, they work to destroy the middle class to profit because they know the truth. So blaming them for being horrifically ugly, terrible human beings is a waste of time, they are, they know they are, and that is that.
What I cannot stand for one more god damn minute is the idiot who will RACE to the polls with not enough money in the bank to buy a tank of gas to vote for them because he knows they hate Black people and he hates Black people and they hate Gay people and he hates Gay people so they must be the team for him.
M O R O N S
But when you consider that Idaho has three of them for a population of just over 1.5 million... do you really need to "see" them? Just knowing that they have them is bad enough. And remember, there were several internment camps in the state back in the 40s, at least one has been restored for alleged historic purposes.
Just sayin'
Wow, aren't you sweet.
Glad I don't personally know you.
The Trilateral Commission was founded at the initiative of David Rockefeller in 1973. Its members are drawn from the three components of the world of capitalist democracy: the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Among them are the heads of major corporations and banks, partners in corporate law firms, Senators, Professors of international affairs -- the familiar mix in extra-governmental groupings. Along with the 1940s project of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), directed by a committed "trilateralist" and with numerous links to the Commission, the project constitutes the first major effort at global planning since the War-Peace Studies program of the CFR during World War II.
The new "trilateralism" reflects the realization that the international system now requires "a truly common management," as the Commission reports indicate. The trilateral powers must order their internal relations and face both the Russian bloc, now conceded to be beyond the reach of Grand Area planning, and the Third World.
In this collective management, the United States will continue to play the decisive role. As Kissinger has explained, other powers have only "regional interests" while the United States must be "concerned more with the overall framework of order than with the management of every regional enterprise." If a popular movement in the Arabian peninsula is to be crushed, better to dispatch US-supplied Iranian forces, as in Dhofar. If passage for American nuclear submarines must be guaranteed in Southeast Asian waters, then the task of crushing the independence movement in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor should be entrusted to the Indonesian army rather than an American expeditionary force. The massacre of over 60,000 people in a single year will arouse no irrational passions at home and American resources will not be drained, as in Vietnam. If a Katangese secessionist movement is to be suppressed in Zaire (a movement that may have Angolan support in response to the American-backed intervention in Angola from Zaire, as the former CIA station chief in Angola has recently revealed in his letter of resignation), then the task should be assigned to Moroccan satellites forces and to the French, with the US discreetly in the background. If there is a danger of socialism in southern Europe, the German proconsulate can exercise its "regional interests." But the Board of Directors will sit in Washington....
The Trilateral Commission has issued one major book-length report, namely, The Crisis of Democracy (Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, 1975). Given the intimate connections between the Commission and the Carter Administration, the study is worth careful attention, as an indication of the thinking that may well lie behind its domestic policies, as well as the policies undertaken in other industrial democracies in the coming years.
The Commission's report is concerned with the "governability of the democracies." Its American author, Samuel Huntington, was former chairman of the Department of Government at Harvard, and a government adviser. He is well-known for his ideas on how to destroy the rural revolution in Vietnam. He wrote in Foreign Affairs (1968) that "In an absent-minded way the United States in Vietnam may well have stumbled upon the answer to 'wars of national liberation.'" The answer is "forced-draft urbanization and modernization." Explaining this concept, he observes that if direct application of military force in the countryside "takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city" then the "Maoist-inspired rural revolution may be "undercut by the American-sponsored urban revolution." The Viet Cong, he wrote, is "a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist." Thus "in the immediate future" peace must "be based on accommodation" particularly since the US is unwilling to undertake the "expensive, time consuming and frustrating task" of ensuring that the constituency of the Viet Cong no longer exists (he was wrong about that, as the Nixon-Kissinger programs of rural massacre were to show). "Accommodation" as conceived by Huntington is a process whereby the Viet Cong "degenerate into the protest of a declining rural minority" while the regime imposed by US force maintains power. A year later, when it appeared that "urbanization" by military force was not succeeding and it seemed that the United States might be compelled to enter into negotiations with the NLF [National Liberation Front] (which he recognized to be "the most powerful purely political national organization"
, Huntington, in a paper delivered before the AID-supported Council on Vietnamese Studies which he had headed, proposed various measures of political trickery and manipulation that might be used to achieve the domination of the U.S.-imposed government, though the discussants felt rather pessimistic about the prospects....
In short, Huntington is well-qualified to discourse on the problems of democracy.
The report argues that what is needed in the industrial democracies "is a greater degree of moderation in democracy" to overcome the "excess of democracy" of the past decade. "The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups." This recommendation recalls the analysis of Third World problems put forth by other political thinkers of the same persuasion, for example, Ithiel Pool (then chairman of the Department of Political Science at MIT), who explained some years ago that in Vietnam, the Congo, and the Dominican Republic, "order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism... At least temporarily the maintenance of order requires a lowering of newly acquired aspirations and levels of political activity." The Trilateral recommendations for the capitalist democracies are an application at home of the theories of "order" developed for subject societies of the Third World.
The problems affect all of the trilateral countries, but most significantly, the United States. As Huntington points out, "for a quarter century the United States was the hegemonic power in a system of world order" -- the Grand Area of the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations]. "A decline in the governability of democracy at home means a decline in the influence of democracy abroad." He does not elaborate on what this "influence" has been in practice, but ample testimony can be provided by survivors in Asia and Latin America.
As Huntington observes, "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers," a rare acknowledgement of the realities of political power in the United States. But by the mid-1960s this was no longer possible since "the sources of power in society had diversified tremendously," the "most notable new source of power" being the media. In reality, the national media have been properly subservient to the state propaganda system, a fact on which I have already commented. Huntington's paranoia about the media is, however, widely shared among ideologists who fear a deterioration of American global hegemony and an end to the submissiveness of the domestic population.
A second threat to the governability of democracy is posed by the "previously passive or unorganized groups in the population," such as "blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women -- all of whom became organized and mobilized in new ways to achieve what they considered to be their appropriate share of the action and of the rewards." The threat derives from the principle, already noted, that "some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups" is a prerequisite for democracy. Anyone with the slightest understanding of American society can supply a hidden premise: the "Wall Street lawyers and bankers" (and their cohorts) do not intend to exercise "more self-restraint." We may conclude that the "greater degree of moderation in democracy" will have to be practiced by the "newly mobilized strata."
Huntington's perception of the "concerned efforts" of these strata "establish their claims" and the "control over... institutions" that resulted is no less exaggerated than his fantasies about the media. In fact, the Wall Street lawyers, bankers, etc., are no less in control of the government than in the Truman period, as a look at the new Administration or its predecessors reveals. But one must understand the curious notion of "democratic participation" that animates the Trilateral Commission study. Its vision of "democracy" is reminiscent of the feudal system. On the one hand, we have the King and Princes (the government). On the other, the commoners. The commoners may petition and the nobility must respond to maintain order. There must however be a proper "balance between power and liberty, authority and democracy, government and society." "Excess swings may produce either too much government or too little authority." In the 1960s, Huntington maintains, the balance shifted too far to society and against government. "Democracy will have a longer life if it has a more balanced existence," that is, if the peasants cease their clamor. Real participation of "society" in government is nowhere discussed, nor can there be any question of democratic control of the basic economic institutions that determine the character of social life while dominating the state as well, by virtue of their overwhelming power. Once again, human rights do not exist in this domain.
The report does briefly discuss "proposals for industrial democracy modeled on patterns of political democracy," but only to dismiss them. These ideas are seen as "running against the industrial culture and the constraints of business organization." Such a device as German co-determination would "raise impossible problems in many Western democracies, either because leftist trade unionists would oppose it and utilize it without becoming any more moderate, or because employers would manage to defeat its purposes." In fact, steps towards worker participation in management going well beyond the German system are being discussed and in part implemented in Western Europe, though they fall far short of true industrial democracy and self-management in the sense advocated by the libertarian left. They have evoked much concern in business circles in Europe and particularly in the United States, which has so far been isolated from these currents, since American multinational enterprises will be affected. But these developments are anathema to the trilateralist study.
Still another threat to democracy in the eyes of the Commission study is posed by "the intellectuals and related groups who assert their disgust with the corruption, materialism, and inefficiency of democracy and with the subservience of democratic government to 'monopoly capitalism'" (the latter phrase is in quotes since it is regarded as improper to use an accurate descriptive term to refer to the existing social and economic system; this avoidance of the taboo term is in conformity with the dictates of the state religion, which scorns and fears any such sacrilege).
Intellectuals come in two varieties, according to the trilateral analysis. The "technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals" are to be admired for their unquestioning obedience to power and their services in social management, while the "value-oriented intellectuals" must be despised and feared for the serious challenge they pose to democratic government, by "unmasking and delegitimatization of established institutions."
The authors do not claim that what the value-oriented intellectuals write and say is false. Such categories as "truth" and "honesty" do not fall within the province of the apparatchiks. The point is that their work of "unmasking and delegitimatization" is a threat to democracy when popular participation in politics is causing "a breakdown of traditional means of social control." They "challenge the existing structures of authority" and even the effectiveness of "those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young." Along with "privatistic youth" who challenge the work ethic in its traditional form, they endanger democracy, whether or not their critique is well-founded. No student of modern history will fail to recognize this voice.
What must be done to counter the media and the intellectuals, who, by exposing some ugly facts, contribute to the dangerous "shift in the institutional balance between government and opposition"? How do we control the "more politically active citizenry" who convert democratic politics into "more an arena for the assertion of conflicting interests than a process for the building of common purposes"? How do we return to the good old days when "Truman, Acheson, Forrestal, Marshall, Harriman, and Lovett" could unite on a policy of global intervention and domestic militarism as our "common purpose," with no interference from the undisciplined rabble?
The crucial task is "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions, and to grapple with the immediate economic challenges." The demands on government must be reduced and we must "restore a more equitable relationship between government authority and popular control." The press must be reined. If the media do not enforce "standards of professionalism," then "the alternative could well be regulation by the government" -- a distinction without a difference, since the policy-oriented and technocratic intellectuals, the commissars themselves, are the ones who will fix these standards and determine how well they are respected. Higher education should be related "to economic and political goals," and if it is offered to the masses, "a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of those who receive a college education." No challenge to capitalist institutions can be considered, but measures should be taken to improve working conditions and work organization so that workers will not resort to "irresponsible blackmailing tactics." In general, the prerogatives of the nobility must be restored and the peasants reduced to the apathy that becomes them.
This is the ideology of the liberal wing of the state capitalist ruling elite, and, it is reasonable to assume, its members who now staff the national executive in the United States....
http://www.chomsky.info/books/priorities01.htm
How much of this have come to pass?
Last edited Thu Apr 24, 2014, 09:06 AM - Edit history (1)
Well, I don't use flyers and political buttons. I start by asking how they're doing and then listening.
Now, once in a Blue Moon, I've been known to hijack a thread....
On Edit:
Its not walking up to a stranger and starting. You develop a sense for when it's right. Did a lot of hitchhiking when I was a kid.
On edit: If you see that in yourself, I'll bet you're reaching inside for change...
been there. Looking back, sometimes my fault, sometimes not.
Every time it seemed like a permanent state. False hope galore, etc. etc.
Each time, as they say, giving way to more fruitful years.
May you be as lucky. 
it would be nice if we got a poll too
We don't neatly fit certain specific textbook definitions, I'm sure, and there will be plenty of people who try to compare the US to prior states now acknowledged as being fascist, and saying 'we don't do/have x, y, z, so therefore we are not fascist.'
Nonetheless, the corporate influence and control of much of our crop of elected officials is enormous and continues to grow with every pro-corporate SCOTUS decision, every piece of ALEC-written legislation that spreads from state to state. Our tax code is extremely tilted to favour corporations and stockholders.
Even our governmental intelligence agencies have been shown to be spying in part for commercial purposes.
History does not repeat, it rhymes.
So yes, the US has many fascist elements embedded in our current political machinery.
I do know that the U.S. government is corrupt to the core. (local to national)
I do know that the law of the land only applies to some. (If you start a war based on false intelligence, torture, or crash the global economy because of shady practices you are home free)
I do know that Wall Street controls our government. (corporations and banks are writing our laws)
I do know police brutality is rarely addressed.
I do know our prison system is a system of vengeance and many people who are not guilty of anything are caught in its web.
Our Supreme Court is so out of touch it's as if they do not even live in this country. (we have choices for our internet and cable needs) 
I do know that monopolies have been embraced by our governments inactions.
I do know that our military budget is bleeding our social services safety net dry.
I do know that tax cuts for the elites and for corporations has created income inequality on a mass scale.
I do know our public education is under attack.
I do know the rights of women are under attack.
I do know that the Christian religion is trying to force its way into our lawmaking.
No. Unfortunately, I'm a pessimist on this subject.
