More Fascist United States?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace" - George W. Bush, in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 21, 2004.

Just like Bush thinks denial is a river in Egypt :laughing:
so too he must think ironic is the language they speak over in Iran.

Seriously, aggressive dictators are a prime symptom of fascism.
Invading countries that haven’t attacked you is another symptom.
Using the “Big Lie” technique (such as Iraq has WMD’s, Iraq caused the 9/11 attacks, Iraq supports Al Quida, Iraq is about to attack us) to paint a propaganda screen over your acts of aggression is yet another common symptom.
Suppression of protest and dissent is also a common feature of fascist governments.
Look at the actual actions, not the words, not the spin, not the lies.
Are you so sure “it could never happen here”? Why?
I think the issue of whether America may be moving in a fascist direction politically is extremely important to all of us at this time in history.
In the heat of political argument, people often toss around some rather pejorative names and labels, many times very inaccurately, as they seek to denigrate their opponents or their policies. That is just petty name-calling and doesn’t really contribute much to any real discussion of the issues at hand. Is it just name-calling though if the terms being used have a real correspondence to the real world situation? On many forums I’ve seen many people, on both the left and the right, label their opponent a fascist in a vague, undefined sort of way. Fascist and fascism aren’t just nasty names to smear on somebody though - they do have a real meaning and definition and valid contemporary usage(ie. Chile under Pinochet). So I tried looking up the definition of fascism. I found that in some recently written dictionaries, the definition of fascism was either very vague or simply pointed to the German and Italian Fascists of the 30’s and 40’s. To find really good accurate definitions of fascism, I had to look in older dictionaries from the 40’s, 50’s & 60’s that were written by people who had actually seen (and probably fought) fascism up close and personal as the German Nazis and Imperial Japan slaughtered millions in their campaign to conquer the world. I think these older definitions have become a bit embarrassing to modern Republicans as their “great war President” tries to lead America down the same road that Hitler took Germany. Check out the definitions and see if YOU see any correspondence with anything in our current political situation and direction.

FASCISM – “

Now, we do not live under a dictatorship, but are we getting close to a reflection of Fascism?

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i think what the republicans will say is “if we didnt kill iraqis, bad stuff would happen. do you LIKE saddam or something? was he good? we stopped him, nuff said”

well i similarly dont like a lot of people who the US is currently not killing. i dont like them a lot more, like the people in charge of much larger scale atrocities in Sudan. why dont we kill them if this is why we go to war? why do we go to war again? much much more substantial reasons that do not include “dont you hate saddam”? good. so why did we go to war in iraq again? wheres the proof that killing the families of terrorists pacifies them? anywhere?

heres the real question for you republicans: dont you care about image? dont you know that terrorists do? or rather, potential terrorists do. if you kill the family of a potential terrorist, you created a terrorist, no doubt.

all they want is for us to listen. all we want is for them to stop. they have clearly shown that they will not stop unless we listen, even with high caliber rifles in their faces and bombs on their own chests. they dont care if they die. there are no other steps we can take against them short of genocide. weve exhausted our options. we cant scare them into shutting up. isnt that clear to you by now?

“The Most Important Unbreakable Law Of All American Laws: Dont Listen to Terrorists Because Then You Look Like a Pussy” fine, ill admit that if we listened to terrorists too much, then we would be faced with lots of new terrorist threats from jerks who want to take advantage of our niceness (this is the root of all evil, mistrust of said jerks). that doesnt mean kill all terrorists, it means stop pissing them off if it can possibly be avoided. if it takes terrorists this long, and this many lives, and this much poverty and destruction, how motivated do you think unfunded revolutionaries elsewhere are going to be towards taking the only action proven to stop the US?

if we immediately caved to their demands, then yeah sure that will encourage jerks to take advantage. so dont do that. but for gods sake you stupid idiot bush, couldnt you have made sure you did a god damned good ass perfect job when you blast your way into the heavily civilian populated heart of the beast? i cant believe he got re-elected based PURELY ON HIS RHETORIC. GEORGE W BUSH, WHO IS QUOTED IN MY PROFILE WON THIS ELECTION BECAUSE HE TALKED GOOD LIKE.

when 17 political parties tell you that you need to postpone the elections because the polls wont be safe and it wont be fair, what would you do? heres a huge surprise, W is guna stand strong! big resolve! hooyah! dont let those jerks with guns scare you, youve got freedom on your side! and boy howdy does god love freedom!

be embarassed republicans. seriously, be embarassed. i know that you will be before 2025, i will bet anybody any sum of money that bush will be looked far down upon in the books.

out of curiosity, in your opinion, did W do a good job over there?

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Nice little post…however I’d like to propose that perhaps the United States isn’t moving towards fascism, but becoming more openly its true form. I have always known the modern-day United States to be an Empire. It stretches is grasp, both militarily and politically, across the globe, and has continued to develop more and more into the imperial image since the end days of WWII when American spheres of influence flooded the Far East and European countries. Democratic Imperialism has been a staple to this country ever since political powers thought cleverly enough to manipulate the governments outside its borders and station troops in places where their only purpose would be to stablize a presence of American influence militarily.

Few countries have resisted America and won…countries like Vietnam, Somalia, and possibly Iraq… It is the nature of this empire to claim land and political rule over that land without actually saying so. Deception is the key element of politics, and the American Empire has mastered it.

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Good posts, Futureman and Sagesound.

The problem we are facing is the mass media, propaganda, and the shattering of the American dream. The American Dream is coming into ruins in the hands of many politicians who arbitrarily use their positions as a way of programming fear into the minds of the citizens of this nation. The United States is the country with the most military intervention in the history of the world. We have always been known as the ‘‘bully’’ of the world, and I believe we are. We serve as an occupation force in Iraq, doing nothing but increasing insurgency, terrorist car bombings, more unnecessary troop deaths, more civilian deaths, etc We came into Iraq with a very poor plan. As a matter of fact, we didn’t need to go to Iraq in the first place.

Bush calls this a war categorized by “Axis of Evil”-just like Hitler did. Hitler presupposed that the Nazis were fighting for the ‘‘good of the world’’-‘‘spread freedom within one race’’. Does this sound familiar? We want to impose another way of life in another nation using military force. What is that??!! It is insane.

As Sagesound clearly mentioned, we are becoming Imperialists. We can take a look at how Halliburton is signing million dollar contracts in Iraq, because we want to profiteer from the Iraqui/Middle Eastern oil fields. And now, there has been talks about Iran.

I would also like to definately agree with Futureman when he mentions that there are places that we should consider ‘‘bad’’ as well. Look at Saudi Arabia. We profit from them! Bush and the Saudis have $87 billion dollar investment/business with oil. Saudi Arabia is generally anti-woman, support public beheadings, torture, etc How about China? China has a deplorable human rights record, and still have not apologized for what they did in Tianemmen Square back in 1989. But, they are good economic competitors as you can see when you take a look at the plate you are eating your food from.

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I think this article does a good job of making the case that the current Administration is a fascist, or protofascist regime:

secularhumanism.org/library/ … t_23_2.htm

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[contented edited by ILP]

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Sudan is about 5 times the size of Iraq. It would be much harder to intervene there. Secondly, when we went to war with Iraq the situation in Sudan had temporarily stabalized. We had no way of knowing that the new crisis would erupt. Now our troops are committed in Iraq.

I’m not a Republican, but I think the well-being of the Iraqis is more important than the image of the United States.

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cat thats not why we went to war. cause if it was, other places very similar to sudan would have gotten some help, like our bastard child liberia. (-ha! i remember seeing the 30 soldiers at the embassy at the height of that crisis, they were hauling cases of beer through the gates! not joking)

we went because people in iraq wanted to blow us up. thats the propaganda at least. i agree with you that its great that saddam and his sons wont be torturing countless iraqis anymore, but our lying bunch of liars in charge of the dept of lies dont care about them at all, or else they would have behaved much differently, and said much different things.

and image is directly related to how much terrorists hate us, since most middle easterners dont get a close up look unless of course its an awful one and they are instant terrorists. it really blows me away that absolutely nobody over here cares about what is shown on al jazeera. “oh its just propaganda, nobody believes that crap!” :laughing:… :frowning:

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I’m not defending the motive, I’m defending the action. Bush, I don’t know why he chose it, I don’t really care what he thinks anyway. But it was a good decision, in that I’m glad he made it.

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I suggest actually reading what we posted instead of just making unfounded statements.

Do you have a problem with any of the analysis’s? Or was there something in the article (which apparently you didn’t read) that you disagreed with?

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The War in Iraq I believe is not really a “war” per se, but more of a hostile corporate takeover orchestrated by oil tycoon businesses such as Halliburton, Exxon, BP, and other oil companies. The Republicans painted a nice picture by using “War on Terror” and “spreading freedom/democracy”. They used wonderful semantics that gave people false hope. Which leads to economic imperialism.

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The war in Iraq is an insurgency. This type of war keeps a constant state of military action and presence, suspends the constitution and keeps Americans in fear of an enemy. I think what we are seeing now is the beginning of intensified police-like interventions around the world. If the Israeli occupation of palestinian territory is any indication, the US will be killing soldiers and Iraqs without purpose for a long time.

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rense.com/general37/fascism.htm

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each: