Fascism Is Creepy

[Joanne98]

For nearly eight years, I’ve tried without success to describe the radical shift that has taken place in our government.

Each time I’ve approached the task, I’ve had to throw up my hands in frustration because the only model that makes sense to me is the one called fascism.

But that word doesn’t go over too well in polite conversation. It evokes horrors too horrible to imagine. The reality, however, is that fascism isn’t just about jackbooted thugs and state-sponsored industry built on slavery and death to one’s enemies.

The danger of fascism is its seemingly benign mechanisms of control - fear, conformity, the state’s intermingling with religion and corporate enterprise - for keeping a populace in check, for making its people feel content with the way things are and never quick to protest occasional violations of human rights and infringements on their or another’s liberties.

The danger of fascism is its seemingly magical ability - through brilliant propaganda outlets like Fox News - to keep a people resigned to whatever the government does in their name, making them feel secure through its adventures in endless wars and policing the globe and the homeland.

The other great thing about fascism is its capacity for supporting, even indulging, denial on the most massive scale: “We don’t torture. …You can trust us. …If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about….”

Our phones are tapped, elections rigged, bogus wars planned and executed, real and imagined enemies created, and police acquire more powers to intimidate and harass while more rights are taken away from citizens.

Churches pray for the end of the world and offer their children as sacrifices for the war machine, and collude with the government colluding with the corporations and financial institutions - promising blood, anything, for National Security.

Soon, we who protest have been silenced, or marginalized. The Supreme Leader has the right to put anyone he considers a threat - U.S. citizens included - into prison indefinitely, without access to an attorney, or the right to confront his accusers, merely by declaring that person an “enemy combatant.”

The whole drama and theater of the fascist play draws its action from the government wedding itself to corporate interests - in the U.S., a nationalist religious fervor is thrown into the mix to make it all palatable.

Eventually, we all do what we are told - or suffer the consequences. The real danger of fascism is its creep factor. It creeps up on us, and before we know it, we’ve become model citizens in the state that runs secret prisons and gulags around the world. We accept, approve and justify state-sponsored kidnapping, torture and preemptive war. Fascism is creepy.

Historically, by the time citizens realize what’s happened to the country they love, it’s too late.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/15/8315/

[GoneOffShore]

1. Fascism is not only creepy - It's here.

And the sooner people wake up and begin to do something about it, the sooner we get this country back.

[Va Lefty]

3. You are right...wish I could recomend a reply for the greatest page!

[liberal4truth]

18. Hate to say it but I dont see a good ending to this. I hope I am wrong.....

but too many Americans think fascists all look and act like a Nazi stormtrooper or a "Darth Vader". Thats why I call the American version "Friendly Fascism" all cloaked up in the flag, mom's apple pie and the whole 9 yards of US patriotism, but fascism nonetheless.

[mnhtnbb]

2. You are not alone in viewing the shift toward fascism that has been happening in the US

since the Reagan era, really.

If you haven't read it, I recommend Naomi Wolf's book, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot" It will send chills up your spine.

This is a perilous time.

[zonmoy]

Earlier than that.

since it probably began when they imported a lot of the cia from the nazis in germany.

[zonmoy]

5. dupe

please delete

[Skittles]

19. OMG THANK YOU

that was a book I had pegged to read some time ago and now that I'm looking for a plane ride book I just could NOT remember what book it was - THAT WAS IT!!! :D

[mnhtnbb]

21. You're welcome. Hope your plane ride is better than my last one

during the American Airlines MD-80 mess. Otherwise, the book may not be long enough!

[angrycarpenter]

4. That is because it creeps

in as a legitimate nationalist movement and waits, patent as death, for an opportunity to seize power. It seems to be a disease that mankind has suffered from since the beginning. As long as people are fearful and ignorant fascism will be with us.

[Voice for Peace]

6. K&R This part was powerful for me:

"Churches pray for the end of the world and offer their children as sacrifices for the war machine, and collude with the government colluding with the corporations and financial institutions - promising blood, anything, for National Security."

I see the times we live in as most everyone under a spell, a kind of fog over the land, where the Great God of Fear rules through the use of cheat, deceit, infecting people with self-doubt and fears of all sizes and shapes. The above quote evokes how real that is: indeed people are sacrificing their children to such a god, and it's no less true than if they were taking them to the top of a mountain and slitting their throats in worship. Oh Great God of Freedom, take my child. Makes me shudder.

[tom_paine]

8. There is a frightening similarity to Nazi Germany you mention there.

"I see the times we live in as most everyone under a spell..."

What can't people be made to do who are "under a spell"? What atrocity is to great to countenance or participate in for such people? What monstrous acts can't be justified by such a people as we?

The truth is, there is no bottom limit. Any "bottom limit" that now constrains the Bushies from doing more direct forms of evil was conferred by Old America (1776-2000) and that nation is dea and gone, along with the Weimar and Roman Republics.

If these trends remain unreversed, in 20 years, most American who were born in freedom to have been old enough to remember what it was will be old or dead. What then? What kind of monsters will we be, collectively THEN?

Stay tuned, because I estimate there is a 98% chance that those of us unlucky enough to live to see it, will be finding out.

Plus, to call it a "spell" is something of an understatement, though it certainly is correctly descriptive. It is a spell produced in the bowels of hell by the finest psychological scientists and honed to a murderous edge by legions of adevrtising and marketing Bushies. It is more powerful than a "spell" (if magic truly existed) utilizing as it's backbone the delivery system of modern media saturation and the psychological principles that state quite clearly that the LARGER the group you are trying to manipulate the LESS the chance of anomalous and unpredictable responses.

Apart, media saturation and this psychological cornerstone of evil dictators everywhere (long before psychology measured it out to twelve decimal places, metaphorically-speaking, dictators understood this instinctively and use crude forms which were prototypes of modern Bushevik propaganda), these are simply two ideas.

Together, they form the basis of the most powerful propaganda machine in human history, the absolute pinnacle (so far) in the Scienec of Lying. What the Bushies have created makes what the Nazis and Soviets have created look the the work of kindergarteners.

And like the Nazis and Soviets, it is almst certain now that there is only one way and one way only to defeat this edifice, now that it has been allowed to metastasize to the "terminal cancer" state of our nation as it did in Germany so long ago.

One way only. But, like the 1930s Germans, we would rather muder another eleven million innocents to top off the million we have so far under our belts, than take this route.

[Voice for Peace]

10. You have me intrigued here, please go on:

"And like the Nazis and Soviets, it is almst certain now that there is only one way and one way only to defeat this edifice, now that it has been allowed to metastasize to the "terminal cancer" state of our nation as it did in Germany so long ago.

One way only. But, like the 1930s Germans, we would rather muder another eleven million innocents to top off the million we have so far under our belts, than take this route."

What route do you mean? (I have my own thoughts on this, but would like to read yours)

[tom_paine]

13. Why, harsh language, of course.

It would be foolish to discuss this on a public message board.

Sorry.

[Voice for Peace]

14. ahhh ok .. gotcha wink wink nudge nudge

[tom_paine]

16. No wink wink, nudge nudge here. I was being straightforward.

We need to use harsh language on them. To stop speaking as if we are afaid of what Bill O'Reilly would say about us.

That is what I said and that is what I meant. Period.

[Voice for Peace]

17. ah ok.. now I get it, except differently

but I don't think harsh language is going to do much except make them laugh at us

[sui generis]

7. don't forget the two biggest elements of fascism:

1. You are either with us or you are the enemy
2. The worst crime of all is defying authority in any capacity

Everything else in fascism evolves from that righeous-mob/obey-the-king mentality.

So I read about Lousiana's capital punishment for rape. I propose capital punishment for bad grammar and halitosis. After all, why stop at feeling righteous about the state murdering people for committing murder when we can also now go after people who fail to attend church regularly, or GASP, those turrible society sucking single parent households.

[liberal4truth]

9. I call it: "Friendly Fascism". It comes with a velvet glove covering an iron fist.

You bet it's scary and the younger generations who don't see it for what it really is.

[Voice for Peace]

11. Ahh, don't we live in interesting times!

But I remain hopeful. There is something even more powerful at play.

[RainDog]

12. agreed

people have to own their govt in a democracy. however, if there is no one who is willing to represent those ppl, you do not have democracy.

I think, at this point, there are enough Americans who are ready to fight back (peacefully) that this time will be pushed back. but we have to make sure it is not only pushed back. the neo-con fascist ideology has to be destroyed as a viable system in the eyes of the public... simply by showing what it really is - this can happen.

If the neocons try to steal the election again this year, I think you will have riots in the streets... ppl cannot afford to live in their own homes, while Halliburton is not accountable for the theft of billions? If pols do not have the saavy to see this, they should get out of the business, because we are going to have to work hard to undo what has been done.

[Voice for Peace]

15. agree with your agreed. too tired to write an intelligent response but yeah.

it's possible. darkness goin down in my lifetime.

[Skittles]

20. they're not EVEN hiding the government/corporation connection

it's freaking BLATANT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16bailout.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

and let us not forget THIS:

[mnhtnbb]

22. The Bushies are loyal to their constituency: the haves and have mores.

That's what it's always been about for these guys and that's how they value government.