It bizarre and almost unbelievable that Fascism could be rising again in an advanced, western, country; and that country is the United States!

Surely it could never happen here? And that is probably one of the greatest dangers, the idea that it could never happen here, that we are immune to the contagon of Fascism.

So many of the characteristics of Fascism are already in place in our culture, one of the most dangerous is the growth of rampant militarism and the willingness to use military force to 'solve problems' over and over again.

It's almost like a kind of diabolical puzzle waiting for Fate to put the pieces together and create the terrible whole. What force pushes the pieces together and has the potential to create full-blown Fascism? It's a vast and complicated subject, worthy of a book or a lifetime of study; but looking back at history, in Italy and Germany, what appears to have given real momentum to the rise of Fascism was a profound economic crisis where millions of people saw their lives, their hopes and dreams for the future destroyed. This destruction and fear lead to dispare and anger, and the desire for revenge, revenge directed at someone or something. We're angry as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore!

So, as long as the american economy keeps on course the lurch to the Right can be contained, probably, within reason; but, if there's a serious economic downturn, with falling standards of living, especially among the middle-class, and rising unemployment, then who knows where we'll end up?

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What is occurring in our country has occurred in others, what is happening to us has happened to others. In my 52 years of life it never crossed this befuddled mind of mine how correct Orwell was. I am doing all that I am able to, pro-actively, to attempt to prevent further atrocious events to become a part of history that is a repetition of what has been. No one has ever prevented a continuance of madness of this proportion with succcess, I still refuse to sit idly by and allow it. I will not allow it, I refuse to allow it, I refuse to accept it and I will do all I am asked to stop it.

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and that is our government consistently supporting Corporate interests against the interests of the Citizens. The examples are too numerous to list here, but the Common-Wealth of our country has suffered greatly through this fascist dynamic in the past 15 years.
Government of the People by the Corporations for the Corporations is not Democracy-- is Fascism. You can look it up in your dictionary.

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Wolf's pattern can be found, in its royalist version, at least as far back as Machiavelli. Upthread, a poster notes that Orwell gave us the updated version. All gangs are run the same way.

I have not watched the video (sorry, I refuse to sit through videos when I could read a text of the comments in 1/10th the time). What she seems to ignore is our contribution.

We join the gang by letting everything be for sale. Gangs operate on an economy of tit-for-tat. Having no aspirations beyond what we can buy, puts us up for sale. Fascism tells us that those who can buy the most are also the most virtuous.

Our Judeo-Christian tradition includes the prophets of old who railed against such unrighteousness and Jesus who threw the money-changers out of the temple. Once the biggest buildings were places seeking holiness. Today they are the banks and the corporate headquarters seeking profit.

We, Americans, have made ourselves ripe for the plucking of gang recruiters. And we let them do it with smiles on our faces. We are happy to be bought and sold.

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Wasn't this the song by Rainbow from 1981 that described exactly what's been happening?

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If military,inteligence men had been wronged by this regime
and did a thing,what can we do?
If Juarez is right,with his,"respect of others means peace".
Probably,we are in worst shape we are ready to admit.
This business of offending the countries of the middle east,even friendly ones will probe fatal,read Buchanan,"whos war" ,and leeden and others views,to attack every posible country in that region.
Again,few days ago I said that Pakistan was about to explode
well,they almost did get Bhuto this week,a neocon stooge.
Fascism had his hour,the nuclear bomb changed that.
What did happen in Iran,the revolt that sent the sha into exile
and all his military commanders to the morgue,is about to
occur in Pakistan,this time the "mother of all weapons "is involved.Is matter of time the clerics get the nukes.
When that happens,we will between the rock......

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While Rome crumbled the power elite kept the masses distracted with diversions. What parallels do you see in the MM today. Infotainment masquerading as news even as the Constitution is used like toilet paper by our government.

I fear a line has been crossed and getting back on the other side will prove to be very difficult.

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Of course the right wingers will dismiss this as a farfetched, paranoid rant. However, the facts are the facts, and well documented. This is unquestionably the most lawless, corrupt, incompetent, deceitful administration in our history and it has arrogated to itself unconstitutional powers which it has misused to punish and harrass critics.

It should be recalled that 9/11 would have been prevented had Bush, Cheney and Rice attended to the numerous warnings that al Qaeda intended to hijack civilian planes and fly them into buildings, and that Middle Eastern men were attending pilot school and behaving strangely. In other words, the "intelligence failure" was due to the intracranial deficiencies of the executive branch, not due to lack of legal authority.

Congress and the public were whipped into a hysteria and submitted to the whole, obviously preplanned agenda. Ironically Bush told us that we were targeted because "they hate our freedom." So it stands to reason that if we have less freedom, they will hate us less!

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First they came for the Gypsies, and I did nothing for I'm not a Gypsy, then they came for the homosexuals, and I did nothing for I'm not a homosexual, then they came for the Jews, and I did nothing, for I'm not a Jew - and then they came for me... (with apologies for the original which I'm paraphrasing). Unless and until real, progressive, non-religiously bound, truly patriotic Americans stand in the street and demand transparency, equity and justice for everyone and an accounting by the greedy oligarchy, we'll keep down the path of destruction of the American promise. Pitchforks and torches, eat the rich - time's awastin'.

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It has become a truly surrealistic time in history. The end of the US as we knew it is like the approach of the Iran war---we see it coming, and there doesn't seem to be a thing we can do to stop it. It's too hard to deal with what has happened since the "Reagan Revolution", so we sign petitions. Even while signing, we recognize our own impotence. We try to pretend that we have a two party government, one of which
(unlike Bill raid-the-New-Deal Clinton) will actually represent the people. We pretend there's a real election coming, with a real choice that will stop our horrendous downfall, but whether Bush is followed by a Dem or a Repub, the current war will continue. Money will continue to be siphoned out of the public treasury, put into "tax relief" for the rich. The next Dem in office will surely "reform" Social Security as welfare was "reformed"---ending aid to Americans in need, and hijacking those public funds to pour into the bank accounts of the super-rich. We have already thrown our poor over the cliff, and next in line comes the disabled. After that, the elderly.

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WE DON'T NEED THE LONG DRAWN OUT STORY BY THIS YOUNG WOMAN. TAKE A LOOK AT BUSH'S GRANDPARENTS. THESE OPPORTNISTS MADE THE BUSH FORTUNE BY SUPPORTING HITLER''S MILITARY. THE CURRENT OCCUPANT OF THE WHITE HOUSE IS LEADING US DIRECTLY INTO A DEATH TRAP. WHEN WE WISE UP, HE AND HIS 'BROWN SHIRTS' WILL FLEE TO CENTRAL AMERICA. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.

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If we need a plunging economy to install a fascist government, then we're not far from that point. Only problem is that there are no real leaders on the right to pull this off. We have a moron in the White House and a pathetic gaggle of Republican candidates running as though they thought losing was a certainty. Bush might invade Iran and then cancel the elections, but I can't see him pulling this off. Hitler burning the Reichstag was better thought out than anything Bush can do.

The problem will come from the Left and not the Right.

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Ya know what is scary???? Much of this stuff started under the Clinton administration and was simply ratcheted up after 9/11. Check out the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law by Clinton (after his WH did much lobbying for its passage) in April, 1996. It is nothing more than a prequel to the USA PATRIOT Act. Clinton signed it despite the fact that amendments were made that Clinton himself said "make a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having nothing to do with fighting terrorism." The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act severely restricted habeas corpus and further expanded the number of federal capital crimes. Lets be honest here, the PATRIOT Act is mostly an extension the A-TEDPA's legal foundations. When you also consider that the Clinton admin proposed and lobbied for crime bills that gave us more prisons, more cops, and 58 more offenses punishable by death ya gotta recognize that Clinton was instrumental in beginning 4 of the 10 points Wolf presents!!!!!!

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I am grateful that she is a strong woman and a very decent human being. I truly believe unlike the various highly educated, concerned and informed people whom speak at lectures and on television and radio, that frankly millions of Americans are stupid. It is not "ignorance" of the facts that millions of Americans still supported the Bush Administration after all of the mass murder they committed in their first term of office, but it is a lack of concern for anyone but themselves. These same millions of Americans are part of the Fundamentalist Christian Right, whom I refer to as Evilgelicals, and naturally millions of Southern whites whom feel "their" America is being taken over by minorities.

Sadly there are also quite a few black Americans whom are also part of the demented and sick Fundamentalist Christians, whom also voted for Bush out of his "Christian" beliefs and the fact that some actually believe Bush to be put in power by God! Amazingly many homosexual white males and possibly females voted for the Bush, Cheney ticket the first and second times around.

What this says to me is that millions of Americans simply don't give a damn about people in Iraq, Iran or anywhere else other than here and naturally Israel.

So long as those in power and the masters that control them, "the military industrial complex, the multinational corporations, those few elite families such as the Rothschilds whom family fortune is estimated at 30 TRILLION dollars, are not put on trial with their little puppets, we will continue to go through these kinds of tragedies throughout the comings years. For instance, the Rothschilds funded both sides of World War II amongst other wars. They are connected to the private banks that make up the Federal Reserve, which is neither "federal" nor governmentally owned.

The Elite give the ignorant in America, the Superbowl, World Series, American Idol and the like, to distract their attention from issues of true importance. Many millions of Americans will simply not even notice fascism here. They are too busy flag waving, "supporting" our troops and America, that they simply don't have time for facts or "depressing" news. Simply put, they will lie, lie, lie, deny, deny, deny to themselves, as well as, others around them that "our" country is the "greatest" on the face of the Earth and everyone wants to be an "American."

A female reader here stated that, Americans are one of the most "well read and educated" people in the world. That is simply not the case. Our mass media is controlled as we all know, and the ridiculous amount of misinformation, distortion and outright lies which come out of the mouths of the so-called journalists and others on television, radio, and in print media, is amazing. The U.S. government was considering attempting to control the Internet. Thankfully that scheme did not work out in their favor!
Still millions of Americans wave flags, shout "USA!" USA!" and do other amazingly ridiculous things to prove their stupidity on a daily basis. Simply put I am so tired of the lackadaiscal attitudes of Americans as a whole. Frankly it is simply astonishing to expect what appears to be at least half of the United States, to all of a sudden awaken from their pathetic state of density, and realize exactly what trouble we as a nation and the world is in.

Terrific

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Ms. Wolf sees what I see, but expresses it so much more articulately. I'm grateful for her vision and persistance.

Mussolini famously called fascism the convergence of state and corporate power. What he meant is that fascism disenfranchises citizens and enfranchises the corporate elite, whom he considered far better suited to to the task of governing.

Another way to spin that idea is to use the word "corruption." Just as in pre-war Italy and Germany, the US Government has become riddled with corporatist proponents, particularly its regulatory agencies.

It's unfortunately true that on the whole, the Democrats are nearly as corrupted as the Republicans. The Clintons are, famously, the most "pro-business" Democrats, but they have plenty of company in the Congressional rank and file.

I wish I could say that I am surprised that the Democratic Congress is dragging its feet in challenging the deliberate sabotaging of our democracy. But I am not. It's only too predictable, considering where their campaign contributions are coming from. Democrats in Congress are not, with a few key exceptions, challenging the notion of a "war on terror." They are not acting to prevent an attack on Iran, which really will put the nation in more danger, spread fear amongst Americans, and play into the corporatist's hands. They are not willing to impeach the President for violating national and international law. They are not willing to pull the plug on funding for international adventurism. They are not willing to halt the flow of obscene mountains of cash to the thugs Bush has hired to man emergency prison camps that we haven't yet started to fill up - but that's in the plan. They have no comment about the militarization of America's police forces with military-grade weapons such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles - weapons which can only have one purpose, and that purpose is to intimidate and suppress an outraged citizenry.

Instead, what we are seeing in Congress is window-dressing rhetoric and pretend action aimed at convincing Americans that if they just wait, Congress will come through. They'll stop the war, stop the contractor excesses, make sure the next election is fair, restore our adherence to the Bill of Rights. But none of it is actually happening. Instead, Congress is passing enabling legislation and abetting the progress of our descent into fascism.

And why not? This is not a Republican take-over, despite appearances. It is a corporatist take-over, and the corporatists own most of the Democrats, too. They can flip the Presidency from one party to the other and back again, and make it appear as though democracy is still functioning. A lot of people will believe it. The rest will be too afraid to speak, or they will be in prisons.

Hillary Clinton has not yet run in a single state primary. But the media has already announced her as the Democratic winner. A sense of weary inevitability has descended on America, where our votes are counted before they are cast, and there's no particular reason to vote at all, though most of us will go through the motions. It's worth pointing out that the polls are, by and large, funded by the corporatists, and reported on by media controlled by the corporatists; the "momentum" they've given Clinton takes on a life of its own.

The Administration's theory of executive power is in complete contravention of the Constitution's checks and balances. The justification? They're looking ahead, not backward. They already believe that fascism is here and the Constitution is meaningless.

All that remains is to round up the dissenters. That will happen after the next 9/11 style shock. Pack your toothbrushes, Alternet readers. You're probably on the list.

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The administration, the power structure is figuring US citizens will not fight for their country. The risks will be great to fight for a restored rule of law in a rigged society and I wouldn't blame anyone if they didn't want to try. Two of my friends have immigrated to France to live out the remainder of their lives more pleasantly. Don't know how much better it will be there but certainly better then here, for a while.

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