POL: The 10 Steps to Fascism

[mrsimperless]

Saw it on the Report. She either doesn't include fraudulent elections on her list, or it was one of the ones not mentioned on the show. I've seen other lists that go to 14 or higher.

Who else is starting to get pumped for the End Times? Can't believe they're almost here already!!

[Karlifornia]

I'm interested by the thread title, but I admittedly don't know what the hell your post is referring to...I at least want to see a list! I was expecting at least:

#1: Populace consisting of a "beaten-down-by-life" quality..

#2:Charismatic leader

[flounder]

#3:OJ Simpson railroaded again. (He can't catch a break)

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by mrsimperless

Saw it on the Report.

Linky? Maybe you're talking about the Colbert Report? Though I'm sure CNN/Fox News have plenty of "X Reports".

Originally Posted by Karlifornia

I'm interested by the thread title, but I admittedly don't know what the hell your post is referring to...

Yep.


#4: Jesse Jacskon calling Barack Obama "white".

#5: No one knowing how to spell "Belichick".

Actually, this is kind of fun.

[JPhillips]

#6 Maximum Football 2.0

[stevew]

Step 1: Cut a hole in the box

[Neon_Chaos]

Step 2: Put your junk in the box

[Pumpy Tudors]

Step 3: Open the box

[CU Tiger]

#7 50,000 protestors show up in a small town and march because 6 african american teens nearly beat a caucasian to death and are being charged while a caucasian kid gets off scot free with hanging a noose in a tree. Ok that is actually the step, the mass media covering it, and acting lie the protestors have a valid point is, well, stupid.

[gstelmack]

This'll be fun, since gun control is a pet Democrat plank, and that's one of the key steps...

[Critch]

Cool uniforms?

[flounder]

Originally Posted by Critch

Cool uniforms?

Like Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation dancers?

[Neon_Chaos]

#8 Color-coordinated jumpsuits.

[Jas_lov]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

I think this is what he's referring to. The book is by Naomi Wolf.

[flere-imsaho]

Ah. Well, I'm sure people are going to look at the 10 Steps and gloss over her conclusion (from the linked article), which is considerably less extreme and echoes the fears that Democrats, Libertarians and certainly a good number of Republicans have expressed over the past few years:

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

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.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

Edit: I'm reminded of testimony, this week, from intelligence chief Mike McConnell, whereby he stated that the very fact that Congress was debating the Bush Administration's surveillance policies* would lead to the loss of American lives.

*The debate, not the potential cessation of such surveillance activities.