fascist america: step three: rise of the police state

This is probably the most frightening step for the majority of people. Private security contractors roaming the streets with impunity to ensure the 'public good.' Along with that add the militarization of your local policeman as they begin wearing bullet proof vests and helmets and toting assault rifles. Over 2000 people have died in police custody in the last three years and the number of videos of blatant police brutality has become staggering. The police brutality is especially evident when dissent is expressed in the form of organized protest.

3. Develop a thug caste
When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

After Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

This step is most evident when there are forms of peaceful protest or peaceful acts of civil disobedience that may step "out of line," but are in no way a threat to anyone. When the people become the enemy, then you know what democracy is dead.

May Day Immigration Reform Protest:


During this protest it was obvious, as the camera-man states, that the event was "set up for failure." The protest was contained in a park, an area easily surrounded and controlled by the massive police force. The police deemed the protest over when they wanted and began systematically forcing peaceful protesters of men, women, and children to leave. Firing rubber rounds into the crowds and knocking anyone out of their way. What was once a peaceful protest turned into a violent police oppression. Why? For what purpose is it necessary to violently silence peaceful voices?

UCLA Library Taser Incident

LA Police Arrest with Punches to Face

Police Crackdown on Young Skaters

New Orleans Police Bloody Brutalization of Old Man

Florida Police Arrests and Punches 15 Year-old Girl for Breaking Curfew

WTO Protests in Seattle

NYC Critical Mass Protest at RNC 2004

In November of last year 4000 young people protested police brutality in DC:


Blackwater in New Orleans

Just recently in New Orleans citizens protested the destruction of public housing at the City Hall meeting where they were denied access:


All of these incidents cut across the racial and class barriers of America. The majority are acts of violence against minority groups, but the police do not discriminate when it comes to dissent. White, black, hispanic, college-age, elderly, if you raise your voice in dissent (or if you say nothing at all) you will suffer the consequences - or at least that is what they want us to think. Long ago Patrick Henry spoke against the British tyranny saying, "Give me liberty or give me death!" On that fateful day that has given us such a historic quotation Patrick Henry also said this,

"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."

We have shut our eyes and ears to the truth because we are told to do so. We are told there is a great terror threatening our land and so you must allow the power structure above you to make any and all decisions because they will be for your own good. We have seen our rights systematically taken away and we have left this issue to fester much too long with inaction. We may not be fighting for liberty from the oppressive crown, but what we are fighting is not that much worse. We are fighting for our personal and collective freedom. I will join the ranks with Patrick Henry and say, Give me Freedom or give me death! The rise of the police state in America is real and very much a step towards the development of a fascist state.

Read Step One & Step Two.