Interesting thoughts on the rise of facism...

snip...

(1) In response, Hector Mondragon, one of Colombia's bravest and most insightful social critics, asked,


"Is it not Fascism because there was an election? Weren't Hitler and Mussolini elected? What was Hitler's popularity during the Holocaust? This is what Fascism is like. Fascism is popular. The middle class loves it. The enemies of the state are being eliminated. The streets are being cleaned. And the middle class applauds. The city has never looked so good. The tourists can say what they said when they went to Germany in 1937: 'Why do people speak so poorly of the government? Germany has never been so beautiful.' Or Colombia.'"
Or the U.S.

more...

http://news.neilrogers.com/news/articles/2004112417.html

We are in no danger then. 49% of America does not like *, on the other hand - clinton won pretty handily (even though many still did not like him on the right).

I find the whole idea of interest because the same devotion we see by those on the right is often shared by those on the left for their candidate - and the words flowing from supporters of the dem candidates can get interesting as well (boycott the evil red states, they deserve what they get, et al). When both sides hate the other side so terribly then we have a big concern because we care less about those who disagree with us and try to punish or dehumanize them (like all the threads about thanksgiving and not wanting to invite those 'red' people over, not going to 'their' house, etc and so on).

We have done a great job at demonizing people we see who do not agree with us - instead of trying to find a common ground and work together for the betterment of us all we want those in the 'red' to suffer and learn their lesson. Screw christmas, christians, republicans, middle of the road and moderates, they are all evil and want to herd us into camps so we have to pull together and take care of em. I see people bring up how the right/* are like hitler and nazis but one could make the comparison to the left as well (ie - we have an enemy, they want to kill us all, so lets get them first - demonize, galvanize, remove emotional attachtments to them because they are humans second and repugs first - don't invite them to dinner, don't buy from them, etc and so on).

The left and the right are both like this - we as progressives need to move beyond the games being played and work to heal what divides us instead of letting politicians keep dividing us because when we are so divided in a 2 party country we will accept candidates who are not the best on our side just to beat the other guy. They have a lock on it all and take turns in power, and things keep getting worse.

We are lead to believe there is no working together, we cannot work with them, we won't, no way, screw em. That changes nothing. Both sides can give - and if we totally believe that the right and left cannot work together then we have indeed drunk the kool aid. We are all humans, all americans, and if sit around trying to find only the worst in those we hate and post it and hype it up then we will only ever see the worst we can.

Christianity is an example of this (as is islam, et al). Many such religious groups do a tremendous work to help others from food, hospital visits, clothing, etc but instead of celebrating such things we try hard to find something wrong with it. The right does the same thing too of course. But in all of this I have seen people of all religions and politics come together to help others. We do share some common things, and working on those and celebrating those can bring us all closer together - and maybe we all will start to listen to each other and not those who want us to hate each other.

Hate destroys. Finding all the negative that the press will print destroys. Instead of focusing on the good within those we call our neighbors and families we try to find the ugly to prove ourselves right and superior and they wrong and inferior.

The choice is ours. That is power. We have it, and if we choose to use only the most negative of it to demonize others than eventually even if we win we might well lose.

You wrote: Christianity is an example of this (as is islam, et al). Many such religious groups do a tremendous work to help others from food, hospital visits, clothing, etc but instead of celebrating such things we try hard to find something wrong with it. The right does the same thing too of course.... We do share some common things, and working on those and celebrating those can bring us all closer together - and maybe we all will start to listen to each other and not those who want us to hate each other.

I am studying to be a minister, and so am fascinated with the idea of fascism arising out of religious nationalism and increased militarization. I see both happening in America.

You are right, there are many devout people working together to relieve suffering. This is a great and noble deed. But there are also people on the religious right that refuse to be in dialog with anyone. They believe their understanding of Christianity is inerrant, and therefore, the morals they are now starting to legislate arise out of the belief that their views of morals are inerrant. The idea that they could ever make a moral mistake does not enter the equation. Moreover, they believe they are living in the ends times, so that also tempers their moral decisions; if you believe that people are inherently bad, and that the end times means you will get to hang with Jesus while all those evil people who don't believe as you do will finally get theirs, what is the impetus to build a heaven on earth by caring for others? ("Others" are probably lazy SOBs anyway, just looking for a handout... is the thinking.)

They combine their Christian beliefs in a literal understanding of this nation. You cannot talk with a person who believes they are inerrant in their understanding of American history, which is fairly un-nuanced. We kicked England's butt so we can do anything; God gave this continent to white Europeans as a new Jerusalem (never mind those natives that had to be displaced); baseball, apple pie, and our boys going off to WWI and WWII to liberate the world from evil. This prevalent national mythology, based equally on national pride and religious concepts. George Bush believes this arrogant ideology, I'm sure.

Combine all that with the the world's most powerful military and corporate entities controlling everything from money to energy to the food supply to media, and you begin to see the rise of fascism. We have seen militarism increase under this administration. Some of it can be attributed to 9-11, but if the administration was going to move in the direction of harmony and cooperation that you envision, certainly they would have done so after 9-11, when the world stood in prayerful solidarity with them. Instead the administration contrived a way to invade a country that was not responsible for the terror we suffered. The US lost about 3000 civilians that day. Iraq has lost between 50,000-100,000 civilians since we began the war in March 2003, and we have lost an additional 1300 Americans. Does that sound like people willing to work with us to build a more compassionate world?

These are not compassionate Christians, but people whose understanding of Jesus is "Jesus is MY personal savior {not yours}, and He will kick butt on behalf of the U.S.!"

Let's review:

Religion
+ Nationalism
+ Militarism/Crackdown on Dissent
+ Media Consolidation (for Corporate Profit)
+ Ecological Degradation (for Corporate Profit)
+ Election Secrecy (for Corporate Profit)
+ State Legislation of Sexual Morality
---------------------------------------
Fascism Rising

thank you!

I've been watching the slow turn to facism over the past four years. And the military overlay is quite enmeshed.

I was once studying to be a minister myself. Things fell apart and I ended up on a different path.

I think perhaps that while there are many fundamentalists who can cause problems for all in their blind devotion that there are many who we can reach with the deeper message which exists. The core beliefs are there but they have become blinded, imho, to many of the other things which are so rich about the faith.

My example has always been the amish. They have their beliefs, life them out as they see fit, and don't press those ideas onto others via legislation - but one thing that goes with that is a deeper belief in america having more freedoms for people to cloister themselves into groups freely and not be tethered by a giant federal government telling that they cannot do x/y/z. The fear that christains like my sister has is that their ability to live their lives as they believe is threatened, so they vote for people who (they think) will remove those threats and allow them to practice things as they see them. Let me provide an example to this which I have heard on many a talks with others:

Prayer in school: ok, so it should not be mandatory. But when you have a community that is mainly christian (or muslim, et al) and their tax dollars are taken and their kids compelled to go to such schools they want them to have the ability to have some time set aside in the day for kids to pray. Ok some would say - then go to a private school, well that costs money plus I am paying my taxes for school already. Now how does all this really boil down to them? Local versus federal - and that they see seperation of church and state like this: "congress shall make no law" we have two key words, congress and law. If this is a local school district then why does congress have any say on it? And if congress has no say in it then how come they can't, as a local community allow it? They see the ability to have a community which reflects their values and beliefs as being attacked - attacked because money is taken from them for something like a school that they have to send their kids to - or they have to fork over money or fight to homeschool and work through paperwork with the government to be allowed to do so.

Their solution is diversity - across the US. The federal government has a place and duty assigned it, and they are over stepping their boundaries by getting involved in local issues that are not their business. They blur the lines created by the founding documents (which to them limit the powers of the government greatly and not the powers of the people and local governments) and take power and set direction, so their goal is to make the government smaller to allow a greater freedom and diversity across the land. Some places will pay for abortion, some will allow gay marriage, some will not - but consolidating all the power and decisions with a central government which makes everywhere the same is bad to them.

So they voted for * - because even if he does not shrink government he says he will make their beliefs law which to them balances things out (ie, the 'left' wanted to make X the law of the land for everyone and consolidate power centrally and destroy diversity in community and since we are not able to shrink government we will use it.)

In all this I think we can work together to meet each others' needs. they don't want a facist government, but they will take one that goes on their ideals over one that will go against it (same it seems as we would).

To make peace perhaps we need to move away from the feds making all the rules and let the states and local people live their lives with true freedom - even when we disagree with them having a nativity scene.

The right has seen us as the ones who want a facist regime in power for years. An example of that is my best friend (a gay republican/libertarian/agnostic) who saw things in a way that the left was wanting to take power and invoke it's morals and beliefs and do so with a giant federal government that made laws which affect everyone in the USA and forced them to accept ideologies that they did not adhere to.

he is a libertarian mainly but voted * to keep kerry out because to him the threat is the same as many see the right as - ie, ride into town with your morals and values on how life should be and make em law.

In some ways I see his point (and we discussed this at hometown buffet a week before the election) - we have a view of life and the world and how it should be, so do they, we want to get into office so we can make the whole country adhere to our beliefs which we deem superior, so do they. The solution as he sees it is to make the feds less powerful and to do the basic job they were hired to do and let the people locally decided laws which while different from area to area all must live within the guiding principles set forth in the founding documents.

The trick we then get is interpreting them - the more restrictive we make the definitions the more power the feds have over us - that is to say, to me, the more power we give a select few people to decide what is law and what is not for all americans. And both sides will throw everything out the window and paint their guy as great no matter what when an election is near (even here on DU - don't bad talk kerry because we don't want him to look bad as he might lose, so be quiet on the bad and hype the good while attacking the other guy and say nothing good about him).

That, to me, is the birth of facism in any country. Win at all costs because the other side is evil and must be crushed. We can single out religion, because right now they hold the cards, and that is fine really with me. But my hope is we do not, in the future, become what we attack - ie I hope we do not take our 'morals' and push them on others in the name of freedom.

The left often portrays itself as the freedom party, but freedom is not something you can legislate - it is absence of legislation which promotes true freedom and diversity while legislating those things needed to insure we all have the security and tools needed to make those freedoms a reality.

The biggest problem comes in when we move to make something 'national' that should be local and should not need a law made to define it which affects all people. Is freedom something which is given by law or taken by it? In a society that has as it's roots a faith, which has played a part historically in how people have lived and acted, want to commemorate that with a nativity scene because they feel that their morals and values which have been an integral part in their lives over centuries, should we tell them that they cannot use a piece of land that their values help secure cannot be used for such a thing? Federally, ok - but locally? Congress shall make no law does not mean that the local politicians can't.

So here we are, with our own morals and values, trying to tell others with their own morals and values that they are wrong.

Sure the logic may be off, the legal wordings may be off, but that is how THEY see it. So if we are to work together to find a solution to all our problems in this country it behooves us to see such people as more than simply a bunch of fundies wanting to make us live our lives as they see (for they see us the same). It is good for both groups to try and see how the other sees things, and maybe not on a national level where one small group of people decide what we all must do.

I am, as a christian, often conflicted in all this. No god in a big school district where we have people of many ideals and faiths - ok, keeping a mention of god and a nativity scene/plays out of a small county in montana where all the people have a similar belief and pay taxes? Seems a bit extreme to me (and same with mainly muslim communities who want to celebrate their holidays - diversity can be alive and well, if we allow people to use it instead of telling them what they cannot do).

Facism has many components, but it starts by a national movement to make us all the same in things we are not the same in. The more one group defines and creates laws to box people in the closer we get to a one mind mentality and the further we get from many people thinking and acting differntly. In the 1800's we had communes that were socialist and some christian, all had their own codes but people were free to leave at any time and had the basic protections from the founding documents - you could not be forced to stay there but you could choose to live in an area where people gave up certain things for other things. If you changed your mind, you could leave.

and that helped spur many to his movement. With the chimp's economic policies, a depression may not be far off. But leave it to * to get the order of events wrong.

supporters is nothing more than enabling their arrogance and stupidity. I have personally decided to demonstrate to these assholes that there are consequences for demonizing me for being a liberal democrat. If I choose to cut Bush voters out of my life it is not because I feel superior, rather, it is because they show me no respect as a patriotic American who happens to have a different opinion. I resent your notion that the hate and venom is in equal measure from both sides--it is not. The extreme right's hatred for Democrats stems from their psychotic notion that liberals are a fifth column of communists; liberal hatred of the right is simple self-respect and self-defense. Furthermore, if you think Democrats and Republicans can work together you've drunk the cool-aid. Have you already forgotten Bush's idea of uniting--he's more than willing to reach out to anyone who AGREES with him. Dialog is dead.

Dems are working with Bush, they voted for his colonial war!

Dem-Repub faux controversy is media manipulation, hate-mongering to keep American people divided so they can be ruled by media and other corporations. Dialogue is the only way to win hearts and mindes, by aggressiveness you only create more aggression and thus make fascism stronger.

It's a trick, divide and rule, the oldest trick, but it still seems to work since you and many like you have fallen for it.

I am a firm believer that you do not dialog with Nazis or any other type of fascist. How is dialog possible during the process of having your throat slit. And before you accuse me of being an extremist paranoid newbie please put the following examples into the context of your world view:

1. the growing personality cult surrounding George Bush (Clear Channel billboards)

2. mandatory psychological testing

3. patriot acts 1, and 2, and ever how many more they can think up in the years ahead

4. election fraud in 2000 and 2004

5. a totally worthless mainstream media

6. a totally irrational spending spree of apocalyptic proportion

I invite you to add to this list.

is a big problem. What we learned in Europe that those who voted fascism in power and even those who guarded consentration camps and were capable of doing were ordinary people, good husbands and wifes, people just like me and you.

The dialogue with fascism is actually first and foremost inner dialogue, getting to know your "inner fascist", our darker side, instead of repelling and denying it - when we make something into absolute enemy and fight it without mercy and empathy, we have tendency to become like that enemy.

Democracy is inherently vulnerable to fascism, by opposing and excluding fascism it is no more democracy but starts to resemble what it opposes. By fighting fascism we only fight against ourselves. We can only fight ignorance, prejudice and aggression, which are the roots of fascism, and that is allways simultaneously both cultural and inner fight, the only cause worth fighting for, Jihad.

Wise men of Greece came to conclusion that only two precepts are necessary, 'gnothi seauton', know thyself, and 'meden agan', nothing in excess. European civilization, any civilization I dare say, is based on those two corner stones. If we do our best to live by those precepts we have allready won fascism.

Fascism feeds on controversy and exclusive hate. Liberty feeds on dialogue and inclusive solidarity.

Fascists are people too, fascism is populist movement (with the support of big corporations and especially military-industrial complex) manipulating the fears and loneliness of "individualistic" middle class, especially poorly educated lower middle class.

It's saved in my files, now.

In my mind, fascism (aka corporatism) is nothing but a bunch of industrialists hell-bent on power who manipulate people by playing to their darker half in order to trick people into giving them more power while ridiculing or demonizing the opposition as being weak on security or being unpatriotic.

Infiltrating the U.S. Military
Gen. Boykin’s “Kingdom Warriors” On the Road to Abu Ghraib and Beyond
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html

By Katherine Yurica
October 12, 2004

Since GOP leaders have tasted the heady stuff of unlimited power and watched the success of their bullying tactics, they seem to take pride in the fact that intimidation and coercion silences all opposition. They’ve begun to step more boldly toward the goal of taking control of the judiciary—and it appears that nothing can stop them from destroying the system of checks and balances built into our constitution. Americans don’t seem to mind. We love the swagger of the cowboys in charge.

We must love Tom DeLay’s boast, “I am the government!”<1> else voters would throw him out on his ears. So those of us who sit and observe are spectators in the GOP’s sport of dismantling American constitutional rule. The Bush administration quietly sends the names of religiously ideological judges down to the Senate for confirmation, while the House devises diabolical bills to rip the heart out of our nation’s jurisprudence. By submitting legislation that seeks to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdictional power, the House leaders hope to delimit what cases the federal courts can or cannot review.<2> The hard right House leaders have gone so far as to introduce a bill that will grant congress the ability to overturn a Supreme Court decision that finds a law passed by congress is unconstitutional.<3> It appears that the entire constitutional structure of our nation could be hanging in the balance in the 2004 election.

How has the Republican Party been so radicalized and transformed? The consequences that flow from the fact that a secret religious infiltration of the Republican Party took place over a period of years prior to the last two elections have simply been underreported in the press. Infiltration and control of the GOP has placed the religious hard right comfortably in control of the party, which in turn places our republic in danger of being controlled by a heretical religious core that began its program of dominance in the 1980’s.<4>

It’s not the first time the religious right has succeeded. Probably the most remarkable plan to takeover an institution began in 1967, when so called “fundamentalists” laid out the strategy to take control of the sixteen million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). According to a chronology posted on the web,<5> Page Patterson a seminary doctoral student and Judge Paul Pressler met at Café du Monde in New Orleans and discussed a long term strategy for “fundamentalist domination of the SBC.”

By 1979, Patterson, Pressler “and others ran a ‘get out the vote’ campaign in fifteen states prior to the Convention, urging a defeat of the moderates in the SBC.”<6> Voters were actually bussed to the convention in mass numbers and left after the vote for the president of the organization.

That year, Adrian Rogers was elected president.

In 1980, Paul Pressler “publicly announced the strategy of the fundamentalist takeover, which was to elect the SBC president a sufficient number of times to gain a fundamentalist majority on the boards and agencies of the Convention.”<7> With a president who had the power of committee appointments, the fundamentalists could begin their reign of power. From 1979 to the present, fundamentalists “elected all presidents of the SBC.”<8>

As they consolidated their power and gained control of the six SBC seminaries, they ruthlessly purged the institutions of all moderates. According to Dr. Russell Dilday, a moderate who opposed the tactics of the fundamentalists in 1985, the fundamentalists operated like a “sophisticated political machine.” In an interview with Charlene Hunter Gault and Judge Pressler on the McNeal Lehrer Hour on June 11, 1985, Dr. Dilday said the fundamentalists used “surreptitious recording of conversations, secretly taping telephone calls, without the permission of the person being talked to, sharing that information with the press without permission. Using the kind of strategy, actually secular strategies, that are not at all consistent with one who claims to believe in biblical authority.” Dr. Dilday said, “If I agreed one hundred percent with his content, I think I would disagree with his cause, just by virtue of the strategy being used.” <9>

In the year 1993, the fundamentalists attempted to refuse to seat members from the church where President Clinton had his church membership.<10> In the year 2000, former President Jimmy Carter left the denomination.<11> In that same year, the SBC leadership forced all employees, professors and missionaries to sign a modern day “loyalty oath,” a new “Baptist Faith and Message” statement that many Baptists felt superceded the Bible and the personhood of Jesus requiring loyalty to the institution over loyalty to God. Over seventy missionaries either resigned because of the requirement to sign or were outright fired, when they refused to resign, with the loss of all their retirement.<12>

Clearly then, the “fundamentalist” takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention was not a disagreement over “religious” issues, at its heart, it was a “political” takeover because it used coercive means to achieve complete control of the organization.<13> The purging of moderate Baptists in the Southern Baptist Convention continues to this day as the denomination becomes ever more politically involved.
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The chaplain corp is the next target...
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Lt. General Jerry Boykin’s Secret “Warrior” Recruitment Program



As one reads or recites the facts surrounding Abu Ghraib, one is tempted to ask how the American military, with its code of ethics as reflected in the high traditions of West Point and our Naval Academy—where men and women are imbued in the tradition of honor— could have turned into such a ruthless band of sadists? The answer is: They didn’t. Someone else did it.



There is evidence the U.S. military, like the Southern Baptist Convention before it, has been targeted as an institution to be taken over and replaced with dominionists who are decidedly less educated and less honorable. These are men and women who may be willing to do anything to further the cause of world domination.



There is also evidence dominionists have infiltrated the military with willing personnel and that the military has similarly infiltrated the churches.



The next chapter of this story begins with Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, the Pentagon’s senior military intelligence official. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1971. That same year, he was commissioned in the U.S. Army where he rose through the ranks to Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) Fort Bragg, N.C. and then in June 2003 to the present to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence at the Pentagon.<19>



There is no question that Lt. Gen. Boykin is a brave soldier and he is undoubtedly a personable man. But in searching through data available on the web, it appears that while the general has spent thirty three years in the military, he has had very little formal military education with the exception of a year at the Army War College in 1990-1991.<20>



Boykin became the focus of media reports when he spoke about his involvement in the war on terrorism at twenty-three Baptist and Pentecostal churches across the country, accompanied by two military aides. According to a 10-month internal investigation conducted by the defense department’s deputy inspector general for investigations and reported by the Washington Post, Boykin received reimbursement for his travel costs from one of the sponsoring church groups and failed to report that fact. He wore his uniform and gave the impression that he was representing the military. <21>



The investigation confirmed that Boykin said that the U.S. military is recruiting a spiritual army that will draw strength from a greater power to defeat its enemy.<22> In fact, he told the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla. on June 30, 2002, “What I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”<23>



Wait a minute! He was speaking to Christians—so he was not seeking to evangelize them to become Christians. What then was he recruiting for? If Boykin is a dominionist, then those words have a concrete meaning: He was recruiting soldiers to fight a war to set up God’s Kingdom on earth!<24>



After all, Ken Hemphill, the Southern Baptist’s national strategist for Empowering Kingdom Growth, (EKG) spoke to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee recently defining the role of religion for them. According to him, church is about advancing the Kingdom of God. He said, “Southern Baptists must lead in awakening the church to be on mission with God for the redemption of the nations.” Hemphill, quoting a passage from the Bible said there is one biblical sign yet to be fulfilled: “This good news of the Kingdom will be proclaimed in the entire world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”<25>



When we consider Boykin’s speaking and recruitment tour along with the fact he was addressing Baptists and Pentecostals who are the backbone of the religious right dominionist movement, alarm bells should go off. It may be that the Army’s Inspector General’s office is simply ignorant of the goals of the religious right, but there is far more evidence that link the hard right religious world with the U.S. Military.


complete artical at :

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html

review of the above article is also at:

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/ReviewOfInfiltratingUSMilitary.html