Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By Naomi Wolf, Chelsea Green Publishing. Posted April 28, 2007.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51150/

--SNIP--

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") -- where torture can take place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals." Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer, and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders -- opposition members, labor activists, clergy and journalists -- are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

[baldguy]

1. 8/10

[jgraz]

2. 9/11