Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps (Guardian)

[Maeve]

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.

<much more>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. our only hope

is the stupidity of the Bush Administration

[cassiepriam]

3. And their arrogance and greed. If they had been a bit smarter

they would have pulled it off.

Actually I don't count them out yet.
They hold all the cards. :(

[rurallib]

2. I am surprised that "FEMA camps" weren't mentioned in step 2

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8272096722231303649

[ananda]

4. hmm

Stupidity is one of the main ingredients of fascism..
on the part of the people who maintain faith in their
leaders and government even though those leaders
are their worst enemies.

It takes fascistic type parents to make people that
stupid and willing to accept authority.

Fascism in other words isn't just a matter of stupidity
on the part of a leader or his admin... it's endemic
in the society... and has to be rooted out at its
psychological core. That's very hard to do when
children are as mistreated and disrespected as they
are here... there's an -abused child- syndrome at play
and that is a complex of behaviors and assumptions
that give supreme authority to a male and believe in
him no matter what... and there's also a philosophy
of family first, hunkering down to defend it even in
the face of abuse and oppression.

Sue

[snappyturtle]

5. One of the more troubling parts

Part of step #8-Control of the Press:

"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."

We definitely have experienced that the lies don't count other than being pointed out. That recognition of existence is where the lie thing ends. We know that we were lied to e.g. about the start of the Iraq war, election fraud,and today the death of Pat Tilman, and last week the testimony of Gonzales. Instead of consequences for lying we get the muddying of the lies to the point of nauseousness....and slowly the issue is overtaken by another and forgotten.

Thank you Maeve. I will bookmark your post the keep these steps in mind. :scared:

[truedelphi]

6. Both our cable and internet service jammed up for about 15mins

Sunday night

I felt like the cable was deliberately jammed- you would get the picture of whatever channel you clicked on for like a nano-second and then it would flicker to blackness - so the problem was definitely not at the station.

No wind or high temps - that too will bring it down.

I seriously thought - oh my gawd they've pulled the plug.

We complain about the media - and truly it sucks - but it is bettter than no media at all

[robinlynne]

7. excellent, very important article!

[Jcrowley]

8. K&R

[undergroundpanther]

9. "Suddenly very polite"

The media becomes suddenly very polite the article said after journalists are arrested,detained tortured and who knows what else.

I spent 18 months in nearly total isolation,I was let out a half hour 3 times a day to eat and into an"anteroom "connected to the isolation room to shower or hit the toilet under staff supervision.I was not allowed my own clothes but luckily my mom got me a long very full robe that zipped up and covered me I was allowed that.Hospital gowns show everything. I hated those gowns they made me feel humiliated constantly...

Yet I went though all this shit and I did no crime. I was treated like this in a "prestigious" private hospital,for my own good,because society tolerates these abuses if a person is declared"mentally ill" and the people do not have to SEE it and feel the victims pain.Than they won't have to empathize and so they can go on with their lives"untroubled".I lived through this because I was "a ward of the state" declared as such by a judge to get eligible for services, I just wanted out of my abusive home,I had to give up some rights as a citizen to get help how fucked up is that.

Now labeled "mentally ill"I am still in the system on an outpatient level. I was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic I was given huge amounts of powerful drugs for YEARS before I got a new doctor who realized doing the same thing and expecting different results was harming me..

Some of the drugs have fucked up my body.Some of the effects of the damage to my body have lessened others have not. I really have PSTD one of the few diagnosis caused by too much exposure to bullies , authoritarian personalities and socialized(or less than socialized) psychopaths. Bullies and authoritarians in institutions and government want to de-legitimize PSTD and trauma(psychiatric injuries) because it is these toxic people who create the victims that we as a culture controlled by toxic people. Toxic personalities are the very people wish to convince society that victims deserved it, asked for it or created their own suffering are not really in pain,so they do everything they can to convince observers and professionals alike
that people who display symptoms of PSTD are not wounded and have no right to resist'treatment' and feel bad about what happened really..They have no right to disagree with the culturally prevailing worldview that life as it is is OK as it is and government is not tyrannical ,people are all good underneath etc..
(they are called "Sick".)

In the mental hospital some people really do choose jobs like psychiatrist,unit supervisor or orderly precisely because the mental hospital is a totalistic totalitarian environment.A place unlike the rest of the nation where even the most basic human rights and dignities can be suspended in the name of"treatment".A place where people can be made powerless and be abused and there is very little justice for people who are assumed crazy by our culture that stigmatizes us to avoid hearing us. As it knee jerks in favor of denial and discounting our stories.. It is like living in the stanford prison experiment, literally .This abuse occurs IF even a few of the staff are there for their own vile reasons, like, getting off on domination or psychologically abusing vulnerable powerless too trusting people. They create a culture of dysfunction to keep their position of power.I now have a very different attitude twords authoritarians and systems of control,borne out of bad experiences. I hate fascists and bullies and have stopped pitying them or trying to relate to them because when I do I am hurt by them. Sometime you gotta say ENOUGH!NO MORE tolerance for YOU asshole!

I am very wary of"professionals" and certain toxic personalities and I do not value them or what they say or do.Back when I was 16 and I thought abuse was"normal"I tolerated way too much of it..I walked in to the hospital innocent and trusting like a lamb,trusting the staff knew what to do to help me and they would not betray their humanity because it was a "helping" profession.. I came out of that ordeal wise as a viper,aware of the games bullies play and the social dynamics they feed on and create deliberately in people to insulate themselves from accountability for what they say and do,and to dominate. I came out of that 'expensive'hellhole full of righteous anger at the'systems' of control that are corrupted by certain personalities,(and there are many)and an unquenchable hate of dominator's ways as rebellious a wild tiger,and I am confident of my own strength and discernment to know when to spit in the fascist's eye,not afraid to go down defending my pride(non sociopaths,people who do not abuse power) like a lion.And when to acknowledge my mistakes and not back down until I am sure the mistake is my responsibility.I will not be pressured to own something that I did not do.Bullies try that one all the time, they project,lie and manipulate others perceptions to favor their own agendas and sadly people do not see this dynamic,and they go along with abusers so easy if the people who have ethical standards are shunned out of the group and silenced by names like radical or trouble maker.Often the real troublemakers are not the people hurting orr the people pissed off at the way things are,but the popular shallow people, the powerful, the ones who have cool heads during times where everything is chaos,the glib superficial and entertaining social clique 'leaders'..but underneath that nice little mask they are cold,callous parasitic,predatory, and ruthless..and they don't care who gets hurt.

If this attitude of mine about psychopaths ,this anti authoritarianism and freedom loving and community defending habit of mine gets the "authorities" or abusers panties in a twist,when I call abuse what it IS,well I'll just twist the noose around the bullies neck even tighter until they lose that false face.Because it is true some people because of what they are, their personality core in of itself, really do enjoy abusing power and trust,and live to create victims,out of people that are not as cold and ruthless as these bullies are with corruption,injustice, and all the systems distorted to allow abuse. It ranges all over society from homes on your street to the Whitehorse. This dysfunctional social phenomena occurs in any society (Even on DU)and every civilization.A socially sick creep of ever closing cultures that will lead right to fascism and domination by the most ruthless and bulling among us which to me is why a diseased closed relationship,is another kind of abusive relationship held between the people and a government gone evil.The more abuse and tolerance of the intolerable, the kind of ethically questionable morally corrupted stuff in relationships that makes your conscience hurt, the more THAT is normalized in your own mind and tolerated as part of your life the less fascist governments (or institutions or relationships)will look diseased,dangerous and deadly to you when they are coming to take over your life,up close and personal..As people we all need to learn to recognize sociopaths, moral degenerates, ethical wrongdoing and resist the toxic influences of bad people. Especially when you are being manipulated,lied to, abused,corrupted and hurt and told to go along or shut up or you are attacked/socially smeared by the bullies that pretend to be'upstanding' examples others not so sensitized to abusers admire..Listen to those internal "red flags" and the troubling thoughts in your mind during sleepless nights and let nobody tell you your senses about issues of ethics or right and wrong are wrong if you are not a toxic person.

Don't be scared to suspect tyranny from above when everyone else calls you'paranoid' because during the prosperous good times when things seem the safest it tends to dull the person's attention and senses about bad things and the bad times because people who feel positive like the feelings,,and like addicts they resent others who warn about coming bad things during positive times. These sensitized people are seen as wet blankets and they are not taken seriously by most in their feel good haze .This is expressed in the lie first they came for the mentally ill but I was not sick so why should I risk my comforts and joy defend them now? mentality..And until we who are not psychopaths realize we are most vulnerable when things in society are going good, be it a moment when the abuser tries to kiss and make up after a beating in an abusive relationship or an appearance of a 'good' president that helps us all prosper (like clinton),that abuse goes in cycles of good-times and bad wounding(we now have bush a dictator) and some people really are so alien from us they are are so evil they want positions of power and get them just to abuse others and get away with it.We must form clear social BOUNDARIES and enforce them on things like how we treat ourselves, how we let others treat us, and how we treat others.There needs to be limits that will not tolerate abuse or abusive people.We do not need thicker skins if we want to stop fascism.We need to be sensitized enough to be intolerant of the intolerable.We must isolate remove from power,and contain the corrupted personalities in boundaries we enforce upon them,if they keep violating them we do whatever it takes to stop the violations. We as people need to learn to recognize and cease tolerating and enabling the toxic social effects of psychopaths among us and repair the damage upon the way our culture behaves to each other.IF we do not want fascism. We need to defend Orr right to have freedom from abusers and the abuses they do.
Read more..about what we are up against.
http://www.bullyonline.org/
http://ponerology.blogspot.com/

[yurbud]

10. Falsified documents and threats--DU only half acknowledges that

mentioning fake threats get you banished to the tinfoil forum.

[Matilda]

11. They've gone so far to cement their hold on power,

I can't help wondering what will happen before November 2008. It's almost certain at this stage that
the Democrats will take power - if Bushco allow it. It seems a bit incredible, but they've taken so
much power to themselves I can't see them letting go of it easily, and the "national emergency"
scenario could be enacted.

I wonder if the powers in the Democratic Party are thinking along these lines, and preparing for it?
Or will they, like so many, think it's just too fanciful to take seriously?