I. "If we allow this, America will no longer be a noble nation."
Q: Who said this and why?
A: Ok, I gave it away with the photo. Bill O’Reilly said it about Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, who had been acquitted in court of criminal activity in his role as abortion provider. O’Reilly said a lot of other inflammatory things, too. He called the man a murderer and baby killer over and over again.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200906090004Eventually, someone followed O’Reilly’s orders and murdered the doctor. That is how fascists gain control of a democracy. They use their thugs to intimidate, obstruct and finally cow into subservience the majority of the citizens.
There is another important thing that fascists have to do if they want to take over your country. They have to make sure that no one dares to call it fascism.
II. Sturmabteilung: The Thugs that Propelled Hitler to Power and How He Repaid Them 
The SA, Hitler’s Stormtroopers, started slowly. They did not spring up over night in all their brown shirted glory with a mandate from Nazi Party leaders to burn down the Reichstaag. The group began
by organizing and formalizing the groups of ex-soldiers and beer hall brawlers who were to protect gatherings of the Nazi Party from disruptions from Social Democrats and Communists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SturmabteilungEventually, Hitler decided to rein in the working class members of the SA and give their power to the bourgeois SS, after the leaders of the Brown Shirts attempted to take over the powers traditionally afforded to Germany’s military. The same thing would have happened had this group of working class activists demanded that certain corporations be nationalized. Or if they had asked for the same rights given to the rich----food, education, health care.
Fascists often use members of the working class to do their dirty work. This gives orchestrated acts of violence a spontaneous populist veneer, which is supposed to make them acceptable in a democracy. However, fascists do not exist to serve or promote the interests of the working class. They represent the elite---rich individuals, powerful corporations and the military---all of whom are united by the fact that they prosper when ordinary men and women suffer.
I mention the fate of the SA, because it is the same fate that modern American fascist thugs will suffer if the economic and political forces who are pulling their strings ever succeed in replacing democracy with full fledged fascism. Angry, poor, frustrated workers are useful if they are killing or intimidating the political opposition. They are a pain in the butt if you finally obtain power and are expected to meet their needs.
However, in the short run fascist thugs can be very, very useful.
The Nazis thought that this would make it difficult to achieve their next goal, which was to pass the Enabling Act, a measure that required a two-thirds majority. However, there were important factors weighing in the Nazis' favor. These were: the continued suppression of the Communist Party, and the Nazis' ability to capitalize on national security concerns. Moreover, some deputies of the Social Democratic Party (the only party that would vote against the Enabling Act) were prevented from taking their seats in the Reichstag, due to arrests and intimidation by the Nazi SA. As a result, the Social Democratic Party would be under-represented in the final vote tally. The Enabling Act, which gave Hitler the right to rule by decree, passed easily on March 23, 1933. It garnered the support of the right-wing German National People's Party, the Catholic Centre Party, and several fragmented middle class parties. This measure went into force on March 27 and, in effect, made Hitler dictator of Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fireRemind you of anything? Maybe a certain group of "Brooks Brothers Rioters" who staged a phony spontaneous protest to (illegally) halt the counting of the votes?
I will repeat the key points of this history lesson. German went from a democracy to a fascist totalitarian state, after a group of thugs under the control of Nazi Party leaders attacked elected representatives of the opposition party. I think maybe that George Santayana was thinking about acts like this when he said
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
It is almost certainly what Henry Ford (dead fascist and Nazi Party promoter) was thinking when he said
History is more or less bunk.
In your dreams, Henry. In your dreams.
III. Fascism is Fascism is Fascism 
Nothing gets modern American fascists more upset than being called
fascists . We even have an American Nazi Party so that the most dangerous fascists can point and say “
They are the fascists, not us.”
However, fascism is as fascism does. And when the spokespeople for the right issue calls for violence against their political enemies, and when a group of “ordinary citizens” answers that call---well, by any definition that is a fascist coup in progress.
Some folks get confused. They think that as long as a democratic process is still in place, then fascism can not exist. That is not true. There is no requirement that the coup be successful before it is called fascist. Plenty of would be Hitlers have failed in their quests for absolute power, and history has not hesitated to call them exactly what they were. So, why are so many in the United States---land of free speech—so afraid of using the word?
Maybe they are scared that some (fascist) thug will attack?
IV. When Fascists Attack http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9nTItnS3VNk/R2xKb8IUGQI/AAAAAAAAMhI/FLgDTMjbq-o/s320/nazi+dog.jpgToday we learn that a freshman Democratic Congressman was physically attacked by right wing extremists. Not called ugly names (like baby killer). Not subject to vague (or sometimes not so vague) threats. A Democrat was actually assaulted for being a Democrat. The way the SA kept members of opposition parties from attending a meeting of the Reichstag where they might have objected to giving Hitler total control of Germany.
We also learned
Recent events have given congressman good reason to be “fearful for their safety.” Last week, a protester hung an effigy of freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) outside his district office, and after a June 22 town hall meeting was disrupted by an “unruly mob” of tea party activists, Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) had to be escorted to his car by police.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/05/freshman-dem-assaulted/I want to make mention of the so called “Tea Party” protests. As I have written before, these Astroturf operations have been financed by large corporations in the United States, such as Koch Industries.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/421They are promoted by folks like Dick Armey, who represents tobacco venders, alcohol salesmen, the gaming industry, makers of military weapons and (drum roll) members of the Medical Industrial complex who make money from the deaths of people who were denied preventive health care.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/394These supposedly grassroots organizations with their supposedly spontaneous outbursts of violence have actually been bought and paid for by the corporations which make money from human misery. Note: I am not saying that alcohol and gambling always make us miserable. Rather, if Americans can be made to suffer more, they will consume more spirits and waste more money on internet poker. Just as in Nazi Germany, the modern American fascist movement is primarily an anti-working class movement designed to consolidate all power in the hands of a few rich folks. Do not be fooled by the ideology that is repeated by the various right wing spokes people. Stuff about “values” and the “sanctity of human life. “The bottom line for this bunch is money. The proof is apparent in their actions. If they gave a damn about human life, they would not be out there threatening---and sometimes inflicting---so much violence.
V. By Their (Fascist) Acts You Will Know Them (to be Fascists) Yes, I am using the F word a lot. Some people here at DU will probably rate this journal down, because of the word. However, if your house is on fire, you do call out “Oxidation reduction reaction!”
Here are some acts of (fascist) violence that have occurred in the land of the free and the home of the brave in the last decade since the coup by stolen votes in Florida. Read these before you conclude that I am crying “Fire” in a crowded theater.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=230 Already, in an increasingly charged atmosphere along the U.S.-Mexican border, there has been violence. In the last year — the same period in which several Arizona ranchers made national news by "arresting" at gunpoint illegal aliens who crossed their lands — three would-be border-crossers have been killed in apparent vigilante violence.
One of them was shot from behind after asking a Texas rancher for water; he was left to bleed to death in the scrub brush. Seven others are confirmed wounded, and the toll will almost certainly go higher.
To the north, in Bloomington, Minn., a Hispanic man was clubbed and critically injured for speaking Spanish at a job site. In Farmingville, N.Y., a pair of tattooed racists were accused of posing as contractors to lure two undocumented Mexican workers to a warehouse where they were beaten severely.
This is from a Southern Poverty Law center document
from 2001 . Anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence has accelerated since then, thanks to our corporate media which now hires people like Glenn Beck, who use issues like immigration to fan the flames.
"We're also looking at civil unrest all around the world," he (Beck) continued. "You need to prepare. This is something that could be ... really dangerous. ... My hands, now, for the first time in my life, are shaking. ... We're running out of exit ramps here."
Beck's greatest fear -- which he suggests is shared by his friends in the military and the FBI -- is clearly not the prospect of widespread poverty, hunger, or homelessness. Rather, it appears to be thenotion that worldwide civil unrest could precipitate a civil war between what he calls the "bubbas" and the United States government.
Laying out a convoluted scenario, Beck suggested that the military is preparing for a situation where "something happens down on the border. You've got the rancher who is protecting his land, people are starting to come over ... there's a shot fired, it ignites things. ATF, FBI come in and arrest that rancher. How many people are going to say, 'Wait a minute. ... You people knew this was going on and you did nothing to protect us.'"
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?t=194119A war between “the bubbas” and the “government”? Now, where have we seen that happen before? And what was the outcome again?
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