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<font size=3>George Jackson:<br><br>
</b>"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of
our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are
already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor
butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover
your humanity and your love in revolution" Blood In My Eye</i>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2> <br>
<hr>
<a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706I.shtml" eudora="autourl">
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706I.shtml<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b>The New
Fascism<br><br>
</b>By William Rivers Pitt<br>
t r u t h o u t | Perspective<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Tuesday 17 January
2006<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b><i>The dogmas of the quiet
past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high
with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new,
so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and
then we shall save our country.<br>
</b>- Abraham Lincoln<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2> <br>
</i></font><font size=3> Say "fascism" to
anyone you meet, and you will conjure images of coal-scuttle helmets, of
Nazi boot-heels clicking in terrible unison down Berlin streets during
dark days that only a few remaining among the living remember. Each day,
members of the generation that heard those heels for themselves go into
the ground, taking with them whispered words of warning. I saw it for
myself, they whisper before they pass. See this tattooed number? See this
scar? It happened. It was real.<br><br>
Say "fascism" to anyone you meet, and you
will be greeted with the boilerplate response of the blithely
overconfident: such a thing cannot happen here. This is the United States
of America, land of the free and home of the brave. Ours is a nation of
laws, of checks and balances, of righteousness and decency. Our laws and
traditions stand as a bulwark against the rise of totalitarian madness.
It cannot happen here. Thus we are indoctrinated into the school of our
own assumed greatness.<br><br>
"We must disenthrall ourselves," said
Abraham Lincoln, and so we must, because it can happen here. It is
already happening. All the parroted recitations of grade school civics
cannot erase the fact that a new order is rising. Call it "secret
fascism" or "smiley-faced fascism." Call it a quiet
dictatorship. Call it what you like, but it is here with us in America
today, and it is growing.<br><br>
To be sure, there are no coal-scuttle helmets lined in
ranks down our broad avenues, no Tonton Macoute savaging dissidents, no
Khmer Rouge slaughtering intellectuals and herding citizens from cities
to die by the millions on roads littered with skulls. The core strength
of our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does not present itself
in such an obvious way that those who subsist on the dogmas of our
greatness can point and say there, there it is, I see it.<br><br>
This new fascism is not fed only by lies, though to be
sure the lies are there in preposterous abundance. This new fascism is
fed by myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock ourselves to sleep.
This new fascism is in truth an elemental fascism, reborn today by a
confluence of events; the diligent work of the few, in combination with
the passivity of the many, have brought forth this new order.<br><br>
The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay titled
"Ur-Fascism," delineated several core elements that have
existed in one form or another in every fascist state in history:
"Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does
not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime
leader. Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect. The
national identity is provided by the nation's enemies. Argument is
tantamount to treason. Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the
instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role
of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state."<br><br>
Take these one at a time.<br><br>
"Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten,
because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of
the sublime leader."<br><br>
George W. Bush has all but gelded Congress in recent
months, attaching so-called "signing statements" to a variety
of laws, which state that the president may act beyond the laws whenever
he so chooses. The United States, fashioned as a republic, has as its
voice the congressional body. This is all but finished. To cement his
victory over the parliamentary system, Bush has put forth one Samuel
Alito for the Supreme Court, a man who believes in the ultimate power of
the one leader over the many. The gelded congress does not appear able to
keep this man from the high court, thus rendering the balancing branches
of government into a satellite system of the Executive.<br><br>
"Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always
suspect."<br><br>
The supremacy of religious fundamentalism within and
without government carries this banner before all others. What is reason
in the face of the zealot's faith? Science has become a watered-down
vessel for Intelligent Design, and the incontrovertible truths of
empirical data are slapped aside. Spencer Tracy, in the film
"Inherit the Wind," bellows the warning here: "Fanaticism
and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor,
with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward,
backward, through the glorious ages of that sixteenth century, when
bigots burned the man who dared to bring enlightenment and intelligence
to the human mind."<br><br>
"The national identity is provided by the
nation's enemies."<br><br>
This has been with us for generations now. Our nation
defined ourselves through a comparison to the Nazis, to the Imperial
Japanese, and then through decades of comparison to Communism. Terrorism
has supplanted all of these, hammered into place on a Tuesday in
September by the actions of madmen. We are not them, all is justified in
the struggle against them, and so we are defined.<br><br>
<br>
"Argument is tantamount to treason."<br>
All one need do to see this in action is spend some
hours with the Fox News channel. Freedom fries. Why do you hate America?
You are with us or you are with the terrorists. Watch what you
say.<br><br>
"Perpetually at war, the state must govern with
the instruments of fear."<br><br>
The manipulation of this population by fear has been
ham-fisted, to be sure, but has also been cruelly effective. We do not
want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud. Weapons of mass destruction and
al Qaeda in Iraq. Nuclear designs in Iran. Plastic sheeting and duct
tape. Orange alert. Argument becomes tantamount to treason simply because
everyone has been made to feel fear at all times. A frightened populace
is easily governed, and governs itself; this lesson was well-learned in
the duck-and-cover days of the Cold War. Those lessons have been
masterfully applied once again. Today, the citizenry polices itself, and
the herd moves as one body. Even the surveillance of innocent citizens by
the state is brushed off as a necessary evil. Remember: you are being
watched.<br><br>
"Citizens do not act; they play the supporting
role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state."<br><br>
Once, we lived by the glorious simplicity of the vote.
Casting a ballot was the single most patriotic duty a citizen could
perform, an affirmation of all we held dear and true. Today, we live in
the nation of the vanishing voter. Power has been so far removed from the
people by those with money and influence that most see voting as a waste
of time. Add to this the growing control of the implements of voting and
vote-counting by partisan corporations, and the rule of We the People is
left in ashes.<br><br>
We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea that our
institutions, our traditions, the barriers that protect us from absolute
and authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They are being
dismantled a brick at a time. The separation of powers has already been
annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet marching down your street
or pounding upon your door in the dead of night. But it is here, and it
is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the whispered fascism of
today to the shouted fascism of tomorrow. We must look beyond the lies
and the myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2> <br><br>
</font><pre>--
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=3>thanks
Frank</font>
<a href="http://www.humboldt.net/~fcieciorka" eudora="autourl">
http://www.humboldt.net/~fcieciorka<br>
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