Comments on: Proto-Fascist Elements in America Today

By: club penguin cheats

club penguin cheats — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:55:11 +0000

to the comment poster above, you are absolutely right

By: eli zaretsky

eli zaretsky — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:08:45 +0000

a fair point.

By: Linda C

Linda C — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:54:45 +0000

However small the gap is becoming, there is still some distance between “…there are proto-fascist elements in America” to “America is a fascist state.” I don’t disagree with Zaretsky’s point and the list he provided of where we’re in particular trouble brings home that point with devastating clarity. However, I don’t buy for one minute the writer’s claim that the base Obama abandoned — “anti-war folks, the ‘Left,’…young idealists and the like…were reluctant to criticize the first black President.” There is a long list of leftist/progressive writers who have been openly critical of Obama’s policies since he took office. While plenty of critics mentioned the historical and cultural importance of electing the first black President into office, my experience has been that the vast majority of them didn’t let that fact hold them back in any way from their criticisms of the President and his policies. We all know progressive politics has been marginalized by corporate media, but they are out there and their criticisms have, I believe, made an impact, though we’re a long way from undoing the damage that’s being done. That’s going to take more than writing critiques and making lists – real people are going to have to go out into real streets and use their real voices if we’re to have any hope of real change.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:43:26 +0000

Steph wrote:

“Hugo Chavez a hero to this website is mass killing jews in Venezuela.”

Steph, when you make an accusation like that you owe it both to President Chavez and to the readers to offer credible substantiation.

By: Robin Vosburg

Robin Vosburg — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:04:20 +0000

Those are Dr. Britt’s 14 defining characteristics of fascism.

Again, I highly recommend following the links which I posted earlier and reading Dr. Britt’s complete development of these points. So many of them apply to America now that it is truly frightening.

By: Ed Stamm

Ed Stamm — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:19:03 +0000

police brutality (Rodney King beating, “Don’t tase me bro’!”, no stats kept on victims) / warrantless wiretapping / invasion of Iraq / 9/11 cover-up (Reichstag fire) / mercenaries on the government payroll / police infiltration of peace and anti-death penalty groups / killings of mentally ill airline passengers / protesters called “terrorists” / torture of prisoners / secret CIA prisons / huge transfers of public funds to private banks and companies / militarization of the police / dismissal of faculty for expressing unpopular opinions / huge military budgets / constant state of war against a series of enemies / huge amounts of money transfered to military contractors, much of it unaccounted for / excluding some candidates from election debates (even Dennis Kucinich towards the end of the campaign) / secrets kept from the public, lack of transparency in government / “bending the rules” to beat the enemy / huge disparity in wealth / riot police used to drive disaster victims back into New Orleans / secret police agencies / misleading voters during campaigns / lapdog media / covered up war crimes (Fallujah, massacre of captured Taliban, Phoenix-like programs in Iraq and Afghanistan)

By: D. Corvier

D. Corvier — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:15:10 +0000

Ron Paul is a great guy. I don’t know how he keeps his sanity when he is surrounded by so many corrupt senators. Dennis Kucinich is another standout. Remember when he read the 35 Articles of Impeachment into the record. Russ Feingold is A-Ok. There are others. But the corrupt ones seem to rule the roost, unfortunately. The PTB have now fixed the voting system so that anyone of deep character who desires to really be a champion of the people will find it next to impossible to get anywhere. If worse come to worse, the black ops people will be tasked.

By: Dean

Dean — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:02:46 +0000

Fascism is when the government and corporations are intermingled. This is what we have here in Amerika. We the People are merely consumers, at least in their minds. Doing anything that ‘rocks the boat’ will put you on a watch list. All the laws are in place, thanks to BushCo, to turn this country from fascism-lite to fascism-stout overnight.

By: charlie keil

charlie keil — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:24:49 +0000

Read Naomi Wolf’s book End of America.
Read B. Gross on “Friendly Fascism” — early 1980s.
Read Ike Eisenhauer’s famous 1961 speech on Military Industrial Complex, by now much more fully entrenched in all 50 states.
We’ve been a corpstate since the late 1960s.
Friendly fascism turned nasty after 9/11.
What makes me VERY pessimistic, is that Democratic Party is fully participating in the fasc, the bundle around the weaponry and it’s permanent, perpetual, unilateral, preemptive use.
Now, as per supremes super-treachery, 3rd party politicians will face a shitstorm of corporate bucks, attack ads, etc. if they try to mobilize citizens to resist, reclaim, reform, etc.
It is an exact measure of how desperate the situation is that the only serious anti-imperialist elected politician seems to be Ron Paul.
Charlie

By: JustJack

JustJack — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:51:53 +0000

If you’re waiting on experts to inform you, go to http://dneiwert.blogspot.com and download David’s treatise on Fascism. As a journalist who’s been tracking the right wing and white supremacy and neo-nazi movemnts in the US for the better part of his career, he’s surely an expert. And he’s cautious about the term for all the correct and appropriate reasons… and ten years after he wrote his tome on Fascism in America he’s doing the math and that’s why he’s now saying we’ve crossed the Rubicon.

You’ll find references to no less than five academics who studied European fascism and at least two of those have postulated American fascism based on sound research.

Further there’s a Canadian academic with a HUGE treatise on Authoritarianism available for free as a PDF. Don’t wait around to be informed. Go read.

What I meant by my closing question is simply that. It wasn’t my opinion on whether we’re there or not. I think for all intents and purposes we are in fact there, American style but for the final and penultimate criterion.