Is * a fascist?

I vote YES

He has total contempt for democracy and the laws of the land. He believes he is on a mision fro God, and he is a corporate whore. Doesn' get much more fascist than that.

The fact that he hasn't gassed Americans shouldn't obfuscate the fact that his policies and views are fascist.

He has the exact same approach to being president that I used to fantasize about...when I was, like, EIGHT YEARS OLD.

"You're the boss, you can do anything."

But then, I grew up. Georgie never did (or HAD to).

He's certainly no Hitler. Hitler was actually intelligent.



As you can see, Il Duce had his chimp-like aspect as well.

But he came to a bad end;

You should never credit Hitler for anything, even jokingly. He killed over 6 million Jews out of utter craziness.

Is Bush wrong for the US? Of course he is...but don't compare him or anyone else to the abhorrent scum that was Adolf Hitler. Thanks to him, I have many friends who have few or no relatives!

You have to recognize a murderous thug in order to stop it before it gets into the millions. How many murdered Muslims has Bush racked up already...50,000?? He has no plans to stop yet.

I was a historian, and there is no way you can compare the two! Don't tell me to stop being sensitive. Compare Bush to someone else....no one deserves to be compared to Hitler!

I compared him to Mussolini.

if you say it's impossible to give credit to Hitler for anything because of the scope and horror of the crimes committed at his behest under the fog of war.

Yes, Hitler was a murderous madman, responsible for the deaths of some eleven to twelve million people (aside from those who died as casualties of war), BUT he was also intelligent, charismatic, and under his leadership Germany in the 1930's experienced such strong recovery that at the time "the German economic miracle" was a common phrase in the West.

Hitler was a human being, and, like all humans, possessed of SOME good qualities. It is perhaps easier to think of him as a one-dimensional monster than a human being, but to do so is to ignore the very discipline you professed yourself a scholar of in preference to blind hatred.

He possessed some good qualities? Tell that to my aunt who was almost pushed into the gas chamber and would have died if the liberators did not show up that moment.

Oh, and as for your "good points", I will address them substantively. 1. His massive groups that were so enamored with him were put together for propoganda purposes (film editing to make it appear that he was in front of a large crowd when he really was not)-so, there goes charismatic, because he really wasn't.
2. As for intelligent, yes he was supposedly a good artist, although he did not get into the University of Vienna, and he had a higher IQ than some people, but no intelligent leader would fight a two front war, after observing its disasterous consequences in the preceeding war (WWI).
3. His economic miracle was a result of violating the Treaty of Versailles by reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine, and by reassembling a military, which was strictly banned. He also began invading other countries-this helps the economy.

Give me a break...your attempt to make Hitler out as a human is sad...and disrepectful to Jews. I fail to see your point, nor can you convince me that Hitler was anything but a sorry sack of shit. I don't have to love everyone and I don't have to excuse him, because if he didn't die, I wouldn't be here.

**see further down the thread.

Actually, he was a piss poor artist. And he banned *good* art.

I mean, until he poisoned it.

Hitler was not a one-dimensional monster, and I think to reduce him to an aberration only makes us blind to his spiritual kin. He could happen again. He already has, on smaller scales, and if we convince ourselves that he was thoroughly evil and therfore easily pigeonholed we could easily miss the human face of a tyrant his equal or worse.

As for Bush and his handlers, they have exhibited similar traits to those of the Nazis, being less overt with their domestic tactics (no Sturmabteilung thugs, though the Patriot Act is more pernicious) and still lacking the equivalent of the Enablign Act. They may never fully realize the Nazi model, but they're cast from the same form.

I'm no Bush fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the Hitler comparisons are over the top -- and damage our credibility because it makes us look very "fringe". The GOP uses it against us all the time to make us look like dangerous radicals. We can't win with that kind of image.

And I don't appreciate the comparisons either -- Hitler killed many of my relatives. Comparing Bush to Hitler marginalizes just how bad *Hitler* was. There is no comparison, and I find it offensive, inappropriate, and insensitive to those of us who have families directly affected by the holocaust. People should not forget the true horrow that Adolph Hitler was.

I couldn't have said it better!

Read what I wrote. I compared Bush to Mussolini. And I stand by that comparison.

Thats why we need to nip this in the bud RIGHT NOW! There is a religious and power agenda underway and these bastards will kill as many as possible to fulfill this agenda.
You cant compare bu$h to AH now but we may be able to in 4-10 years from now.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Get Bush out of office is one thing-comparing him to Hitler is completely another..

Like we really need credibility with the FREEPERS . LOL ..

They depend on us to keep their sh*tty little message boards humming. They are NOTHING without an *enemy* to fight.

Good Advice: don't worry about what the freepers are going to *think* about "us".

http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/Structure3.htm

The 14 Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. Check

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded 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, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. Check

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. Check

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. Check

5. Rampant Sexism -
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homo-sexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution. Check

6. Controlled Mass Media -
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. Check

7. Obsession with National Security -
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. Check

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 is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. Check

9. Corporate Power is Protected -
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.Check

10. Labor Power is Suppressed -
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. Check

11. Disdain 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 and letters is openly attacked. Check

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.Check

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 even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. Check

14. Fraudulent Elections -
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation 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. Check

That's pretty incredible, how well this admin. fits those profiles...

WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE VOTING "NO" F***ING NEED ?????

KICK THEIR ASSES!

:D

This is the country that, more than any other stomped out real fascism. Hitler and Mussolini are the most agreed illustrations of fascism by historians and scholars. Is Bush probably the worst president in a hundred years? Yeah, but he aint Hitler or Mussolini or anything close.

Half of this country would not support a fascist. Bush is an ignorant uninterested born-again drunk who, like most republicans are accustomed to the dick-head conservative dogma that has been so readily available to them 24 hours a day from talk radio and fox news.

But to throw around the word fasism to apply to that simply weakens the word and therefor the atrocities that fascist regimes have committed.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/04/19/fascism/print.html

I think people should read that article

is not just a river in Egypt. :eyes:

is fascistic. You are probably right that Bush is nothing more than an ignorant drunk that the media can prop up.

But the agenda that is being implemented now definitely tends toward fascism in an incontravertible way.

Bush* is not as bad as Hitler or Mussolini or the others, but he's headed in that direction. All the elements of fascism are there in the Bush* administration. It's a matter of degree, and that could be a matter of time.

Look at the way that freepers, for example, defend anything and everything that Bush* does. That's the kind of blind, zealous support that leads to fascist regimes.

like a boob might festoon? Is DU your fringe?

I spent much of my adult life in the study of the Second World War, and of both fascism and imperialism. It is not "fringe" to find that Bush (and indeed his whole family) are fascists, though no doubt the GOP would dearly love it to be cast as a fringe idea.

No, Bush has not (yet) done the sort of wholesale atrocities that Hitler did, but I am not comparing him to Hitler.

The comparisons to Mussolini are apt because of his unwise aggressive military campaign against a Muslim people, because of his favoritism towards a few useful industrialists at the expense of the People, because of the sort of rhetoric he uses to incite war fever, and because of his buffoon-like attitude.

If you want to see the full measure of just how much of a fascist Bush really is, allow him to steal another term in office.

history about the rise of Hitler in the thirties. Bush has probably murdered 50000 or more Muslims and he has NO plans to stop. That's how Hitler started. You are looking at the end product of Hitler, it took him a while to get there.
History is useful, try it.

Please do not think I am condoning what Bush is doing...I am not...there is not need to end lives. However, America was faced with a 9-11 attack by Muslims, fanatical Muslims, but Muslims. The Jews did nothing to provoke Hitler, he was sick. Comparing the two makes the death camps that my grandmother was in seem insignificant, and I will not have her disrespected in that manner!

I don't like war or killing either, but comparing Bush to Hitler makes people forget just how bad Hitler was.

Also, it is true that Jews didn't DO anything to provoke Hitler, whereas some radical Muslim extremist (not ordinary Muslims) provoked us. Sure, our response was disproportionate, but there is no comparison between the so-called "war on terror" and the Holocaust.

If some of you people can't find it in your hearts to be understanding and sensitive, than you are not true progressives.

Please explain to me how an entire "race" of people can -- in any way -- be said to be "attacking" or "provoking" someone.


MDN

There is a lot of Anti-American sentiment in Arab nations, including a lot of terrorist sympathy. This is not saying that all Muslims are included in this litany-95% are not. However, Saddam had many chances to comply with the regulations given to him, but he did not. So even if we disagree with the Iraq war, it is impossible to say that it is blind persecution of a group of people based on race or religion.

Hitler, on the other hand, specifically targeted the Jews for annihilation, although no Jew had done anything to provoke them.

Do you see the difference now?

The elimination of an Abrahamic religion. Do you see a difference? Because I don't. Hitler accused the Jews and their religion of "Anti-German" sentiment too.

Jews were placed in ghettos, they were forced to do slave labor. Infants were thrown out windows for fun. They hung a girl in the Warsaw ghetto because she was the prettiest one there. They starved people to death and threw others in a chamber of Zyclon B to die! Shall I continue? And no Jew took an airplane and flew it into the Twin Towers! How can you compare the two?

Bush may not be the best, but he hardly compares. You are just making a mockery of Hitler and what he did to the Jewish people when you make comparisons like that. America is entitled to defend itself. Germany was only pursuing world domination. Think about it! Don't minimalize the Jewish plight!

Oh, and Hitler made up Jewish Anti German sentiment. There are many Arabs (Hello Al-Jazeera!) who have made their Anti-American sentiment well known, without provocation.

http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/speeches/1939-09-19.html

One thing has been clearly proved in the last twenty years; the Poles who had not founded that culture also were not able to maintain it. It has been shown again that only he who is himself culturally creative can permanently maintain real cultural performance.

Thirty years would have been sufficient to reduce again to barbarism those territories which the Germans, painstakingly and with industry and thrift, had saved from barbarism. Everywhere traces of this retrogression and decay were visible.

Poland itself was a 'nationalities State.' That very thing had been created here which had been held against the old Austrian State. At the same time Poland was never a democracy. One very thin anemic upper class here ruled not only foreign nationalities but also its so-called own people.

It was a State built on force and governed by the truncheons of the police and the military. The fate of Germans in this State was horrible. There is a difference whether people of lower cultural value has the misfortune to be governed by a culturally significant people or whether a people of high cultural significance has forced upon it the tragic fate of being oppressed by an inferior.

We are determined to carry on and stand this war one way or another. We have only this one wish, that the Almighty, who now has blessed our arms, will now perhaps make other peoples understand and give them comprehension of how useless this war, this debacle of peoples, will be intrinsically, and that He may perhaps cause reflection on the blessings of peace which they are sacrificing because a handful of fanatic warmongers, persons who stand to gain by war, want to involve peoples in war.


This is Hitler's speech at Danzig about the Polish "problem" I.E. the Jews. That last paragraph is illustrative of the intentions. Still see a difference?

You cannot compare the plight of the Jews under Nazi rule, who did NOTHING to provoke any ill will towards them and Muslims, who, yes, for the most part, many did nothing. But there were many who did...Al Qaida , Hamas, PLO, who did things that warranted a response.

Why can't you just pick someone else to compare Bush to? Why does it have to be Hitler? Jeez! Don't you understand what it means to a Jew to have our plight so trivialized. There is a difference!

Your lame attempts at hyperbole do nothing. I doubt you even read the post.

To equate the plight of muslims with the holocaust?

it becomes a holocaust. And the use of depleted uranium there also points to that. What is happening in Iraq is genocide pure and simple.

Wake up. You're not in a free country.

Absolute nonsense.

Your attempts to make light of the systematic murder of over 6 million Jews by comparing it to the Iraq War is what is lame.

Both are human beings. Keeping the blinders on and not seeing it for what it really is only hurts you. You might be next.

The point is not that people are being killed..yes that is horrible in any case.

The point is the way Hitler went about it is the worst atrocity known to mankind, and to compare anyone to him makes light of what happened, and is a disgrace to the memories of those we lost!

the methods may be different, the goal is the same. Get with it.

This is why we have gradations in our penal codes...murder is not all the same.

this war is in self-defense?

So you think that a person who raped and murdered 11 women deserves the same punishment as someone who assists a terminally ill friend commit suicide?

Your logic says yes.

You think this war compares to assisted suicide? What logic

i just love how you completely dodged the whole purpose of the analogy...why do i waste my time?

lynching or dragging someone to their death is worse than a quick, painless death?

If that is what you think, I have some African-American friends who might disagree with you.

Both are dead. Are you calling me racist now?

No, I'm not calling you a racist.

Why so defensive?

It didn't work. Killing is killing. It's no different what method is used. You don't get it.

if I was going to execute you, and I gave you options including:

1) Hanging
2) Firing squad
3) Lethal injection
4) Flaying
5) Drawing-and-quartering

You would respond to me, "that's okay. YOU choose." ???

the fact that you want to kill me? That fact alone say alot about you and nothing about me.

U.S. Soldiers have forced muslims in Iraq to wear armbands stating that they are Muslims? Isn't it even worse how U.S. forces went into every Iraqi neighborhood, rounded up everone in sight at gunpoint, and packed them into cattle cars ten times two small for all those people to fit in?

How about when the Iraqi train cars arrived at the barb-wired facilities where the Iraqis' hair was shaved, to humiliate and sell, and they were painfully marked with tatoos? Then, of course, it was even more horrible when the U.S. Soldiers forced to eat only food that violated the dietary laws of their religion while building munitions for U.S. forces during 20-hour workdays? How about all the cruel and unsual medical experiments we performed on the Iraqis?

But, the ultimate horror is how we march off the Iraquis to gas chambers , firing squads, and ovens for painful, systematic extermination.

Yeah... our treatment of muslims and Iraquis is JUST like the holocaust /sarcasm

Well said!

Yet. Those who fail to see history only repeat it. Sure you're in the right place?

of my Jewish heritage, and I do not like to see the suffering of my people marginalized by such comparisons.

when you seek to prevent other's suffering. Playing down what's happening now actually does marginalize it.

And forcing women and children out of a town and killing the military age men in a bombing campaign isn't? I question your logic

I suggest you read Night by Elie Wiesel and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi...then come talk to me

See my last post to you-stop looking at the end-people killed, but look at the means. The means is the problem here!

Genocide is Genocide

Bush is wrong, yes

But he did not set out to annihilate the Muslim religion on the basis of being the Muslims. He is not persecuting the Muslims in this nation, rounding them up into cattle cars and driving them to their imminent death.

Stop looking at it on a large scale and have some respect for the Jews we lost in the Holocaust

Gitmo, military tribunals, Fallujah, Abu Gairb? How much more evidence do you need?

I see I am banging my head against the wall, because you are completely missing my point. I do not feel like repeating myself, so leave it at that. Obviously, you feel a need to press a sensitive issue, and you refuse to understand and really think about what I am saying. If we make every "genocide" rank and file, they are bound to be repeated. Jews deserve our respect to allow their memories to stand out.

Read the books I recommended, then tell me what you think.

for being human. If you want to be blind to suffering then go right ahead. It's your right. Genocide is genocide and turning away from the evidence only makes sure it happens.

are you insinuating that this war is in self-defense?

Jews deserve our respect to allow their memories to stand out.

My Native American ancestor's memories are given no special treatment. Millions of the planet's ethnic groups which have been *cleansed* from the face of the earth receive no "stand out" treatment. Does your progressive spirit limit itself to special treatement for only one race?

is way too narrow for my thought processes.

Yes they ARE. They aren't being *murdered* .. but you've stated it's the METHOD and not the MURDER which holds importance ..

Round UP:
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/26/deportee/index.html
Banished from the American dream
The Kesbehs were a hardworking immigrant family with a successful business and deep roots in Houston. But after 9/11, the U.S. kicked them, along with thousands of other Arab and Muslim families, out of the country. Now, in a land the children barely know, they wonder why their life has been shattered.
>> more

.. or you wouldn't be here, remember?

group. So what we're doing in Iraq, as horrendous as it is, is not genocide.

killing METHODS? and NOT the actual MURDERS?

So, as long as we have kindler, gentler maim, torture, rape and murder it's all okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Or at least *not as bad*
:( ..

Dead is dead, dude.

SOMEONE FINALLY GOT IT...You win the prize!

they are both bad, but Hitler is worse.

/sarcasm

is the term "goy" in your vocabulary?

inquiring minds want to know.

I detect a prejudice

Is the term "goy" or "goyim" in your vocabulary?

I'm not the one elevating the jew over all the other races.

military purpose behind what they did. In fact, many Jews were Hitler supporters (before the Holocoust) and helped him get elected because of the "progressive" social/economic plan he campaigned on; as you know, a good majority of us Jews are liberal or other progressives.

Are you really that blind?

the extermination of the Jews served no military purpose for Hitler.

except for world domination, which is what hitler was after.

did not play into his "world domation" agenda -- only his social agenda.

It was well known.

"Well-known" conveys no useful information. That is a broad, unsubstantiated overgeneralization.

You haven't given me any. Where are your facts to say he isn't?

And, to answer your question would be to force me to prove a negative, an impossibility.

my posts are there with links and the evidence is all over the board

The German people voted for Hitler in 1932 as their defender against Stalin's invasion of Germany, which was virtually defenseless under the Treaty of Versailles. But Hitler was preparing for and then waged a war for world domination, for which most of those who voted for Hitler or his party in 1932 did not vote.

He wanted world domination because it would have prevented any subversion of his power by the "bacillus of Bolshevism" and the "bacillus of democracy." World domination would have given him unlimited world power, greatness and grandeur unprecedented in history.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/6/26/235713.shtml

Adolf Hitler, a charismatic, Austrian-born demagogue, rose to power in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s at a time of social, political, and economic upheaval. Failing to take power by force in 1923, he eventually won power by democratic means. Once in power, he eliminated all opposition and launched an ambitious program of world domination and elimination of the Jews, paralleling ideas he advanced in his book, Mein Kampf. His "1,000 Year Reich" barely lasted 12 years and he died a broken and defeated man.
http://www.remember.org/guide/Facts.root.hitler.html

So are you saying "world domination" EXCLUDES "social agenda"???
World Domination DEFINES Social Agenda.

You can't separate the two...

to combat the hyperinflation caused by the reparations Germany was forced to repay by the Treaty of Versailles is what got Hitler elected.

bhenries (58 posts) Sun May-02-04 11:18 PM
Response to Reply #74

81. The extermination of the Jews

did not play into his "world domation" agenda -- only his social agenda.


"Once in power, he eliminated all opposition and launched an ambitious program of world domination and elimination of the Jews, paralleling ideas he advanced in his book, Mein Kampf. "

World Domination DEFINES Social Agenda.

You can't separate the two...

Was not discussing how he won the election, but rather what his agenda was. Back on track now?

philo-semitic?

pro-human. Nobody gets a pedestal from me.

What exactly does "pro-human" mean?

Sounds like more of a cop-out. If one loves everyone equally, one can hate everyone equally as well, simultaneously.

The term, pro-human, has no meaning; it is empty and vacuous.

I find it hard that, in your life, you do not love one, or a few, people more than others, or hate one or two people more than you hate everyone else. If that is the case, does that imply that you are not pro-human, by your definition?

What's with the personal attacks anyway? Haven't you read the rules?

a single personal attack. Unless, of course, you consider a substantive point you can't respond to (substantively) to be an attack.

is a personal attack. Thank you

"LIKES Jews." It is the OPPOSITE of anti-Semitic. Calling someone philo-Senitic is hardly an attack, nor is asking someone if they are a PHILO-Semite.

I am niether pro or anti-semitic. I hardly see where that fits in in this discussion.

which you just answered, though I don't see how one can plausibly maintain neutrality with resect to every person on earth.

when you see them as human and not as gods.

Democrats, Republicans, socialists, facists, authoritarians, and libertarians all equally?

and if they hurt others I want them in the same place. behind bars.

That means that you love Freepers too? It doesn't appear from what you are saying that you really love everyone!

Now if they want to hurt others or be a disruption then I don't have to put up with them.

Can it, you can't elevate one race above all the others. We're all human. Which is what you're trying to say.

Here is what you wrote:

However, America was faced with a 9-11 attack by Muslims, fanatical Muslims, but Muslims. The Jews did nothing to provoke Hitler, he was sick.

You are trying to make a case for religious/racial "provocation" by Muslims, in order to differentiate that from the case of Jewish deaths under Nazi Germany. The problem is, the people Bush is currently bombing had nothing to do with the "provocation" you cite. Are you arguing for "group guilt", then? IE: because the 19 people who hijacked 4 airliners on 9/11/01 were Muslims, therefore all Muslims everywhere -- notably those in Iraq -- are now suddenly guilty of "provocation"? And isn't that precisely the same "scapegoating" pitch that virtually every racist group in recent memory -- up to and including the Nazis -- has employed?

Sorry, but the distinction you are claiming just doesn't stand up to scrutiny, imho.


MDN

I think you are definitely missing the point here. I am not saying that Bush is right for being in Iraq, and I feel for the innocent there. However, they are liberated without Saddam, who killed and oppressed many more than Bush did. Why don't you compare Saddam to Hitler? I still would be angry, because Hitler stands on his own, but I think that is a more appropriate analogy if you are forcing me to make one.

All I am saying is that no one should call anyone Hitler. He is a disgusting sub-human, and even with the war in Iraq, Bush has not done even 1/8th of what Hitler did. You cannot make the comparison.

Also, Jews never taught their children hate in school. I know that many Muslims teach their children to hate Jews and Americans, such as those Muslims in Israel!

I didn't make any such comparison.

Our exchange has gone as follows:

You posted a statement that Muslims (in general) had committed "provocations", which you distinguished from the situation of Jews in Germany under Hitler.

In response, I asked you to please explain how a religious/racial group can "commit provocations" at all.

Thus far, you still haven't answered my question.


MDN

I did not say that Muslims in general committed provocations. I actually said 95% had nothing to do with it. 5% of fundamentalists did...compare that to 0% of Jews. I am trying to tell you that your question had nothing to do with my statement. Sorry if I was unclear.

After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.
http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2
google: "Prescott Bush" for MUCH more ...

Hey, if whoosh*'s grandpappy could handle banking services for Hitler, and then I suppose, buy little geo-rge an ice cream cone .. then a line of comparison can be drawn, right?

they are liberated without Saddam
Have you been reading any other threads around here? Is that your definition of "liberation"?

Why are deadly concentration camps *worse* when Jews were locked up? Shouldn't they be abhorred no matter WHO is locked up without regard to human rights? It also just so happens that no Jews have been locked into camps for the past 56 years!! Yet, I get the impression that is supposed to be a larger concern than the atrocities which are occurring at THIS VERY MOMENT in time. How can that be? I get upset when I think about the witch burnings and murders of the catholic church, but it doesn't BLIND me to what is happening TODAY, NOW.

Does only torture of *Jews* convince you of immorality? Is the *Jew* the only *human* worthy of life and liberty on the planet?

This is not about Jews per se or Arabs per se. This is about remembering what happened in Germany under Hitler and respecting the memories of the Jews that were killed. If we place that with every rank and file killing of a certain race, religion, or creed of people, we only marginalize what happened.

All I have been trying to say is compare Bush to something else...keep Hitler burning in Hell all on his own pedestal!

I mourn the senseless loss of every life on the planet. Don't play favorites with races. Wanting to elevate one race above all others is exactly what Nazism is about. Just reversing the *higher race* is NOT the solution.

And I can have mine

And if you want to claim special elevated status for one RACE, you are free to do so. Happens quite frequently, in fact. There are many people who share your opinion. That's why the world is so SCREWED UP.

how two BRAND NEW members can show up at the same time with identical tragic histories?

I wonder if they *know* each other in RL? What an AMAZING coincidence. It's a miracle!!

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

then .. This isn't something we see everyday at DU. Not in exactly this way. Being unique is a good thing, isn't it?

as the memory and history serve as a warning for future generations. Looking at the comparison as a possible road we may be heading means your grandmothers experience and those that were slaughtered will not be in vain.

Part of the strong support for Israel is the guilt felt that we just stood by and let it happen. We knew it was going on and we did nothing for quite some time. We must learn from our mistakes.

As I understand it, he also murdered gypsies, the retarded, homosexuals, the mentally ill, etc. etc. etc.

So, was the first targetting of Jews and Jews ALONE? Or did he start out targetting anyone he thought was draining the vitality and resources of Germany?

It's a political and economic system. "Corporatism" as Mussolini called it. Although fascist regimes generally use an iron fist, it is the marriage of government and corporate power that is the key ingredient. Calling Bush a "Nazi" would be a big leap. "Fascist" is a much smaller one.

From Friendly Fascism by Bertrand Gross (1980), The Specter of Friendly Fascism


p168
Although friendly fascism would mean total ruin of the American dream, it could hardly come suddenly- let alone in any precisely predictable year. This is one of the reasons I cannot go along with the old-fashioned Marxist picture of capitalism or imperialism dropping the fig leaf or the mask. This imagery suggests a process not much longer than a striptease. It reinforces the apocalyptic vision of a quick collapse of capitalist democracy-whether "not with a bang but a whimper," as T. S. Eliot put it, or with "dancing to a frenzied drum" as in the words of William Butler Yeats. In my judgment, rather, one of the greatest dangers is the slow process through which friendly fascism would come into being. For a large part of the population the changes would be unnoticed. Even those most alive to the danger may see only part of the picture-until it is too late. For most people, as with historians and social scientists, 20-20 vision on fundamental change comes only with hindsight. And by that time, with the evidence at last clearly visible, the new serfdom might have long since arrived.

p168
... in the movement toward friendly fascism, any sudden forward thrust at one level could be followed by a consolidating pause or temporary withdrawal at another level. Every step toward greater repression might be accompanied by some superficial reform, every expansionist step abroad by some new payoff at home, every well-publicized shocker (like the massacres at Jackson State, Kent State, and Attica, the Watergate scandals or the revelations of illegal deals by the FBI or CIA) by other steps of less visibility but equal or possibly greater significance, such as large welfare payments to multinational banks and industrial conglomerates. At all stages the fundamental directions of change would be obscured by a series of Hobson's choices, of public issues defined in terms of clear-cut crossroads-one leading to the frying pan and the other to the fire. Opportunities would thus be provided for learned debate and earnest conflict over the choice among alternative roads to serfdom . . .

The unifying element in this unfolding logic is the capital-accumulation imperative of the world's leading capitalist forces, creatively adjusted to meet the challenges of the many crises I have outlined. This is quite different from the catch-up imperatives of the Italian, German, and Japanese leaders after World War I. Nor would its working out necessarily require a charismatic dictator, one-party rule, glorification of the State, dissolution of legislatures, termination of multiparty elections, ultranationalism, or attacks on rationality.

As illustrated in the following oversimplified outline, which also points up the difference between classic fascism and friendly fascism, the following eight chapters summarize the many levels of change at which the trends toward friendly fascism are already visible.

Despite the sharp differences from classic fascism, there are also some basic similarities. In each, a powerful oligarchy operates outside of, as well as through, the state. Each subverts constitutional government. Each suppresses rising demands for wider participation in decision making, the enforcement and enlargement of human rights, and genuine democracy. Each uses informational control and ideological flimflam to get lower and middle-class support for plans to expand the capital and power of the oligarchy and provide suitable rewards for political, professional, scientific, and cultural supporters.

A major difference is that under friendly fascism Big Government would do less pillaging of, and more pillaging for, Big Business. With much more integration than ever before among transnational corporations, Big Business would run less risk of control by any one state and enjoy more subservience by many states. In turn, stronger government support of transnational corporations, such as the large group of American companies with major holdings in South Africa, requires the active fostering of all latent conflicts among those segments of the American population that may object to this kind of foreign venture. It requires an Establishment with lower levels so extensive that few people or groups can attain significant power outside it, so flexible that many (perhaps most) dissenters and would-be revolutionaries can be incorporated within it. Above all, friendly fascism in any First World country today would use sophisticated control technologies far beyond the ken of the classic fascists.

p184
... a friendly fascist power structure in the I United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more sophisticated than the "caesarism" of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head... it would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment.

p189
Under the full-fledged oligarchy of friendly fascism, the Chief Executive network would become much more powerful than ever before. And the top executive-in America, the president-would in a certain sense become more important than before. But not in the sense of a personal despotism like Hitler's.

Indeed, the president under friendly fascism would be as far from personal caesarism as from being a Hirohito-type figurehead. Nor would a president and his political associates extort as much "protection money" from big-business interests as was extracted under Mussolini and Hilter. The Chief Executive would neither ride the tiger nor try to steal its food; rather, he would be part of the tiger from the outset. The White House and the entire Chief Executive network would become the heart (and one of the brain centers) of the new business-government symbiosis. Under these circumstances the normal practices of the Ultra-Rich and the Corporate Overlords would be followed: personal participation in high-Ievel business deals and lavish subsidization of political campaigns, both partly hidden from public view.

p190
This transformation would require a new concept of presidential leadership, one emphasizing legitimacy and righteousness above all else. As the linchpin of an oligarchic establishment, the White House would continue to be the living and breathing symbol of legitimate government. "Reigning" would become the first principle of "ruling". Only by wrapping himself and all his agents in the trappings of constitutionality could the President succeed in subverting the spirit of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Chief Executive Network, Big Business, and the UltraRich could remain far above and beyond legal and moral law only through the widely accepted image that all of them, and particularly the president, were fully subservient to law and morality. In part, this is a matter of public relations-but not the old Madison Avenue game of selling perfume or deodorants to the masses. The most important nostrils are those of the multileveled elites in the establishment itself; if things smell well to them, then the working-buying classes can probably be handled effectively. In this context, it is not at all sure that the personal charisma of a president could ever be as important as it was in the days of Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy.

etc.

Does a wild bear shit in tne woods?

Don't compare Bush to Hitler. Hitler was a decorated war hero.

Bill Maher

I think their money had a common origination too?

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/ratlines.htm

Ratlines:The CIA &The Nazis

To understand how the CIA has evolved into a menace to freedom worldwide one needs to look at the very beginnings of the intelligence service in this country starting in the period following WWI and the cast of characters. Where and when did the CIA evolve into a monster diametrically opposed to the ideals of a democracy and who were involved? The simple answer is Allen Dulles; evidence abounds that he was a traitor. But as with all simple answers there is a much more that lays hidden. In the following pages the role of Wall Street bankers and big oil along with their servant Dulles will be shown to have been behind the subversion of many countries and the importation of Nazi war criminals. Dulles and the U.S. intelligence community were actively involved in helping Nazi war criminals escape from Europe; they were assisted with help from both Britain and the Vatican.

Obviously Dulles needed help in carrying out a continuing cover up and could not have acted alone. During the war several individuals from the State Department subverted the wishes and orders from FDR. Elbridge Durbrow and R. Borden Reams were two people from FDR's State Department who deliberately mislead FDR and withheld information from him. Reams withheld the first reports from a spy inside of Germany and occupied Poland of the atrocities being committed against the Jewish people.14 As this was being written a report surfaced that the first notification of high government officials of the Nazi euthanasia was a cable from Vice Counsel Paul H. Dutko dated October 16, 1940.102 It is uncertain if this cable ever reached FDR just as the later information was kept from him. It is doubtful that even if it had reached Roosevelt that he could have done anymore than condemn the actions with the rampant isolationists and the anti-Jewish senitment that was prevalent throughout the country and in congress. Their actions and the actions of others mainly inside the State Department went beyond a simple disagreement over policy into acts of subversion.

Recent evidence confirmed by Clark Clifford has shown that Truman was unaware of the CIA importation of the Nazis war criminals.3 Generally the cover up during the Truman administration was the work of James Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy at the time. The reader should note here that Forrestal, a conservative Democrat could barely cover up for his Jewish bigotry and worked behind Truman's back to block the creation of the state of Israel and had strong ties to the oil business. Before coming to Washington Forrestal was a vice president of the Wall Street firm of Dillon, a firm that invested heavily in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.113 Another who was certainly involved and well aware of the status of the various war criminals that were allowed to emigrate was J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover protected himself in several ways, one he removed all damning files from FBI headquarters to the New York and Washington field offices, likewise he removed the FBI from the background checks.15

Others were involved in the cover up at the time as well. In 1945 the navy captured documents from the Nazi oil cartel, Kontinentale Ol A. G. Konti headed by former Reichsbank officer Karl Blessing. A young naval officer was assigned to review those Konti documents. Allen Dulles had personally vouched for Blessing's as an anti-Nazi. If Blessing would have went down as a war criminal and a Nazi, Dulles and his clients would go down as traitors. Dulles personally asked the young naval officer to keep quiet about those documents in exchange for financing the young man's first congressional race, thus was launched the political career of Richard Nixon.4

Prescott Bush is largely credited with helping Nixon getting started in politics as an early backer and in his selection for vice presidential candidate in 1952. This is the same Prescott Bush that ran a corporation that was seized by the United States government during WWII as being nothing more than a den of Nazi spies. Nor could Prescott Bush plead innocence of the Nazis in the business as he sought out help from the Dulles brothers in concealing the Nazi involvement in this business from the U.S. government. The astute reader should recall that during Watergate, Nixon threaten to fire everyone at the CIA except George Bush after the CIA refused to cover up for him. Did Nixon make the exception of Bush as a payback to Prescott or was Nixon fearful that Bush could expose his past? That leaves a neat little package with immense implications for the reader or another investigative reporter to explore.
(snip)

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

Erosion of civil liberties (PATRIOT Act), government tabbing of political dissidense (which pre-dates Bush and should not be tolerated in a democracyy), supply side economics, preemptive war, stolen elections (several since the 2000 precendent (but Ralph Nader is to blame right)), closing gap b/t party votes (the Republicans didn't make the last 3 years happen alone), and a general rascist outlook (look at his recent comments on skin color/self government and the stastics of victims executed in Texas while he was governor).

Yup, we are headed towards hell, and neither major party gives a shit right now.

Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because
it is a merger of state and corporate power."
--- Benito Mussolini

Fascism, capitalism and corporatism
GIULIANI, JEWS, ART & FASCISM
BY SAM SMITH
http://prorev.com/fascist.htm

"Italians, who invented the term fascism, also called it the estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Orwell rightly described fascism as being an extension of capitalism. It is an economy in which the government serves the interests of oligopolies, a state in which large corporations have the powers that in a democracy devolve to the citizen. Today, it is no exaggeration to call our economy corporatist, which has been described by British academics R.E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler as a system in which the government guides privately owned businesses towards order, unity, nationalism and success...

"Let us not mince words, they said. "Corporatism is fascism with a human face." The Nazis had their own word for it: wehrwirtschaft, semantically linking wehr (for defense, bulwark, weapon) with wirtshaft (for housekeeping, domestic economy, husbandry) to describe an economy based on the assumption of warfare.

Our nation does seem enthralled in the fascisim championed by a Mussolini, with some difference (famously, under Mussolini, the general popoulation was content in that the 'trains ran on time' -- industry and infrastructure began to work again). But there's something more than fascism afoot, there's a neo-liberal imperialism working its way around the globe, too.

The NSS (National Security Strategy of the United States, September 20, 2002, available at whitehouse gov) sure does read like a definitive "Manifesto of Liberal Imperialism".

To paraphrase the NSS: "The American Way of Life -- individual liberty and free market capitalism -- is self-evidently superior to all others. If the world followed Our Way we'd all be more prosperous and secure in our Liberty. There exists dangerous rogue states out there that would diminish liberty and threaten our security. We therefore have the right and self-interest to remove these illegitimate states and help their peoples build states in our own image. It is in the self-interest of everyone for us to re-order the world in this way. Thus, the New World Order of the Pax Americana." (It goes something like that, anyway.) The NSS even implies we'd go to war to enforce lower marginal tax rates! Definitely very Liberal Imperialistic, there's no doubt about it! The word "fascism" doesn't (yet) apply.

There is in this some things that I think appeal to the American spirit, and maybe that's part of the reason Bush has been allowed to behave as he has. First, the notion that our way of life, the result of full exercise of the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, is the highest expression of individual freedom ever on earth -- spreading it is a good in itself. (Remember, we're in the world of myth, here.) And, second, governments gain legitimacy solely through the consent of the governed. The people in a sense "lease" their power to the state apparatus through the intermediation of constitutional democracy. Where this is not evidently so, government is illegitimate; we have a "rogue" state. Illegitimate states have no right to claims of sovereignty, rendering "regime change" for the purpose of replacing the regime with one in our own image moral and legal and right.

This is, note, just a modern rendition of the "white man's burden". And I hope we all remember how false and class serving that was!

I think the above represents the ideology for public consumption. It hides the underlying reality. Liberal Imperialism is fundamentally optimistic. It posits value in the conquered as well as the conqueror -- all serve as consumer and worker when cooking an ever growing economic pie. It's the (Strasserian) Big Lie. Instead, I think what we're witnessing today is a collapse of optimism and a reaction to limits. After writing off vast parts of the U.S. population and the world (as "useless eaters" and "cannon fodder"), GWB is leading a circling of the wagons for self-defense of his elite's way of life while ours is left to decline down the back slope of Hubbert's peak (peak oil).

Note the choice of nations for regime change. Afghanistan and Iraq. Is Iran or Syria next? Yet North Korea is relatively ignored. Why is that?

Bush is advancing a radical right-wing agenda that is firmly focused on reducing the role of government to one narrow purpose: Security. Policing and protecting the prerogatives of power. Expanding the empire. And...

Really
The police try to protect the banks
And everything else is secondary
--D.A. Levy, SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM

Note the crushing fiscal policy -- two tax cuts totaling well over $2 trillion that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy. Our $6 trillion surplus has been reduced to a $5 trillion deficit for as far as the eye can see. This is nothing more than a continuance of the Reagan/GHWB policy of pauperizing government in order to make it impossible to continue programs other than security, including their hated social security and medicare for the coming glut of boomer retirees.

Why? To reduce the lower and middle classes to deeper dependency on the largesse of authoritarian corporations -- resulting in labor's declining share of value creation and rising profits for the advantaged classes.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there
government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and
life and property are his who can take them.
---Thomas Jefferson, to Annapolis Citizens, 1809

Steve Miller had a piece on CommonDreams.org that makes these same points better than I can...

The New Right Wing Agenda
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0613-02.htm

"The most important implication of all this is that large segments of the domestic and world population are no longer seen as worth worrying about. On one level, this is just racism and classism. But there’s more than that going on. In the past, capitalism was optimistic and assumed that it would keep expanding, which provided the basis for a “corporate liberalism” that saw everyone in the world as a potential consumer and/or laborer – and therefore having some potential worth. But the new reactionaries see the future as much more of a zero-sum game. Partly, this is an expression of their incredible greed and corruption – their incessant efforts to rip off wealth for themselves and their narrow sets of cronies. In any case, the result is that most of Africa, large swaths of Latin America and Asia, and significant parts of the domestic US population have been simply written off –individuals who may arise from the trodden mass are welcome as junior partners, but there is no concern at all for the general well being of these sectors beyond token PR and the limited need to keep local elites from causing too much anti-American trouble on the world stage.

"The amazing thing is that the right wing fundamentalists have been able to seize power and win a large amount of support – or at least acquiescence -- among the US electorate. The people I talk with point to a number of contextual reasons. First, this country lacks any significant institutionalized alternative. The Democratic Party is both complicit and fratricidal. The labor movement is the only really powerful potential organized opposition, but they are ideologically scattered, organizationally weak, and under unremitting attack. In addition, the powerful role of money in shaping our electoral outcomes is another key ingredient in the right wings success, as well as in keeping liberal (much less radical) alternatives from gaining influence in the Democratic Party. The increasing dominance of US media by an incredibly small number of incredibly right wing corporations has a powerful impact. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the lack of any significant “third way,” and the resulting feeling that there is “no viable alternative” has been a very important context for the right wings’ ability to present themselves as inevitable and unstoppable. Finally, the current climate of insecurity, fear, and even paranoia – which the government and media are successfully doing their utmost to deepen and expand – plays an important role in making it hard for opposition to find political space.

<snip>

"Most important, by wrapping themselves in the mantle of religion, the GOP leadership has made themselves a vehicle for the growing religious fundamentalist upsurge – parts of which can accurately be described as a fascist movement. Having god on your side means you are always right, no matter what other people may think or how events may fall out. You simply never have to say you are sorry, and all your failures are the result of evil forces beyond your control. Being on a Crusade, having an absolutist and deeply ideological sense of mission, also underpins the right wing’s willingness to use all the power at their command – legal and extra-legal – to push for a maximal agenda. No matter how thin their electoral margin of victory, once in office, they act without hesitation or compromise. They understand that success creates its own legitimacy and its own tailwind, pulling others along with it.

"The scariest part is that the right wing lunatics feel that they’ll get away with it. Who remembers Afghanistan, or the absence of Iraqi’s supposed weapons of mass destruction? Who seems to care that our economy is collapsing? In the short term, Bush and company win not because of smarter strategies or brilliant tactics, but because they have access to overwhelming resources and power and they can simply outlast everyone and everything else. In fact, they are so incompetent and so blind to the complexities of the real world that they will make huge mistakes. So it is possible (but not inevitable) that the world situation will spin out of control and the small clique now running the country will have to pass the baton to others in 2004 or 2008. But we should not underestimate their willingness to keep imposing their will through direct (or indirect) force -- the racism, lies, manipulation, and violence used to secure the 2000 election are likely to be repeated or exceeded in coming years.

<more>

I argue for fascism with the term "neo" prefixed to it. Neo: "New and different" -- different than the fascisms that preceded it (in many ways), new in that it represents the agenda of the radical "conservatives" that came to power through the logically twisted and power-serving SCOTUS decision of December 12. I use the term "neo-fascism" because "fascism" resonates with negative emotions already out there (it serves as a meme). I mean to make it stick to the current regime. I understand the risk (the oversimple dismissal because "Bush is no Hitler").

I mean to push buttons. "Neo Liberal Imperialism" just doesn't have quite the same weight, but shout "fascism" at a suburban cocktail party and you will engage debate! (Gotta move that "middle" ya know!)

Here's another good article from the great OnlineJournal.com, available here.

Midnight ride of the rabble
By Thom Hartmann
OnlineJournal.com

To every Middlesex village and farm,
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear.
—From Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863

June 13, 2003—Emerson told us, in his lecture Angloam, that in America "the old contest of feudalism and democracy renews itself here on a new battlefield." Perhaps seeing our day through a crack between the skeins of time and space, Emerson concluded, "It is wonderful, with how much rancor and premeditation at this moment the fight is prepared."

"Feudalism?

"Let's be blunt. The real agenda of the new conservatives is nothing less than the destruction of democracy in the United States of America. And feudalism is one of their weapons.

<snip>

"The government of the United States is us. It was designed to be a government of, by, and for We, the People. It's not an enemy to be destroyed; it's a means by which we administer and preserve the commons that we collectively own.

"Nonetheless, the new conservatives see our democratic government as the enemy. And if they plan to destroy democracy, they must have something in mind to replace it with. ... What conservatives are really arguing for is a return to the three historic forms of tyranny that the Founders and Framers identified, declared war against, and fought and died to keep out of our land. Those tyrants were kings, theocrats, and noble feudal lords.

<snip>

"The great and revolutionary ideal of America is that a government can exist while drawing its authority, power, and ongoing legitimacy from a single source: "The consent of the governed." Conservatives, however, would change all that.

"In their brave new world, corporations are more suited to governance than are the unpredictable rabble called citizens. Corporations should control politics, control the commons, control health care, control our airwaves, control the "free" market, and even control our schools. ...

<snip>

"Corporations and their CEOs are America's new feudal lords, and the new conservatives are their obliging servants and mouthpieces. The conservative mantra is: "Less government!" But the dirty little secret of the new conservatives is that just as nature abhors a vacuum, so also do politics and power. Every time government of, by, and for We, the People is pushed out of administering some part of this nation's vast commons, corporations step in. And by swamping the United States of America in debt with so-called "tax cuts," they seek to force an increasingly desperate government to cede more and more of our commons to their corporate rule.

<snip>

"But these are straw man arguments: What they are really advocating is corporate rule, and ultimately a feudal state controlled exclusively by the largest of the corporations. Smaller corporations, like individual humans and the governments they once hoped would protect them from powerful feudal forces, can watch but they can't play.

<snip -- please read the article for its details!>

"This is feudalism in its most raw and naked form, just as the kings and nobles of old sucked dry the resources of the people they claimed to own. It is in these arguments for unrestrained corporatism that we see the naked face of Hamilton's Federalists in the modern conservative movement. It's the face of wealth and privilege, of what Jefferson called a "pseudo-aristocracy," that works to its own enrichment and gain regardless of the harm done to the nation, the commons, or the "We, the People" rabble.

<snip>

"These new conservatives would have us trade in our democracy for a corporatocracy, a form of feudal government most recently reinvented by Benito Mussolini when he recommended a "merger of business and state interests" as a way of creating a government that would be invincibly strong. Mussolini called it fascism.

<snip>

"These corporate-embracing conservatives are not working for what's best for democracy, for America, or for the interests of "We, The People." They are explicitly interested in a singular goal: Profits and the power to maintain them. Under control, the desire for profit can be a useful thing, as 200 years of American free enterprise have shown.

"But unrestrained, as George Soros warns us so eloquently, it will create monopoly and destroy democracy. The new conservatives are systematically dismantling our governmental systems of checks and balances; of considering the public good when regulating private corporate behavior; of protecting those individuals, small businesses, and local communities who are unable to protect themselves from giant corporate predators. They want to replace government of, by, and for We, the People, with a corporate feudal state, turning America's citizens into their vassals and serfs.

"Only a public revolt in disgust over this unconscionable behavior will stop these new conservatives from turning America into a corporate-based clone of Mussolini's feudal vision. As Longfellow reminds us, "In the hour of darkness and peril and need/The people will waken and listen to hear."

"It is again that hour, and now is the time for we, the rabble, to re-awaken our fellow citizens.

(bolded emphasis added by dk)

Thom Hartmann <thom@thomhartmann.com> is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," and the host of a nationally syndicated daily talk show <www.thomhartmann.com>. This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

It's Mussolini's definition of fascism, the marriage of corporate and state power, that lends the tag "fascism" its weight now (insofar as it has weight). Perhaps the marriage occurred years ago, but I see a qualitative shift in the open unilateral abrasiveness and bullying of the current regime. This is something new. Such is my opinion.

If not "neo-fascist imperialism", then what language would you use then, any of you, to rally the rabble? In my case, to move the middle (knowing that elections, here in the U.S., are won or lost on just how the middle breaks on election day)? Give me memes! Give me soundbites and slogans! Such is the ammunition I seek.

...If I recall right the corporate state was more about the state coordinating and paritally regulating buisness...sort of a state-buisness partnership, with the state performing a coordinating, regulatory role.

Sort of like the the early attempts at "planning" and "industry codes" under FDRs NRA (the one that was ruled unconstitutional by the USSC).

I think, in this new neofascism that you are postulating , this coordination funciton is "kicked upstairs" to organizations like WTO and treatys like NAFTA...the decisionmaking is pretty remote from democratic accountabilty, true, but this is happening at an international level, not at a national level.

In sense, instead of the corporate state we sort of have radical fee marketism...where the state enforces "economic freedom" for the private sector via deregulation, police support of union busting, and such...with the necessary economic "coordination" happening at the transnational level.

The repressive aspects of neofacism are happening more in the cultural and civil liberties side...

Its sort of a marriage of freemarket fundamentalism and religous fundamentalism, here in the USA at least.

Only because I don't believe Bush has a political philosophy or worldview. I really think most of the crap he says, he is just parrroting what he's been told to say. It's pretty obvious he's got no clue what he's talking about.

And note my post above yours.

I agree that Bush most likely does not have a "political philosophy" of his own, this man who rarely reads, who has those around convey "objective news".

I see Bush as a man buffeted along by powerful winds, unconsciously doing the bidding of his handlers who puff selectively, to maximal effect.

But I answered "yes", acknowledging that the regime Bush represents is neo-fascist through and through.

...I think we are seeing something new under developement, not conventional 20th century facism.

Yes, and I don't toss that term around lightly. He has a clear authoritarian personality and no respect for either democracy or the rule of law. He is NOT a Nazi, however.


From Orcinus, a very good piece on Rush and Fascism. He requests a $5.00 donation (not required to read)
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pdf

Namely:

"Why the hell do we have to ask this question?"

He Claims God chose him for pretzeldent.

People who say he is really don't understand the meaning of the term. He's a bastard, but he's no fascist.

The more we hear about this guy, the clearer it becomes that he really DOESN'T read the newspaper, BARELY can read, has DUMBED DOWN intel reports, needs Cheney by his side, thumbs his nose at history (probably like most madmen and ignorant fools), and "talks" with God.

Oh, and this guy is POTUS!

When will this nightmare end?

YES.

he's a psuedoconservative. they share many aspects.