Is America A Fascist Nation?

[RFKJrNews]

RISE OF THE FOURTH REICH

As anyone who has ever heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak on the subject of fascism already knows, he says that America is not veering towards becoming a fascist state — he thinks we’re already there, friends.

According to Kennedy, we passed that mile marker a long time ago.

In his 2004 book Crimes Against Nature (soon to be a documentary film), Kennedy strongly implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House picked up more than a few tricks from the Nazis.

“While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business,” he writes. “My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as ‘a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.’ Sound familiar?”

He quotes Hitler’s propaganda chief Herman Goerring: “It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. 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 peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Kennedy then adds: “The White House has clearly grasped the lesson.”

Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini’s insight that “fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

“The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power,” Kennedy told us.

“There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power on American democracy.”

SO AT LEAST SOME OF US SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW…

But how many realize that fascism is hardly new to the United States?

This isn’t something that just suddenly happened over the past 7 years.

In actual fact, the cancer has been growing here since the 1920s, back when Mussolini was still fashionable and Hitler’s brand of socialism looked like a plan that just might work in the USA. Many powerful, influential, and seemingly otherwise intelligent people believed adopting a fascist system here would be the only way to end the Great Depression. After all, it had worked so well in Germany and Italy, hadn’t it?

In the 1930s, the fasces (an ancient Roman symbol adopted by the Nazis at about that same time) started showing up on our money, in our government buildings and public landmarks. (Check out a few comparative photographic examples at the link below.)

Our attitudes towards the Fascists supposedly changed after 1940 - but if that is true, why did we bring over so many of the top German Nazis after the war and protect them from prosecution at the Hague?

Why haven’t the fascist symbols in the halls of Congress and on our currency been removed? It’s only been 67 years since the U.S. entered World War Two; you’d think someone would have gotten around to it by now.

And why the hell is there a building on a US Naval Base shaped like a Swastika?

(SNIP)....

READ THE REST OF THE STORY W/ LINKS< REFERENCES< IMAGES AT:
http://rfkin2008.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/op-ed-is-america-a-fascist-nation/


* Please forward and distribute widely. This is a MAYDAY bulletin, folks!

Time to wake up and smell the gas.

[Double T]

1. YES.

Can't wait to see how the fascist neocons attempt to steal THIS ELECTION.

[mmonk]

2. Yes, by most criteria I'm running into

including subversion of the rule of law by use of law.

[RFKJrNews]

3. Kennedy knows more than a little on that subject

for those who haven't read it already....

"WAS THE 2004 ELECTION STOLEN?"
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

[Echo In Light]

4. Here's a good article: Is America Becoming Fascist?

Is America Becoming Fascist?
by Anis Shivani
04/27/03

Since mainstream left-liberal media do not seriously ask this question, the analysis of what has gone wrong and where we are heading has been mostly off-base. Investigation of the kinds of under-handed, criminal tactics fascist regimes undertake to legitimize their agenda and accelerate the rate of change in their favor is dismissed as indulging in "conspiracy theory." Liberals insist that this regime must be treated under the rules of "politics as usual." Liberals are quick to note certain obvious dissimilarities with previous variants of fascism and say that what is happening in America is not fascist. It took German justice minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin to make the comparison explicit (under present American rules of political discourse, she has been duly sacked from her cabinet post); but at the liberal New York Times or The Nation, American writers dare not speak the truth.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3127.htm

[Echo In Light]

6. And a few others for consideration:

Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America
A Dig led by Stan Goff
Author Stan Goff, a retired 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces, sounds a warning call that many of the historical precursors of fascism—white supremacy, militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization—are ascendant in America today.
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200601003_white_supremacism_sexism_militarism/
========

Fascism: An American reality
By Larry Pinkney

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word fascism as "a philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism." Moreover, and most importantly, it also defines fascism clearly and succinctly as "oppressive or dictatorial control." There are those who will sarcastically say that the political/social situation in and with America is not "that bad," when in fact things are far, far worse.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_962.shtml
========

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Fascism_America.html
========

14 Points of fascism

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm
=======

My fellow Americans, it’s official now: We live in a fascist nation.

Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I’m not using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, 1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as:

Secret prisons – they’re back!
Torture – we’re doing it.
Spying on all citizens.
Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial.
Rampant militarism.
Secret detention.
Enforced disappearance.
Denial and restriction of habeas corpus.
Prolonged incommunicado detention.
Unfair trial procedures.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/callahan/callahan160.html
========

http://www.counterpunch.org/albert08232005.html
========

"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party." ~ The Danger of American Fascism, By Henry A. Wallace
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/082103F.shtml

[RFKJrNews]

7. Very good article

thanks for the link, Echo In Light!

[Echo In Light]

10. No prob :)

[Perry Logan]

5. The years 2000-2006 were definitely a botched fascist takeover. Now we're cleaning up the mess.

[robcon]

8. NO. It's a representative Democracy, and it is working well.

We'll have a Democratic President, House, Senate and Supreme Court appointees next year.

[tkmorris]

9. You can't be helped

[leftchick]

12. no shit

[TheWatcher]

15. With All Due Respect, WAKE UP.

America....

Land Of Confusion, Home Of Superior Indifference.

[cascadiance]

18. Yes the now Korporatist Democratic Party represents corporate "people" well...

So if you consider corporations people, and the only people worth representing, then yes, this is a representative democracy, where the people are defined as corporations.

Pardon me while I don't wish to have a part in such a system!

[RFKJrNews]

19. But I thought we were a representative *Republic*

A democracy is three wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

[Echo In Light]

20. Oligarchy

[BoneDaddy]

11. No but moving in that direction

Look, I know it certainly seems that way but it is not, yet. That is why it is so important for us to act now.

[Echo In Light]

14. The ante is raised incrementally via smoke and mirrors - has been for decades

Relying on propaganda and indoctrination to prevent clear perception of reality. More people are aware and concerned now as many incidents of the last several yrs marks the end of that incremental tip-toe fascism process.

[BoneDaddy]

16. NO doubt

but I still think compared to the historical fascist examples we still have democracy for the most part.

[flashl]

13. YES ...

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Fascist Dictator of Italy

From its inception, America has always been about the investor class and the 'others'.

[malaise]

17. Watch KOs take

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
On FYCA and the telecoms

[SIMPLYB1980]

21. 1/4 of it sadly.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

22. No, of course not, don't be so silly.

Claiming to be living under fascism in America is a gross insult to all the people who really are.

If only all questions were this easy.

[JohnyCanuck]

23. America 2007 is Germany 1930

Article below is by Norman Livergood, a former department head at the US Army War College where he also performed research in areas like brainwashing, propaganda techniques, psychological warfare etc.

America 2007 is Germany 1930

by

Norman Livergood

We who live in the post-World War II period possess an immensely valuable symbol, even if we don't understand it or use it effectively: the example of Nazi Germany.

"The German experiment, except to those who are its victims, is particularly interesting, and, like the offer of a strong man to let himself be vivisected, should make a great contribution to political science. For the Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat."

Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society

SNIP

The 2004 election revealed that many American citizens are as intellectually and morally incompetent as the Germans in 1930. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!

http://www.hermes-press.com/germany1930.htm

Here's another article along similar lines by Livergood:

Brainwashing America

The puppet Bush regime is using new, aggressive forms of brainwashing to change the very way Americans think and feel.

This is the psychological dimension of the demonic cabal's general onslaught against American workers, just as the "war on terrorism" is the military dimension and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich comprise the economic dimension.

We are living under the beginning stages of a military dictatorship in precisely the same way that 1930s Germans suffered under the Nazi regime.

As in the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored propaganda (brainwashing) is a vital part of the Bush regime's strategy.


http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm

[RFKJrNews]

24. those who don't know history

are doomed to repeat it.

America needs a good slap in the face: WAKE THE F*@K UP!

[earth mom]

25. YES, YES, and YES!!!

:grr:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

26. No. We're Not. Saying So Is Embarrassing, Reactionary, And The Product Of Melodrama. That's A Fact

People will always keep popping up with this ridiculous assertion, but to those outside the small ignorant 'the sky is falling' bubble, it looks nothing short of insane ramblings and ridiculousness.

No, we are not a fascist nation.

[RFKJrNews]

27. Tell that to Bob Kennedy Jr.

that is, if you have the courage to say he is embarassing, reactionary, melodramatic, ridiculous, ignorant and insane to his face.

I'll buy tickets for that match. Just let me know when the smackdown is scheduled to take place.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

30. His Claiming We Are A Fascist Nation Is Embarrassing, Reactionary, Melodramatic And Ridiculous.

If I ever met him face to face, I'd have no qualms with saying so.

[Echo In Light]

33. Perhaps some don't understand how elements of both can/do co-exist

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

36. I'm Not Saying There Aren't Any Elements.

I'm also not saying there haven't been any trends towards that direction.

But we aren't even close to being a flat out fascist nation, as the OP puts it. Whenever someone makes a claim that we flat out are, it always comes off as quite embarrassing, irrational, knee jerky and silly to me.

[bryant69]

28. Some people'll believe anything.

Gives 'em something to do, I suppose.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[mrbluto]

29. Why US Naval Base shaped like a Swastika...

So...

Fine to point out the fascist trends. But....

The "US Naval Base shaped like a Swastika" was probably not intended to look like a swastika.

It's just a fairly natural shape for a building to take. It gives four nice courtyards. It's a simple shape.

Thank god the nazis didn't use an "X" or there'd be more gasps as people discovered them. Worse would be "O"s. Perhaps we should generalize a bit more - the nazis used straight lines and right angles in their design - OMG! Maybe we should be offended at every instance of the clearly provocative Nazi-referencing straight lines that are all over our society! Ban right angles!

You know I looked for the fascia symbols and didn't see any, just the lame swastika building. On currency would be a different story.

Very disappointing.

[RFKJrNews]

31. Since when is a swastika a natural shape for a building to take?

Can you show me photos of any other buildings shaped like that in the USA? Why, I had no idea it was so common! you mean to say we have Swastika-shaped buildings everywhere? wow - who knew?

As for the fascia on the currency, pull out some coins and have a look.

Check the image link in the story...you'll find plenty of examples. If you can't see them, might want to get your eyes checked. don't know how more in your face they could possibly be.

So, let me get this straight: do you also deny the Bush family Nazi ties? Are you a Bush fan?

Enjoy your slavery.

[mrbluto]

38. WTF?

So a cross or "X" is a fairly natural shape for a building - two intersecting rectangles. A "T" is isn't much of a stretch either. Both these shapes make for something other than a box. If you take an "X" and bend the ends to form four court yards you wind up with a swastika. It's really not a big stretch to imagine someone innocently designing such a thing - the world is not so symbol laden for some.

When I said I was disappointed about not getting an example of the fascia it was because there were none in the article as seemed to be promised in the post. Besides the fascia was an ax with a bundle of sticks around it to make it come down with a heavy and authoritative "chunk". Why because it was a more warlike precursor to the gavel we're all familiar with. To have a picture of that on buildings or in the currency would be an undeniable authoritarian symbolism.

So suddenly you switch to "You must like Bush, do you deny they worked with Nazis?"

Look, one of my favorite verbal sticks to put in the spokes of militaristic a**holes is the bit about Smedley Butler blowing the whistle on the coup attempt by a bunch of industrialists/bankers (which probably included V. Bush) and going on to write the book "War Is A Racket". Then I ask where's the Smedley for our times - cause we certainly could use one. That usually makes them think.

Anywhere in my post did I even hint at that I was a bush fan?

No. You fantisized it so your more-against-Nazis-than-thou act wasn't so much work.

Lazy thought and a weak argument that assumed the worst on the part of your chosen target.

And then you sign off with "Enjoy your slavery!"

Screw you and whatever you rode in on - you sanctimonious twerp.

Enjoy your ineffectual smugness!

[Occulus]

37. The only way it went unnoticed was through deliberately overlooking the design.

Come on. It would have been self-evident in any overhead architectural drawing or layout. Given when this thing was built, it just is not possible that it went unnoticed by all parties. It's simply unbelievable and unrealistic to say otherwise; the swastika was (and is today) an image that is in most cases burned into people's memories.

"Maybe we should be offended at every instance of the clearly provocative Nazi-referencing straight lines that are all over our society!"

Straight lines? Uh, no. Nobody's going to get upset over a bunch of straight lines because that's just how people build things. However, I see a decided lack, or should I say, complete absence, of any shape used throughout our society that even approaches a swastika. Even crosses are acceptable and all over the place, but add just four straight lines at right angles and all of a sudden, people know exactly what it means and they don't like it one little bit.

Funny how that works. You'd think it was the specific arrangement of those straight lines people would be concerned about, or something.

[mrbluto]

39. Look - sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I think it was probably an innocent mistake in this case. Have you ever looked at a blue print? Thin blue lines, heaps of annotation - easy to loose the forest for the trees.

Speaking of trees I'm assuming you might recall the swastika formed of trees they found in Germany that had been there quite some time. That was certainly deliberate. Theres little natural reason to plant trees of two various species in such a manner.

The other thing is that the Swastika had a meaning before the the Nazis appropriated it that was kind of cool. It was an agricultural symbol if I recall correctly. Going one way it meant "Sowing" the other way meant "Reaping". Casting seeds, scything the grain. The opposite acts were symbolized by the same graphic elements - only in a chiral reverse, a reflective transform. Watching Bush in action actually reminds me a bit of this symbol and that particular detail. For all his rhetoric about compassion and democracy his effort to appear as a "sower" he is really a "reaper", a taker, a divider and authoritarian. He actually is too sloppy to really illustrate the opposition of the forms however. But hopefully you can see what I'm swinging at with the observation.

So, if you really think about that particular symbol you can discover a bit.

Even the problem that the swastika is so sullied is a bit emblematic of what happens when selfish, twisted people with a bit of esoteric knowledge appropriate and misuse a symbol. It winds up that intelligent people can't even discuss or use the symbol without encountering a raft of sh*t for what will probably be a century.

As you might be able to tell by the last paragraph or so I really was curious about the symbols for themselves rather than entering this thread and mentioning them as some crypto-nazi canard.

Cheers!

[warren pease]

32. All the pieces are in place; they just haven't flipped the switch yet...

Naomi Wolf sure thinks so, too.

Thanks to the madness of King George, the snarling cyborg and a compliant congress, we now live in a country that has all the trappings of a national security state. Each of these legal or physical pieces of a totalitarian infrastructure is an important link in the chain. Taken together, and when placed in context of a government completely in thrall to the power and influence of mega-business, what else could it be?

As organizing principles, we now have an unprecedented litany of repressive legislation, executive orders and presidential directives; massive federal invasions of privacy regarding medical and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html?ex=1308715200&en=168d69d26685c26c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">financial records; monitoring US citizens' electronic communications; re-targeting spy satellites for domestic surveillance; the TSA cavity search specialists (for attractive young women only; the rest are presumed to pose no threat to the state); no-fly and terrorist watch lists; Halliburton/KBR's detention camps; RFIDs in all new passports and in the new national ID cards scheduled to be issued this year; new TSA "behavior detection officers" to spot those who don't "look quite right;" all this wonderful new stuff from the DHS; private armies featuring mercenaries from companies like Blackwater and SAIC springing up like mushrooms after a light rain... All that and the Patriot Act, the http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/commissions.html">Military Commissions Act, http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22203res20051206.html">extraordinary rendition (whatever the hell that means) and torture, too. (Note: the torture link is graphic and disgusting.)

Also, see the blockquote in this post, which is a small part of H.R. 1585, the fiscal year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. Note the orders to prepare to use regular troops -- as opposed to the Guard or Reserves -- to respond to "natural disasters and terrorist events." In other words, martial law.

I look at the massive power the executive branch has acquired for itself since 2001 -- with the complete complicity of congress (no matter the majority party), non-stop cheerleading by an uncritical mass media, and the tacit compliance of our brain-damaged debt slave population -- and I can only draw one conclusion: all the pieces are in place to lock down this country like a time vault. They just haven't been placed on full operational status yet. But they could be within days -- maybe a week at most.

Or maybe they never will. Maybe the implied threat is enough, although the overlords have gone through a hell of a lot of trouble to build a continental-sized prison of laws and physical detainment camps that can serve only one purpose. The Cheneys of the world don't strike me as the type to do stuff like this just for fun.

Rather, fun to them is shooting animals and, occasionally, each other. We need a lot more of the latter and far less of the former.


wp

On edit: fixed a broken link

[Echo In Light]

34. Another stellar post, Warren n/t

[Zynx]

35. We've oscillated toward and away from that direction more than once.

I believe the public is in the mood to swing away now.