America is moving perilously close to fascism, part 1

I began this project after speaking to a friend. He called to ask if I’d ever seen the information on the web outlining how the Bush administration is transforming us into a fascist state. I had, of course, seen it but not for a while. So, I went to take a look for myself. It’s still there, but it was in need of updating. It was through this self-imposed project that I discovered just how perilously close we are to becoming a fascist state.

The basis for this article comes from Laurence Britt. In his article, “Fascism Anyone?” he outlines the 14 common characteristics of some of the world’s most potent fascist regimes: Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), Salazar (Portugal), Papadopoulos (Greece) and Pinochet (Indonesia). They are:

Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
Disdain for the importance of human rights
Identification of enemies and/or scapegoats as a unifying cause
Military supremacy of paramount importance
Rampant sexism
Controlled mass media
Obsession with national security
Government and religion are intertwined
Power of the corporations is protected
Labor’s power is suppressed
Disdain for and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
Preoccupation with crime and punishment
Rampant cronyism and corruption
Fraudulent elections
Let’s hope that some day we’re not reading an updated version of the Britt article with ‘Bush (America)’ included. However, if you don’t recognize the above 14 points running rampant within our present imperial regime, then you are not paying attention. If you are still showing blind faith in our elected leaders, then you are naïve. If you are waiting for the next president to assume power and reverse everything Bush has done, you are delusional. If you are simply one of the many who believe ‘it can never happen here in America,’ then you are displaying a level of misguided patriotism that is a danger to our democracy. It can, and is, happening in America.

Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.”

-Huey Long

The marketing of war started in earnest with George Herbert Walker Bush and his administration, coining the moniker ‘Operation Desert Storm.’ His son has carried on with the tradition by coining the slogans ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ and ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ I’ll argue that the present Bush administration took it one step further by glamorizing the blanket bombing of innocent people by reducing it to a mainstream media sound byte, ‘Shock and Awe.’ Having spent more than thirty years in advertising and public relations, I can tell you without reservation that these slogans, which the Bush administration combined with powerful images, were intended to brainwash the American people into supporting the war.

That these slogans have been engraved on the headstones of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, often without the final consent of the surviving family members, is nothing short of disgusting. What if the family members, dare I say even the deceased, did not support these wars? Certainly it is public knowledge that George Bush and his minions lied about everything leading up to the war in Iraq. The legality of this war is certainly more than in question. The government’s intrusive behavior is just another warning sign of the danger posed to our individual rights and freedoms.

Since 9-11, we’ve been barraged with a plethora of patriotic mottos and slogans, symbols and songs. Then there’s the American flag, which has adorned almost everything from bridges to bank statements. The most intense usage of the flag, however, has to be the lapel pin. To some, like conservative columnists and pundits, Barack Obama’s lack of an American flag lapel pin is the most important issue in this presidential race. It’s not the economy. It’s not the war. It’s not the housing crisis. It’s the lapel pin, stupid. Of Obama removing his American flag lapel pin, conservative commentator Laura Ingraham says, “It just goes to show he’s not ready for the big time.” (George Bush, of course, wears the lapel pin.) The effervescent Sean Hannity declared that we wear lapel pins because “our country is under attack!”

Indeed, our country is under attack. It is under attack from within, from the very likes of Hannity and Ingraham and those in the administration who feed their paranoia, not from Iraq. And not from Afghanistan.

Disdain for the importance of human rights

In fascist regimes, the people are persuaded to forfeit their civil rights in exchange for ‘security.’ That this administration has utilized fear mongering since the September 11 terrorist attacks is well accepted, by everyone it seems. A panicked Congress passed the ill-advised USA Patriot Act a mere six weeks after 9-11, without giving it much thought. It was rammed through in Bush style, with some lawmakers admittedly not having an opportunity to read it.

According to Ron Paul (R-TX), “They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill was definitely not available to members before the vote.” Oddly enough, Ron Paul and Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) voted against the Patriot Act. When Kucinich was asked during one of the 2008 debates why he voted against it, he said it was because he actually read the bill.

The first USA Patriot Act began the administration’s assault on the Constitution by completely gutting the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as seriously compromising the Seventh and Tenth. When the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan think tank, published the full text of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (or Patriot Act II) we found that, in addition to the civil rights violations from the previous version, George Bush had reorganized the entire federal government -and many areas of state government - under the control of the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command. He did all of this under the guise of keeping us safe. How do you spell dictatorship?

America’s freefall doesn’t stop there. We are now pretty much internationally viewed as a torture state, and with good reason. In April of this year, President Bush admitted to ABC News that he knew that his senior staffers discussed ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques and that he approved of them. If I worked for the mainstream media, I’d probably be using the phrase ‘shocking admission.’ However, nothing is shocking when it comes to this administration. In fact, I venture to say that most logical-thinking people had to know that this was a top-down torture plan. The only shocking aspect of this whole issue is the arrogant and righteous nature of Bush’s admission. Somehow our twisted-thinking leader has managed to reconcile the depraved behavior at Abu Ghraib [Please note: these are very graphic images] and the use of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (or deporting detainees to countries that are known to employ torture) with his supposed rock-solid Christian values.

The administration has come up with sanitized terms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ instead of calling it exactly what it is - torture. The mainstream media simply parrots those terms back to us, rather than calling it torture. Our supposed military and legal experts have been reduced to quibbling about just exactly what constitutes torture. However, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention is pretty clear when it refers to “violence to life and person” (death and mutilation) as well as “outrages upon personal dignity” (cruel treatment). Having studied the photos and read as much as I can read about what happened at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo, I’d have to say the United States crossed both of those lines. And, as is so often the case with encroaching fascism, the voices of our civic and moral leaders have fallen silent on this issue and the American public, rather than believe it could actually be happening here, finds it easier to ignore torture and execution.
The administration managed to pass the Military Commissions Act of 2006, giving the president the absolute power to decide who is an enemy to our country and to imprison people indefinitely without charging them. It suspends the Constitutional due process right of habeas corpus, the basic right to have a court decide is a person is unlawfully imprisoned. To remove this core value makes us more like those we are trying to defeat. Among its other evils, it allows the president to sidestep the Geneva Convention definitions of torture, permits the inclusion of evidence gained through torture and abuse, and provides protection retroactively. How did this happen? Even though the stipulations outlined in the Geneva Convention have seen us through the Korean and Viet Nam wars, the administration argued that the definitions were too vague. As has been par for the course for the last eight years, Congress was asleep at the switch. One has to seriously wonder if they even read what is sent to them.
Identification of enemies and/or scapegoats as a unifying cause
Americans have been unified in patriotic fervor since the 9-11 terrorist attacks to identify and eliminate ‘enemies of the state.’ Most often, the targets have been Islam and those our president chooses to call terrorists. However, immigrants, liberals, gays and lesbians, ethnic and religious minorities are not immune.

In January of 2007, having lost his Senate seat, Rick Santorum joined a conservative Washington think-tank to run a program called ‘Protect America’s Freedom.’ The program studies “threats posed to America and the West from a growing number of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future and violating religious liberty around the world.”

Conservative shock jocks and hate mongers like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and Mike Gallagher, some of whom our president met with at the White House after the November 2006 elections, continually paint those who oppose George Bush and his policies as unpatriotic. After Joy Behar (The View) offhandedly compared Donald Rumsfeld to Adolph Hitler, Mike Gallagher went so far as to suggest that anyone critical of the administration should be rounded up and put in detention camps because they are traitors. Yet all of these hate mongers have absolutely no problem doing the exact same thing to liberals. None seem to grasp that all Americans are guaranteed freedom of speech. Their understanding is that freedom of speech applies only to those who share their ideology.

While America’s immigration policy is always a hot topic, CNN’s Lou Dobbs is like a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to immigration. Peddling his insidious brand of racism under the CNN shield, Dobbs uses the ‘Broken Borders’ segment of his show to blame all of America’s problems - from a faltering educational system to the floundering economy - on what you are led to believe is a massive daily influx of illegal aliens.

Evangelical Christian leaders continue to spread messages of fear and hate to their followers. The Reverend John Hagee, until just recently one of John McCain’s spiritual guides, has preached that Hurricane Katrina happened because New Orleans had a Gay Pride parade planned for the Monday Katrina came ashore. (It should be noted, however, that Mr. McCain didn’t reject Hagee until his unfortunate comment about Nazis.) The Reverend Rod Parsley - still a spiritual guide in good standing with John McCain - has repeatedly exhorted his minions to protect themselves against the angry gay population. He feeds an already-frenzied following with a powerful parade of lies, including that they have to protect themselves against a the gay population on the attack to “pervert God’s original intention.” He also routinely communicates to his followers a powerful hatred of Islam.

Military supremacy of paramount importance

In fascist societies, the ruling elite always identify with the military and the businesses that support it. A disproportionate amount of funding is directed to the military, while the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. Frankly, that sounds exactly like America today. Between funding for the Pentagon and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many domestic programs are falling short.

The total Department of Defense budget for 2009 is $515.4 billion dollars, a 74% increase over 2001 levels. Of that, a total of $70 billion is allocated for the ‘war on terror’ (read: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Then comes the disclaimer: “The Administration will request additional funding once the specific needs of are troops are better known.” At a cost of $12.5 billion per month, it’s easy to do the math and figure out how quickly the $70 billion allocated to the war is exhausted. Typically, President Bush requests emergency funding to cover the shortfall, adding sometimes $100 billion in war spending. When any of this is questioned, which is quite infrequently, we’re told that it’s to keep America safe from terrorists. In the meantime, the Department of Education limps along at $59.2 billion and the Department of Health & Human Services comes in at $737 billion in 2009.

One of the supposedly successful cornerstones of the Bush legacy is No Child Left Behind. Yet, some states claim it is under funded, in some cases falling $12 billion dollars short of the legislation requirement. The state of Vermont conducted a fiscal analysis of the program and discovered that there would have to be a 28% funding increase per state for the legislation to be appropriately funded. Because of this, several states have simply voted not to implement NCLB. Educators claim it is too heavily weighted toward standardized testing and test preparation, ‘dumbing down’ the classroom, and it punishes rather than helps poor and minority students. There are other disturbing aspects of NCLB, steeped in ideology and having nothing to do with education, which I doubt most parents know are buried in the 1,000-page bill.
For example, schools are now required to turn over student contact information to the military for recruiting purposes, and districts must certify that no policy prevents the participation in “constitutionally protected prayer in public schools.” In addition, no school or district can prevent the Boy Scouts or any other group listed as a “patriotic society” under U.S. code access to the school’s facilities. The Department of Education must certify Title 1 reading programs as “scientifically based.”

Our president, who has no problem asking Congress for billions of dollars for an illegal war that is killing American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians on a daily basis, seems to have a problem supporting the Webb GI Bill for expanded educational benefits for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current Montgomery GI Bill pays for only a fraction of today’s bloated tuition costs. The Webb legislation would bring the GI Bill into the 21st century by paying 100% of tuition costs (not to exceed the most expensive state school in the veteran’s home state). The president calls the provision “too generous” at somewhere between $2.5 to $5 billion per year while he authorizes roughly $12.5 billion per month for the war in which these veterans serve. John McCain is taking the side of Pentagon officials who are worried that the legislation might make enlistees leave the military sooner than they originally planned just to get an education. The legislation has broad bi-partisan support, so perhaps a Bush veto can be overridden. The point is that it should not have to be threatened with a veto in the first place.

At the end of 2007, recognizing that health care was in a crisis state, the Democratic-run Congress sought to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover an additional 3.3 million uninsured children whose parents did not qualify for Medicare but who could not afford private insurance. It would come at a cost of $35 billion over five years, but it would be covered by a 61-cent-increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes. This is yet another domestic program that President Bush refused to support. I read two different articles on his veto and he had two different reasons for vetoing the bill. In one, he disagreed on philosophical grounds, stating that the expansion would change the original intention of the legislation. In a different article, Bush resorted to his usual complaint of ‘fiscal irresponsibility.’ The Senate had the votes to override, but the House fell 15 votes short. President Bush subsequently reauthorized the bill through March of 2009 at present levels.

War and the military has not only been glamorized but sanitized with the advent of ‘embedded journalists.’ If you are a cable subscriber, you’ll find no fewer than four channels dedicated to the military and weapons, The Pentagon Channel, The Military Channel, The Military History Channel, and a show on Discovery called Future Weapons.

Part Two of this series on fascism will be posted next week.