Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

by Naomi Wolf 24 April 2007

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

DYI:  Multiple agendas requires different threats to mobilize our citizens into acceptance and action[propaganda - LIES].  9-11 was just such an action designed for that purpose.  In the beginning it was very successful ramping up the military industrial complex for wars all over the Middle East.  Another agenda is an oil and gas grab as the natural resource wars move into high gear with the grand prize being attempted for the seizure of Russian resources especially those east of the Ural Mountains.  I have many other prior posts in greater detail explaining this.     

2. Create a gulag

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

DYI:  The Fed's have built multiple FEMA facilities around the country so far to the best of my knowledge they have remained unused.  The development of these camps has been muted due to citizen journalist and alternative news outlets.       

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

DYI:  

OBAMA'S 'NATIONAL CIVILIAN SECURITY FORCE' ENDORSED

Back in 2008, Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, called for a “civilian national security force.” And he wanted it wanted it as big as all of the nation’s military branches.“For several days now, WND has been hounding Barack Obama’s campaign about a statement he made July 2 in Colorado Springs – a statement that blew my mind, one that has had me scratching my head ever since,” he wrote at the time.
“In talking about his plans to double the size of the Peace Corps and nearly quadruple the size of AmeriCorps and the size of the nation’s military services, he made this rather shocking (and chilling) pledge: ‘We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.'”
“Now, since I’ve never heard anyone inside or out of government use the phrase ‘civilian national security force’ before, I was more than a little curious about what he has in mind,” he wrote. “What does it mean?”
Farah pointed out that a “massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together” would be startling.
“The U.S. Army alone has nearly 500,000 troops. That doesn’t count reserves or National Guard. In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that?” he wrote.

Thank God this idea went nowhere.  However the Federal government has been Federalizing local police forces around the country in their attempt to create through the back door a national security force.  Luckily our local police forces are becoming awake and are resisting any sort of nationalization with a push back against their political bosses who only see the Fed's carrot(money).
  

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

DYI:  Everyone knows by now the NSA's national data collection - OF ALL CITIZENS. What more can be said?

5. Harass citizens' groups

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

DYI:  The IRS(ABC News)has been used by Presidents of both political parties to harass their political enemies.  I tried to find the first known case out of curiosity.  ABC News mentions as far back as FDR so this is a long held tradition.  Of course what is needed is to eliminate the Federal income taxes and replace it with a national sales tax/importation tax AND repeal the 16th Amendment.  A tall order and a big step for liberty.   

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

DYI:  So far I've not heard of this happening...so far so good.

7. Target key individuals

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

DYI:  The IRS is the prime example to target individuals as mentioned in point #5.

8. Control the press

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

DYI:  Both political parties especially the executive branch(President) are notorious for this behavior with the old line media being their lap dogs as long as the message is pro big government/big business further serving the global corporations drive for a feudal state. 

9. Dissent equals treason

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

DYI:  The propaganda push against the alternative news outlets ramps up setting the stage AFTER Trump leaves office to shut down alternative media outlets that do not follow the new world order - big government/big business corporate feudal state.  

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

DYI: No doubt the rule of law has become almost nothing more than a joke.  Exampled by the bankers who are repeatedly fined yet no one goes to jail.  The latest fiasco is Wells Fargo where 10's of thousand of account holders were placed fraudulently into new accounts to generate fee's. Anytime a customer opens a new account requires their signature.  The Wells Fargo case there was 10's of thousand of forged signatures - where are the handcuffs??? 

To maintain freedom requires eternal vigilance AND A HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK!

DYI