Recently, I have made arguments, confined to comments, that the United States has in fact, undergone a fascist coup. I’ll let those arguments speak for themselves as I reprise them here, but I decided to write a diary because my ominous warnings to my fellow Americans might lead some to conclude that I advocate and argue for the necessity of armed revolution to overthrow the fascist movement.
Not necessarily.
My arguments are not a call to arms, but rather, an observation of what does happen, what has happened, historically, when fascism or it’s anti-republican variations, regardless of stated propaganda, overthrow a society and install a dictatorship.
Inevitably, fascism fails because it relies upon fear, oppression and imperialism in the place of law. Fascism is the ultimate corruption of the rule of law, and seeks to work it’s corruption internally and externally.
Historically, fascism (and it’s anti-republican cousins) eventually falls because it cannot, as a system, ever successfully live up to it’s ideals. There is no superhuman nation, race, class, group, family or person who can wield lawless raw power effectively or benignly for any appreciable period of time. Such regimes flail about, sapped by the endless corruption they spawn, smashed by wave after wave of purges, coups, revolts and unrest.
I say to my countrymen, if you desire this form of government, then do nothing.
The fascist movement has successfully harnessed the discontent over the imperfections of republican government into a brand of ideology that rejects republican government as weak, ineffective and unsuccessful. It’s adherents are impatient, ungracious ingrates who cannot tolerate a few seconds of deviation from the gratification of their desires.
Look around you and find observations of this in your everyday life. There you will find the support for fascism. You will find it among those who otherwise profess to be liberal, progressive, republican, democratic and free thinking. It is an insidious frame of cultural reference accepted as American as apple pie. You will find it’s active supporters among those who regard themselves to be traditional and conservative!
The momentum toward a fascist state has been steadily gaining speed over the past 50 years. It is not something that may happen in the future. It is upon you. You no longer have a republic in fact, nor by law. You have it as a collection of beliefs, as a national myth, but even this is being revised, edited and re-written in a fashion worthy of comparison to the allegories given in Animal Farm or 1984, Orwell’s riveting social commentaries.
Here follows a recent comment of mine, illustrating the very revisionism that I mention above, and building upon it, finally returning to the subject of this diary:
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OVERTON WINDOW STRATEGY
Even Dan Abrams of MSNBC, no apologist for the Bush Administration, said that he is willing to concede that in some, rare instances, torture might be an effective way to get a terrorist suspect to spill the beans and save lives.
And that's the goal of this recent public foray by Ex-CIA agent Kiriakou.
There must be strong pushback on this false and misleading meme.
Years ago, UN officials, the Red Cross, journalists, and human rights advocates were sounding the alarms: There are secret prisons, ghosting of prisoners was taking place, illegal groundless detentions were taking place, people were being kidnapped and flown to secret prisons, torture was being used, and people were being murdered.
The Bush Administration's idea of "counter-terrorism" is to create and sustain an international program of terrorism. The Bush Administration is practicing state-sponsored terrorism.
Along with the above acts, they are trying to assassinate or oust foreign leaders, destabilize governments, and contract terrorists. They are running arms illegally, funding their activities with heroin, cocaine, illegal arms, and outright theft of the treasury, or goods bought by the treasury.
As each part of this heinous criminal enterprise has been exposed, the Bush Administration has managed to hold off accountability for it (the DEATH PENALTY) and move public discourse into an acceptance, in "rare instances."
In all of the instances above, the Bush Administration has insisted that the people being terrorized are "the worst of the worst terrorists," but that has IN FACT, been proven to be false.
What's more, the Bush Administration has constructed an extra-constitutional judicial system designed to uphold this propaganda. The "terrorists" never get a day in court to present evidence and the government never has to produce evidence, hiding behind "state secrecy" like a totalitarian regime.
The Bush Administration tells the public that everything is allowed because the people being kidnapped, illegally detained, tortured, denied due process and even murdered ARE terrorists. Who says so? The president. What's the evidence? Can't tell ya. It's a secret.
Each time, in each instance, they normalize totalitarian government, in "rare instances," while setting precedent for broad application, just as fascist regimes have done in the past.
Along with these arguments, the Bush Administration has sought to justify it's crimes by arguing that American constitutional rights are not human rights, but exceptional legal principles.
In short, Bush proposes that he gets his authority to act overseas from the constitution, and that the constitution doesn't apply to his exercise of that authority.
Kiriakou's efforts are just the latest version of this strategy to normalize fascist and illegal activities.
Kiriakou said he believes this information "disrupted a number of attacks."
What plots? What attacks? Can't tell ya. It's a secret. We can't divulge sources and methods.
We are close to revealing that all of these things are part of an entirely criminal system of state-sponsored terrorism. The "sources and methods" are the crimes being alleged against "terrorist suspects."
Bush thinks he is applying "an eye for an eye." What he is doing with that approach is legitimizing the terrorists. Recall, if you will, how often Bush elevates Osama Bin Laden as an enemy, equating the threat posed by him to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union, while refusing to capture or kill him.
As long as Osama Bin Laden is out there, Bush gets away with his fascist agenda: Eroding our rights, subverting the rule of law, asserting executive control of the whole government, overturning popular sovereignty, and running the biggest protection racket in human history.
This latest attempt to normalize crimes, war crimes, and more crimes in the service of other crimes must be answered with impeachment, removal and prosecution seeking the death penalty.
If there is any candidate for president who is even giving lip service to these despicable and criminal abuses of power, they should be considered as co-conspirators in the death-penalty crimes.
If anyone is being given a platform in the media to further this criminal regime, that person can only be considered a foot soldier in an overt fascist coup.
We can give those who have been taken in, a chance to recant, but active cooperation to remove the criminals and bring them to justice is the only redemption. Passive or active participation in the crimes, whether in words or deeds is treason.
Treason is defined as only taking arms against the United States or giving aid and comfort to it's enemies. Bush, Cheney, and the entire neocon cabal, numbering at least a hundred, ARE ENEMIES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT AND THE RULE OF LAW. Their words and deeds show it plainly, as they brazenly dare us to bring them to justice.
They pile outrage upon outrage. We must ensure that not one of them ever escapes justice. There must be nowhere in the world they can escape justice. There must be no refuge or legal technicality that protects them. All such things are waived, as easily as they waive the entirety of the rule of law.
We must not be content with justice against Bush, Cheney and the 33 former and current members of the government who are the neocon cabal. All of their enablers, no matter what their party, deserve to be brought to account. Those who oppose the normal course of justice in the face of evidence of unspeakable crimes are collaborators and accomplices.
Members of Congress, judges, military officers, corporate executives, propagandists posing as "journalists," party officials, lobbyists, lawyers, "professors," and think tank sycophants must each answer for their part.
If our system fails to produce this result, then the people will have to abolish it and establish a Second Republic. This will become necessary whether it is done before the [official] establishment of a dictatorship, or whether it is done after the dictatorship falls.
If any accuse me of inciting insurrection, and being unpatriotic, then I will refer them to the words of the founders of our republic, who spoke boldly of popular sovereignty over social aristocracy, and who spoke boldly of republican government over authoritarian government.
I say to my countrymen that if you cannot see that our republic has been overthrown, then you are blind. If you will not take action to change this FACT of our existence, then, have a dictatorship. And have it's eventual fall and the bloody chaos that will ensue.
Remember this day when you were told that our present system could have been saved at the expense of a relatively few traitors and criminals who mean to steal your liberty right out from under your nose.
Remember it, I say, when the dictatorship has fallen and anarchy reigns.
33 neocons must be prosecuted seeking the death penalty.
More than a hundred of their enablers, in both parties, must be prosecuted seeking life in prison without parole.
Nearly a hundred more must be prosecuted seeking long sentences, with possibility of parole, but barred permanantly from any position of public authority, whether political, corporate, journalistic or educational.
Roughly two hundred more must face jail or suspended sentence, and permanant bar from any kind of public authority.
The entire fascist infrastructure must be uprooted and barred from the same path to power that they are currently exploiting. This may or may not require prosecutions, depending upon cooperation and level of former participation in the fascist movement.
Fascist ideaology must be identified, and strictly BANNED, with violators permanantly barred from journalism, or office within any organization that has a corporate charter, or public office.
Federal lobbying must be BANNED, and campaigns must be publicly financed with no exception, and violaters must be swiftly JAILED.
Our media should be placed under the stewardship of a National University System, publicly financed by Congress, with power of appointment existing under state governments.
A national university system should provide free, public education at all levels from pre-school to doctorates.
Fascist ideology should be identified in school curriculums, from elementary school onward, and contrasted with republican government, so that no child grows up being indoctrinated into pro-corporate fascist ideology. (IT IS HAPPENING!)
We must ABOLISH the practice of single individuals occupying more than one corporate office (No more Chairman and CEO)
We must ABOLISH the practice of single individuals occupying corporate offices for more than one corporation (No more interconnected boards)
We must ABOLISH the practice of single individuals, families, or less than seven persons controlling majority shares in any kind of corporation.
We must ABOLISH the practice of corporations controlling the majority shares of other corporations.
There must be limit on share ownership. 10% if the shareholder is an officer or board member or employee, 17% if not any of the above.
We must widen the franchise of corporate power and create republican checks and balances for corporations, both internally and externally.
The federalist division of power between the states and the federal government must be re-established, with states re-gaining collective authority over all corporate entities.
ALL of these reforms are necessary, constitutional changes if we are to re-establish popular sovereignty over social aristocracy, and republican government over de-facto (and, now de jure) fascist government.
If our present system cannot effect such change, then the sovereign power, The People, must abolish it and establish a Second Republic.
The choice is clear. For those who will not countenance such change now, then you are by assent, supporting an experiment in fascist dictatorship. It's that plain. It's that clear.
You have a choice, and that choice is upon you now.
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So I wrote, in a comment, recently.
Certainly, this seems to be a call to arms. Certainly, this seems to plainly and clearly spell out the dangers that we face, and give a sober assessment of the state of our republic. There is a definite prescription, too, for the root of the problem: unconstitutional corporate power.
I wrote about in in more concise form in a more recent comment:
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We don't need Marxists
To tell us the Bush Administration is fascist.
We already have a socialist economy. The question we should be asking is "What kind do we want?"
Do we want an elitist, corporatist socialism, like they had in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, or do we want a democratic socialism, like they have today in Britain, France and Germany?
Those who argue for a "capitalist" economy:
Go and find it. Go ahead and find somewhere you can buy food, fuel, supplies or anything else that ISN'T controlled by a corporation.
I would remind everyone that corporations operate under a GOVERNMENT CHARTER, and that they ARE NOT "mom and pop" grocery stores, or anything resembling a capitalist business. It's time to put that corporate myth to bed permanantly. It's a foolish and unrealistic view of corporations.
And let's put aside any serious consideration of Marx, PLEASE.
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Here I give a direct, and testable observation about the pervasive influence of the fascist movement, and I attack the myth that our choices are a fascist dictatorship or Stalinism.
And now I come to the observation that prompted me to write this diary.
I stand by my earlier warnings. If you do nothing, you will have a dictatorship. We have it in fact and by law already. Our electoral system is nearly entirely corrupted by the fascist movement. But for those who shrink from taking up arms, have heart!
In the past 50 years, we have seen totalitarian governments collapse without ensuing bloody anarchy and civil war. There is an alternative, loosely referred to as "The Velvet Revolution." In each case, these revolutions were successful simply because the people stopped cooperating with the totalitarian regime. In Chile, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and even arguably, in Russia, people simply stopped cooperating with corrupt regimes and turned to one another instead.
If you desire change, then look to this alternative. It is really the only civilized and reasonable alternative, since the dictatorship is upon us. The fascist movement will assert itself more forcefully as time goes on, since the fascist movement has no choice but to assert itself more forcefully. Failing to continue "leaning forward" domestically and internationally will land it’s principal actors in prison or before the executioner.
There is no guarantee that a Velvet Revolution alternative will prevent a catastrophic failure of the dictatorship, or a bloody civil war in it’s wake. But it is, at least, a thin beam of light in an otherwise bleak outlook.
The methods of non-cooperation are many. Fortunately, such great leaders as Lech Walensa, Martin Luther King, Ghandi and Saul Alinsky have left us examples.
I won’t go into detail here, but I will say this: Standing in a "free speech" pen and waving signs will avail you nothing. Strolling along city streets chanting is only effective if there are concrete actions of non-cooperation that go with it. Think about the source of power for the fascist movement. I’ve given you food for thought above, and there are peaceful ways to effect change in considering the source of fascist power.
I have some hope left in our electoral system. It is possible that the next president will be a truly visionary leader who pulls us back from the brink of disaster and leads the country to adopt permanant constiutional reforms that will defuse the threat of the fascist movement.
People need to understand, though, that unless that happens, the fasicst movement will continue to be the existential threat that it is today. Unless we have permanant constitutional restraints on corporate power, such as I outline above, statutory and legal remedies will, in the end, fail and social aristocracy will prevail over popular sovereignty, bringing in it's train, a fascist state.
So, for those of you who advocate a peaceful, and even spiritual alternative to our present state of affairs, I ask you to look at the success of past "Velvet Revolutions."