Left of Center

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism

2005-10-01T15:50:00.000-04:00

From the "What We Could Have Known Two and a Half Years Ago" Department:

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism
by Lawrence Britt
Spring 2003
Free Inquiry magazine

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy.

The 14 characteristics are:

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Copyright © 2003 Free Inquiry magazine
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.

BushBashRag

2005-08-01T11:03:00.000-04:00

This is a quick vent and rant about the current BushCo shituation . While I understand that all Presidents use the recess appointment to get people they want in under the "radar" so to speak, I feel there needs to be some kind of limit as to the level of position that is permitted to be appointed without the approval (as in advise and conset function of the Senate) of the people through their respresentatives. I don't love that some things are railroaded through by a majority vote, but at least it got a vote.

Okay, so what has set me off this morning? The recess appointment of Bolton by Bush. Here is a man who has been delayed in the Senate for over 4 months, while the White House refused to release documents the committees felt were relevant to their decision. It has always amazed me that people don't realize that if you refuse to be up front about a person, then there is more than likely something to hide - and if there is something to hide then it follows that person may not be the best candidate for a job - particularly one as important as UN Ambassador.

I do not deny that we need someone strong in that position. I disgaree that we need someone who wields only a club and not honey at the same time. When it comes to carrot and stick diplomacy this man has a record of only carrying a stick - much like the man who appointed him. His temper is well known; is brow-beating of subordinates is documented; his less than ethical comments and recommendations made to please his masters has been at the very least implied (missing documentation might have substantiated those accusations); and more that is too numerous to post here.

I heard that a group of far right Christians are trying to get others to move with them to South Carolina so they can secede and form a Christian country - we having fun yet??? Maybe if they do we can send Bush to be President, and Bolton to be their UN Ambassador, allowing us to move back into the 21st century with progressive modern elected officials!

There is an elephant in the living room

2005-07-26T22:57:00.000-04:00

This certainly says a lot of what I think - Molly knows how to put it!

MOLLY IVINS

RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2005, AND THEREAFTER

AUSTIN -- Now it's getting funnier and funnier. There is an elephant in the living room and we're sitting around having a conversation about whether there's an elephant in the living room.

"I think there's an elephant in the living room."

"Well, there's a lot of elephant poop around, but that doesn't prove there's an elephant in the living room."

The entire Republican Party is shocked (!) anyone would think that Karl Rove (!!) would leak a story to damage a political opponent. Oh, the horror. And Karl has always been such a sweet guy. Just to give you an idea, one time Rove was displeased with the job done by a political advance man and said, "We will f--- him. Do you hear me? We will f--- him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f---ed him!" (From an article by Ron Suskind). And that was a guy who was on his side.

Attacking an opponent's wife is standard operating procedure for Rove. Have Republicans actually convinced themselves that he wouldn't do such a thing? People, sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

Actually, we are missing the point here. The point being that Joseph Wilson is merely one of the many people who provided one of the by now innumerable pieces of evidence that this administration lied about why we went to war in Iraq. When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote that Bush planned to invade Iraq from the day he took office, the administration went after O'Neill. When Richard Clarke disclosed that the Bushies wanted to use Sept. 11 to go after Saddam Hussein from Sept. 12 on, they went after Clarke. They went after Gen. Zinni, they went after Gen. Shinseki and everyone else who opposed the folly or told the truth about it. After they got done lying about weapons of mass destruction and about connections to Al Qaeda, they switched to the stomach-churning pretense that we had done it all for democracy. Urp.

We suffer the worst attack on this country since Pearl Harbor, and the Bush administration sends the FBI after the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU exists to protect every citizen's rights as defined in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States. The ACLU works solely through the legal system: It does not advocate violence, terrorism or any other damn thing except the Bill of Rights. Since when is that extremist? Why in the name of heaven are we wasting the FBI's time on this idiocy? I don't pretend to be an expert on counter-terrorism, but if it were up to me, I wouldn't start looking for the violence-prone in pacifist groups either. Your pacifists, you see -- oh, just look it up.

I know that sludge-for-brains like Bill O'Reilly attack the ACLU for being "un-American," but when Bill O'Reilly's constitutional rights are violated, the ACLU will stand up for him just like they did for Oliver North, Communists, the KKK, atheists, movement conservatives and everyone else they've defended over the years. The premise is easily understood: If the government can take away one person's rights, it can take away everyone's.

We are living in a time when our government is investigating an organization that stands for the highest and best American ideals. And claiming the mantle of patriotism while they are about it. This is cuckoo -- and such an idiotic waste of the FBI's time and the taxpayers' money that whoever thought up this idiocy should be fired yesterday.

But even that is superseded by what lies at the heart of Plamegate and that is lying in order to get this country into war. If the Washington press corps had a memory bank longer than 10 minutes, they could have exposed this years ago: the lies so often directly contradict one another. Before the war, the CIA was such a wussy organization it kept trying to downplay weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: After the war, it was all the CIA's fault, they had exaggerated the weapons of mass destruction. And so on and so on.

The trouble with piling lies on top of lies is that we can't even agree on facts anymore. I read the right-wing commentators, and it's not that we're not on the same page -- we're not even in the same library. They read the Downing Street memos and convince themselves they don't mean what they say. I really don't understand: Is it that hard to admit you're wrong when you're wrong? Is it that hard to admit that the invasion of Iraq has been a disaster? Isn't it self-evident?

If you support someone politically, you are not required to believe they are perfect. Did I think Bill Clinton had a sleazy affair while he was president? Yes. I just didn't care. I didn't think it had anything to do with the way he was running the country. You can't dismiss this. You can't not care about lies and war. Not if you care about American soldiers.

WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ROB SIMMONS?

2005-07-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

Being from Connecticut, this one caught my eye right off. Rob Simmons is another lapdog that is more than willing to tow the NeoCon party line. His first election for the congressional seat was the nastiest in Connecticut in years. He, of course, blamed it on the Republican National Comittee, saying that he had no control over the ads that the RNC decided to run. While this is very probably true, many of us noticed that the other congessional districts in the state had much less nastiness associated with them. His second election campaign was basically a flag-waving rally laying down the Republican party line... 9/11, Fear, WMDs, Fear, Attack 'em over there, Fear, etc, Fear.

Rob Simmons is, by the way, ex-CIA.

SIMMONS CONTRIBUTES TO DELAY'S DEFENSE, DELAY CONTRIBUTES TO SIMMONS RE-ELECTION

Simmons Contributed to Tom DeLay's Defense Fund. According to the Hartford Courant, "Rob Simmons thought Tom DeLay was being unfairly persecuted, so he wrote DeLay's legal defense fund a $1,000 check." Questioning the validity of the accusations facing DeLay, Simmons said, "Why did I do it? Because I had been the target of bull---- accusations myself." [Hartford Courant, 4/17/05]

Tom DeLay Raised and Gave Campaign Cash for Simmons. Simmons has received over $39,000 in campaign contributions from DeLay's leadership PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority, or ARMPAC. Moreover, Simmons has been a beneficiary of DeLay's Retain Our Majority Program, which raises money for vulnerable Republican members of Congress. According to the Hartford Courant, Simmons, "took an estimated $128,000 this year from ROMP, the Retain Our Majority Program, a DeLay-run effort that directs money from members of Congress with lots of cash and safe seats to their more vulnerable colleagues." According to Roll Call, Simmons was set to collect $110,000 from ROMP in 2001. Simmons has been a beneficiary of DeLay's fundraising efforts since he came to Congress in 2001. [Political Moneyline, www.tray.com; Hartford Courant, 4/17/05; Roll Call, 5/7/01; Congress Daily, 5/29/03; Washington Post, 3/6/05]

SIMMONS HAS TIES TO FUNDRAISERS WHO COST CONNECTICUT MILLIONS

Simmons Attended Fundraiser at Home of Lobbyist Involved in Busted $220 Million Enron Deal. In March 2005, Simmons attended a fundraiser at the home of Anthony Ravosa. Ravosa and his wife have donated $8,500 to Simmons' Congressional campaigns. Ravosa was a fundraiser for now disgraced former Governor John Rowland and was involved in the state trash authority's ill-fated $220 million deal with the Enron Corp. [Political Moneyline, www.tray.com; The Day, 4/1/05]

Simmons Took Contribution from Head of Firm that Cost Connecticut Pension Fund Millions. Simmons took a contribution of $1,093 from Theodore Forstmann, the head of Forstmann Little & Co, which was sued by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal for improperly investing and losing $125 million in state pension money. According to the Financial Times, "A jury eventually found that Forstmann Little was negligent and violated a contract when it took minority stakes in McLeodUSA and XO Communications…" The lawsuit was settled for $15 million. [Federal Elections Commission, www.fec.gov; Associated Press, 5/28/04; Financial Times, 5/4/05; Associated Press, 9/21/04]

So why is nobody talking about Bob Novak?

2005-07-14T12:11:00.000-04:00

The title says it all.

So far, there's been a firestorm over Rove, a slew of interviews (like the one with Joe Wilson this morning on network television), and a lot of non-comments from the White House.

But what seems to be missing from a national public discussion is the part that Bob Novak played in all of this.

Why, I wonder, didn't the court throw his butt in the slammer? After all, he broke federal law by publishing the name of an under-cover agent of the United States government.

Remember the HBO show K Street? Well toward the end of the first and only season, Bob Novak runs up to someone (Mary Matalin, I think) and said something to the effect of, "I've got something to tell you, and there's gonna be trouble"...

By the end of the series, the government was swarming over the offices of Carville and Matalin's consulting firm and threatening all kinds of problems.... what happened to art imitating real life? Right now, I'd settle for real life imitating art!

Mother Jones has some decent stuff available on the unfolding story.

LA

Karl Rove: Truth or Dare

2005-07-13T10:30:00.000-04:00

Okay folks, here's a class project for us all....

Everyone post a "Rove Moment". You know... one of his little schemes or quips or whatever you feel is noteworthy.

I'll wait and go last (or at least toward the end). I know we're all busy, and that posts won't go up immediately, but let's face it: This is the most Evil (yes, that's evil with a capital 'E') man in America today, and there're plenty of things to say about him.

It would be ideal if posts/comments included pictures, quotes, links, etc. This is the computer age, sheeple, and it's time we started putting it to work for us. This guy has paid out a LOT of rope... let's see if we can hang him up with some of it.

LA

The REAL 19 Hijackers??

2005-07-10T23:38:00.000-04:00

A friend forwarded this to me.

A picture really IS worth a thousand words!

LA

Base Closings: More Than Meets The Eye?

2005-07-08T15:17:00.000-04:00

Okay folks, I've been mulling this over for weeks now, and I want to bounce these ideas off of you.

With the number and variety of bases slated to be closed by the Department of Defense, I can only think of two instances when closing the quantity and quality of bases that they're talking about makes sense:

The DOD came up with the list of bases that will actually be closed when they first started the process, then added the others to give the the public, the cities, towns and states something to 'spin their wheels' about. After all the fighting and negotiating and political behind-the-scenes arm-bending, the DOD will get to close the bases they were going to close in the first place, while giving the public something to feel a sense of accomplishment about. OR...
The upper eschelons of power within the DOD are re-making the country's defense force into something much less high tech and less careful about leaving bodies around on both sides of a conflict, basically trading 'surgical' strikes for 'blunt-force trauma' attacks. In this manner, the DOD and the "Military-Industrial Complex" that Eisenhower had warned against more than 40 years ago could save/make money by not only making less use of expensive, high-maintenance ordinance and equipment, and more use of expensive corporate contracts, but by creating a self-sustaining cycle of conflict to generate a need for these corporate services. But first, a small test. A small war that could be easily handled and, if not easily won, at least controlled while optimum parameters could be established for not only manipulating cashflow, but the other branches of government and the will of the citizenry as well.

Iraq, of course, would be the perfect target. Almost a decade of sanctions had left the country weakened, and their continued resistance to no-fly zones and weapons inspections had kept the country and its dictator in the public eye. All that was needed was a reason that the public could get behind.

Along came September 11, 2001. The country as a whole had been sucker-punched and the collective consciousness of the country called out for retribution. The administration's first question was, of course, "Is there any way we can tie this to Iraq?"

The answer, of course, was "no". But doing something is always better than doing nothing, and the administration began 'tying' Iraq to 9/11 in various ways. Ficticious meetings between Iraqi officials and al Queda operatives (despite the fact that bin Laden had professed a philosophical dislike for Saddam) and the 'revelation' of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction primed the pump while Congress willingly held the catch basin.

Corporate contracts for equipment, services and personnel have grown by leaps and bounds even as enrollment in the armed services has decreased. The decerase doesn't seem to worry the DOD, since they've begun cutting veterans' benefits and generally done everything they can to make military service even less attractive.

This step in the evolution... ummm... excuse me... this step in the intelligent design of warfare as it applies to corporate earnings seems to be a careful mixture of misdirection, cronyism, back-room favors and control of the collective public psyche.

Over the past four years, they have proven to themselves that the will of the people can be controlled and directed for a period of time sufficient to attack a soverign country without the aid of world opinion or United Nations support and spend billions of dollars in the process regardless of the state of the treasury.

Okay. That's my rant for today. I guess you can tell which one of these possiblities I've got my money on, huh?

Thoughts? Comments? Additions?

Does this man look intelligent to you?

2005-07-03T17:06:00.000-04:00

I won't belabor the point, since one of you already sent this picture to most of the folks here, but DOES he look intelligent??

"Heh heh... Condi just pulled my finger! She fell for it! Heh heh!"

Thanks to Lonny!

2005-07-03T14:34:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take a moment to thank my friend and compatriot in Atari Computing, Lonny Pursell, for pointing me to this blog setup.

THANKS LONNY!!!

Welcome to Left of Center!

2005-07-03T14:16:00.000-04:00

Well folks, It looks like we've finally found a blog that works! NOW to get it attached to the main website!