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SDR
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Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 1696
Location: San Francisco
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 Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:12 pm Post subject: "Fascism, anyone?" |
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In an essay titled "Fascism Anyone?," in Free Inquiry magazine, Vol 23, No 2, Dr Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism." (The term comes from the Latin word "fasces," meaning "a bundle of sticks tied together;" the individual sticks represented the citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks.)
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphenalia. Flag sare seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Distain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people of fascist regimes are pursuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3 Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly contolled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very commom.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology are common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation are often the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government rlationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Supprssed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Distain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and treasure to be appropriated or even stolen outright by government leaders.
14. Fraudulant Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against -- or even assasination of -- opposition candidates, use of legisation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician -- Buzz Windrip -- runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy [and] those concerned with individual rights and freedoms as anti-American.
On April 9, 1944, The New York Times published these comments by Vice President Henry Wallace: "The really 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.
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. Theri 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." |
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Donald
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 493
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| Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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Back in 1944, I suppose that the VP had some concerns and comparisons of the Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet crowd, but in todays day and age, that my friends is why they need to show this list, along with the Islamo videos over and over and over again all over the world. And it should serve as a reminder to all civilized societies that all of these Islamic fascists should be eliminated. Not appeased, not negotiated with, not understood, not arrested and not prosecuted, but wasted  |
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SDR
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Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 1696
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:29 pm Post subject: Use your imagination |
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Imagine, if you will, what it *must* look like, to people in other lands -- people, in truth, very much more like you and me, than not -- what the most powerful nation on Earth is doing OFF ITS SOVEREIGN SOIL.
Invading. Bombing. Burning. Destroying. Imprisoning. Interrogating. Torturing. In a country which DID NOT ATTACK US. And, lying about it, before, during, and after. In the name of FREEDOM. In the name of LIBERTY. In the name of DEMOCRACY. In the name of FREE TRADE.
What, objectively, can this look like, under the best of interpretations, to non-Americans, to Middle Easterners, to Asians. Or don't those opinions, those people, count?
Have we no pride?
Have we no shame?
Can we, any of us, defend -- do we, any of us, condone -- such actions?
Those who deny the past, will re-live it, until they learn.
All human sociopathic actions and reactions, both individual and collective, are the result of distortions of personality, common to the great majority everywhere, which override logical thinking and behaviour. Examples of such "human failings" abound in history, often in the arena of "leaders of men" -- the great kings and queens, monarchs and princes and others, notable enough to have had their words, thoughts and actions recorded. Many of these traits and actions appear, in representative form, in the woks of writers like Shakespeare.
We see the same illogical, obsessive, counter-productive actions taken by one or another of the world's (usually self-elevated) Leaders of Men every decade, every century. Man's most common neurotic reactions result in "raising the drawbridge," " closing the gates," accusing "the enemy" (the "other") of wrongs frequently committed on "this side of the fence," and, because nothing "proves a point" more effectively than aggression, when these actions are played large, on the world's stage, more that one man's few neighbors suffer. |
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Donald
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 493
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| Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 11:36 am Post subject: |
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And as I've said before ... remember to give a fair and objective look at what is going on in our war on terror and don't get sucked into the media hype. Lets review again for those not remembering.
Question: How do you think America would have fared in World War II if the media had obsessed over stories of wrongdoing by American troops? Wouldn't the Nazis have loved to have seen coverage in American newspapers detailing civilian deaths in the bombing raids on German industrial and military targets? Couldn't you see the German high command grinning broadly as they read of demonstrations in the United States demanding an end to the bombings? How many more American deaths would it have taken to finish the job if today's media had been covering yesterday's war?
This isn't World War II. This is World War IV. It's the war against Islamic terrorism. It is a war against a radical and bloodthirsty element of Islam that grows stronger with every depiction of America as the bad guys. These Islamo-fascist murderers don't merely want the infidels out of the Middle East, they want and are by Allah determined to achieve a world dominated by radical Islam. They want you living under their Islamic law, whether you wish to convert to their religion or not. They have attacked us on our own soil, and they plan to do so again. We read of warnings from the FBI to local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for possible Islamic suicide bombers on American soil.
We have a class of people in this country, call them liberals, progressives, Democrats, socialists, elitists, intellectuals ... call them what you like -- but we have a class of people in this country who harbor such an intense hatred for US Government and George Bush, economic liberty, capitalism, the American culture and American political strength that they will sacrifice the safety and liberty of future generations of Americans just to see America disgraced in the Middle East and George Bush pushed out of the White House.
It's tragic enough that we have to be fighting yet another World War at this time in our history. It's even more tragic that we seem to have so many Americans who are actively pulling for the other side. |
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Architorture
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Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 1376
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| Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 11:41 am Post subject: |
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i don't quite understand point 8. religion and government are intertwined...
i'm pretty sure hitler was no great fan of any religion...seeing as he immediately attempted to limit their interference in government by disbanding all the political parties that had religious underpinnings...
this little article of yours seems as though it is just tailor-made to attempt to prove a point that it is obviously more interested in than the actual truths of facism...
there are many points in here that don't seem to jive very well with historical examples of facist regimes... i mean i would really like to see some examples here, besides the ones being insinuated in the bush adminstration...
otherwise this post seems like it is just a weak shot in the dark at the bush administration and its policies... |
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iamanamateur
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:25 am Post subject: what's in a name? |
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if it's specifically (Islamic) fundamentalism that's causing a problem, is there any chance people could stop calling it "Islamic" and maybe just call it religious fundamentalism, coz calling it Islamic it heaps a lot of people devoted to their god in with all that violent terminology and it's not right.
I'm not surprised though, i've tried so many times to find non partisan stuff about Islam on google and it's impossible. If the only information we can get about the "Other" is distorting and negative, i'm not surprised our views are as right wing as the groups we're apparently opposed to. |
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Donald
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 493
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 9:06 am Post subject: |
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| Of course its impossible, so lets just keep it to "Islamic Terrorism" because thats what it is... and they are not fundamentalists that you refer to, they are Islamic Terrorists...amateur. The other religions you are alluding to are just that, an illusion to water down the problem that you, the media and Islam want to avoid. |
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SDR
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Joined: 02 Oct 2004
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Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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Individuals and nations alike will NEVER, EVER achieve the peaceful and cooperative relations they need, want and deserve until they are able to understand and empathize with the strengths, weaknesses and needs of their neighbors. And this will never be achieved while both sides indulge in name-calling and rock-throwing, encouraged by "leaders" (who are, after all, only a particularly power-hungry breed of men, whose own strengths and weakness are amplified in their self-elevation). "We're good, you're bad" -- from every quarter -- is just not going to get us anywhere. The instant communication and rapid travel on the modern world have made it more imperative than ever that men and women in all nations harness the understanding of human psychology to get us beyond our primitive disfunctionality as world citizens. Those who claim an interest in their nation's well-being must be the first, not the last, to demonstrate an ability to move in this direstion. Or so it seems to me.
SDR |
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Architorture
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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| well are you proposing we become some homogenous population on this planet with no boundries and only the interests of the entire world being considered at all times? |
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SDR
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Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 1696
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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No, not any more than I would propose that everyone in town has to live in one big room. But the parallels between the relations of street neighbors to each other, and to "world neighbors" -- now that globalization is a fact of life -- are appropriate, don't you think? Each party wishes autonomy and self-determination, and the respect of others; these are universal psychological and physical (survival) needs. But isolationism doesn't work, if a person or a nation wants to maximize their potential: we want to be able to enjoy things not grown or made on our own soil. Indeed we are past the point of being willing to do without any but domestic raw materials. So, we must cooperate with our neighbors.
As the wealthiest nation on Earth, it falls to the US to participate fully in this eschange, to lead, not just to ravage the planet for raw materials and cheap labor to support a (some would say) bloated "lifestyle." In the news recently has been the subject of foreign aid; it is shown that, when polled, American citizens believe that their government gives 10, 15, or 20% of its GDP in foreign aid, when the actual figure is about 1/4 of 1%, a much smaller percentage than is given by her smaller developed world neighbors. I don't have an opinion on what the number "should" be, but the discrepency is noteworthy, and our apparently inflated sense of self-worth, interesting.
If it were possible to be objective, don't you think "the greatest good for the greatest number" would be the desired objective, regardless of who specifically would benefit? Or do you believe (as anyone from anywhere can) the "our" interests should take precedence over anyone else's? |
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Donald
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 493
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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There are people, Americans included, who hate the United States for its Strength and Leadership. These people harbor the naive world view that no nation should be stronger than another, and that not one nation should ever be allowed to dominate world affairs. Some even look at it as if we are raveging the planet. Somehow, in their convoluted logic-starved "bloated lifestyle"minds, these people have forgotten that someone, somewhere, is going to be the top dog. Or, in the alternative, they fully realize that every wolf pack has its dominant male, and they just want that dominant male to be someone else. And just who would that be? The United Nations? Is that what they're after? They recognize that someone is inevitably going to fill the role of "the world's policeman," and they want that someone to be the hopelessly corrupt and blatantly anti-American United Nations?
Think about this. In almost every war, save two*, in which the United States has been involved, the country we were at war with was rebuilt following the conflict and its people were left to chose and elect their own government. Can you name another powerful nation with such a history? Following World War II the Soviet Union robbed the people of how many nations of their freedom? I lost count somewhere. Some of those nations are still fighting to this day to regain their independence.
There has never been any nation in this history of man's time on earth that has done so much good for so many people as has the United States. There has never been any nation that has done so much to spread the cause of freedom and self-government then has the United States. These accomplishments have come about because the United States is both benevolent and powerful. Take away either element and the positive influence of the United States on the affairs of the world and the lives of people everywhere will be all but gone.
So, for those of you who believe that the United States cannot be the world's policeman, fine. You pick the replacement, because a replacement there will be. Let me know who you think can do a better job.
*The two exceptions are what is commonly called the "Civil War," and the Vietnam War. Some people despised the fact that in Vietnam Americans were killed in a war that the politicians were not dedicated to winning. Today people despise the fact that we're in a war that our leaders are determined to win. You just can't please everyone...especially those with bloated left wing egos |
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SDR
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Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 1696
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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Viet Nam and Iraq: Wars started by the United States, to defeat a foreign entity who "might," at some future date, pose a threat to our soil. It's easy to identify "enemies," once you're convinced that there's always one (or more) and that they pose some real or potential threat. The relentless war-mongers rode the "Communist threat" for all it was worth; when that evaporated, it became necessary to raise a new spectre. To rise above this unfortunate mind-set, you have to be able to see things differently, to empathize with others, and to acknowledge a larger set of realities than those you're convinced are "in your best interest." There'll always be an enemy, if that's what you need.
I had an interesting insight when an old friend, a political conservative, explained a core belief to me: He is convinced that ALL people ALWAYS operate from self-interest, even when doing something that seems altruistic or generous. His model, and justification of his own self-serving nature, is the "natural world" and its life-forms. I'd be interested to know how common this idea is, and who are the people who believe it.
As for "benevolent power," tell that to the citizens of Baghdad and Fallujah, in 2005. The Neo-con Junta convinced themselves that Iraq would be a cake-walk and it fit neatly with Bush/Cheney oil-and-gas interests, "reality" be damned. We have now ratcheted-up the anti-American hatred you seem to enjoy talking about, to the point where the country really is threatened, neatly fulfilling the fear-mongering predictions (picture Colin Powell "selling it" at the UN, George "piece-of-cake" Tenet sitting behind him) that preceded this tragedy. Bloated? You can puff and strut all you want, but those uninfected with the desperate need to justify every American action, no matter how un-American, will continue to work for a more honorable, a more honest, nation.
SDR |
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Donald
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 493
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | but those uninfected with the desperate need to justify every American action, no matter how un-American, will continue to work for a more honorable, a more honest, nation. |
Yes its true that there will be an Iraqi Freedom laid out by end of this month...and that last week, John Kerry even went over to Iraq to thank the troops for their more honorable more honest service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Amazing  However, remember what JK said during his campaign? That it was the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did he have the courage to say that to our troops? Must be those wrongfull polls showing that our troops are overwhelmingly in favor of the work they're doing in Iraq. Why didn't Mr. War Hero stand up in front of these men and women and tell them that they were fighting the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place?
Anyway, while he was over there, he continued (as SDR does now) the Democratic tradition of attacking the Commander-In-Chief on foreign soil. We should expect nothing less. But what he did after his visit to Iraq was most interesting. He went to Syria to visit Saddam's fellow Ba'athist buddy, Bashar Al-Assad. JK held talks with Assad.
So, let me get this straight. Syria is known to have harbored former regime officials from Iraq, is suspected of hiding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and is sending terrorists into Iraq to assist the insurgency and kill American soldiers; and JK rushes to Al Assad's side for a bit of mutual spit swapping.
Does this sound just a wee bit like bringing aid and comfort to the enemy? Maybe JK was looking to get a read on who Assad thought the new world police might want to be. |
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SDR
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Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 1696
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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You have failed either to agree with or to refute the points of my previous posts, preferring instead to change the subject. What this tells me is that you'd rather not deal with some uncomfortable truths. We'll never get to where we should be, as a nation (and no, we're not there yet) if we can't be honest with ourselves and with our neighbors, no matter what that may entail. If I could reach you with reason I would, but it takes two to have an honest and intelligent discussion; we're just "doing the waltz," and I'd rather not. Thanks for your time.
SDR |
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iamanamateur
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 4:56 am Post subject: |
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| there's more than one truth, D. Are you just going to pick the one that you prefer, no matter how irrational it is? |
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