It's Hard To Be a Democrat (a serious must-read)

[Keirsey]

Quote of quotes

Benito Mussolini claimed credit for defining Fascism stating: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." In 1938, Mussolini established the first Fascist state by replacing the Italian Parliament with the "Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni" - the Chamber of Fascist Corporations.

During World War II the New York Times asked U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace: What is a fascist and how dangerous are they in America?"

Wallace responded:

"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." … "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact"

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

"…to crush fascism internally, (Democracy) must develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels." - Henry A. Wallace (U.S. Vice President 1941-1945)

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=8779&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Excellent article...Thanks for posting.....n/t

[tigereye]

2. pretty good assessment of fascism

new there was a reason the term kept coming up when we talk about the current adm's way of thinking.

[denverbill]

3. Wow. Nice find!!!

What an incredible description by Wallace.

I can't think of a better description of the Republican Party.

[Englander]

4. Very good..also from truthout..

>>So far, I've seen nothing to eliminate the possibility that Bush is on the same course as Hitler. And I've seen far too many analogies to dismiss the possibility. The propaganda. The lies. The rhetoric. The nationalism. The flag waving. The pretext of 'preventive war'. The flaunting of international law and international standards of justice. The disappearances of 'undesirable' aliens. The threats against protesters. The invasion of a non-threatening sovereign nation. The occupation of a hostile country. The promises of prosperity and security. The spying on ordinary citizens. The incitement to spy on one's neighbors - and report them to the government. The arrogant triumphant pride in military conquest. The honoring of soldiers. The tributes to 'fallen warriors. The diversion of money to the military. The demonization of government appointed 'enemies'. The establishment of 'Homeland Security'. The dehumanization of 'foreigners'. The total lack of interest in the victims of government policy. The incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. The growing prosperity from military ventures. The illusion of 'goodness' and primacy. The new einsatzgrupen forces. Assassination teams. Closed extralegal internment camps. The militarization of domestic police. Media blackout of non-approved issues. Blacklisting of protesters - including the no-fly lists and photographing dissenters at rallies.<<

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/5/3201

[DavidMS]

6. Not from truthout...

but another reasion similiarity...

Bush's decision making process is not grounded in rantional examination of what Michael Scheuer (writer of Imperial Huberis) called checkables, things that can be learned from any decently equiped public libary.

Bush's policy team is ideologicaly blinded and does not do proper research before making policy proposals.

[Fridays Child]

5. Rove clearly states that Middle Class Republicans are stupid chumps...

...but, as his quote observes, they're not smart enough to recognize it:

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing" -- Karl Rove

[MISSDem]

7. Silly though it may sound, I thought of the Nazi rallies

last night watching the frenzied crowd during Zell Miller's lie fest.

[Catfight]

8. This falls on deaf ears, Americans always choose to give up their

Constitutional Rights over protecting them.

[delete_bush]

9. Good post, which brings up something I've been

curious about. I have always thought of fascism in these rather strict terms, i.e. the state joining with corporate power to consolidate and extend the power of the state.

Lately the word seems to have taken on a meaning so broad as to severely dilute what originally was to me a great descriptive term. Now it seems to be somewhat useless. I don't understand, for example, the term Islamo-fascist.

Common usage seems to be any group with real or imagined power. Can anyone get me up to speed on this? Thanks!

[highnooner]

10. I am as patriotic as the next guy, but

Weren't the chants of of "USA! USA! USA!" a little over the top. It's not like this was the Olympics.

[Kenneth ken]

11. whose usage?

who is using / where are you encountering terms like Islamo-fascist?

If it is from the right-wing shouting heads of tv and radio, that would probably be an overt attempt to dilute and thereby render meaningless the actual definitions of fascism/fascist.

If you want to deflect the accuracy of a charge, it helps to incapacitate the meanings of the words necessary to accurately charge.

So, by diluting, and incapacitating the word fascist, the fascists, and their propagandists make it more difficult for opponents to accurately label them as fascists.

I would point out that Islamo-fascist is probably not a real word, and ilamic fundamentalists have no interest in creating a fascist state, they want a theocracy (which is a term RW-fascists can't really try to co-opt, because many of their followers also want a theocracy, just differently slanted than Islamists.)

[delete_bush]

12. You're probably right that I've mostly heard the

term coming from RW sources. However, I did a quick search of DU and came up with at least 4 instances of DU'ers using the term. And they were not quoting or referring to someone else using the term.

As you say, Islamo-fascist is not a real word, but if the right is not countered it will become part of the lexicon.

This is what they do. Just as they initially labeled only the "fringe" left liberals, they kept nudging the scale to the right to ultimately include mainstream democrats in their demonization of all who don't believe the way they do.

They are scum, in the original sense of the word.

[Vitruvius]

13. Kick

Excellent article. Thanks -- and :kick: