disneydude

Wake up America!

Mussolini defined fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power" ...Seem hauntingly familiar?

I ran across this article comparing the Bush Presidency to the 14 tenaments of Facism. Certainly mind-provoking to those who truly care about what is happening in America today.


1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism:
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.


2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights:
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, people are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." (e.g., the so-called "Patriot Act").

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.

Muslims= 'enemy amongst us'

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.
Bush slashes domestic programs, boosts defense.


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. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
It's legal again, to fire gov't workers for being gay
Bush calls for Constitutional ban on same-sex marriages

6.) Controlled Mass Media:
Sometimes the 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.
FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

7.) Obsession with National Security:

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses
The strategy used in 2004 to help Bush reamain in power -stoking public fears about terrorism, raising concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate.
The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level.
Cheney warns that if Kerry is elected, the USA will suffer a "devastating attack"

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.

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.
Bush money network rooted in Florida, Texas: Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, the federal government has awarded more than $3 billion in contracts to the President's elite 2004 Texas fund-raisers, their businesses, and lobbying clients

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.
Labor Department warns unions against using their money politically
President Bush Attacks Organized Labor - issuing orders effectively reducing how much money unions can spend for political activities and opening up government contracts to non-union bidding.
March 2001: President Bush signed his name to four executive orders on organized labor last month, including one that cuts the money unions will have for political campaign spending.

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 is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Bush's cut funding for arts, education
Artists from all over the world are being refused entry to the US on security grounds.
A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes

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
Citizens who have done no more than criticize the president are being banned from airline flights, harassed at airports’, strip searched, roughed up and even imprisoned
The United States has now become the world leader in its rate of incarceration, locking up its citizens at 5-8 times the rate of other industrialized nations.
AG Gonzales was deeply involved in developing some of the most sweeping claims of near-dictatorial presidential power in our nation's history, allowing him to imprison and even (at least in theory) torture anyone in the world, at any time
Police officers don't have to give a reason at the time they arrest someone, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a ruling that shields officers from false-arrest lawsuits.

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.

Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) was forced to give up his seat on the powerful committee after the FBI raided his home as part of the Abramoff scandal. To replace him, the GOP leadership tapped Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who was himself recently named one of Congress’ most corrupt lawmakers.
Making Sense of the Abramoff Scandal
In preparation for upcoming Congressional hearings, Bush Administration firing federal attorneys and appointing ringers without Senate confirmation via the patriot act.
The five top appointees at Justice have zero prosecutorial experience among them.
Big Iraq Reconstruction Contracts Went To Big Donors
The main companies that were awarded billions of dollars worth of contracts in Iraq have paid more than $300 million in fines since 2000, to resolve allegations of fraud, bid rigging, delivery of faulty military equipment, and environmental damage.
US Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) lost track of $9 billion
"Contracting in the aftermath of the hurricanes has been marked by waste, corruption and cronyism"

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.
A couple of election workers have been convicted of rigging a recount in Ohio following the 2004 election
Rolling Stone does some investigative and rather exhaustive digging into public documents and says we’re almost guaranteed the 2004 election results were massively rigged

Conyers hearing in which Clinton Curtis testifies that he was hired to create hackable voting machines
The Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

No explanation for the machines in Mahoning County that recorded Kerry votes for Bush, the improper purging in Cuyahoga County, the lock down in Warren County, the 99% voter turnout in Miami County, the machine tampering in Hocking County
Less access than Kazakhstan. Fewer fail-safes than Venezuela. Not as simple Republic of Georgia.
Ballot recounts in Florida shortly after it seemed that legitimate President Gore had a lead. The "citizens" started what was later called "the preppy riot". Screaming, yelling, pounding on the walls, these "outraged citizens" intimidated the polling officials to halt the court mandated recount. A closer look reveals who they really were. They were bussed and flown in at Republican lawmakers expense. Some even flew in on Tom Delay's private plane.




It may sound crazy to some, but the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism.

__________________
Sarah Palin/Jeb Bush 2012
"Bringin' Bush back to the Whitehouse"

new coup for you

I've seen this list several times before, and it's always just so tedious.

When conservatives say the United States is becoming Gomorrah (which is their equivilant to this list) they at least have the excuse of being under the influence superstition.

__________________
And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.

disneydude

What is frightening about your post is that complacency on the part of the public is what allows facism to blossom. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin (to name a few) did not convert the nations overnight.

Trajan Octavian Titus

You are a liar that quote is a fake and it is completely the opposite of the economic policy of fascism wherein labor and capital come together under the direction of the state in the form of corporates.

Proof that the quote is a fraud as are you:

PublicEye.org - Fascism: Corporatism v. Corporations

Your list is a joke and it was written with the explicit intent of comparing the policies of the Bush administration to fascism. The list is not scholarly in nature and the author is a left wing hack who authored "June 2004" about a future distopia in which the Christian right has established a totalitarian police state in America. Simply put he like you lacks any and all credulity.

WI Crippler

I am really, really ****in' confused as to how America is even remotley close to facism. People need to go experience real facism and come back to America with their tail between their legs thanking their lucky stars that America is what it is. Same goes for communist lovers. They should go spend some time in a communist country, not as a vacationer, but as an actual citizen.

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"What Jesus fails to appreciate is that it's the meek who are the problem."- Reg

disneydude

Did you even read the article that you posted. Even in THAT article it does not claim that Mussolini didn't make the quote.

PublicEye.org - Fascism: Corporatism v. Corporations



What part of this did you miss?

Let me spell it out more clearly - I said that the article compares the Bush Presidency to the 14 tenaments of Facism. See I indicated that the article was written with the explicit intent of comparing the policies of the Bush administration to facism. Did you get it this time?

What part is not scholarly in nature? He makes a pretty good argument of taking the 14 tenaments and showing how specific policies of GWB fit perfectly into the model.
But then again.....Facism doesn't happen overnight. It is slowly rolled out and a great deal of the public won't see it coming even when it slaps them in the face.

disneydude

Do you really believe that the America that we have today is the same America we had even 6 years ago?
No one is saying that the facism of GWB is the same as a communist country....however, as I have indicated, facism doesn't come on overnight. It is a slow erosion of what freedoms a country once had.
Its like boiling a frog in water. You drop the frog into boiling water it leaps right out. You put it in and slowly increase the water temperature, he is boiled to death.

Goldenboy219

How many American casualties have there been in Iraq???

How much money has been spent in a foreign country in the name of "security"?

My whole point of this is, we could have had armed security on every airline coming into this country, and installed the most sophisticated security systems available to strategic targets in the US.

Instead of securing our country from the inside out (upgrading our entire security infer structure), and protecting our borders, the money and manpower went to liberate the people of Iraq.

That my friends is ****ing retarded!!!!!!! That is why i dont agree with the war...

The security interest of your own people should come first, and the rest of the world as a last resort to a group bent on world domination.

GWB believes spreading democracy is more important than preserving our own.

Trajan Octavian Titus

Yep they just said that no one can find a source for the quote:

So where does this quote come from?

The 14 tenaments were created with the explicit point of comparing Bush's policies to fascism, that's what you don't get.


Start from the begining and when you get to the end, that's the part of the list that isn't scholarly in nature.

disneydude

You are still missing the point.

I have made no claim that the author of the article did anything more than he claimed. He took 14 tenaments which are common of facist regimes and compares them to the policies of GWB. I make no claim to the contrary. I have clearly indicated that this was the intention of the author and claim no neutrality in his position.
What I DO claim is that I think he is pretty accurate and provides specific details justifying each link.

Perhaps you are claiming that you don't believe the list of 14 that he comes up with are found in facist regimes. If so, I think that you are are wrong because especially when you analyze the policies of Hitler and Mussolini, those of the policies that were implemented that allowed for the facists to obtain and retain power.