You're point is well taken about use of the word Nazi to discribe Bush's crimes against humanity. But only the German fascists, which is what the Nazis were, specifically choose the jews as their national enemies. If you look to what the Nazis had in common with all other fascist states, you will see that fascists choose "non-nationalists" and minority races as degenerate...say, lowerclass blacks, illegal mexican immigrants, Moslems and homosexuals...and in this, they are right in line with Bush priorities.

John Dean in talking about the same issues, used the word
"authoritarian" to discribe the Bush/Cheney gov't, but I think he is erring on the side of indulgence. Authoritarians are not necessarily
empire builders, devoted to illegal wars to build their own wartime industries, but fascists are.

Authoritarians, like the paleo-conservatives, support the constitution, but interpret it in the most conservative way. Fascists, on the other hand realize that the Constitution is all that stands between them and the permanent party-government that they desire.

If you wish to describe the Bushes properly, fascists is the proper word, but you'll still have a fight to make your point, as fascism is such a loaded concept.

Still, study fascism, learn about it, and you'll see that it's the proprer word to describe what the Bush neocons are attempting to do.

The proper word for Republican "conservatives" isn't "authoritarian", it's "fascist", or more completely corpo- fascist or neocon-fascist.

We make a mistake when we over (or under) judge and describe the state that the neocons are trying to make the US into: authoritarian, oligarchy, plutocracy, etc. All of those words are a too cautious approach to a world coming to resenble the one our fathers and grandfathers fought in Europe, the world of militarism, empire,class and racial pride that the elitist Mussolini and his apologist Gentile properly labeled fascism.

It's wise to remember that pre-war Germany as well as Italy was a "democracy". It took but a few months for both the German as well as the Italian model to reform itself into an "elective" dictatorship. World Communism was the terrorist enemy the fascist elite invoked to take over their respective countries, just as Muslim terrorism is the enemy invoked to explain our suspension of Constitutional liberties.

It would be good if we could be governed by 2 principles in our fight against the loss of America as we've come to know it:

one, we should call a spade a spade, and in this case, the spade is fascism, or perhaps electoral fascism, if you can believe that the election part of the equation is still valid.

Two, we should try and recognize that the America of Franklin and Jefferson was radically different than the America of Lincoln, which was radically different from the America of FDR, and so forth. What was constant, in the last analysis, was that all the parties to the changes that America endured believed that they were guided by the American Constitution.

We should accept that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights IS America and has always been America; and we should fight to our last breath to see that the America that is being transformed as I write this, is returned to a country where the principles enshrined in the Constitution define and guide us as a people and a nation.

We should settle for nothing less. Our fathers and grandfathers died to give us this opportunity.

Here's the 2nd half of Thom Hartmann's comparison of
Hitler's rise to power and G. W. Bush's.

If you read the 1st half, you recognize what
curious and seemingly unlikely parallels exist between Hitler's
seizure of power in Germany and George Bush's judicial
acquisition here in America. Both men almost immediately
constructed a "defensive" strategy that would enable them to
plunge their respective countries into a wars of choice for
the purpose of seizing the vital assets of a foreign
power.

We take up with Thom's account just after Hitler
has announced to Germany -as well as to Europe that- he
deemed it necessary to "protect" Germany by invading Austria.

The leaders of Europe recognized the threat.

__________


It took a few months, and intense international debate
and lobbying with European nations, but, after he
personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom,
finally a deal was struck. After the military action
began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the
nervous British people that giving in to this leader's
new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our
time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning
move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders
so often do in times of war. The Austrian
government was unseated and replaced by a new
leadership friendly to Germany, and German
corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion,
Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said
that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can
only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have
in the course of my political struggle won much love
from my people, but when I crossed the former
frontier there met me such a stream of
love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have
we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at
the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and
his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to
equate him and his policies with patriotism and the
nation itself. National unity was essential, they
said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors
didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation
or weakening its will. In times of war, they said,
there could be only "one people, one nation, and
one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein
Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a
nationwide campaign charging that critics of his
policies were attacking the nation itself. Those
questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not
good Germans," and itwas suggested they were aiding
the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic
necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in
uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to
stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom
most of the army came) against the "intellectuals
and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of
Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and
peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised
in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news
bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist
cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally
suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to
divert public attention from the growing rumbles
within the country about disappearing dissidents;
violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders;
and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was
producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector
but threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded
Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and
all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of
national security. It was the end of Germany's first
experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few
milestones worth remembering.

February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch
terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful
firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag)
building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to
legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By
the
time of his successful and brief action to seize
Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed,
Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the
history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was
later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of
the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous
agency's initials: the SS.

We also remember that the Germans developed a new form
of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war"
or
blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating
civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable
"shock and awe" among the nation's
leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book
"Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense
University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage
Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us
this definition of the form of government the German
democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance
with the largest German corporations and his policy of
using war as a tool to keep power:

"fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that
exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business
leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's
useful to remember that the ravages of the Great
Depression hit Germany and the United States alike.
Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt
chose very different courses to bring their nations
back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower
corporations and reward the society's richest
individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle
dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and
create an illusion of prosperity through continual and
ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws
to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to
diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on
corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created
Social Security, and became the employer of last
resort through programs to build national infrastructure,
promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact,
the choice is again ours.

_________


So, what do you think? Is Thom pointing up the essential question?
Are we faced with an immediate critical choice? Are we really
confronted with a Constitutional crisis, as so many of our critics
and pundits think?

For me the answer is clear, and I don't think we have very much time.
That's why I want to start the journal - Fascist Papers - because I wanted us to have a space where we can consider the ramifications of
Bush/Chaney's style of Neocon- or Corpo-fascism.

When I figure out how to get the DU Fascist Papers Journal functioning properly, I'll present material from some other writers who make equally potent points comparing George Bush's version of "democracy" and Hitler's fascism.

If what the dawning of American fascism is compelling to you, look for Fascist Papers in DU "Journals". I'll have it up as soon as I can.

Fascist_Papers

Friends-

I'm trying to start a DU Journal called Fascist Papers. So far I've been unable to post directly to the journal itself. Apparently you must post comments to someone else's post and then transfer it to your own journal. I may be entirely wrong on this, but so far this is the best I've been able to figure out; let's face it - DU is a complicated site.

I intended to post the following as my 1st entry, so , with your permission, since you have opened questions about Bush and fascism, I'll post it here.

I've edited it down a bit, because it's pretty substantial, so I'll present it in 2 seperate entries. I hope this is what you're looking for.

I've been archiving Bush-Fascism material - let's call it Neocon or Corpo-fascist material for the last 3 years. I hope to present the best of it as soon as I can figure out an effective presentation.

________

Is this how fascism is coming to America?


It started when the government, in the midst of a
worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an
imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had
launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but
the media largely ignored his relatively small
efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that
the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians
are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the
intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most
recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the
highest levels,in part because the government was
distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's
leader had not been elected by a majority vote and
the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to
the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said,
a cartoon character of a man who saw things in
black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to
understand the subtleties of running a nation in a
complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of
language -reflecting his political roots in a
southernmost state - and his simplistic and often
inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the
aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated
elite in the government and media. And, as a young
man, he'd joined a secret society with an
occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals
that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike
(although he didn't know where or when), and he had
already considered his response. When an aide brought
him word that the nation's most prestigious building
was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who
had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a
press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch
in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the
burned-out building, surrounded by national media.
"This fire," he said, his voice trembling with
emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a
sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out
war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a
people, he said, who traced their origins to the
Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds
in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for
terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first
suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a
national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag
was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers
suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the
nation's now-popular leader had pushed through
legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and
fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that
suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech,
privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept
mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be
imprisoned without specific charges and without access
to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's
homes without warrants if the cases involved
terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of
People and State" passed over the objections of
concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he
agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if
the national emergency provoked by the terrorist
attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would
be returned to the people, and the police agencies
would be re-restrained. Legislators would later
say they hadn't had time to read the bill before
voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act,
his federal police agencies stepped up their program
of arresting suspicious persons and holding them
without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year
only a few hundred were interred, and those who
objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press,
which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a
leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who
protested the leader in public - and there were many -
quickly found themselves confronting the newly
empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or
fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of
the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was
taking almost daily lessons in public speaking,
learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial
expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack,
at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a
formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to
stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so,
instead of referring to the nation by its name, he
began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase
publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech
recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie
"Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's
hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an
us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the"
homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply
foreign lands. We are the "true people," he
suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's
concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are
violated in other nations and it makes our lives
better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a
disagreement with the French over his increasing
militarism, he argued that any international body that
didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of
his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He
thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in
October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval
armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United
Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to
ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man
and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity.
He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the
Christian faith across his nation, what he called
a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing
army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" -
God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed
it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's
leader determined that the various local police and
federal agencies around the nation were lacking the
clear communication and overall coordinated
administration necessary to deal with the terrorist
threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens
who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably
terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various
troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He
proposed a single new national agency to protect the
security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of
dozens of previously independent police, border, and
investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be
leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office
for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government
equal to the other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that,
since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at
our disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of
their nation's leader, or raising questions about his
checkered past, had by now faded from the public's
recollection as his central security office began
advertising a program encouraging people to phone in
tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so
successful that the names of some of the people
"denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio
stations. Those denounced often included opposition
politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a
favorite target of his regime and the media he now
controlled through intimidation and ownership by
corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government
alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and
forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the
nation's largest corporations into high
government positions. A flood of government money
poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against
the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within
the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He
encouraged large corporations friendly to him to
acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns
across the nation, particularly those previously owned
by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He
built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate
ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to
build the first large-scale detention center for enemies
of the state. Soon more would follow.

Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist
attack, voices of dissent again arose within and
without the government. Students had started an active
program opposing him (later known as the White
Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were
speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed
a diversion, something to direct people away from the
corporate cronyism being exposed in his own
government, questions of his possibly illegitimate
rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil
libertarians about the people being held in detention
without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the
media - he began a campaign to convince the people of
the nation that a small, limited war was necessary.
Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious
Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection
with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most
important building was tenuous at best, it held
resources their nation badly needed if they were to
have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He
called a press conference and publicly delivered an
ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking
an international uproar. He claimed the right to
strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations
across Europe - at first - denounced him for it,
pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in
the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like
Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.


_________



This is the 1st half of a piece that Thom Hartmann wrote
comparing Hitler's ascension to power with George Bush's.

Right on the money, isn't it? The full title of the
piece that Thom originally wrote back in August/2003
was : When Democracy Failed.

The concluding portion will be in my next entry
which should follow this one.

Fascist Papers