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.

fascist america: step two, incarceration and torture

Inside or outside the rule of law our prison system is full of inequalities and discrepancies with our proposed democratic method.

2. Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Secret prisons across Eastern Europe were used to interrogate some of the most important al-Qaeda suspects. Nearly four years ago the CIA established a secret prison system that spanned eight countries: Thailand, Afghanistan, a number of Eastern European democracies, and Guantanamo Bay. In Soviet-era buildings terrorist suspects disappear, what happens is still unknown. In White House, CIA, and Justice Department documents these secret prisons are referred to as "black sites." While it is unsure what happens at these locations, the increase in abuse by US military and other forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are reason for concern. Images of the abuse are disconcerting, but what have we really done about it? Congress is supposed to have oversight on such operations, but we seem to have a Congress that prefers to not live up to its mandates.

More recently controversy has arisen about the practices at the most more well known of these "black sites." Torture has become the defining activity of the current administration. Last week, the top Bush Administration officials met to sign off on torture tactics that were "ok" to use. The Bush Administration has signed off on torture. In an article from The Progressive one author can't believe that this news was so quickly out of the main stream media. I for one an not surprised, but the author makes a good point. We know that torture is happening, our government is ok with it, and somehow we have a democracy here?

Secret prisons across the world, one just off the coast of Florida, but what about the US prison system? Why has there been such a surge of inmates in recent years? Why is the US the only country and society in history to imprison more of its people in the name of security? A 1998 article in The Atlantic excellently explains the "prison industrial complex." The surge in the numbers of people in prison has been steadily rising. The number of minorities and those of 'lower' economic class are outrageously high.

During enslavement, Black people were severely punished according to the whims of the plantation owners, for "real or imaginary" crimes, such as running away, disobeying an order, or assaulting an overseer (Deason, 2005, p. 95). After the Civil War (1861–1865), a new form of enslavement was instituted when southern states needed to rebuild plantations and cities that had been destroyed during the war. Policies and laws crafted by southern lawmakers were designed to entrap homeless and hungry formerly enslaved Black people.

As of 2003, there are 2.2 million people incarcerated. However this is a surprising occurance since from 1923-1973 there was a stable level of about 110 in prison for every 100,000 people. The high numbers are equally disturbing since from 1992-2000 crime rates steadily declined. Racial minorities were also disproportionately represented in the prison system. Blacks, American Indians, and Latinos all had higher incarceration rates than whites. Minority youth make up 34 percent of all juveniles are 62 percent of those youth incarcerated. This is paired with a sharp rise in government spending on prisons and the idea that prisons represent an industry of safe jobs that will not be outsourced. Some of the harshest laws passed by Congress have been to crack down on crime and push the war on drugs forward. Shall we incarcerate the majority of our population to provide some jobs that cannot be outsourced and the powerful can financially benefit? As a way to strengthen the prison industrial complex, Congress has passed a number of harsh laws and acts to regulate crime and drug policy. I suggest reading the full article by Adolphus Belk Jr.

Read Step One.

fascist america: step one, exploiting fear

What happens when the voice of dissent sheds light on the truth and knocks on the door of the root of a problem? What grows when that level of dissent is directed at a powerful government structure run on the fumes of false fear? Why has there been such a sharp increase in the number of deaths while under police custody? Why do our local police now look like paramilitaries waiting to take over a town center from extremists? When people so much as question their government why does that become motive enough for arrest, beating, and detention? How can our government systematically take away our rights and grant themselves exemption? The questions as to where America is headed could go on for a very long time, but what is needed is an understanding and an answer to follow those questions.

In her book The End of America Naomi Wolf outlines 10 steps of how to turn a democracy into a fascist state. She tells us that there is a blueprint written by all the 'greats': Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler and followed by other smaller dictators like Pinochet and others. She writes that each of these 10 steps have been initiated in America. All blockquotes are from the above cited article of Naomi Wolf.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Naomi notes that our government increased the fear factor of this event and used hyped language to push the beginning of their fascist agenda. However, Naomi agrees to the truth of this event and the real threat of Islamic terrorism. Is there really a threat of Islamic terrorism or is it really a state terrorism? Was 9/11 an inside job?

A conservative republican who could not reconcile with the fact that the explanation of the World Trade Center Towers' collapse was officially caused by impact and fire has made a documentary called 9/11 Mysteries. Watch the 12 part series on Youtube here as Brad's documentary uses science and history to prove the official collapse theory wrong and makes frightening discoveries that hint at an inside job, a fabricated terrorist threat. The corporate interests involved before and after the collapse are absolutely disgusting. "No steel-framed building before or since 9/11 has collapsed due to fire. What happened to the Twin Towers that caused them to come down? This video takes you through popular myth into science for a new understanding of the possibilities."

In the Spring of 2001, "reporting on terrorism surged dramatically,"notes the 9/11 Commission Report (204), "[...] none of these [reports] pointed specifically to possible al Qaeda action inside the United States - although the CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] continued to be concerned about the domestic threat." This surge in threat reports came from none other than the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) established under the Reagan administration. The CTC collects information only abroad. What better place to fabricate a threat than the Counterterrorist Center? Another interesting note - the security firm, no longer in existence, that handled security at the WTC, Dulles Airport, and United Airlines was Securacom, where the youngest Bush son sat on the Board of Directors. Everything that we have been told about 9/11 makes no sense. The truth is slowly being uncovered.

I will follow Naomi Wolf's "ten steps" and provide my own research and analysis of what we might be seeing happen to the America that we used to know and love. Watch for the next steps coming soon. In the meantime be sure to do your own research, ask questions, and don't accept anything merely because you are told by your government or "authority."

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
- Buddha