President, or Prefect of Jesusistan?

Quite a few of you have probably seen my anti-Jesusistan rants before. We devote an entire category to it at Reconstitution. But there are people who take offense (or, more accurately, want to take offense) at the term “Jesusistan.” So I like to explain every now and then where the word came from, and who and what it is I’m talking about when I use it.

Reconstitution’s view of what a Jesusistani is can be seen here and here. I coined the word sometime during the runup to the invasion of Iraq, while I was arguing with a faith-based wingtard on a message board. Although the wingtard professed to be “shocked” and “offended” at my newly-invented word, I found using it very satisfying. With this one word, I was able to evoke precisely the image I wished to evoke. This one word has saved me paragraphs and paragraphs of typing.

This was the way I defined what I saw as a “Jesusistani” awhile back. I stand by the definition now. If the definition doesn’t fit you, then you’re not my target

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism continued..

THE FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM PART VII:

OBSESSION WITH NATIONAL SECURITY ESSAY II:

Power Corrupts Bush Absolutely
By Matthew5 and DoctorWho

“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end….liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition. ” -Historian Lord Acton.

We should be so proud. We have a President who should either be impeached for an abuse of power, or who should be removed from office by reason of diminished mental capacity, (i.e. megalomania). The idea that this president wants to protect us is laughable at best and delusional at the very worst.

The fact of the matter is that Bush has already confessed to having broken a federal law, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. True, FISA does allow for the surveillance of American citizens –when they are communicating outside the United States to potentially dangerous groups or individuals, but before that can happen you actually have to acquire a so called FISA warrant; you actually have to prove some kind of probable cause before you can do monitor an American citizen. And (surprise, surprise) Bush did not do this. He just went ahead, acting on yet another faith-based, internal impulse, and used the situation to satisfy his insatiable craving for personal power.

Let’s not forget that we really don’t know who’s being monitored here. For all we know, Bush and his lackeys could be listening to American citizens for domestic, political reasons which have nothing to do with national security. That seems plausible when you consider the fact criticism of any kind represents a threat to national security in the Demander and Thief’s irrational thought process. We are, after all, dealing with a President who cannot and will not admit that he ever made a mistake, and who views political criticism as a form of treasonous behavior. And when you’re dealing with someone whose thought process (or lack thereof) is that rigid and that paranoid, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that he’s monitoring whoever he thinks may represent a political threat, not just a security threat.

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 7

We present another in the series The 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how BushCo uses them.This is updated from the original series that ran on the Coalition for a Republican-Free America -Dusty

PART VII: OBSESSION WITH NATIONAL SECURITY
Essay I: Librarian Takes on Patriot Act: And Wins
By PraetorOne and BibleBelted
Editors’ Notes by Daniel and BibleBelted

This particular post was originally written on April 12, 2005. At the time we wrote it, we had no idea that it might actually qualify as an essay in a series about the Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism. Indeed, in April 2005, there was some doubt as to whether or not the Patriot Act would be renewed. As it turns out, President Bush, despite promises that he made in 2001 that such Draconian measures would be temporary, has now decided that they should be permanent, and the Patriot Act, with only minor amendments has been tragically approved.

Why does that not surprise us? The Neocon agenda has never been all that sympathetic to civil liberties. Indeed, it seems as if only one Senator, our own Russ Feingold from right here in the State of Wisconsin, was the only Senator who even bothered to read this right wing abomination. Had the other 99 Senators bothered to have done so they would have realized that the Patriot Act was nothing more than a wish list for just abut every repressive measure that the GOP has been hoping for since the Nixon Administration.

When you think about it, the legislation was produced rather quickly–too quickly– which tells me that it had been sitting on a back shelf somewhere waiting for the right opportunity to exploit.

In many ways this reminds me of what happened on 28 February 1933–the day after the Reichstadt Fire in Nazi Germany. Never one to let a good opportunity slip by, then Chancellor Hitler went to President Hindenburg, asking that the aged president sign a decree for the “Protection of the People and the State. To quote William L. Shirer’s masterpiece, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH: A HISTORY OF NAZI GERMANY (1959-1960, Simon and Schuster), the decree stipulated that:

“… restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

“In addition, the decree authorized the Reich government to take complete power in the federal states when necessary and imposed the death sentence on a number of crimes, including ’serious disturbances of the peace’ by armed persons.”

Now where have we seen this before? A national tragedy being used as an excuse to limit civil liberties. Oh, Jeez. I don’t know. You think maybe it might be in the Bush administration and their Orwellian named Patriot Act?

Could be.

On the other hand, not all of the news is bad news. As a result of efforts liberty-loving librarians and a concerned American public, our elected officials may well drop the library related provisions in the Patriot Act–even if they haven’t quite risen to the level of true patriotism and decided to scrub the entire act and its misbegotten spawn, Patriot Act Part II. Here, fellow readers, is an example of a plucky little lady and how she defied actions which could have easily led to an invocation intellectual repression. Here is Brandon’s Post from 12 April 2005. It is called ….

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism continued..

PART VI: CONTROLLED MASS MEDIA

“Our Wonderful Corporate Media.”
By PraeterOne and BibleBelted

Warner Brothers Pictures, Morgan Creek, New Regency, Warner Brothers Animation, a partial stake in Savoy Pictures, Little Brown & Co., Bullfinch, Back Bay, Time-Life Books, Oxmoor House, Sunset Books, Warner Books, the Book of the Month Club, Warner/Chappell Music, Atlantic Records, Warner Audio Books, Electra, Warner Brothers Records, Time-Life Music, Columbia House, a 40 percent stake in Seattle’s Sub-Pop Records, Time Magazine, In Style, Martha Stewart Living, Sunset, Asia Week, Parenting, Weight Watchers, Cooking Light, DC Comics, 49 percent of Six Flags Theme Parks, Movie World and Warner Brothers parks, HBO, Cinemax, Warner Brothers Television, partial ownership of Comedy Central, E!, Black Entertainment Television, Court TV, the Sega Channel, the Home Shopping Network, Turner Broadcasting, the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, World Championship Wrestling, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, New Line Cinema, Fine Line Cinema, Turner Classic Movies, Turner Pictures, Castle Rock Productions, CNN, CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNN/SI, CNN Airport Network, CNNfi, CNN radio, TNT, WTBS, and the Cartoon Network:

Those, according to Eric Alterman, in his 2003 book, What Liberal Media, are companies that were acquired by AOL when it acquired Time Warner.

Between AOL-Time Warner and the likes of Disney, Bertelsmann, the News Corporation, General Electric, Viacom, and Disney, the vast majority of everything we see and hear n the supposedly “liberal” mass media comes from only six–that’s right, six–mega media corporations. As I have suggested in previous posts and comments, this is why the media should be independently owned. All too often liberals believe that conservative media owners directly order journalists to cover or not to cover certain stories, when, in fact, the truth is a little more complicated than all that.

In the first place we need to understand that journalists have very little in common with your typical welfare recipient or elderly person who may need energy assistance to survive a northern state winter. According to sociologist David Croteau, “95 percent of elite journalists earned more than $50,000 a year, and 31 percent earned more than $150,000.” On other words, this often puts journalists in the same economic class as the right wing free market politicians who they are supposed to be covering.

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism continued..

Continuation of our series on the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how BushCo uses them. The first Essay in this section was incorrectly labeled as Part 4 Sunday. It is of course Part 5. -Dusty

PART V: RAMPANT SEXISM

(Women at Risk: The Dangers and Consenquences of a Christian Republic)

Section 2

So what does this have to do with the Bush Administration and fascism? Consider this. In many ways the attitudes of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis are mirrored in the most fanatical of Republican constituencies: The Radical Christian Right, which is hardly Christian nor right about anything. Only radical.

FACT: “The administration requested $546 million for domestic violence programs in fiscal 2007, a decrease of $20 million–or 3.5 percent–from the amount appropriated in 2006, the anti-violence network’s figures indicate. The amount does not include any funding for 21 newly enacted programs, the largest of which is a $50 million program that provides services for survivors of sexual assault.” [6]

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 4

Part V: Rampant Sexism

(Women at Risk: The Dangers and Consequences of a Christian Republic)

By Donatra, Shakti and Katie

Section 1

“Women whom Nietzsche never had, he consigned to a distinctly inferior status, as did the Nazis, who decreed that their place was in the kitchen and their chief roll in life to beget children for German warriors. Nietzsche pit the idea this way: “Man shall be trained for war and women for the procreation of the warrior. All else is folly.” He went further in Thus Spake Zarathustra. He exclaims: “Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip!”–Which prompted Bertrand Russell to quip, “Nine women out of ten would have got the whip away from him and he knew it, so he kept away from women!”

From: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
Footnote on Page 100
By William L. Shirer
1959, 1960 Simon and Schuster

“Emancipation of women? Hitler said the idea was absurd:

“Talk about the emancipation of women is an invention of Jewish minds. The German woman does not need to be emancipated. She has always possessed what nature has bestowed upon her…Her world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home. Where would the great world [of men] be if the small world [of women] was not looked after. Providence has confided to women the care of their own world on which the world of men can be built. These two worlds do not stand against each other. They compliment each other, they belong together, as men and women belong together. We hold it wrong for the woman to invade the world of men. We feel it is only natural that both worlds remain separate.”

Was there then any place at all in public life for women in National Socialist Germany? Hitler quickly disabused the women of any such hope.
“For many years,” he said, “we National Socialists have been against women entering public life, which for us seemed unworthy of them.”

From: The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940
Pages 135-136
By William L. Shirer
1984 Little, Brown, and Company

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 4

Another in our series on the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how the Republicans and BushCo in particular use them. -Dusty

PART IV: THE SUPREMACY OF THE MILITARY
Essay 2: The Recruitment of Skinheads, and Nazis
By BibleBelted

And to think there was a time when we thought the Bush Administration only anted to exploit the troops by using them as props, as propaganda tools whenever he wanted to boost his sagging approval ratings. Now we know differently. It isn’t only a matter of exploiting those troops who are truly honorable, but also a matter of attracting sadistic bullies, thugs, and hatemongers on the far right. Since this article was written in the summer of 2005 we have learned that the United States military, in an attempt to meet quotas, has lowered the bar and has been recruiting–of all things– criminals, addicts, and more chillingly, skinheads and Nazis.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center the United States Military has now been infested with NeoNazis and skinheads who hope to use their military training here at home. How bad is it? The following quote comes from a right wing hate blog:

“Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman’s war,” he wrote. “It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and ‘cleansed.”

Ask yourselves this: Can this be a coincidence? When you look at the Bush Administration’s attitude towards civil liberties, at the Administration’s almost obsessive desire to know what every American is doing at almost any time, and it’s basic contempt for the Constitution, is it really too hard to believe that the Administration secretly approves of goons like the one who I quoted above? Granted, the Administration isn’t as flamboyant as the Skin Heads or the Aryan Nation, but when you look at some of their policies the similarities are indeed stunning.

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 4

This morning we welcome two members of the Coalition for a Republican-free America who are continuing the series on the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how the Republican’s and extreme right use them in America. Our resident historian Uncle Abe is back with us as co-author of this section. -Dusty

PART IV: SUPREMACY OF THE MILITARY

Essay 1: No Child Left Unrecruited
By Dr.Who and Uncle Abe

During the course of a 2005 NPR “On Point” interview, Major General Michael Rochelle suggested that the United States should further militarize American culture to help the Armed Forces meet its quota in the area of new recruits. As the program dragged on and mercilessly on, with Rochelle all but begging young people to line up and get shot in Iraq, one of the hosts suggested (perhaps sarcastically) that we might begin shaming young people into joining the military as had been done during the days of World War I. Sadly,the good general did not fully understand that the host was joking.

In a way you can’t blame General Rochelle for trying to further militarize the culture even more than it has already been militarized. This is both, an unpopular war and an unnecessary war, which has essentially treated young soldiers as if they were disposable cogs in the Bush Administration’s war machine. But on another level you really need to ask yourself just how more militarized this society can become?

It seems to me that American Society has already been over-militarized. What, exactly does General Rochelle propose? Armed soldiers on every street corner in the United States? Giving the United States Military the right to kidnap and raise our children to be blindly obedient soldiers? The way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised, because it seems to me, that as we progress down the road of Republican-inspired fascism, we already have the military sticking its nose into areas of our lives which simply are of no concern to anyone except families and individuals.

Buried deep within the increasingly controversial “No Child Left Behind” Act, is a provision which grants the pentagon access to directories with high school students’ names, addresses and phone numbers. Prior to No Child Left Behind (read No Child Left Unrecruited) high schools were not required to provide this information, the privacy of students and families coming first. Indeed, a third of all American High Schools simply refused to do so. But now, as a result of “No Child Left Behind,” high schools are required by law to provide this information and, to make matters even worse, could lose their federal funding if they refuse to comply. This ironically, comes at a time when the reigning Republican regime in Washington talks about the dangers of big government and peppers the public dialogue with hollow rhetoric about giving more power back to the states and individuals. And yet these “pro family” hypocrites are perfectly willing to divulge personal information about our sons and daughters without so much as a jot of concern as to what parents and guardians may think about their children signing up for military service.

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 3 continued

THE FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM PART III: IDENTIFICATION OF ENEMIES (Essay 1: The Cultural War Against Gays By SweetPea (Daniel) SECTION 3

Who Suffers? We Do.
The Inevitable Results of Threats and Hate Speech

The verbal attacks continue. Gays and lesbians are compared to everything from rats to Devil worshipers, which makes me wonder, what kind of effect does this have on the society at large? Well, we a lready know, don’t we? It creates an atmosphere in which those who are less than balanced, in which the highly disturbed feel free to act on their violent impulses. Can you say Matthew Shepherd? Can you say Harvey Milk? They were individuals who were quite literally murdered because of their sexual orientation, and they aren’t the only ones who have suffered such a tragic fate.

*Nicholas Ray West, a 23-year-old Southern Baptist singer was kidnapped, tortured and executed in a gravel pit because he was gay. [21]

*January 1994, Michael Benishek, another gay Texan, was found dead in San Antonio. The coroner was uncertain if he died from a severe blow to his head with a blunt instrument or from a knife slash across his throat. [22]

*February 1994, Tommy Musick, age 48, a gay hairstylist from Midland, Texas, was shot four times in the head. His 18-year-old killer, Ramsey Harrell, received a mere twelve year sentence because the jury held an an obvious bias against gay people. [23]

*In March 1994, police discovered the body of Joe Trevino, another gay man who had been strangled and bludgeoned to death in his home by two teenagers. [24]

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 3 continued

Another in our series on the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how BushCo and the extreme right use them. This post was authored by SweetPea, a member of the Coalition for a Republican-Free America

 

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism

Part III, Identification of Scapegoats

(Distorted Facts: The Cultural War Against Gays)

by SweetPea

SECTION 2

As an out-of-the-closet gay male I am getting a little sick and tired of being compared to everyone and everything from Typhoid Mary to Jeffrey Dahmer. For all intents and purposes gay males are compared to the worst kinds of people that you could ever possibly imagine and the sad truth of the matter is that all too often what the far right promotes as the truth is often picked at random out of their proverbial, theocratic asses.

This is the kind of garbage that we hear on an all to regular basis.

Gays Are Diseased

First let’s get something straight. Homosexuality is not a disease. Countless respected, mainstream organizations will tell you this, including: The American Psychiatric Association, the American Law Institute, American Bar Association, the World Health Organization, The American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the Academy of Pediatrics, and the Council on Child and Adolescent Health. Moreover, in 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, American the Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Psychological Association, the American School Health Association, the Interfaith Alliance Foundation, the National Association of school psychologists, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Education Association, issued a document called Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation in which they:

“Expressed concern about harassment of gay and lesbian youth; condemned reparative therapy as potentially harmful and of little or no effectiveness, and describe transformational ministries as representing only one part of Christianity–those faith groups which view homosexuality as outside God’s will. and incompatible with Christianity. The site other denominations as supporting equal rights, and protection against discrimination, for gays and lesbians.”[7]

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, Part 3

ESSAY II:
RACIAL PROFILING: CODE WORD FOR RACISM
By PraetorOne and Biblebelted

In the 1960s Lyndon B Johnson incurred the wrath of Conservative Southern Democrats by supporting the civil rights movement; specifically the Voting Rights Act. Admittedly, Johnson was a piece of self-centered work, a flawed, even power hungry individual (though a rank amateur when compared to George W. Bush), but his stand against right wing bigots was an honorable and a productive one. Few pieces of legislation have been as effective and as beneficial as the Voting Rights Act. And what was the Republican response? In the years after the Johnson Presidency, Richard M. Nixon and his merry band of authoritarian cronies decided that they would play the proverbial race card and divide the south along racial lines. In a stunning display of bigotry, the party of Lincoln decided to embrace hate-mongering, southern racists and religious fanatics who had routinely stood in the way of equal rights for Black Americans.

Now fast forward to August 2006. Only hours after Great Britain thwarted a pending terrorist attack, the right wing bigots on AM hate radio and the Reich Propaganda Cable bands were advocating–get this–a policy of racial profiling for Muslims. Allow me to repeat that: a policy of racial profiling for Muslims.

Call me naive, but isn’t that a little like trying to use a fly swatter to diagnose a case of Scarlet fever?

Will somebody–anybody–please be so kind as to tell the incompetents who compose this Administration that Muslims come in all varieties and colors, from the very liberal Sufis, to the very repressive Fundamentalists; to the very white to the very dark; and everything in between? Indonesian Muslims probably tend to be Asians. European Muslims probably tend to be white. Many American Muslims are probably black. And those are–at the very best–the broadest of generalizations. There are as many shades of Islam as there are Muslims. Like Christianity, Islam is a global religion, there are adherents in every country on the face of the earth. But for some reason, right wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannitty assume (incorrectly) that if we profile young males ages 16 to whatever with brown skin that we will win the war on terrorism.

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The 14 Characteristics of Fascism Part 3, Essay 1

Part 3 of our continuing series, the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how they apply to the Rethugs and BushCo in particular.

Part III: Identifying Scapegoats

Essay 1
(Distorted Facts: The Cultural War Against Gays )
By Daniel (SweetPea)

SECTION 1

During the 1920s and 1930s the world learned that when sociopathic leaders, such as Adolf Hitler,were megalomaniacal to put their insane ideas in print, the world should wake up and listen. Today I would humbly suggest that the same holds true for public statements made by megalomaniacal religious leaders on the far right. If we don’t wake up and both, listen, and infer the lessons from the past, we may not only lose our Constitution and our freedom. Some of us may well lose our lives.

Execution Mania

If we take the Holy Bible at face value there are anywhere from ten, to eighteen, to twenty-three capital offenses. They are as follows:Murder (Exodus 21:12, Exodus 21:15); Murder (Exodus 21:12, Exodus21:15); Kidnapping (Exodus 21:16); Disobedience to parents (Exodus 21:17, Deuteronomy 21:18); Juvenile delinquency – incorrigibility (Deuteronomy 21:18-21); Bestiality (Leviticus 20:15); Violations of the Sabbath (Exodus 31:15); Adultery (Leviticus 20:10); Abominations (Leviticus 20:2); Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16); Incest (Leviticus 20:11); Homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13); Witchcraft (Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:27); False prophecy (Deuteronomy 13:5); Worshiping a false god (Deuteronomy 13:6-10); Sacrificing to false gods (Exodus 22:20); Sodomy (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13); Sex with a woman betrothed to another (Deuteronomy 22:25); False witness in a capital crime (Deuteronomy 19:16-20); Fornication by daughters of priests (Leviticus 21:9); Failure to abide by a decision of the High Court
(Deuteronomy 17:12); Unchastity (Deuteronomy 22:21-24); Cursing someone (Leviticus 24:14); Negligence resulting in death (Exodus 21:29).

Wow! That’s quite a list, but whether like it or not the truth of the matter is that there are pastors, laity, and members of congregations who seriously believe that the above list of capital crimes should indeed result in executions if the perpetrator is found guilty. Consider the remarks that follow:

“Brute beasts … part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”
Jerry Falwell On homosexuals, as quoted in The Bible Tells Me So, 1996 [2]

“I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”
The Reverend Jimmy Swaggart in a September 2004 evangelism television broadcast [3]

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THE 14 CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM Pt.2

PART 2 DISDAIN FOR THE RECOGNITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

(Is George W. Bush a Sociopath?)
By PraetorOne (Brandon)

Will someone please explain how George W. Bush can call himself a Christian and still endorse torture as a legitimate tool of American foreign policy? Will someone please tell us how a purported believer in the teachings of Jesus Christ can behave so brutally and unethically, and still claim that he he is a man of virtue. a compassionate conservative? The last we knew Jesus didn’t advocate the twin perversions of torture and sadism, and yet, for reasons which defy imagination, Bush and his merry band of sexual sadists are perfectly willing to crawl into the gutter with societies such as Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Peoples Republic of China as they make a mockery out of both, decency and Western civilization.
Ironically, American torture techniques are derived from methods used by the KGB. They include sensory deprivation and self-inflicted torture; black bags over the victim’s head to maintain disorientation; forcing the victim to stand on his or feet for days on hand with his or her arms stretched out at his or her sides. That may not sound disturbing, but the end results are horrific. Fluid builds into the legs, sores break out, the kidneys begin to fail. Then add fear, threats, cultural humiliation, personal intimidation, and….well, you get the idea.

Of course, he ultimate irony in all of this is that torture really doesn’t work. The weak will offer false information to end the pain and the strong will be ale to resist, offering either silence or false information in defiance of their persecutors.

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THE 14 CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM

Sirens begins a series on the 14 Characteristics of Fascism and how they apply to the Rethugs and BushCo specifically. This series has been updated since it originally appeared on the Coalition for a Republican-free America. We would like to thank PraetorOne, Biblebelted, Kelli, Uncle Abe and ALL the writers on that site and the Coalition for a Democratic America for this wonderful enlightening series. -Dusty

Part I
POWERFUL AND PERSISTENT NATIONALISM

During the summer of 2005, my best friend and I listened to a startling interview on Wisconsin Public Radio with Laurence Britt, who discussed his FOURTEEN DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM, comparing the attitudes and belief systems of the Bush Administration and fascist governments in the past. As the interview progressed we realized that the Fourteen Characteristics would make splendid topics for essays in which we might attempt to link the Bush Administration and its utter disdain for the Constitution and Personal freedom to some of the more unsavory aspects of world history, most notably the period in European history from the early 1930s to the mid 1940s.

The topics covered are wide and varied: I) Powerful and Continuing Expressions of Nationalism; II) Disdain for the Importance of Human Rights; III) The Identification of Enemies and Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause; IV) The Supremacy of the Military and Militarism; V) Rampant Sexism; VI) A Controlled mass Media; VII) Obsession With National Security; VIII) Religion and Ruling Elite Tied Together; IX) Power of Corporations Protected; X) The Power of Labor Suppressed or Eliminated; XI) Disdain and Suppression of Intellectuals and the Arts; XII) Obsession with Crime and Punishment; XIII) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption, and XIV) Fraudulent Elections

PROLOGUE

By Katie
Imagine this: your country has installed a new government, by way of supposedly fair and legal elections. In this body politic, there emerges a bright star, a man who claims to be able to return said country to its roots, to make the country a driving moral, social and economic force, one so powerful that other countries have no choice but to fall on their knees and follow in the example your country has set. The ones that resist, it’s decided, will be forced into submission by any means necessary, i.e., the military. There will be a purity of sorts in the country, seeing as how it’s such a moral power, and the rest of the world, in following the set example, will also gain that purity. If not voluntarily, but rather, involuntarily. Everything will be just peachy, in other words.

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