One of my fellow liberals sent this in response to being chided for not
being more temperate in his language after referring to neo-cons as
fascists. Interesting points.
Welcome to Fascist America!
by Gene Callahan
DIGG THIS
My fellow Americans, it's official now: We live in a fascist nation.
Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years
in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone
wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare
programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I'm not
using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned,
1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as:
* Secret prisons – they're back!
* Torture – we're doing it.
* Spying on all citizens.
* Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial.
* Rampant militarism.
* Secret detention.
* Enforced disappearance.
* Denial and restriction of habeas corpus.
* Prolonged incommunicado detention.
* Unfair trial procedures.
(This list was compiled partially based on the work of Amnesty
International, available here.)
An absolutely mind-numbing response to complaints that our traditional
legal system is being torn apart is the question, "So, you want to
protect the rights of terrorists?"
Um, no, I want to protect the rights of non-terrorists who might be
falsely accused of terrorism! That was sort of, you know, the whole idea
of our legal system. I'm sure there was some neo-con around in the 1700s
saying to Jefferson or Madison, "So, you want to protect the rights of
murderers and robbers?" but luckily they ignored him.
We've now gotten to the point where Nazi Germany was, say, in 1934.
Remember, at that time, if you had told a typical German what his
government would do over the next ten years, he would have looked at you
as a madman. After all, his land had been civilized for over a thousand
years. His was the nation of Albertus Magnus, Gutenberg, Goethe,
Schiller, Beethoven, Bach, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Heisenberg,
Reimann, Mann, Lessing, Herder, Handel, Dürer, Leibniz, Gauss, Helmholtz
– he could have gone on, but you get the point. His nation could not
possibly descend into barbarism! If you tried to tell him he was living
in a police state, he would have pointed out that his government had
used its vast new powers very judiciously, and only against a few
trouble-makers. So far.
It is interesting, in gauging the direction we are heading, to look at
the proclamations of "respectable" opinion writers who support this
administration. For instance, we have people at a "libertarian" think
tank proclaiming that Moslems are not entitled to full civil rights in
the US. (Perhaps we need to make them wear something special on their
clothing like, say, a yellow star, so we know just who they are, hey?)
But "conservatives" provide even more stunning examples of purely
fascist reasoning. For example, conservative demagogue Ann Coulter has
called for the editor of The NY Times to face the firing squad for his
part in publicizing this administration's abuses of power. Let's look at
a recent column by Douglas MacKinnon at TownHall.com.
MacKinnon considers all of those involved in revealing the sordid
collection of secret programmes that have been launched by the Bush
administration as "traitors" who have publicized these schemes "purely
because they don't like the policies of the new president." Well, he's
right in that "they don't like the policies" that they consider
unconstitutional violations of our rights. Far from "aiding the enemy,"
these revelations aided us, the American people, by letting us know what
our government has in store for us.
Consider what the point of classifying these programmes was in the first
place, and who they were being kept secret from. The jihadists no doubt
already knew about the secret prisons – their friends are in them! They
surely knew that the war in Iraq has been helping their recruiting –
it's their recruiting! ("Praise be to Allah, Abdul, I read in The NY
Times that it is the Iraq War that is sending us these thousands of new
recruits – who knew?") They no doubt suspect they may be wiretapped –
what they didn't know was that all the rest of us are, as well. No, not
one of these leaks helps terrorists, nor was one of them classified to
stop terrorists from finding them out. We were the ones who weren't
supposed to find out about them.
MacKinnon continues: "And if even one American lost his or her life
because of a leak, then I would want that person to be executed for
treason."
So anyone who reveals our fascist government policies is a traitor who
can be executed! This is obviously an attempt to intimidate the
opposition so that our police state can be expanded without the annoying
work stoppages caused by public outcry when the latest bit of
construction is revealed. And just how does MacKinnon propose to show
that some American lost his life because a journalist revealed that the
US government tortures people across the globe, rather than, say,
because the policies he supports have inspired a million new jihadists?
Secret trial, perhaps? Or why even bother with trials for filthy traitors?
Herr Goebbels – oops, I mean MacKinnon – writes, "Until we severely
punish those who leak classified information, then the traitors among us
will not only continue to flourish, but will grow more brazen with the
secrets they reveal."
Yes, what we ought to be able to do, you know, is simply seize anyone
who even mentions our government's "secret" prisons, and, without a
trial, throw them in a secret prison! This is the logical conclusion of
this fascist's article, after all, since those who talk about the
American Gulag are pretty much terrorists themselves.
Folks, this is coming real soon, and, once it does, domestic opposition
is pretty much over. One journalist – that will be about all it takes –
will be seized as a "terrorist" and thrown in the Gulag. The government
may release him, but then another will simply disappear in the night in
Iraq or Afghanistan, and rumors will circulate that he is being kept in
a cage somewhere and waterboarded. No journalist lacking heroic courage
will any longer be willing to seriously protest government policy.
America is full of decent people, who could never believe their own
government could become fascist. So were Germany and Italy in the 1920s.
But they became fascist anyway. They passed laws suspending civil
liberties, but the government promised the frightened populace that
those laws would only be used against targets like "Communist
terrorists." And, a little bit at a time, the target kept getting bigger
and bigger, slowly enough that the people who weren't paying close
attention never detected it.
And, next thing you know, there were millions of people dead! So, it
turns out, it would have been worth paying attention after all.
October 4, 2006
