A really good article on American fascism

undergroundpanther

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Wed Oct-20-04 11:57 PM
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A really good article on American fascism

As Wallace's President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "...out of this modern civilization, economic royalists carved new dynasties.... It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.... And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man...."

Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core: "These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power."But, he thundered in that speech, "Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!"

Click here for more...
http://www.betterworld.com/getreallist/article.php?story=20040812154536702

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Beam Me Up

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Thu Oct-21-04 12:16 AM
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1. thanks undergroundpanther

haven't read the article yet but this is a particular area of interest for me.

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Sugarbleus

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Thu Oct-21-04 12:29 AM
Response to Reply #1

2. Me too. Booking this for tomorrow's reading...

Thanks much UGP!! :hi:

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Paul Hood

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Thu Oct-21-04 12:31 AM
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3. Interesting article.

I looked up Sinclair Lewis (who is mentioned in the article) on Google and on top of the sponsored links was a boycott Sinclair Broadcasting site. Hopefully people will be able to use the internet to fight the corporations that will be trying to dominate them.

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Barney Rocks

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Thu Oct-21-04 02:13 AM
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4. Everyone should read

this---they need to understand that fascism is on the march--and this time they may be the ones to die in concentration camps. Please wake up Americans!!!

:kick:

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shelley806

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Thu Oct-21-04 02:32 AM
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5. Thank you--chilling and ominous

Edited on Thu Oct-21-04 02:37 AM by shelley806

So glad you posted that. Wallace was so intelligent and well expressed, and the article was uncannily so like GW's regime, that I literally broke out in goosebumps. This is an issue (fascism) that I have recently become interested in again, due to Bush. I searched the internet about a month ago on Bush and fascism. That was before I happened upon DU!

Snips from your article:
_________________________________________________________________
Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book "It Can't Happen Here." And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler. These events all, no doubt, colored Vice President Wallace's thinking when he wrote:
" Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases."

But American fascists who would want former CEOs as President, Vice President, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people. Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.

In a comment prescient of George W. Bush's recent suggestion that civilization itself is at risk because of gays, Wallace continued:
" The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination..."

""They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

In 2004, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II. Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "compassionate conservatism." The RNC's behavior today eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for." It's particularly ironic that the CEOs and lobbyists who run the Republican National Committee would have chosen to put Hitler's fascist face into one of their campaign commercials, just before they launched a national campaign against gays and while they continue to arrest people who wear anti-Bush T-shirts in public places.
____________________________________________________________________

Powerful indeed. I found it so interesting about the growth of
prejudice and the links with tyranny. Is this like Who ever's not with me is against me? It really doesn't necessarily make sense that bigotry would precede tyranny, but may because it is rule by the few, it has exclusion already built into it. Next, I have to figure out how the neocons and PNAC fit into this new fascism.

I heard so many newscasters almost angry at Kerry's anger. I hope he keeps it up. This is serious.

PS I tried to edit (underline, italicize and highlight, but nothing works!

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Eloriel

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Fri Oct-22-04 10:13 AM
Response to Reply #5

9. Here's where the bigotry fits in

It creates conflict and dissension among the "common people," which keeps us distracted and fighting amongst ourselves as well as very busy fending off the bigotry (instead of seeing and fighting the REAL enemies, the fascists) and it unites those for whom an appeal to bigotry works with those in power -- against their OWN self-interests -- by providing that "common enemy." Also, it introduces an element of fear when that domestic "common enemy" can be made into bogeymen and women (gay marriage will destroy America). Fear is nearly all-powerful in politics.

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Selatius

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Thu Oct-21-04 02:44 AM
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6. It's a damn shame Henry Wallace wasn't VP when FDR died

He could have been in a position to attack US style fascism before it became what it is today. It's another one of those "what ifs" in history that just kill you when you play it over again in your mind. What would have been the course of US history if Wallace, not Truman, succeeded FDR?

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

And another:

"If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

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Sugarbleus

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Fri Oct-22-04 12:17 AM
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7. FANTASTIC article........!!! WOW

I saved this and forwarded it to people who NEED to hear this.

I've sensed that we are descending into a fascist state for some time, but this article really brings home some serious facts. On the one hand, it's scary. On the other hand, it makes me want to RAIL AGAINST THE SYSTEM LIKE NEVER BEFORE. Especially since there is precedent for "railing" ie Wallace.

Thanks for digging this article out for us. :thumbsup:

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Eloriel

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Fri Oct-22-04 10:20 AM
Response to Reply #7

10. Some more information for you

Global Eye
Night and Fog By Chris Floyd
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/10/120.html

You think it's not true, you think it's not coming, you think "it can't happen here." But it can, and it is, right before your eyes.

George Bush's United States is clearly in a proto-fascist condition. Of course, there's no such thing as direct equivalence between historical events. The same dangers never come around again -- not in the same form nor with precisely identical content. At every point in time, a new set of elements and circumstances coalesce to create the unique reality of that particular historical moment.

But if you take the general definition of fascism provided by its founder, Benito Mussolini -- "the merger of corporate and state power" -- and apply it to the elements that are coalescing in America at this historical moment, you could hardly find a more apt description of the Bush Regime. Couple that with the Bushists' radical transformation of party politics into a quasi-religious cult of militarism and leader worship, and you have not an equivalence but certainly an ever-deepening resonance with the malevolent spirit that swept Germany and Italy during the first half of the 20th century.

-- more at link --

Other links, some of them very, very powerful:

They Thought They Were Free
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

Fascism Anyone? by Laurence W. Britt
http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm

Wake Up and Smell the Fascism
(examples of Britt's 14 points)
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

The NASCAR Nazi
Bush is creating an un-American America
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/38/lost-washburn.php

It's time for another Bush/Nazis thread (Aug. 03)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=199853#199877

Nazification of America Phase 3
http://www.hermes-press.com/nazification_step3.htm

The Reichstag Fire and 9/11; Pretexts for Dictatorship and the Fourth Reich
Includes: Parallels between the Third Reich and the Bush Regime; 9/11 and the Reichstag Fire; What was the Reichstag Fire; Nazis in America; Poland 1939, Iraq 2003 http://www.oilempire.us/reichstag-fire.html

The Rise of the Fourth Reich
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/reich.html

Bush's 9/11 Reichstag Fire by Harvey Wasserman
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0913-03.htm

20 Comparisons by Barrie Zwicker
http://www.deceptiondollar.com/news/BloorRemarks911-03.htm

The Bush Plan for America: The Rise of an American National Security State
By Jennifer Van Bergen, 14 December 2003 http://www.ftaaimc.org/en/2003/12/3232.shtml

America, We Have a Problem
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i4dodd.htm

Fascism and America Today
by Aldo Vidali
http://www.apj.us/20010312fascism.html

Roads to Fascism: Sixty Years Later
by Roderick T. Long
http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long7.html

This is the Fight of Our Lives by Bill Moyers
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0616-09.htm

Published on Monday, July 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

E-book - It Can't Happen Here b y Sinclair Lewis
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/l/lewis/sinclair/happen/
Also read: The Iron Heel by Jack London and
"Der Fuhrer" by Konrad Heiden and "The Plague" by Camus
discussed here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2344349#2344364

"Now and Then"- Part 1
by W. David Jenkins and Sara DeHart June 6, 2002
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300019.htm
"Now and Then"- Part 2: The Propaganda Machine
by W. David Jenkins and Sara DeHart June 14, 2002
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300020.htm
"Now and Then"- Part 3
Hitler's Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power
by W. David Jenkins III and Sara DeHart July 4, 2002
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300021.htm

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Eloriel

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Fri Oct-22-04 10:21 AM
Response to Reply #10

11. More

Keywords: Fascism
(with list of characteristics)
http://keywords.oxus.net/archives/000026.html

Fascism Anyone? by Laurence W. Britt
http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm

Friendly Fascism (Excerpts etc from Bertram Gross's book)
http://a4a.mahost.org/gross.html

What Is Fascism
(This one is quite good and incl. two-tiered legal system as well as many other hallmarks, and Dr. Lawrence Britt's list, and additional links)
http://www.couplescompany.com/FEATURES/Politics/Structure3.htm

Superpower Democracy (another must read)
http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/2003_07_01_gd.html#105880160504381723

IS AMERICA BECOMING FASCIST?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2159330
This article: IS AMERICA BECOMING FASCIST? http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/fascism.htm

Mussolini in his own words.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2413173

1944 article: American fascism (April 1944 article in NYTimes -- also see 1940s section for the complete article)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=212387

The F Scale
(Measures one's authoritarian personality profile, which makes one receptive to fascism, based on research done after WW2)
http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htm
link posted here: He's Acting Like Nixon in the Final DaysHas Bush Gone Over the Edge? (has some good links re fascist personality, etc.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1725171

Bethune Institute Anti-Fascist Studies
http://bethuneinstitute.org/index2.html

The Spectre of Friendly Fascism by Bertrand Gross
(book excerpt)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Specter_FriendlyFascism_FF.html

Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
By Umberto Eco
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

Freedom to Fascism -- -- A Bumpy Ride
http://207.44.245.159/article7054.htm

Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism
Bernard Weiner, June 9, 2003
http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm

The Brownshirting of America
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts75.html

-------------------------------------------------------
Some Book Recommendations:
barb1622000 (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-19-04 01:32 AM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2367949&mesg_id=2369563&page=
29. there are several books
and I don't know if they are still in print but they are probably at university libraries

1. International Relations Between the Two World Wars 1919-1939 by E. H. Carr, Harper & Row, 1947
2. The Crisis of German Ideology by George Mosse
3. The German Catastrophe by Friedrich Meinecke
4. Varieties of Fascism by Eugen Weber

I think the world was quite stunned when Hitler became more powerful and then finally became Chancellor in the mid 1930s. They simply didn't know what to do about it. National socialism was going on in several countries at the same time, including the USA during the time and check the fourth book for an outstanding exposition of the various forms by country.
----------------------------------------------

ORWELL'S VISION IS STILL ALIVE IN 2003
http://www.orwelltoday.com/orwellvision.shtml

---------------------
TahitiNut (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-20-04 01:49 PM
12. You mean China, Inc.?
"Fascism" isn't an ideology ... it doesn't engage in intellectually honest discussion regarding the "features" or "advantages" of fascism. This is predominnatly due to one of the core beliefs of fascists: the people are an almost mindless herd. THere is, therefore, no interest in honest public discourse. It's an "ideology" of narrow power and privelege - where 'the people' are merely a labor resource or cannon fodder. It's an attitude of "the public are the servants."
China is there. Any semblance of 'communism' in China is mere facade or window dressing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2516368#2517408

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Eloriel

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Fri Oct-22-04 10:24 AM
Response to Reply #11

12. DU Discussions

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Sugarbleus

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Fri Oct-22-04 07:42 PM
Response to Reply #10

13. Thank you soooooooooo much Eloriel!

I haven't been able to rest since reading the original thread. As just one person wanting to fight this creeping dread, I feel desparate. Oddly, when I or others even mention "Fascism" to aquaintenances or political types...they vigorously shake their heads in denial and shout NOOOOOOOOOO it isn't so! FRUSTRATING. :grr:

I sent the original article to a family member. I'd like to get this info out there enmasse though.

I wish we could have a discussion on "how" to fight this new american fascism.

For starters, on my part, I've committed to refusing to do business with certain businesses nor buy certain products--to the extent possible. In another thread others are talking about boycotting also. MONEY TALKS...

I can print out the articles and put them in binders to carry with me as I sound the alarm in public...? Other than that, well I need more tips on what people can DO about this.

I SURE HOPE that DU doesn't quit after the elections. This place has been a bottomless well of priceless information and activism.

Thanks again for all the info. Man, this is dreadful

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Kanary

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Fri Oct-22-04 01:07 AM
Response to Original message

8. Thanks for posting this! Came at just the right time.... one more

conversion, coming up. :hi:

Kanary

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