As Thomas Jefferson warned, U.S. slipping toward fascism

August 02, 2006 09:09 am
Craig Etchison,
Center for Nonviolent Alternatives,
Fort Ashby, W.Va.

“Yes, we did produce a near-perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” As I watch what’s happening to our Republic, I find Thomas Jefferson’s words prescient. In the last 25 years, the near-perfect Republic has been all but destroyed by the forces of fascism.

Impossible? Evidence overwhelms. Scholars have identified common characteristics of fascist regimes, from Hitler to Mussolini, from Suharto to Pinochet. Looking at the major characteristics of fascism in terms of the U.S. today is illuminating — and depressing.

Nationalism and disdain for human rights characterizes fascism. In the U.S.? How about illegal wire tapping by the NSA? American citizens such as Hamdi and Padilla arrested and denied all constitutional protection. Torture OK’d by the president and his attorney general, who calls the Geneva conventions “quaint.” Thousands of prisoners held in secret detention. Nationalism? You’re either for us or you’re against us. Wave the flag and thoughtlessly worship the country’s leader. U.S.A. number one, always.

Control of the media — and especially censorship of war making — characterizes fascist regimes. U.S. corporations, who reap massive profits, own the mass media, so the media ignore news that might embarrass those in power. Remember the Downing Street Memo, where Bush admitted fixing the intelligence to scare the country into war? U.S. media ignored it. Remember Armstrong Williams, paid to shill Bush policy as real news? The GAO reports that government videos paid for by tax dollars and sent out by Bush people to television stations “constitute covert propaganda.” Lies heaped on lies, a given in fascist regimes.

Obsession with national security is also characteristic of fascism. Note how we’ve been hammered by national security fears in order to pass laws such as the Patriot Act, which deprive us of basic constitutional freedoms. Note the staggering increase of government documents now classified and the increased difficulty of freedom of information requests. Fear mongering is a given with fascists — keeps the populace in line — and the Bush fear-mongering never ceases. Remember how he didn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud? Speech after speech offering security if we give up our freedom.

In fascist regimes, corporate power is protected, cronyism and corruption is rampant, and elections are fixed. Did anyone notice that Congress rejected a proposal to investigate Iraq war profiteers? Even though Halliburton — the V.P.’s company — is serving meals with expired dates and dirty drinking water. What about the new bankruptcy law written by credit card companies that hammers honest working people while leaving loopholes for the wealthy? Anyone notice Exxon’s profits after energy policy was written by energy executives behind the V.P.’s closed doors? Mussolini was right to equate fascism with corporatism.

Cronyism and corruption? Jack Abramoff. Iran-Contra felons with top Bush jobs. Billion dollar no-bid Iraq contracts to the V.P.’s company. Enron.

Fair elections are anathema to fascists. An actual hand count of Florida votes proved Gore the 2000 winner. One in every nine votes of people of color was tossed out in Florida. The irregularities in Ohio in 2004 boggle the mind. We’re now saddled with electronic voting machines that are easily manipulated and have no paper trail. The more e-machines, the more illusory fair elections.

The military reigns supreme in fascist states. The U.S. military-industrial complex holds unparalleled economic and political sway. In 2004, the U.S. spent almost half of the $1 trillion the world spent on arms. If 2006 war spending continues, we will waste $2.8 trillion in the next five years, leading to more terrorism and more people hating us. Economists J. Brauer and N. Anglewicz recently calculated that 68 cents of every tax dollar is spent on war and war-related activities. This war economy, mostly funded by massive borrowing from Japan and China, results in slashing social programs and not renewing crucial infrastructure.

Will Jefferson’s words be prophetic or will the people rise up against this fascist disease? The latter, I hope, though corporate forces and a greedy few arrayed against us and the Republic are considerable. Change will require a major change in our thinking and in our actions.

Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon

By Anders Strindberg
08/01/06 "Christian Science Monitor"

NEW YORK - As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism.

Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel's silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?

Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of Israel and its allies, Hizbullah - easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East - unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.

Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and demanded a prisoner exchange, Israel has killed more than 140 Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from its wider context and was said to be "manufactured" by the enemies of Israel; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which Israel was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

Once the Arabs had rejected the UN's right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress.

For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home because they are of the wrong race. "Israel must remain a Jewish state," is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political spectrum. It means, in practice, that Israel is accorded the right to be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now close to 5 million.

Is it not understandable that Israel's ethnic preoccupation profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather than demanding that Israel acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize Israel's right to exist at the Palestinians' expense.

Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to cosmetic concern for Palestinians' rights and liberties: The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over themselves? That it is too much of a hassle to right the wrongs committed against them? That the front of the bus must remain ethnically pure? When they refuse to recognize their occupier and embrace their racial inferiority, when desperation and frustration causes them to turn to violence, and when neighbors and allies come to their aid - some for reasons of power politics, others out of idealism - we are astonished that they are all such fanatics and extremists.

The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking what is "practical" and "realistic." Yet reality is that Israel is a profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and wars against its victims and their allies.

A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in Israel's foundational and per- sistent refusal to recognize the humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to "wipe out Jews," as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.

These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they fulfill the need for someone - anyone - to stand up for Arab rights. Israel cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket ramps. If Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.

Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since the late 1990s, primarily for European publications.