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The Real Reason America Is Drifting Towards Fascism
Step 1: Demonizing the Enemy
War is always sold by artificially demonizing the enemy.
Countries need to lie about their enemies in order to demonize them sufficiently so that the people will support the war.
Everyone knows that “truth is the first casualty of war“.
As Tom Brokaw said:
All wars are based on propaganda.
Posters prepared in foreign countries demonizing Americans are an obvious form of propaganda. For example, here are samples from Nazi Germany:
The Soviet Union:
(the American is supposed to be the guy on the left)
North Korea:
These are disturbing images, because we as Americans know that they falsely depict who we are.
But Americans have demonized our enemies as well. For example, in World War II, anti-Japanese posters such as the following were used to whip up hatred of the enemy:
Anti-German posters such as this were also widely used:
And, at times, Americans have even demonized other Americans, such as during the Civil War:
Modern America’s Unique Form of Authoritarianism
The unique modern strain of American fascism can be traced through Leo Strauss and the University of Chicago.
Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of recent American administrations. Indeed, many of the main neocon players – including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky – were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years.
The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans – the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate.
What did Strauss teach?
Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers such as Carl Schmitt and of Machiavelli (more on Schmitt later).
Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:
A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured.
(the quote is by one of Strauss’ main biographers).
Indeed, Stauss used the analogy of Gulliver’s Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like:
“When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect.” (this quote also from the same biographer)
Moreover, Strauss said:
Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic . . . Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.
So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one’s own soil to one’s own people — of “pissing” on one’s own people, to use his Gulliver’s travel analogy. And he advocated that government’s should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally “not know” that Rome is burning. He advocated messing with one’s own people in order to save them from some artificial “catastrophe”. In other words, he proposed using deceit in order to demonize an adversary and artificially turn him into a dangerous enemy.
Genesis of the Meme: Carl Schmitt
Painting by William Banzai 7
But to really understand Strauss – and thus the Neocons – one must understand his main influence: Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was the leading Nazi legal scholar and philosopher who created the justification for “total war” to destroy those labeled an “enemy” of the Nazi state.
Strauss was a life-long follower of Schmitt, and Schmitt helped Strauss get a scholarship which let him escape from Germany and come to America.
Not only was Strauss heavily influenced by Schmitt, but Strauss and Schmitt were so close that – when Strauss criticized Schmitt for being too soft and not going far enough – Schmitt agreed:
Schmitt himself recommended Strauss’s commentary [on Schmitt's writing] to his friends as one that he believed saw right through him like an X-ray.
Schmitt’s philosophy argued that the sovereign was all-powerful in being able to to declare a state of emergency. As Neil Levi explains:
The sovereign is the name of that person (legal or actual) who decides not only that the situation is a state of exception but also what needs to be done to eliminate the state of exception and thus preserve the state and restore order. Note the circularity of the definitions: the sovereign is the one who decides that there is a state of exception; a state of exception is that which the sovereign deems to be so.
The sovereign eliminates the state of exception to restore order, but the content of this order is historically contingent, because it is dependent on the sovereign’s will. All that matters to Schmitt is, as Slavoj Žižek puts it, “the decision for the formal principle of order as such.” Similarly, Schmitt says nothing, can say nothing, about what it is that makes a [principle] worth defending with one’s life, what substance and concrete content could or should compel one to make such a commitment to preserve this form.
Indeed, Schmitt says that “politics” is not the process of debate, making trade-offs, building consensus or letting the best ideas win. Instead, the sovereign – through an act of will – makes a decision, and then the political system should carry it out, and the military effectuate it.
George W. Bush’s statement that he was the “decider” fits in nicely with Schmitt’s theories.
Moreover, Schmitt argued that war against one’s enemy is total – lacking any legal constraints – but the sovereign can use ever-shifting definitions of who the enemy is:
War is the existential negation of the enemy.
***
As with the state of exception, there are not rational criteria for distinguishing friend from enemy. All conflict is situational conflict.
Similarly, Al Qaeda has been our “mortal enemy” since 9/11 … but now they are our close ally.
Indeed, Schmitt said that those who are like our “brothers”, who are as much the same as different from us, must be demonized so that we don’t feel any compassion for them. They are either “with us or against us”, regardless of whether or not they are good people, or how close to us they may be.
The Georgetown University Law Center notes:
Schmitt denounces all “neutralizations and depoliticizations,” which for him are the hallmarks of liberalism. There are no neutralizations: if you are not with us you are against us and we will destroy you: “If a part of the population declares that it no longer recognizes enemies, then, depending on the circumstance, it joins their side and aids them.”
Indeed, Schmitt believed that demonization and war must be maintained for their own sake, or else a horrible world where peace and culture reined would be created:
Schmitt writes that if war became impossible, then “the distinction of friend and enemy would also cease” and what remained would be “neither politics nor state, but culture, civilization,economics, morality, law, art, entertainment, and so on”….
A continuous “state of emergency” is required for the type of leadership advocated by Schmitt and Strauss. In 2002, Slavoj Žižek pointed out how this continuous state of emergency works:
A notable precursor in this field of para-legal ‘biopolitics’, in which administrative measures are gradually replacing the rule of law, was Alfredo Stroessner’s regime in Paraguay in the 1960s and 1970s, which took the logic of the state of exception to an absurd, still unsurpassed extreme. Under Stroessner, Paraguay was – with regard to its Constitutional order – a ‘normal’ parliamentary democracy with all freedoms guaranteed; however, since, as Stroessner claimed, we were all living in a state of emergency because of the worldwide struggle between freedom and Communism, the full implementation of the Constitution was forever postponed and a permanent state of emergency obtained. This state of emergency was suspended every four years for one day only, election day, to legitimise the rule of Stroessner’s Colorado Party with a 90 per cent majority worthy of his Communist opponents. The paradox is that the state of emergency was the normal state, while ‘normal’ democratic freedom was the briefly enacted exception. This weird regime anticipated some clearly perceptible trends in our liberal-democratic societies in the aftermath of 11 September. Is today’s rhetoric not that of a global emergency in the fight against terrorism, legitimising more and more suspensions of legal and other rights? The ominous aspect of John Ashcroft’s recent claim that ‘terrorists use America’s freedom as a weapon against us’ carries the obvious implication that we should limit our freedom in order to defend ourselves. Such statements from top American officials, especially Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, together with the explosive display of ‘American patriotism’ after 11 September, create the climate for what amounts to a state of emergency, with the occasion it supplies for a potential suspension of rule of law, and the state’s assertion of its sovereignty without ‘excessive’ legal constraints. America is, after all, as President Bush said immediately after 11 September, in a state of war. The problem is that America is, precisely, not in a state of war, at least not in the conventional sense of the term (for the large majority, daily life goes on, and war remains the exclusive business of state agencies). With the distinction between a state of war and a state of peace thus effectively blurred, we are entering a time in which a state of peace can at the same time be a state of emergency.
Columbia Law School professor Scott Horton notes that Schmitt’s philosophy formed the basis of the famous torture memos:
Where exactly did [Department of Justice torture memo author John] Yoo come up with the analysis that led to the purported conclusions that the Executive was not restrained by the Geneva Conventions and similar international instruments in its conduct of the war in Iraq? Yoo’s public arguments and statements suggest the strong influence of one thinker: Carl Schmitt.
***
Perhaps the most significant German international law scholar of the era between the wars, Schmitt was obsessed with what he viewed as the inherent weakness of liberal democracy. He considered liberalism, particularly as manifested in the Weimar Constitution, to be inadequate to the task of protecting state and society menaced by the great evil of Communism. This led him to ridicule international humanitarian law in a tone and with words almost identical to those recently employed by Yoo and several of his colleagues.
Beyond this, Yoo’s prescription for solving the “dilemma” is also taken straight from the Schmittian playbook. According to Schmitt, the norms of international law respecting armed conflict reflect the romantic illusions of an age of chivalry. They are “unrealistic” as applied to modern ideological warfare against an enemy not constrained by notions of a nation-state, adopting terrorist methods and fighting with irregular formations that hardly equate to traditional armies. (Schmitt is, of course, concerned with the Soviet Union here; he appears prepared to accept that the Geneva and Hague rules would apply on the Western Front in dealing with countries such as Britain and the United States). For Schmitt, the key to successful prosecution of warfare against such a foe is demonization. The enemy must be seen as absolute. He must be stripped of all legal rights, of whatever nature. The Executive must be free to use whatever tools he can find to fight and vanquish this foe. And conversely, the power to prosecute the war must be vested without reservation in the Executive – in the words of Reich Ministerial Director Franz Schlegelberger (eerily echoed in a brief submission by Bush Administration Solicitor General Paul D. Clement), “in time of war, the Executive is constituted the sole leader, sole legislator, sole judge.” (I take the liberty of substituting Yoo’s word, Executive; for Schmitt or Schlegelberger, the word would, of course, have been Führer). In Schmitt’s classic formulation: “a total war calls for a total enemy.” This is not to say that in Schmitt’s view the enemy was somehow “morally evil or aesthetically unpleasing;” it sufficed that he was “the other, the outsider, something different and alien.” These thoughts are developed throughout Schmitt’s work, but particularly in Der Begriff des Politischen (1927), Frieden oder Pazifismus (1933) and Totaler Feind, totaler Krieg, totaler Staat (1937).
***
A careful review of the original materials shows that the following rationales were advanced for decisions not to apply or to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and the Hague Convention of 1907 during the Second World War:
(1) Particularly on the Eastern Front, the conflict was a nonconventional sort of warfare being waged against a “barbaric” enemy which engaged in “terrorist” practices, and which itself did not observe the law of armed conflict.
(2) Individual combatants who engaged in “terrorist” practices, or who fought in military formations engaged in such practices, were not entitled to protections under international humanitarian law, and the adjudicatory provisions of the Geneva Conventions could therefore be avoided together with the substantive protections.
(3) The Geneva and Hague Conventions were “obsolete” and ill-suited to the sort of ideologically driven warfare in which the Nazis were engaged on the Eastern Front, though they might have limited application with respect to the Western Allies.
(4) Application of the Geneva Conventions was not in the enlightened self-interest of Germany because its enemies would not reciprocate such conduct by treating German prisoners in a humane fashion.
(5) Construction of international law should be driven in the first instance by a clear understanding of the national interest as determined by the executive. To this end niggling, hypertechnical interpretations of the Conventions that disregarded the plain text, international practice and even Germany’s prior practice in order to justify their nonapplication were entirely appropriate.
(6) In any event, the rules of international law were subordinated to the military interests of the German state and to the law as determined and stated by the German Führer.
The similarity between these rationalizations and those offered by John Yoo in his hitherto published Justice Department memoranda and books and articles is staggering.
In that light, take another look at this Nazi propaganda poster branding America as a “terrorist” because of its “culture”:
Horton continues:
Carl Schmitt was … marked by a hatred of America that bordered on the irrational. He viewed American articulations of international law as fraught with hypocrisy, and saw in American practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a menacing new form of imperialism (“this form of imperialism… presents a particular threat to a people forced in a defensive posture, like we Germans; it presents us with the greater threat of military occupation and economic exploitation” he writes in 1932 …. He saw in the peculiarly American notion of consensus-democracy an unsustainable foolishness, and in the Jeffersonian vision of small government with a maximum space for individual freedom a threat to his peculiar Catholic values.
***
Yoo’s views on international humanitarian law have absolutely nothing to do with the Founding Fathers. They are a cheap, discredited Middle European import from the twenties and thirties. Viewed this way, it becomes increasingly clear where they would lead us.
A Perennial Problem
While it might be tempting to blame the implementation of Schmitt and Strauss’ ideas on George W. Bush alone, this is not borne out by the historical record.
After all, Dick Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long decades before Bush became president. Likewise, indefinite detention, widespread spying on Americans, war throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, militarization of the police, and most of the other Bush-era abuses were launched or contemplated long before Bush was sworn in.
Indeed, the demonization of the enemy through dishonest means has been going on for thousands of years.
And these Strauss/Schmitt policies are being faithfully continued by president Obama – a supposed liberal.
Painting by William Banzai 7For example:
- Obama is implementing the Neocon plan for regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa
- Obama has increased the number of drone strikes, labeling all young men in conflict zones as probable bad guys. Obama has appointed himself sole “decider” as to who lives and who dies
- A top legal expert says:
President Obama … says that he can kill [any American citizen without any charge and] on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion.
- Obama has continued the state of emergency declared on 911 – and renewed every year since – and may even have continued the extra-constitutional state of government declared on 9/11 (no one has given a definitive answer one way or the other)
- Spying on Americans has ramped up much more under Obama than Bush
- Obama has continued an economic system begun under Bush which is literally more fascist than capitalist
- The government uses arbitrary, shifting definitions of enemies. For example, while Al Qaeda has been our “mortal enemy” since 9/11 … now they are our close ally. Yet the government might label anyone anywhere in the world terrorists if they do what we do … without our permission. And government agencies under the Obama administration are labeling the most mundane, normal American behavior as potential terrorism
- The federal government under Obama used such brutal violence to break up the Occupy protests (see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this) that the Egyptian military used the crack down on Occupy as justification for the murder of protesters in Tahir Square, Egypt.
Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that the U.S. is quickly drifting into tyranny. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
We would argue that the problem of tyranny goes beyond Obama, or the Neocons or Strauss or even Schmitt.
The problem is that 4% of the the population are psychopaths. Unless people evolve to the point where they can spot the sociopaths in our midst, we will continue to be controlled by them, and to suffer at their hands.
Why We Are Drifting Towards Fascism (And What We Can Do About It)
Ultimately, we are drifting towards fascism because the majority of people aren’t standing up for ourselves. We are letting the authoritarians have their way.
The good news is that the longest-running sociological study ever shows that only 25% of people are authoritarians. And most people are not psychopaths.
The truth is that we have overwhelming numbers (and see this). If we worked together we would win.
We need not be victims to the psychopaths who would want to control us. We can evolve and empower ourselves.
At a deeper level, if we are disconnected from out own thoughts, our own feelings and our own soul, then we will look to others to tell us what to do. We will follow the strong leader protecting us from imagined crises and made up enemies, as advocated by Schmitt and Strauss.
Only a re-connection with ourselves, our communities and our souls will act as antibodies to the insane ramblings of those who would manipulate us in order to gain total control over society and to carry out their infantile fantasy of destroying all enemies.
Schmitt, Strauss, Yoo and all of the other boneheads who have adopted a crazed disconnection from reality are worshippers of “thanatos” … the “drive towards death” diagnosed by Freud and others. Many of them write lustfully about the beauty of the noble death on the battlefield.
Sanity lies in reconnection with the beauty of the everyday: the beauty of nature, of lovers, of children, of community, of an intellectual insight, of a brilliant engineering breakthrough, of a life of service, of art, of quiet prayer and meditation.
We need to reconnect with the beauty of life … and the fact that deep down inside (despite different clothes, languages and customs) everyone’s blood is red, and everyone wants the same basic things: a little food, a little comfort, a little love, a little inspiration.
In the end, the brutal murderers and tyrants are children. Real men stand up to fascism.
Fear makes people stupid and cowardly … and willing to follow the authoritarian leader into the depths of hell. On the other hand, real courage and strength comes from love for life and passion.
Insanity may be contagious. But courage is contagious as well. And as scared as we may be of the powers-that-be, they’re even more terrified of us.
Love and courage are the antitodes: they are what make us fully human, and able to defeat the psychosis of Schmitt, Strauss and the perennial crazies who would crush humanity.
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What we have is the culmination of Alexander Hamilton’s dream of complete Federalism. Once complete control is achieved entropy will claim its own. The premise of the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union was that the communist achieved communism and the system collapsed. We either decentralize by design or chaos will do it for us.
The two of them corresponded as academics and books have been written on the subject. It is also believed Schmidt helped Strauss escape from Germany. I actually found Strausses notes on Schmidts essay on the Political.
What set me on this trail was last weeks riots in Spain and a news item on Golden Dawn, not Neoconism. In particular, I was thinking about the proposed Spanish law banning photography and video of police tactics. Who came up with that exception? It's ok for the police to photograph you but not in reverse. It's ok for the police to wear masks, but not you.
We are constantly making comparisons with inter war fascism. What this information does is to demonstrate how the intellectual DNA traces to the current situation, not only in the US, but in Europe as well.
Schmidt is still considered a major intellectual influence, notwithstanding his eventual involvement with Nazis. That quote about the sovereign being the one who decides on the exception speaks volumes. He made that statement during the chaos and political paralysis of the Weimar period.
If you really want to construct a framework for understanding what is happening now and what can eventually happen, I can think of no better way than examining the Weimar period as well as the roots of European fascism, which were not limited to Nazism.
Too many people think these comparisons are extreme. However, I would argue quite the contrary. Just because we don't have death camps doesn't mean the analogy is flawed as many would have us believe.
Let me remind everyone that Joseph Goebbels was an avid follower of the teachings of Edward Bernays.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo
Goebbels love affair with Bernays whoms abuse of Freud's psychoanalysis ruined an entire nation. Our puritanical origins make the uneducated vulnerable to narcisstic organizations and occults.
Sponsored in part by Marshall McLuhan.
William,
It weakens whatever argument a person wishes to make if they stress a point too far - and whatever influence Schmitt had on Strauss it wasn't a primary one: it simply isn't possible for someone who advocates for a Jew-killing regime to be considered the intellectual father of a Jew.
Schmitt just seems to be yet another one of those Prussian cobweb spinners who went about justifying for centuries whatever it was an authoritarian State might want to do. Born of a heretical society, they just went further and further in to heresy; further and further away from truth until evena "smart" one would write twaddle about it being ideal for a leader to decide what the exception is.
University Of Chicago was founded/funded by John D. Rockefeller.
[per Wikipedia] "The history of the University of Chicago began in 1890 when the school was established by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller and the American Baptist Society ..."
Our current leader "studied" there. Also home of neocons' Leo Strauss, Milton Friedman and his shock-and-awe IMF tactics, etc.
Univ of Chicago a spawning ground for control freaks?
Friedman was clearly in the SDS!
LOL
Sounds like a terrorist organization to me, what the fuck are the Marines waiting for?
@George Washington,
You are a complete nut. Looney tunes, Ten sandwiches short of a picnic. A pallet short of a load of bricks.
I appreciate your writing as the fantastical world of colors I only hope you intend it to be.
Great point by point rebuttal. Your detailed analysis of the article is sincerely appreciated.
"The Real Reason America Is Drifting Towards Fascism"
Drifting???
Name a single market that isn't strangled in Govt Law/Legislation and is not monopolised by the twin terrors of Big Govt and Big Corpse?
America, like Europe and Japan, is a Marxist-Fascist* State already.
Good article GW
* Marxists and Fascists are chips off the same genetic mutation, the human parasite (or Scumbag in Latin)... let's drop the window dressing and trite labels, these guys suck
G.W. If you havn't read C. Wright Mills book "The Power Elite". Goes back to the mid 50's. It is classic. Milestones
We have met the enemy and he is us!
Nope the enemy is them
Them are few, we are millions sitting on a fence watching these scumbags get away with socio-economic murder
One day, when everyone's out of a job, wrecked by these parasites greed, we'll wake up and realise we outnumber them 1 million to 1 and then we'll really have to fight one other to get in the cue to stick a pitchfork in them
I am 'them'! I screwed as many people out of $ as u can imagine. I don't give a fuck about your personal freedom. If u Don't think like me, u well be sent 2 a re-education camp. I have my own private army that is on a secret Island in the Pacific. I print my own $$. Looking for a Director of Leisure Activities and Entertainment. Any takers? Pays SO$ 1,000,000.00 a month. Includes lodging and board and a women of your choice..............
george thanks for your article
I only have one prediction and that is when the shit does hit the fan the one place that will be standing room only are places of worship. In the end faith and spirituallity win
Funny i had this discussion with my daughter this weekend about watching a kid get bullied by some of her friends and not standing up for the kid makes her as guilty as the kids that are being bullies. I also told her bullies are cowards and when confronted for their behavior they turn and run
Its time america rediscovered right and wrong
Your daughter needs 2 meet my son! He sold drugs to all his classmates and we paid-off our morgage. I'm very proud of him.
Right and wrong? Sounds expensive, besides both are moot in the absense of truth.
Good luck with your kid. She will need it. It's best she find new [rotten] friends.
My kingdom is not a part of this world. So leave me the Fuck alone.
Hee hee. Thank god.
You're out of your depth here, George. While it is useful to trace the origins of the neo-con ideology, you do a VERY sloppy job here.
Nowhere, for instance, do you really focus on the Zionism that is the core of the neo-con ideology. By making a fast-and-dirty identification of everything anti-liberal "fascist", you actually do more to obfuscate than illuminate the issues we face.
Schmitt was no Zionist!
And the attempt to smear his simple observations about power and soveriegnty (he is a "classic" despite his "nazi" connections precisely because of his unforgettably lucid and honest recitation of political realitTies--something which no amount of horrified arm-waving can make go away).
Try again.
@Optimus Prime
I'm thinking maybe you and George think alot alike. If you ask me, there's a slightly over-imaginative side to Glenn Beck.
You make some tremendous points Sir but I think you're being a tad hard on GW as I don't believe he ever claimed to be journalistically infallible in absolute terms. Thanks for your addition to the post!
Thanks for the good read George!.
we are not drifting toward facism, nor are we racing towards it - it is already upon and is us today....the film which mike kreiger introduced documenting stop, search, frisk is blunt evidence of that.....all talk about sliding, drifting, and veering is juvenile.
furthermore, talk about american leaders being either too obtuse or willfully ignorant in the face of danger is also naive at best....a nation which breeds people who devise and sign documents like operation northwoods, assassinations on leaders like john kennedy and martin luthing king are also capable of more vicious assaults like 9/11 and vietnam.....
the neocons are alive and well and they descend directly from nazis who descend from america's plutocrats....the bush crime syndicate is a well docmented therrorist organization going back to before world war 2, and the rockefeller axis of evil is a well known terrorist organziation going back further....supposing that these "people" are fundamentally patriotic americans who are taking advantage of an external crisis makes my stomach turn.
Thanks for a great article and some unsettling imagery GW!
Drifting? "We're there, man." Have been for at least a decade.
We still have alot of freedom ...eek duck, Big Bro Drone overhead ... you can still ...Google spy-bot compiiant post ...pick your nose in America ....bank transfer declined, IRS non-compliant amount ...and wipe your arse ...knock, knock, "Homeland Security" ...sorry must go mate, transfer to Gitmo holiday camp beckons!
Good man, GW,the first Poster,you call German,it is written in Danish,i dont know if its a copy of a German poster,but the Language is not German:I know cause i am Danish !
GW - This is easily the best post you have ever made. Congratulations: You are now public enemy #1.
The real reason why any state drifts into facism is because they lose their collective sense of absolute values.
Everything goes. Once the hedonism phase is past through (a la 1920's Germany) the hangover phase begins (late 1920's - early 1930's Germany). After a number of attempts are made to fix the headache, facism rears it's head as people who have lost their way. They no longer believe in right and wrong and put their trust in a strongman who says the right things.
As far as they are concerned, problem solved. Look at the middle east today. The Muslim Brotherhood has a simple solution to their collective problems. The solution is not that the middle east needs to change their value system. The solution is to wipe out the opposition.
Good point, however truth is not a value. Each and every "person" you are alluding to is organized through the lawless proxy of incorporation. Corporations don't have values. Thinking they do constitutes the rot of denial permeating decent society.
The solution is transparency and justice, literally writing the names of the participants in the sky and ending life of privilege for fraud-producers (that don't exist according to Eric 'dick' Holder in the USDOG). Man generally does the right thing when informed of truth, like when one learns their banker brother is fucking his wife.
The lack of truth in EVERYTHING reveals the entrenched status of the lie (regardless if it is believed).
Secrecy, avoiding truth dialogue (like the presidential faggots in pinstripes as of late) are all symptoms of Fascist capture (or tolerance as the case of the BOTH parties of lies).
When truth is revealed the crash of government-enriched fascism begins. Truth isn't profitable, hence the enemy of State status quo, today.
As mentioned elsewhere, even though the NYC secret police are one step from clearing neighborhoods in night raids looking for terrorist toothbrushes, it's those pesky ghosts we're trying to protect from using them in YOUR house.
Bring 'em back, shut the boarders, deport, and do a ten year reset
He KNEW peace would benefit society globally, but where's the profit in that? So the good professor has been taken at his words by TPTB in today's never-ending B-rated political/financial version of 'Psycho'.
There is a huge problem with this article: why would America set up a known nazi and fascist in a position of great influence over future American scholars?
America has been on the road to fascism since 1932 and the regime of FDR. FDR was a great admirer of Mussolini and Hitler prior to the conflict. Is it any wonder that political writers of that time trumpeted warnings of the rise of fascism in America?
America has exhibited all the hallmarks of fascism since 1960, with the final part- the military-industrial complex. The law has become the tool of the fascists, protecting crony capitalism, financial terrorists and allowing the shredding of the Constitution.
While this article points out the hypocrisy of our positions and the rose colored vision we have for freedom and liberty, it is probably because they have cemented their control so completely (here and in euroasia) that they no longer feel the need to hide. The Executive is a tyrant, a puppet held by the strings of the banker's, that creates legislation, declares war and approves funding- all Congressional duties.
Why were fascist's saved? The only obvious reason? This system was perfect for the development of power and influence through central banking. It is an ideal method for instituting global feudalism.
America is nothing more than the police force for the British/Dutch/Zionist central banking cabal that has operated without peer since the establishment of the central banks in the Netherlands and England.Their establishment across the globe was an INVASION and it was met with open arms. A comraderie of psychopaths.
The history is available. However, until The People of the world educate themselves, we will fall prey to articles that attempt to enrage and incite people to action through democratic systems (voting) that are impotent and useless. Revolution is completed by the peaceful alteration of financial and consumer habits that eschew the ruling paradigm and the laws that protect it. Sound money, black markets, refusing to legitimize law enforcers or givers and the creation of strong communities that bond together to protect their individual interests in the face of increasing fascist demands.
I would beg to differ.
Pure populist bullshit.
Ooops, sorry for the insult. Said it in my loud voice. See below.
Most excellent...nailed it. The problem is that "We the people" have not been paying attention, trusting that the people we send to DC would work for us and not themselves. Now we have a bureaucracy that is so huge and entrenched with its own ever expanding interests that a well intentioned Congressman is laughed out of town as in "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that". We must have TERM LIMITS.
Great post--I see some are unwilling to face the truth, but you have laid it out.
Your comment, "America is nothing more than the police force for the British/Dutch/Zionist central banking cabal that has operated without peer since the establishment of the central banks in the Netherlands and England." is golden. Until it is more widely known and appreciated, all aspects of recent history remain irredeemably opaque.
All true...but I would say the FDR wolf was unleashed by many...including Woodrow Wilson...
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
The effete elite never tire of their scheming.
Wilson he was a real charmer gave us the Federal Reserve oh and then WAR
If Obama wins, will he be another Woodrow Wilson?
snip
In his first term, Wilson had legislative accomplishments more popular than Obama's. A partisan Democratic Congress passed a new antitrust act, created the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve, lowered trade barriers, and imposed an income tax on high earners.
When Americans voted in November 1916, World War I had been raging in Europe for more than two years. Hundreds of thousands were dying in trench warfare, and Wilson ran on the slogan "He kept us out of war."
Wilson's second term was wholly unlike his first. In April 1917, he went before Congress and got approval for a declaration of war against Germany. A military draft was instituted, a law passed criminalizing anti-war protests, the railroads were nationalized, and the top income tax rate was raised to 77 percent.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/barone-if-obama-wins-will-he-be-another-woodrow-wilson/article/2511056
Good post George, bet this is goin to go over like a fart in church
Could you now please study on the destruction of The Commons. These two topics alone will get you kicked off this site, or marginalized as a socialist.
More awesome work George - would love to know how you find this material - you are a first class researcher.
Also - I doubt the victims of US imperialism would find those posters a 'false depiction'. However, the common people tend to be used by the controlling powers, and fed a diet of pure lies - so in their defense, they have a vigorous propaganda and pure lies campaign to deal with in order to understand the situation and react rationally.
Yet .. the internet is here now .. so anyone supporting further imperial aggression have little excuse but pure laziness if they are fooled into further supporting war - and no defense for not actively and loudly campainging for an end to the current US aggression in the central and middle east.
In this particular case, some emails from yours truly ;-)
To give you an idea how fast GW works, I sent him the info on Schmidt and some of the other citations on Friday. He massaged it all together with the other stuff and had the whole article ready by Saturday evening!
Propaganda being so wonderfully adaptive, the newest fashion appears to be the neoliberals who've nearly bankrupted the government and hopelessly corrupted the political system now pointing the finger at government per se as the culprit. Power mad sociopaths are endlessly clever.
Following the the money tends to tell the true story.
Bob:
So true. War is wondrously profitable and propaganda is what gets you there.
http://ftmdaily.com/global-issues/resource-wars/where-do-53-of-your-tax-dollars-go/
Follow the money? Okay, I did. At the end of this search, I found this: Military Industrial Complex.
Call it what you will. But it is what it is.
What I find amazing are those who are so wonderfully adept at assuaging their own guilt.
Who would have ever thought someone who was willing to force perfectly fine, young, healthy college kids to buy health insurance (and told them he would) and told everyone else he was for "government investment" alongside crony capitalists could turn out to be so...wrong?
Its really quite remarkable ;-)
"Real men stand up to fascism." But take it from George, it is still not safe to admit that you think 911 was an inside job. That will have to wait maybe 60 years, as George's recent article on Pearl Harbor shows.
Right now the best you can do concerning your own beliefs about 911 is to bob and weave and try to deflect attention. I am grateful to George for showing this, but 60 years? Maybe they'll have a cure for old age in the next decade.