Time to post again the 14 defining characteristics of fascism.

[woo me with science]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002792903 (also searchable online)

Dr. Lawrence Britt examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to all:

The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

[newfie11]

1. We seem to fit some, if not all, of those here in America

[edhopper]

3. The GOP

fit ALL of them.

[woo me with science]

8. Corporate Dems are complicit in all of them, too.

Religion, sexism, and other issues within which bones can be thrown to the people without threatening the bank accounts of plutocrats are exploited by corporatists in both parties to divide us and sustain the illusion that we still have real choices in our elections. But no matter which party is elected, we get the same economic predation, warmongering, and police state. The merger of state and corporation is always the ultimate goal, and smashing all opposition to that. Corporate Democrats are growing the fascist state and the police state just as surely as Republicans are.

[newfie11]

25. +1. Nt

[840high]

33. +2

[RufusTFirefly]

41. Absolutely!! This is not another excuse for partisanship. It's a deeply systemic problem. n/t

[daleanime]

44. Hell yes.....

[Dragonfli]

45. I have to agree, both parties want me to die, and die quickly for the sin of becoming too ill.

Thanks to welfare deform, I do not receive enough to not be homeless soon no matter how humbly I live.
And thanks to the machinations of both parties SS disability has been denied to me repeatedly even though I payed a great deal in for over thirty five years. It is not a question of my being sick, I am on permanent oxygen and being a tradesman, I can no longer work, not enough breath in me to swing a hammer for long for one, and the oxygen being an insurance liability for a contractor for another.

The last Magistrate hired to rationalize why I should receive nothing helpfully suggested that I should just work in an office, like being in my fifties with all of my experience related to home restoration and building things will get me such a job with kids working them for free on internships.

They all suck unless you are wealthy. And they certainly want me to die.

I hate the Fascist state and the way it killed the country I once loved.

[woo me with science]

95. You speak for millions,

Thank you.

(((((((((Dragonfli)))))))

[delete_bush]

97. One would think,

especially since you've apparently posted this "list" in the past, that you would have enough integrity to NOT refer to Laurence Britt, a businessman without any academic credentials in the subject, as "Dr. Lawrence Britt".

Why, knowing such, do you continue this fraud?

It's not a difficult question. Your response?

[woo me with science]

98. Are you lost? nt

[delete_bush]

99. Brilliant response.

Not unexpected, of course.

Why not answer the question? Too tough for you?

[Scuba]

67. + another

[JaneyVee]

54. Yup, basically the Republican party platform.

[BlueStreak]

2. 4. Supremacy of the military

This is the one we really need to look at. Long ago, the FBI was separated from the CIA/NSA/et al with the idea that only the FBI would deal with things inside our borders. Obviously the system is working very hard every day to break down any lines of separation.

The Guard and Reserve were set up as a way to use state militias to supplement the national army in times of emergency. But it often works the other way with the Guard personnel being put against our own citizens.

And the final frontier is ever local police force across the land being militarized.

If we don't reverse these trends, soon al of these forces will be totally indistinguishable. They are already practically accountable to nobody.

[Ed Suspicious]

16. That was one of the main stated goals of the national security apparatus post 9/11 . . .

the break down the walls between the federal security organizations. It never really made sense to me the need for this streamlining given that the president had the intel that attacks were quite imminent. I guess I might be starting to see why this was sold as so ultimately important.

[truedelphi]

56. I wrote one of the first published timelines

of the Nine Eleven events.

To research this article, I called NORAD. Extremely polite group of folks handled my request for information, and they scheduled their spokesperson to allow me an interview, some 72 hours down the road.

In the meantime, I made extensive use of the internet.

(This was December 2001-January 2002 time period.)

On the CIA's official website, not a site with someone commenting on the CIA, but their official website, they had a group of sub-pages beneath their main page.

On one of these sub-pages was the remark that one of the current top priorities of the CIA was trying to figure out how to get American military personnel to turn on American citizens. That bit of text had been posted to that sub-page sometime in Spring of 2001.

i think that one of the goals attempted by PNAC crowd and the CIA was that they thought by having American service people go through two to six tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan that those people would be so shattered as human beings that they could be employed to turn on us civilians. Now some of these people are actually some of the hard line, ass hole police types we keep encountering in American life. However, most to the people who served multiple tours of duty are so over the top PTSD-ed and so injured from various tragedies, including surviving IED attacks, that the PNAC solution turned out to leave them with their original problem intact.

[Ed Suspicious]

61. Seriously? Good God.

[woo me with science]

83. On the website?!

What the hell?

I don't doubt that has been a goal...but on the website?!

[truedelphi]

85. I know, I know.

It sounds preposterous, but there it was.

[Octafish]

4. 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Since the repeal of Glass-Steagal, UBS has specialized in all kinds of Buy-Partisan Wealth Management:

http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

[Enthusiast]

19. +1 an entire shit load.

[Nye Bevan]

5. Not this nonsense again.

Hint: if you can post openly and freely on a public internet message board to debate whether or not you are living under "fascism", you are not. And yeah, I know, this is only the "very early stages" of the upcoming fascistic regime which DUers have been predicting for oh, about 14 years.

[nxylas]

11. That's a great argument, as long as you don't think about it

Look, I have my problems with Mr (not Dr, whatever the OP says) Britt's definition of fascism. Given the timing of its publication, it's hard to altogether escape the conclusion that it started from the premise that "Bush is a fascist" and worked backwards from there. But this objection is just stupid. Do you think that people in Mussolini's Italy were imprisoned for saying that they lived under fascism?

[Jakes Progress]

34. Why think? It just hurts

and leads to conclusions that must not be faced.

Easier to just be a reasonable woodchuck and have your thoughts handed to you.

[woo me with science]

14. Someone tried this sad line of argument

on another thread yesterday. The results were quite embarrassing for the attempt. I recommend that everyone read all replies to Response #1 to share in the appreciation of how absurd and offensive this line of argument really is.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025378446
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025378446#post1

[Enthusiast]

22. +1

[Zorra]

23. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Resistance is futile"

Thanks for the OP's, woo.

[littlemissmartypants]

57. Where did you find this picture of

NC Gov. Pat McCrory and his buddy Thom Tillis? Pray tell?

~ Lmsp

[Zorra]

73. That's the infamous Chuckles, the Sensible Woodchuck.

Created by most awesome political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow to caricature the spew of MSM conventional wisdom spewed by Third Way Democrats and other conservatives.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

51. I think that's the center square on 'why American isn't a fascist state' bingo.

It's certainly the silly argument I see most often.

Along with things like 'Well, we don't match (Nazi Germany/Italy/other named fascist state) in (insert specific nitpicky way)!'

Not only could it happen here, it's been happening ever more steadily here for 40 years. Slow cook the frog, and it will die having sat around proclaiming the entire time that it's nonsense to suggest that it's being boiled.

[woo me with science]

81. +1 It also helps not to keep records.

Post by RockaFowler:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025429276
"What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings"
http://gawker.com/what-ive-learned-from-two-years-collecting-data-on-poli-1625472836/+kylenw

The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government—not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force—wants you to know how many people it kills and why.

It's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence. What evidence? In attempting to collect this information, I was lied to and delayed by the FBI, even when I was only trying to find out the addresses of police departments to make public records requests. The government collects millions of bits of data annually about law enforcement in its Uniform Crime Report, but it doesn't collect information about the most consequential act a law enforcer can do.

I've been lied to and delayed by state, county and local law enforcement agencies—almost every time. They've blatantly broken public records laws, and then thumbed their authoritarian noses at the temerity of a citizen asking for information that might embarrass the agency. And these are the people in charge of enforcing the law.

[TheKentuckian]

17. When your definition is reached it is too late and conditions have been moving closer

and closer with the passage of time.

Hint: being able to complain is not the only indicator nor even necessarily a requirement for an authoritarian government merged with industry. Let them bitch, it promotes the illusion of freedom is not that hard of a concept. Hell, it works way better than the old crackdown, folks like you will help reinforce the illusion as long as folks can complain and you can play voter.

[Enthusiast]

21. +1

[Louisiana1976]

52. +2

[truedelphi]

76. Can we really post openly?

There are at least five things I cannot post about here on DU without threatening my ability to remain a member. And the same topics are verboten on DailyKos as well.

I have lost at least four good friends here for their posting on those topics, and often they made the mistake ONCE!

Sure I can write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, about any or all of those matters, but then I can expect about six replies in the following week to the effect of tinfoil hat "What a weird conspiracy theorist you are."

And it is all a function of time. Once we have gotten to the point that everyone accepts what we can't talk about today, it will be far too late to do a damn thing about those matters.

[hunter]

79. You're free to post openly so long as anything you say is inconsequential.

If you become a real threat to big money and/or the war machine, a threat that can't be dissipated by propaganda, deception, claims of treason, etc., then your situation becomes dicey.

It's a very subtle system escalating from non-coverage or slandering of reputations by corporate mass media, to false flag operations, to harassment, imprisonment and outright assassination.

Many of us are very well-conditioned to such a system by our education and employment system.

Do you avoid rocking the boat at work because you don't want to be let go? Even when your employers are unethical assholes, or worse?

When corporations gets big enough the line between government and business blurs.

It's becomes difficult to tell the pigs from the men.

[woo me with science]

82. Great post.

It's a very subtle system escalating from non-coverage or slandering of reputations by corporate mass media, to false flag operations, to harassment, imprisonment and outright assassination.

And thanks to Edward Snowden, we have more evidence of the system than we ever did before.

[woo me with science]

6. Torturers are patriots,

from the mouth of an American president.

2.... Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

[pampango]

7. Sounds like Russia and the US should be near the top. n/t

[clarice]

9. You are quite few.......

Nationalization of production
Confiscation of firearms
Centralization of power to President/ruler.

[woo me with science]

10. Our President maintains "Kill Lists."

Anyone, including US citizens, can be indefinitely imprisoned or even murdered based on secret determinations.

Even kings did not wield that level of power under the Magna Carta.

[niyad]

58. "you are quite few". . . huh????

[clarice]

70. I meant missing quite a few. nt

[ReRe]

12. K&R

Thanks, woo me.

And a reminder to everyone: History tells a story. And Democracy is a verb.

[TDale313]

13. K&R

[joanbarnes]

15. Check,check and check......

[Enthusiast]

18. K&R! This post deserves hundreds of recommendations!

Wake the fuck up, people!

[Enthusiast]

20. When the "smaller government" meme comes to fruition we will be there.

A small representative government would have no ability to control powerful commercial entities and destructive cronyism. The smaller government meme is but a tool to achieve Fascism.

[RufusTFirefly]

24. Some info on Laurence Britt. He's not a Dr. and never claimed to be.

That said, he spent a lot of time studying the history of fascism. Here is his reply to one of the many sites that re-posted his 14 points. (They originally appeared as an op-ed in the secular humanist magazine, Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, no. 2. That was 2003. I have corrected some minor typographical errors.)

For your information I never made a claim that I was a “Dr.” Someone on the Internet made that ASSUMPTION when they passed on the article. I am a retired businessman with a life long interest in history and current events. I have a personal book collection on these subjects of over 3000 volumes. I’ve contributed chapters to three books, written another, and am working on a second. I’ve written approximately 25 magazine and newspaper articles on political and economic affairs. I spent about 200 hours researching the fascism article building on a lifetime interest in the subject. My novel, “June , 2004″ was written in 1997 and published in 1998. It was a fictional treatment of a future of fascism in America, which has turned out quite predictive of actual events since it was published.Regards, Larry Britt

Source

[JEB]

26. Looks like we are batting 1000 on that list.

What to do?

[WillyT]

27. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

28. Malloy read this on his show....

I recorded the audio, cleaned it up and uploaded it to Ben Burch at White Rose Society who archived it. Then Eric Blumrich at Bushflash used it in a flash video which later landed on Youtube.

Enjoy:

[grahamhgreen]

29. #2 - is this Obama's justification for torture:

“I think it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks like what happened on 9/11.”

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/08/01/obama-condemns-but-also-rationalizes-cia-torture-during-press-conference/

[RufusTFirefly]

30. "Must America Go Fascist?"

"Our conclusion from the available data on basic social trends in the United States is to the effect that the discernible drift is at present in the direction of fascism, although it has not yet accelerated to a speed that suggests inevitability. There exists no adequate organization of anti-fascist forces which would seem to be strong enough to check this drift. The uniqueness of American institutions will not alone prevent a coalescence of forces that may ultimately welcome a fascist attempt to solve the problem of the continuing social crisis; only organization of opposing forces can prevent it. Those who believe that present tendencies will bear watching should not be regarded as conjuring up in imagination a non-existent peril."

--- Matthews, J. B. And R. E. Shallcross. “Must America Go Fascist?” Harper’s Magazine 169 (June 1934), p. 15

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905 (frequently paraphrased and/or misquoted.)

[LittleGirl]

31. Bookmarked

Awesome, thanks for posting.

[geretogo]

32. America is all 14 characteristics . Now how do we go back to being a democratic Republic

short of millions of people in the streets with guns and rope . Voting will not change anything
as we have seen over the last 6 years .

[Louisiana1976]

53. It'll prpbably take more Fergusons to get rid of fascism.

[leftstreet]

35. DURec

[cer7711]

36. I Hope Dr. Britt Credited Umberto Eco: "14 Ways Of Looking At A Blackshirt"

Last edited Thu Aug 21, 2014, 03:00 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

"Ur-Fascism": Essay from Five Moral Pieces; published in the Italian in 1997

[bobthedrummer]

37. K&R n/t

[Octafish]

38. You've been talking about this since DU was new, bobthedrummer.

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x199853

And we've been on to their gangster asses.

[tea and oranges]

39. Number 5

Men are ever so much easier to control when they're given carte blanche to take out their frustrations on women & children.

[happyslug]

40. A simpler definition is better.

Fascism is when a Government promises the working class full employment, in exchange for Corporations getting lower labor costs.

This requires the suppression of labor, suppression of any organization that has other aims (This includes religions, parties, movements etc).

Now, the economic loss of Labor (in exchange for full employment) leads to hardship among the working class as their income declines, and some enemy is needed to justify that decline, which leads to verbal attacks on other nations, they people, other "Groups" (Nazis attacking Communists, Communists under Stalin attacking Fascists etc). One easy way is Nationalism, but other concepts can be used, for example Stalin used Communism.

Yes, I agree with Mussolini, Stalin was greatest Fascist of the 1930s. Under Stalin the bureaucracy he installed to replace the various Bourgeois middle class that formerly ran the businesses they ran under Stalin, became for all practical purposes bourgeois themselves.

Thus almost all of your 14 points are attempts to keep LABOR content while LABOR as a whole loses income share. Thus the better definition is a State Policy that reduced labor costs for business in exchange for full employment.

[delete_bush]

66. Sometimes "simple" is just that.

There are scholars who have spent the better part of their careers addressing the phenomena. They've written books, articles, give lectures, teach, etc. etc. etc.

And yet YOU have somehow managed to distill that which hundreds of thousands of research hours has yet to produce into one simple definition - "Fascism is when a Government promises the working class full employment, in exchange for Corporations getting lower labor costs".

Wow. Just wow.

[happyslug]

69. I stole it from someone else, but it reduces Fascism to its core

Thus, under that definition you can easily include Russia under Stalin, The problems Fascism can NOT address is when their Corporate Masters want to cut wages AND not have full employment. Russia after Stalin was the most successful of these Fascist states in staying in power but did so do to a fear of invasion (Given the German Invasion of 1941, a fear with a good bit of basis). Furthermore, Khrushchev made enough reforms to keep everyone employed till the late 1980s. Russia ended up spending almost 40% of their GDP on the Military, but they kept people employed and feed till the late 1980s when everything fell apart.

You have to understand full employment ends up putting a floor on wages, in full employment situations, workers whose wages are cut, can find other work at their old pay rate so to keep the workers, the employers has to match those wages. In simple terms, no more pay cuts but employment level has to stay the same. Hitler was running into this problem in the late 1930s, and his move was to go to war. By the late 1930s real wages had been cut almost a 1/3 from their height in the 1920s and had hit a level where people were getting restless.

Anyway, this is a problem with Fascism, the inability to adjust to new economics situations. Stable wages leads to a sense of security among Labor and an increase in the demand for higher wages. Low wages encourages outside businesses to open up in the Fascist state, this eases the burden on old businesses to keep workers employed, but also supports a shortage of labor that drives the cost of labor up. Thus Fascism is thus caught in a net, it can NOT permit wages to go up, even if that is what is needed, and it can NOT create excess unemployment to drive wages down, for that would lead to unrest among the working class whose wages would thus be forced down.

Thus Fascism only works for about five to ten years. Mussolini had done it in the 1920s, but by the 1930s Mussolini had to rely on suppression not popular support to stay in power. Stalin used Fascism techniques for about 10 years, starting in the late 1920s, and thus Stalin had to resort to the show trials of the late 1930s to stay in power.

In addition to suppression, wars tend to bring support to any government, thus in the early 1930s it was Italy that was going to war (even sending troops to the Border with Austria in 1934 to prevent the Nazis taking over Austria in 1934, Hitler had to wait till 1936 to do so). Mussolini control of Italy was weak by the 1930s, and thus he was overthrown in 1943 as the Allies invaded Italy but that reflected the decline in power do to the problems inherent in Fascism. Stalin also went to war to help him stay in power, by sending troops to take over Eastern Poland in 1939 and Finland in 1940 to fight Japanese Troops in 1939 and to Invade Western China (Xinjiang/Shinjang) in 1937. Hitler took over the Sudetenland in 1938 and invaded Poland in 1939.

Karl Marx made the comment that any group that is in control of a country will NOT give up that control without a fight. Furthermore to show that the Country should support them, will resort to suppression of the opposition AND foreign wars claimed to be done to protect the people as they lose power. The wars of the various fascist states are best explained by this tendency not in fascism itself. Thus the Wars of Fascism is NOT a characteristics of Fascism but the characteristic of any group in power as it loses control.

The main characteristics of Fascist states are their efforts to keep wages low AND to keep everyone employed. The problem is such a society can NOT handle new technology or a new economic situation. You can not hire people, if everyone is employed unless you offer higher wages. Such higher wages undermine the policy of low wages and thus undermine the Fascist state. When the economy reaches that situation, pressure for wages to go up can NOT be contained by the State and Corporations withdraw support for the state. The Fascist State thus had to go to war to stay in power, for only in war can they justify the suppression needed to keep the opposition out of power. If war is NOT an option, then the Fascist state falls.

Now, many Fascist states face another problem, the opposite side of the same coin, an inability to maintain full employment. Wages can be kept down, but employers refuse to hire OR pay the taxes needed to either draft the unemployed OR give the unemployed some other type of employment. Thus labor ends up in a situation when unemployment is the norm and that breeds unrest. It is this unrest that Fascist Governments were first invented to address, but the method of addressing it requires support from the rich. If the rich do NOT support the concept of full employment of the working class, the Fascist government losses whatever support it has from the people and fails to stop any revolution. This is what happened in Cuba, the Dictator prior to Castro could suppress the people, but he could not give them full employment for the rich of Cuba did not full employment for their workers, excessive numbers of workers kept wages low.

Thus any fascist state has to address either the problems caused by Full Employment (Demand for higher wages) or the problems caused by excessive unemployment (Revolution). To handle the unrest caused these two problems, Fascist states in Latin America basically turn their country over to the moderate left wing opposition starting in the late 1970s. Thus the left wing opposition takes the heat for the needed changes (increase unemployment or reduction in wages). Thus Latin America Dictatorships, created in the 1960s and 1970s, returned to Democratic Rule in the 1980s and 1990s. Argentina tried to do what Mussolini and Hitler did in the 1930s, go to war, but when that failed they had to give up power. Labor tends to be willing to undertake hardship for a left wing government they have a say in, as opposed to a Right Wing Government they have no say in.

Thus the 14 characteristics of a Fascist state reflect what ANY society will do where the powers that be are losing control. That is true of a Communist State, a Democratic State or even local government (look at the situation in Missouri, opting for suppression instead of talking to the protesters).


Side note: Pope Pius IX smuggled in his famous letter denouncing the Nazis as liars for violating the agreement they had signed with Pius IX in the early 1930s. The Nazis tried to prevent that letter from reaching the Catholic Churches but it did reach the churches (Thus the movement within the German Army to overthrow Hitler, through run by Protestants, approached the German Catholic Bishops for support, the Officers knew they needed support of the people to overthrow Hitler and to get that support they needed to communicate with the German People, and the only means to do so was the Catholic Church through its Homilies given in Mass every Sunday. That was the only means of Mass Communications in Germany NOT under the Control of the Nazis).

Prior to the adoption of pulp paper newspapers around 1850, the only truly effective mass communication system that existed was through the Churches. Yes you had newspapers from the 1500s onward, but these were primarily papers for advertising, news were an after thought. Pulp paper was invented in 1801, but did not start to replace Linen Paper till the 1830s. Without pulp paper, newspaper would be to expensive to be printed daily or even weekly basis. Thus prior to about 1850 most people obtained their news from the pulpit. i.e they heard what people considered important during Sunday Mass (or after mass when the members of the congregation talked to each other). Thus prior to about 1850, control of your state church was important if you did a coup. After about 1850, control of the church became less important as newspapers, and after 1920, Radios, and after WWII Television, took over the function of spreading the news. Thus today support of what ever is the State Church is NOT important for most Coups, but control of Newspaper, Radios, Television and now the Internet is important. On the other hand Churches still retain this ABILITY to spread news and thus can still be used to get your message to the people. For this reason, the Nazis forced all the Protestant Churches into one Protestant Church. The Nazis could NOT do that with the Catholic Church, but did reach an agreement with the Vatican, which the Nazis subsequently broke and that break was the subject of Pius IX's letter.

The Conspirators knew they had to get their message tot the German People and part of their plan was to take over the Radio stations. One of the reasons the July 20th plot failed was their failure to get control of ALL of the Radios and to arrest Goebbels and the rest of the head of the ministry of Propaganda (Which today would be called the Ministry of Information). Another part was to get their message to the German people EARLY via the Catholic Church. On the other hand the Catholic Church had to be careful, it could not come out to be Anti-Hitler

The Conspirators to overthrew Hitler tried to get the Catholic German Hierarchy to support them, but the hierarchy had to be careful. Remember the old saying, "Three can keep a Secret, if two of them are dead". You start spreading talk of a coup to far, you destroy the ability to do the coup. Except for one thing, all the Catholic Hierarchy could do would be post coup and thus wanted no knowledge of the actual coup, but the coup plotters knew they had to inform the German People BEFORE the coup why it was necessary. Given the control of the Media by the Nazis, that left the Catholic Church. Thus the one thing the Catholic Church could do pre-coup was to point out the problems with Hitler and the Nazis. The Catholic Church had to do this carefully, they could NOT afford to be suppressed (which the Nazis could do) for if suppressed no message would get out, but the message of opposition had to be told to the people. This required a careful balancing of the statement, strong enough to tell people Hitler must be overthrown, but weak enough that the Nazis do not arrest all the Catholic Priests. The Nazis did not want to increase opposition to Hitler by arresting such Priests, but would do so if the Nazi thought the messages said in mass was increasing opposition. Thus the message had to be carefully preached. This all became moot with the failure of the July 20th plot, but it brings it up the fact that Churches still retain that ability to get news to people.

Even today, the main pillars of African American Communities are their Churches. That the government of Ferguson Missouri are NOT going to those Churches and asking for support tells you something of the situation in that city. During the Martin Luther King riots of 1968, in Pittsburgh, the National Guard lined Fifth Avenue, as it ran from downtown Pittsburgh to the Oakland section of Pittsburgh (Where the Universities are). The Guard had strict orders, no rioters on Fifth Avenue, no rioters in Oakland, no Rioter in Downtown Pittsburgh. As to the Hill District, where the riot was occurring, that was to be isolated AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY LEADERS WERE ASKED TO CALM THE RIOTERS DOWN. This not only included African American Politicians but religious leaders. No one went into the area actually in riot till the people calmed down and the job of calming the people down were their own leaders. This is absent in Ferguson and why the rioting has lasted as long as it has.

[delete_bush]

88. I'm not sure where to begin...

your post, which seems to be original to you, is over 2,000 words. If nothing else, congratulations are in order for your ability to produce such a response. Not sure if I'm impressed, befuddled, or both.

And now, of course, comes the... however, nonetheless, regardless part.

You've merely described the effects of a command vs. market economy, "this is a problem with Fascism, the inability to adjust to new economics situations".

Those who are knowledgeable about the subject consider such a wide range of defining characteristics that what you consider to be so overpowering amounts to little more than a hill of beans. Even giving you the benefit of doubt on the application of your theory to fascism, there are so many other more compelling characteristics of such - whether it be palingenesis, a lineage stretching from the French Revolution to Vichy France, preoccupation with community decline, anti-capitalism as well as anti-communism, a third way, victimhood of the group, national values vs. individualism, the Great Depression, the interbellum, the Treaty of Versailles, ad nauseam - that you haven't a case.

[cantbeserious]

42. No Doubt Any More - Welcome To The New Amerika

eom

[rhett o rick]

43. Recognizing the problem is part of the battle, but it's time we start doing something

about it. I can't believe there isn't anyone that's working on a strategy and tactics to turn this around.

[cer7711]

46. Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren. And You!

[rhett o rick]

47. Naw! The three of us are just full of rhetoric. We need someone seriously looking at a

strategy. For example we need someone like Al Gore to buy a network. Ah shit!

[blkmusclmachine]

48. We see so many of these in America now, especially after 9/11.

Operation Northwoods


U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans included the assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba ... casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

[tritsofme]

91. It appears to me that this list was written with that intention.

[craigmatic]

49. One of the reasons WW2 was so terrible is that it created the illusion that we'd permanently

defeated fascism when in reality we've been working with fascists for decades since and harbor some fascistic tendencies at home.

[cantbeserious]

60. Free Download - It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis - How Fascism Comes To America

http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3659/it-can-t-happen-here

[pampango]

50. And those countries that are high on this list are low on the index of global peace (below):

The US is 101 out of 162. Russia is 152.

Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and some countries in South America and Africa rank very high in terms of the peace index.

http://www.visionofhumanity.org/#/page/indexes/global-peace-index

[Louisiana1976]

55. Excellent post. K&R

[niyad]

59. k and r as often as needed.

[whereisjustice]

62. those are simply reasonable steps for our own safety, remember...

if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.

[calimary]

63. Man, why does this list look so familiar?

Why does this list FEEL so familiar?

[sakabatou]

64. That sounds like some Teabaggers.

[delete_bush]

65. Why are you (and most everyone else)

so enamored of this “list”?

I find it only a tad more compelling than “Seven Things NOT to do on Your First Date!”

Do you not know there is no such person as “Dr. Lawrence Britt”? The author is Laurence Britt, who is a former corporate executive who worked for such companies as Mobil, Xerox, and Allied Chemical, and studied business at Northwestern University. Do you give him the title “Dr.” to add credibility to his list?

Tell me, is this list part of a larger study on the topic? Are there at least “footnotes” to back up his assertions? I would think for one to take this seriously there must be more than just “the list”.

[Progressive dog]

68. ^^Lists are really cool and require no thought.

It is not as if a list of stuff that fascist states did would be hard to compile.

[delete_bush]

89. I’m preparing my own list

of the 7 defining characteristics of those who post lists.

It’s a work in progress, so all suggestions are welcome.

1) Those who post lists need not have any knowledge, nor even care, about the topic of the list.
2) Those who post lists have no responsibility to those who question “the list”. It is best to ignore them and go on to other threads to post more lists.
3) Those who mindlessly respond to lists, without question, are, well….. mindless list responders.

Any suggestions for the next 4 are greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Doctor A. List
Political Scholar

[niyad]

72. can you refute anything on that list--with, as you insist, "footnotes" (why in quotes??)

please show us where this list is wrong.

and yes, there is such a person, who NEVER claimed that he was a doctor, somebody else added that to his name, NOT him.

[delete_bush]

84. I put footnotes in quotes to draw attention to

the fact I believe that if he went to the trouble to compile his list there should be some supporting documentation of the methodology used.

For example, how did he determine which regimes were fascist and why. How is "Obsession with National Security" measured. Sounds very subjective.

There are scholars who have spent a great deal of their careers studying Fascism. They are PhDs who have published numerous books/articles and some teach on the subject. Among the authors I've read are Zeev Sternhell, Robert Paxton, Stanley Payne, Roger Griffin, Roger Eatwell, and others. What's interesting to me is not only how they approach the issue but how they differ in their respective conclusions. Sternhell, for example, doesn't consider Nazi Germany as being fascist (others believe they were, but not as much as the Italian version), and traces the origin to the French Revolution. Some consider it to be an strictly an interwar phenomenon.

Britt's list is a conversation piece without any depth.

[niyad]

90. you did not indicate where you see that the list is wrong, just some vague references

to people I assume we are supposed to regard as experts.

keep trying, I need the laughs.

[delete_bush]

92. “keep trying, I need the laughs”

Right. What’s risible is your obvious lack of intellectual curiosity. Not only are you unfamiliar with those who are universally regarded as being the experts on the subject, you’re not even interested enough to ‘Google’ them – instead you refer to them as “people I assume we are supposed to regard as experts”. And by the way, a “vague reference” occurs when a pronoun refers to a word that is only implied, not stated. I clearly identified those I consider to be experts in the field, there is no “vague reference”.

Fortunately for me, YOU represent the target audience I’m referring to. Your knowledge of F(f)ascism is pedestrian at best. And yet you’re attracted, much like a moth to the flame, to a singular “list”. You care not the qualifications of its composer, only that others deem it worthy. That its author has no academic credentials is of no concern to you – after all, when supplied with another list, one comprised of those who’ve made a career of studying the topic, you can’t be bothered to spend a few precious moments validating such. Why look any further than a former corporate executive who worked for such corporations as Allied Chemical, Mobil and Xerox Corp and studied business at Northwestern University. He’ll do just fine.

But let’s get back to “the list”. Of what use is it? There are 14 characteristics, are they all given the same weight? Is there some sort of scoring system in place where #2 is twice as predictive as say #8? What if I don’t believe that Suharto was a fascist, is there an adjustment that can be made? What exactly is “Rampant Sexism”? Are there certain combinations of characteristics that are more powerful? What about palingenesis, or preoccupation with community decline? Are these not characteristics as well?

[niyad]

94. wow, I guess I really hit a nerve. you have no idea who I am or what I know or believe, but

keep up with the attempted insults.

[delete_bush]

96. You’ve hit nothing so far,

… lack of ammunition.

Read the posts, and if you disagree let me know.
1) YOU responded to my post to the OP
2) I answered back to you in a very civil manner
3) YOUR response? keep trying, I need the laughs

YOU set the tone, not me. Come at me and I hit back twice as hard. If you want a civil conversation then dial it back.

What you “know” for me is only discernible from what you post. My assessment is that you are NOT well read when it comes to the topic (fascism). You’re not aware of those who are prominent in the field, yet you blindly follow one who has no credentials.

Before I put any more time into this, let me know how I’m wrong about the above.

[hifiguy]

71. This can never be posted often enough

K and R!

[brutus cassius]

74. I wouldn't argue with 90% of this.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that "fascism" is just one particular ideological branch of the core philosophy of collectivism; fascism & communism aren't polar opposites on any meaningful spectrum; it's just "right-wing" collectivism as compared to "left-wing" collectivism," & each are much further removed from individualism (individual rights, rule of law, equal justice) than they are from each other.
I'd also keep in mind that the particular face & attitude of fascism can change from it's hold on one society to another; & that change may be marked by more than just cultural distinctions. For one example, that (10) "Labor Power is Suppressed" is not a necessary pre-condition. Indeed, these days labor unions are among the top agitators for (& of course, beneficiaries of) arbitrary state power & interventionism. In the end it doesn't really matter which particular interest groups are the primary supporters & beneficiaries of the fascist state; it could even be the case that outwardly antagonistic & competing interest groups vie for influence & control over state power. What matters is that state power is used in contravention of individual rights, rationalized by a supposed primacy of collective prerogatives or an alleged "social welfare." All that really distinguishes fascism are certain tendencies like nationalism, belligerent militarism, & sometimes an attempt is made to retain a superficial air of de jure private property rights & self-determination in economic affairs, when in fact it's almost always agents & operatives of the bureaucratic state who exercise de facto ownership & control.

[Uncle Joe]

75. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for thread, woo me with science.

[old guy]

77. I have them bookmarked.

I review the list periodically so I won't forget.

[Laffy Kat]

78. Gulp! nt

[raouldukelives]

80. K&R nt

[Initech]

86. Sascha Cohen said it best at the end of "The Dictator":

"Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests. "

[cantbeserious]

87. Nice

eom

[GiveEmEnoughRope]

93. 10 Similarities Between Ultra-Conservative Republicans and Nazis

10 Similarities Between Ultra-Conservative Republicans and Nazis

Posted on 06 March 2009
Columnist – John Sammon

Before the election last November, a Frenchman (immigrant) who was canvassing for Barack Obama saw me in my yard working, and came over to ask me to vote for Obama. We got to talking about France, and I asked him if France had conservatives?

“Oh yes,” he said with a serious expression. “They are called Fascists.”

His candor was refreshing, to say the least. But there are indeed some similarities between the right wing of the GOP, and the most reprehensible regime ever inflicted on mankind, Hitler and his Nazi rat henchmen.

1. The general feeling, whether spoken out right, or kept not-so-subtly-hidden, of being better than others. Nazis, like Republicans, and Republicans, like Nazis, think they’re better. They’re white. They don’t like, not necessarily in this order of dislike, niggers, spics, gooks, zips (Koreans), dinks (Chinese), wops, Jew kikes, Japs, wet-back greasers, camel-jockeys and sand niggers (A-rabs), Frogs, foreigners, immigrants, faggots and butch lesbians, and a host of others. Republicans often talk about (white) Americans as though they’re God’s chosen people, the only people who matter (in the war in Iraq, no mention has ever been made of the number of Iraqis killed because they don’t matter). The Nazis of course called themselves the Master Race.

2. Religious Xenophobia. God is a Republican. The Republicans tie religious belief to their supposed superiority, and to politics and policy-setting. They know God. You don’t. God favors them, not you, if you disagree with them. The German Nazis had belt buckles that read, “Gott Mitt Uns” (God is with us).

3. Patriotism as propaganda. Republicans consistently and improperly display the flag, often from car antennas, to demonstrate their patriotic resolve, when the flag was meant to be displayed properly, only in places where decorum would allow dignity. The flag was not meant to be a feckless political prop to back a right wing world viewpoint. For their part, the German Nazis had rallies with thousands of flags.

4. Love of war. The Republicans used to pride themselves as the party that didn’t start wars, the Democrats did. No more. Today, they never saw a war they didn’t like (they won’t admit it), and view war not as a purely defensive measure as the Founding Fathers intended, but as a useful tool, an instrument of shaping foreign policy. The German Nazis use of war is well known to the world.

5. Love of radio propaganda. Political talk radio is a largely right-wing creation, to counter what conservatives endlessly contend is the liberally biased mainstream media, and has mushroomed across the country, fed by angry white boys who like to listen to it. It is hosted by a host of American Joseph Goebbels (German minister of propaganda) imitators, who dispense false accusations, right-wing claptrap and mocking, thinly-disguised hate for those who disagree with them. Their most recognizable traits are smugness and the school-yard bully mean spirit.

6. The cult of the leader (fuehrer). Democrats may praise the tough pluck of little Harry Truman, or the dignified wisdom of FDR, but mythologizing conservatives as some kind of gods brought down from on-high is a right-wing phenomenon that has recently grown in scope. Current deification efforts include among others, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and the pre-posthumous Rush Limbaugh. The Germans of course had Hitler.

7. Use of diversions. The Germans used the Reichstag fire of 1933 to suspend civil liberties under emergency decree. George W. Bush used 9-11 to invade Iraq under the guise of false weapons of mass destruction, and to re-make the Middle East. He did illegal wire taps of American citizens to make Americans supposedly safer. Both German and American citizens largely accepted these measures with docility and without debate or protest.

8. Use of scapegoats. The Germans called people they didn’t like “sub-humans.” The right-wing Republicans call them “bad Americans.”

9. Contempt for Democracy. Hitler said Democracy was corrupt, soft. Bush said being a dictator would be easier than being president.

10. The blame game, or denial of bad news. Conservatives, in power for eight years, blame Obama for the country’s impending economic collapse. Hitler said his generals let him down.

Copyright 2009 Sammonsays.

[niyad]

100. in reading some of the responses to this list, I am reminded of a quote attributed to voltaire:

"it is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere", and also the "they came for the jews" piece from niemoeller.

[delete_bush]

101. My question to you would be,

to whom are you making reference? It would seem that if you take issue with "some" of the responses - and there are only 100 of them, not too difficult a task - you would be able to identify those with which you disagree and reply with a reasoned response, rather than painting with a brush SO broad one cannot even discern on which side of the ledger you reside.

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers". -Voltaire

[link:|