Fifth Column Movements---Are they coming for the anti-war folks?

[hang a left]

Will it just be those that actively participate in marches and protests? Will they come after anyone who has ever made a comment online or in an email that is against the Iraq war or any other war? Is is just a way to eventually quell anti-war movements? Is it getting scary enough for everyone now?

[cali]

1. No.

This is just fear mongering bullshit. I hate it. I'm not scared. I'll continue to drag my ass to DC for marches, attend my dinky peace and justice group meetings, say what I want on the internet (bush and cheney are criminals who should be impeached) and write LTTE.

In November, we'll vote the bastards out. The pendulum is swinging. Even Diebold tinkering won't be able to change it.

[hang a left]

3. You don't think that the problem is systemic??

You think that if Bushco goes everything will be OK?

[cali]

8. What problem? You mean peace activists

being dragged into detention and beaten? Not happening. Look, lots of problems within our government are systemic, and getting rid of bushco is only a beginning, but what you're talking about isn't close to happening. Mr. Stupidity has pointed out some of the reasons they're not happening, but I'd go further than he does, and suggest it's harder to silence people in this day and age than we credit.

[hang a left]

14. The problem I am referring to is the mad rush toward

totalitarianism. I am not talking about being beaten and detained. I am discussing the possibility of being disappeared. Who is Halliburton building the detention camps for? Is Bushco expecting some kind of uprising that would necessitate camps? Who might they be thinking about rounding up? Iranians? Anti-war activists? Supposed Fifth Column Movements? Who the hell is that?

[cali]

20. Oh for pity's sake

Come back to the present. It's not happening now. Now is what we have to work with. We can change this. We just have to keep on fighting and not be distracted by fear, real or paranoid.

[hang a left]

22. How are "we" going to change this??

Who do you think they are referring to when they discuss "Fifth Column Movements"?

[specimenfred1984]

21. Not Happening??? WTF?

"Hundreds of people wandered into Pershing Park on the morning of Sept. 27—activists looking for a protest, nurses in town for a conference, lawyers headed to work, and a cyclist training for a race. And there was Chief Charles Ramsey with his troops, ready to arrest them all." --- http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/01/17/bosshogt.html

It happens at every D.C. protest and has since chimp stole the 2000 election.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. It hasn't even really started.

1) what antiwar movement?
2) nobody is being arrested.

In terms of (1) yes I realize that there really is an antiwar movement, but it is SO BENEATH THE RADAR to all but the politicized extremes, that it might as well not exist. Cindy is out there screaming and nobody is listening. The media lock down has neutralized the antiwar movement without their having to do much of anything else, which brings me to (2).

Until there is chaos on the order of the events here in this country from about 1968-1972 there will be no need for them to do anything.

[f-bush]

7. Absolutely! I've been saying this for three years

nothing happens til the rich complacent assholes are shook from their happy little world. They a) either have to have their sons and daughters getting shot at or b) have their lives interupted in a significant enough way that it causes discomfort and fear!

[iconoclastNYC]

10. 2,000 arrested at NYC GOP convention alone

"Twenty-three people filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court here, saying New York city officials violated their constitutional rights by orchestrating massive arrests and detentions to sweep up political dissenters during the Republican National Convention in August.

The lawsuit seeks to represent all of the nearly 2,000 people arrested during the convention. Police later lodged charges against the demonstrators that were the equivalent of traffic tickets.

The lawsuit asks that a federal judge issue a permanent ban on mass arrests as a means of crowd control during political demonstrations. Lawyers said police officers denied detainees access to legal representation and medicine, and subjected them to verbal abuse."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5552-2004Nov22.html

[Warren Stupidity]

11. Interesting point.

Indeed I was there and the police presence was, as it has been in DC as well, rather repressive. I'm not claiming that they will not sweep the streets at any given demonstration and pack us all off to jail. I'm simply saying that the OPs post was nonsense: there is no campaign to toss all dissenters into jail. Why would there be? Dissent is nearly invisible. Even when 2,000 people get tossed for no reason in NYC at a peaceful demonstration, it isn't news, it didn't, as far as public awareness is concerned, happen.

The real question in my mind is not 'how scared should we be'? Fuck that, I refuse to play. The real question is 'how can we wake people up'?

[iconoclastNYC]

12. I agree.

But I think it makes sense to think about the worst case scenario.

How many at DU 5 years ago would think it possible that the Bush would threaten only two vetos.

#1 to keep the right to torture
#2 to allow a government with ties to 9/11 to operate our ports.

On the face of it martial law and massive detentions seems far-fetched, but precipitated by a new 9/11 event I think it is completely possible. If they round up the top 25,000 dissenters (including people from the Alex Jones, Jeff Rense far-right) then dissent is over. The rest of the country will be cowed into submission.

And what then?

[hang a left]

13. That is what scares me.

Yesterday I read that tucked into a terrorism bill in 2004 was a new law that would prohibit the public from viewing birth and death certificates.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=534159

There was a lot of speculation on why someone would want to deny access to public records.

[The Blue Flower]

4. Not scared

Just more determined to stop them.

[Sammy Pepys]

5. No

Spinning things into positives has a better chance of return than trying to silence the opposition.

[Bruce McAuley]

6. Yup, they'd turn me in to the sedition police if they could...

I keep my message on local forums strictly to PEACE.
I do not advocate revolution, but I AM firmly against the war(ANY war). I also do whatever I can to show people the hypocrisy of the Bush administration.
That being said, the right wingers on some of the local forums I frequent would turn me into the brown shirts in a trice if there was a "sedition" law in effect.
Keep the message to PEACE as practiced by the Quakers, for example, and they'd have a hard time taking you away.
Just my own opinion, of course!

Bruce

[donkeyotay]

9. We are definitely being dehumanized to incite hatred of us as the enemy

A Fifth Column isn't a full human being, but an enemy. Conveniently, the Right has forgotten that the anti-war movement was RIGHT while they were wrong.

They are saying we are guilty of sedition, of fomenting rebellion against the government. Well, I am doing no such thing. I am a patriot for my country; it's this administration I'm against. Against their warmongering and corruption. My opposition to them is in support of my country. That ain't sedition from my viewpoint.

And I see the Loyalists who support the Republican Party over the rule of law as just as entitled to the term "fifth column" as the anti-war movement - who I again point out - were RIGHT. If the country had listened, think how much better off we'd be.

[Oilwellian]

15. you can bet...

you'll hear a lot of the Iraq war's failures blamed on the Fifth Column. Greenwald wrote an excellent piece on that very issue:

Finally forced to accept the reality of their failure, war proponents have only two choices left: (a) admit their error and accept personal responsibility for their horrendous lack of judgment and foresight, or (b) blame others for their failure while insisting, in the face of a tidal wave of evidence, that they were right all along. Guess which option these Shining Beacons of Personal Responsibility are embracing?

For the entire war, the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. On virtually every matter relating to the war, the Congress deferred to the Bush Administration and “interfered” with nothing the Commander-in-Chief wanted. Bush followers have controlled every aspect of this war from start to finish. If they were looking for someone to blame for its failure, one would think they would look to those who controlled the war top to bottom, back and front. One would be wrong.

The finger-pointing began this weekend when Bill Kristol, unquestionably one of the most influential war proponents most responsible for our invasion, essentially acknowledged that his Iraqi project was failing by blaming the military for failing to fight the war hard enough. Just like the slightly modified Leninists that they are, neoconservatives are blaming the faulty and insufficiently loyal implementation of their theories for this failure while insisting that their theories remain pure and good (“Communism didn’t fail because it’s a wrong theory, but because it was poorly implemented by Stalin”).

In fairness to Kristol, he has been blaming Rumsfeld and the military for a couple of years now for the failure of the war. But that’s only because Kristol has long recognized that the war was failing, and got an early jump on his campaign to ensure that he is not stuck with the blame. The consequences which will be unleashed by a failed war effort in Iraq are astronomical. This war failure is killing George Bush’s presidency, and someone is going to be saddled with an extreme amount of blame and guilt over what has occurred.

What we see now are the rats on the sinking ship scrambling around desperately to point fingers in order to ensure that the blame and the consequences are heaped on someone – anyone – other than them. For Bill Kristol to go on national television and blame the Bush Administration and our country’s military for the failure of his war is an act that is as despicable as it is revealing of the true magnitude of the desperation of the war proponents.

And then we have those self-defenders who will sink a level lower than even the level to which Kristol descended by seeking to blame war opponents for the war’s failure. At least Kristol had the intellectual honesty and decency to try to shove the blame onto those who actually influenced the prosecution of the war (the Defense Department and the military). These "blame-the-war-opponent" types are actually trying to blame their own failures on people who control nothing and influenced nothing. http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/02/latest-iraqi-war-casualty-conservative.html

It's coming folks...be prepared.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. As soon as you're scared to act or speak out, they win.

The Gestapo, in Germany, was really a very small force, but everyone was terrified of them and acted accordingly. Now, here, we have the NSA wiretapping, the FBI snooping around libraries, and God only knows what other bunches of "just following orders" types threatening us. But, the reaction to the threat is the key. The German people who opposed Hitler were too frightened to speak out or openly oppose the regime in fear of the shadows and their neighbors who "might" be untrustworthy.

It's like our beloved media that's afraid of taking chances because they "might" run into trouble and risk a boycott or lawsuit or an FCC clampdown.

It's silence and fear that will give the fascists complete victory.

[cali]

19. Exactly right

and posts like the OP don't help.

[Joe Fields]

17. It will work this way.....

If you have made only one known and provable comment against the administration, but not directly toward Bush, you get a stern verbal warning from the brownshirts.

If you If you made one known and provable remark against administration policy on the "War on Terror," but not a direct personal condemnation of Bush, you get a written warning.

Three written warnings, and you go to detention "boot camp" for a week. You must then take an oath, placing your left hand on the Carlyle profit and loss statement, with your right hand in the air, swearing to never again utter anything that may help the enemy. Then, and only then will you be released.

But if you continually speak out against the government, and especially toward Bush it is off to camp you go, where you will receive care for the rest of your life. Think of it as a vacation, where you will have round the clock care.

But if you have been involved in protests, and carried any anti-Bush propaganda, then you may as well bend over and kiss your sweet ass goodbye. Off you go to Guantanamo. Or maybe sunny Saudi Arabia. I hear Carlyle has built a lot of "resort hotels" there, with "really personalized service."

[shadowknows69]

18. All I ask

is if they ever take me, someone somewhere make a loud noise about it. I pledge to do the same for any of you. If we have to hang lets have company.