Author Naomi Klein: America is succumbing to fascism

[Poiuyt]

Author Naomi Klein sits down with Bill Maher to discuss her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

The Shock Doctrine shares a sentiment that, while corporations are engineered to profit off of situations, planned or otherwise, the United States under President Bush has corporations opportunistically poised to collect taxpayer-funded payouts from disasters such as 9/11, Katrina and the Iraq occupation.

Calling it the "mission statement of the Bush administration," Klein says that politicians are seeing themselves as facilitators between disasters and their friends in the private sector. Each time there's a disaster, says Klein, politicians use the "shock" felt by the citizenry to "push through a further privatization agenda" with little opposition.

==

So it's not about the corporations taking advantage; we expect corporations to do that. It's about the politicians who think the government should be an ATM machine and just transfer wealth to their friends in exchange for a deposit in the form of campaign contributions."

"But you're talking about our government and corporations as if they're two different things," quips Maher. "Now, we all know that communism is when the government takes over private business. But, when corporations take over the government, that is what has been defined as fascism.

Do you think that's where we're at?"

Klein agrees, adding: "You could call it crony capitalism, you could call it corporatism; but it certainly not the free market."

more-

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Naomi_Klein_explains_how_we_willingly_1013.html

[whistle]

1. That should read "...America has already succumbed to fascism"!

[Kansas Wyatt]

2. Americans just cannot grasp that this country has turned fascist

And American Citizens have become subjects of the Corporate Government to exploit and enslave.

[Triana]

13. I've gingerly mentioned to some folks that that has already happened...

....and got MY HEAD BIT OFF. And these were NOT Republicans (ie: fascists) I was talking to.

I think that people CANNOT FACE that it's already happened here. They still think it "can't" happen here.

[JohnyCanuck]

14. "Only puny secrets need protection. ......

Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity."

Marshall McLuhan

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!

SNIP

By learning from the German Nazi tragedy, we can see--in twenty-first century America--that we could easily wait too long. For example, we must look at the interesting similarity of Hitler's use of the Reichstag Fire to seize dictatorial powers and Bush's use of the September 11 terrorist attack as his excuse to move us to a police state where Bush can simply "declare" that a foreigner is a terrorist and that person's rights become almost non-existent.

Without any necessity of presenting evidence, the president can now brand a non-US-citizen--OR A US CITIZEN--a "terrorist" and the suspect is brought before a secret military tribunal where the rules of evidence and prisoner rights are drastically attenuated.

Off with their heads Hitler was able to brand anyone he considered an enemy and see that that person was summarily executed. How long will it be before President Bush begins to brand as "terrorist" any US citizen who disagrees with him?

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

[Triana]

15. THANK YOU - great quote - I'm saving it for later use!

And the link/article too.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. You're welcome. Glad you found it helpful. n/t

[melody]

3. What succumbing? We're being conquered by it.

We're just little money grinders to them -- they'll terrify us into paying.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

4. When corporations control government, that's fascism. Yup, that's correct. nt

[rudeboy666]

6. No, it's really more like Oligarchy n/t

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

9. How? nm

[flordehinojos]

5. how can we get out of the fascist cistern the bushes have fast & furious thrown us all in?

[antigop]

7. Who called the DLC the "Democratic Leadership Corporation"? n/t

[Demeter]

8. Too Many Americans Embrace Fascism as a First Choice

due perhaps to their abused childhoods in authoritarian households and church settings...

[AntiFascist]

10. Excellent points!

whether you label it fascism or not, this is what it is all about.

[L0oniX]

11. We all need to not show up for work for a few days and spank these asscarrot corporations

We need to do what they do in France where the government is afraid of the people.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. So a published author writing the same things some of us have

been screaming about over the last few years... makes it valid?

Or will she join us as an alarmist cook as well?