The blueprint (click here): 10 steps all fascist societies have taken throughout history:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (the "terrorists")
2. Create a gulag (Guantanamo Bay)
3. Develop a thug caste (Blackwater)
4. Set up an internal surveillance system (domestic spying)
5. Harass citizens' groups (infiltrate, taser, jail, put people on "lists")
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release (whisleblowers, Guatanamo)
7. Target key individuals (political opponents, journalists, activists)
8. Control the press (FAKE news releases, embedded reporters, FAKE reporters, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh)
9. Dissent equals treason ("You're against the troops", "You're with the terrorists", "You're un-Patriotic")
10. Suspend the rule of law (revoke Habeus Corpus, Military Commissions Act, etc....)
In her new book, “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot”, Naomi Wolf says the United States is on the road to becoming a fascist society, right under our very noses. Wolf outlines what she sees as the ten steps to shut down a democratic society and argues that the Bush administration has already implemented many of these steps.
DN! transcript or DN! video
Naomi Wolf: "I saw that there is a blueprint that would-be dictators always do the same ten things, whether they’re on the left or the right, and that we are seeing these ten steps taking place systematically right now in the United States...It’s scary enough to see these ten steps, but what is terrifying to me personally is how many actual phrases are being recycled, and tactics. “Homeland security”—“heimat”—became popularized by the National Socialists. Goebbels developed the practice of embedding journalists...Hitler descending in an airplane in von Riefenstahl’s famous Triumph of the Will and being greeted by the uniformly armed paramilitary sort of surrounding their leader and him saying, “Help us accomplish our mission...Mussolini developed the Blackshirts, which were these paramilitary thugs that beat up newspaper editors, terrorized the population, and they intimidated people counting the vote in Milan...Hitler developed the Brownshirts, the SA, who intimidated people counting the vote in Austria...And you saw this scene of identically dressed Republican staffers in Florida in 2000 intimidating people counting the vote...target key individuals...Valerie Plame’s bolts were taken away from her back deck, fifty feet off the ground. She has two toddlers...watch lists...secret prisons...military tribunals...black sites...often-innocent prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and these black sites around the world ...torture people that it sees as at the margins or that citizens see at the margins: brown people on an island in Guantanamo with Muslim names, whatever. That’s what they did in Germany in ’31, ’32: anarchists, communists, Gypsies, Jews, whatever, homosexuals, whatever...blurring of the line. And once the state legalizes torture of people at the margins, inevitably it will begin to direct state abuse at people at the heart of civil society, and it’s always the same cast of characters: journalists, editors, opposition leaders, outspoken clergy and labor leaders. And when that starts to happen, society can close down in a heartbeat, because people start to sensor themselves...journalists saying, "“We’re seeing a fascist society build.” And they were told that they were biased...Some corporations were deeply involved in Nazi Germany, making millions, like IBM. How did they round people up so quickly, you know, in Germany when they were rounding up the Jews so fast? It’s because IBM had developed this prototype of a punch card system, and they were secretly working with the Nazis. Prescott Bush, Bush’s grandfather, was making millions in consolidation with Krupp, Thyssen, and it’s very interesting to me, because in the Nuremberg trials they went after these industrialists like Krupp, and so there was a moment at which the Nuremberg trial was about to identify supporters of these war crimes who were US collaborators...who controlled the trials, right?...The President has said that he can say, “Amy Goodman, you’re an enemy combatant. Naomi Wolf, you’re an enemy combatant. This guy behind the camera, you’re an enemy combatant. A person walking down the street, enemy combatant. can be anyone. A person walking down the street, enemy combatant...They can’t torture us yet, though I was chilled to learn that an adviser to the White House was reported in a British newspaper yesterday as not ruling out waterboarding against US citizens...Well, the ACLU is suing many agents of the state for illegally infiltrating citizens’ groups...there’s been a heightening of surveillance in the wake of 9/11...But what we’ve got to understand is that our country is unique right now in directing the crackdown on civil liberties and surveillance at citizens. In countries like England and Spain, experienced the same terror attacks, the same kind of terror attacks by the same bad guys that we did, but they’re not using that as a pretext to strip citizens of civil liberties...You can’t close down a society without a paramilitary force. We skipped over that one. It’s very important. Blackwater, the Blackshirts, the Brownshirts, that’s not answerable to the people, and surveillance... I was on the watch list for a year and a half, Amy, which means that every time I got on a plane, I got taken aside for extra searching, quadruple-S high-risk Naomi, you know. And I was told, “You’re on a list.” And I found out that many critics of the administration are on the list: ACLU staffers, Ted Kennedy, antiwar activists, David Altoon [phon.], a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran who was critical of the Iraq war. Not only is he on the list, but people who come to me in tears after my readings are more upset that now their kids are on the list if they write a letter critical of the Bush administration...in a strong society, it’s like it’s a kind of compliment to be "on the list"...but in a closing society, it gets very frightening...how do they round up people so quickly in a closing society? The management of the lists is going to go from the airlines to the government. And in February, unless we push back this regulation—it’s being slipped in very quietly—we are going to have to apply to the state to get an airline ticket to cross a border, which moves us from 1931 to about 1936...
Well, the patriot’s task is, first, wake up .............................................................................
