Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

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chiskop

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Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.
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  1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
  2. Create a gulag
  3. Develop a thug caste
  4. Set up an internal surveillance system
  5. Harass citizens' groups
  6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
  7. Target key individuals
  8. Control the press
  9. Dissent equals treason
  10. Suspend the rule of law
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
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Interesting column in today's Guardian.
 
The [-]guy[/-] author handcrafts 10 criteria and then shoehorns a nation into it.

Hey look, it fit - how amazing. :rolleyes:
 
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alanf85 said:
Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

"invoke" yeah right:rolleyes: . Islamic extremism is at war with the whole "western world". From U.S to Europe to Australia even with Russia, Israel and in places like Indonesia. They have made their intentions quite clear and standing up to that and calling it what it is it not invoking it. They are coming anyway whether you like it or not and groveling appeasment isn't going to help.
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You swallowed their story :D
alanf85 said:
Create a gulag

What gulag. Gitmo is a prisoner of war camp. I don't see Democrats sitting in Gitmo nor any moonbats. It's not a 5 star hotel and rightfully so.
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Except wait, we can't call them POWs, cause then the Geneva Convention would apply. Rationalise it how you want, alanf: it looks like a gulag and it smells like a gulag...
alanf85 said:
Develop a thug caste

What thugs? Every country has citizens and politicians who think they are above the law. Some manage to get away most don't in the "western countries".
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I admit I found this to be a weak point of the argument.
alanf85 said:
Set up an internal surveillance system

So? There happens to be terrorists who want to kill large amounts of America's citizens. But they must be allowed to conduct their build up and operations with impunity. Pity the poor law abiding citizens who lose their lives because some extremist's "right" to do what they please is being infriged upon.
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Pity he (Bush) had to go about it illegally. Why was that? There was already a mechanism for secretly obtaining approval for this kind of surveillance, maybe that wasn't all-encompassing enough?

alanf85 said:
Harass citizens' groups

Bwahahahaha

C'mon you can't be serious. :D

The police state of America :o
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Heard of free-speech zones? There's doublespeak if I ever heard it.

alanf85 said:
Engage in arbitrary detention and release

*sigh*

They just pluck any Tom, Dick or Harry off the street :rolleyes:
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Only the Toms Dicks and Harries involved in antiwar protests? Is it illegal to demonstrate (in a non-violent manner) against govt policies that you disagree with, especially since those govt policies were based on outright lies.

alanf85 said:
Target key individuals

Yeah like terrorists.
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No, just people they perceive to be against them, like journalists, activists etc.

alanf85 said:
Control the press

Like CBS, CNN, Washinton Post and NewYork Times are all Whitehouse controlled :o
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I didn't see any cynicism in the rush to war from any of these papers. I didn't see anyone questioning the lies about WMDs.

I did see that the NYT held off for a year on the wire-tapping story out of some kind of deference to Bush.

alanf85 said:
Dissent equals treason

That's why the Dems, various flaming moonbat blogs and Hollywood celebs are all sitting in the "gulag" right now.
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Thats not what she said. But you'll notice how any criticism of the war is taken as a) criticism of America, b) criticism of the troops.

alanf85 said:
Suspend the rule of law

The laws during peace normally aren't sufficient during a period of war


*sigh*
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Looks like you swallowed that one too...
 
Bwana - naomi is not a guy. She looked at the actions of various fascist govts, and compared it to Bush's policies.

His policies do seem to have had the effect of closing down the space for debate and for democracy.
 
 
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I dont know. Are POWs supposed to be afforded trials?
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Are they POW's? How do you know they're not taxi drivers or journalists?

Some kind of trial seems like a not-unreasonable idea.

alanf85, I can't argue with your insightful and well thought-out points like "Yeah the dems sitting in their are starting to smell" and "You scared the government might listen in on people's embarising "call boy" phone sex lines".
 
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chiskop said:
Are they POW's? How do you know they're not taxi drivers or journalists?

Some kind of trial seems like a not-unreasonable idea.
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Which one would you prefer?

If you want them treated as POWs and therefore covered by the third Geneva Convention then they wont get trials - they're prisoners of war.

If you want them treated as civilians and not as POWs then they wont be covered by the Geneva Convention.
 
bwana said:
I dont know. Are POWs supposed to be afforded trials?
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Bush and his buddies are saying their prisoners are not POWs but to them are "unlawful enemy combatants" which basically means they do not have the rights of a POW. However they need to be declared as such by a tribunal and till then they should be considered POWs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

Now the US has changed its law to include terrorists to qualify as an Unlawful comabatant.

Just goes to show, those Americans can find loopholes in most international treaties.:(
 
bwana said:
Which one would you prefer?

If you want them treated as POWs and therefore covered by the third Geneva Convention then they wont get trials - they're prisoners of war.

If you want them treated as civilians and not as POWs then they wont be covered by the Geneva Convention.
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Well, treating them is POW is perhaps a step in the right direction, if that is what they are. If they are civilians, treat them as civilians.
 
sox63 said:
Bush and his buddies are saying their prisoners are not POWs but to them are "unlawful enemy combatants" which basically means they do not have the rights of a POW. However they need to be declared as such by a tribunal and till then they should be considered POWs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

Now the US has changed its law to include terrorists to qualify as an Unlawful comabatant.

Just goes to show, those Americans can find loopholes in most international treaties.:(
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Some might argue that they are better off being classified as unlawful enemy combatants
Once a combatant is found by a competent tribunal to be an unlawful combatant, he or she no longer has the rights and privileges accorded to POW, but he or she retains all the rights any other civilian would have under municipal and international law in the same situation.
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IOW then they would receive a trial.
 
@Bwana

You better get in and say something if you want to before Kilo arrives ;)

I reckon he is gonna suffer another meltdown when he comes across this thread. :o :D
 
arf9999 said:
Don't you have to declare war in order to capture POWs? The US has not declard war on Afganistan AFAIK.
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Wasn't Afghanistan seen as a "failed state". There was no state to declare war on.
 
The article has a lot of holes... The US is not a fascist state, despite the curtailing of many of the freedoms that its constitution was based on. The key difference is the openess of the media and the freedom of political activity.

The current US govt. is a symptom of certain special interests meddling in foreign and domestic policy, not a new world fascist order.
 
alanf85 said:
Like the Chinese muslim who just happend to be training in Afghanistan to overthrow the Chinese government during a jihad against nato troops there :o
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Alanf, all I'm asking for is some kind of a trial, held under fair conditions.

alanf85 said:
I dunno but surely other wars had POW camps? Why can't this war :confused: . Didiprevious POW camps have a 100% success rate in not interning innocent people? If not where was the outrage then?
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I'm not sure about the success rate of previous internment camps, but thats neither here nor there. Are you suggesting its okay to keep innocent people because it happened somewhere else before?


alanf85 said:
Okay I'll rephrase it for you minus the sarcasm because you seem to have trouble picking it up

You claim Gitmo is a gulag?

Where are the political prisoners, hard labour and torture? Why is it not fulling up with "activists" and journalists?
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Well, I've already pointed to one journalist who seems to be there. The point is that you don't really know whose there either. Makes sense to me to try to figure that out first?

alanf85 said:
Secondly...

Do you fear the administration will listen in on personally embarrassing phone calls? Do you think the State has that much interest in your personal life and what can happen to you if you did nothing illegal?
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No alanf85. I just believe the state, and especially its executive, should adhere to the the laws of that country. There is a (secret) legal process for this kind of monitoring. Why could Bush & co. not remain within the fairly "liberal" bounds of that process? :D
 
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