History shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. According to Naomi Wolf in this morning’s Grauniad, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all :
- Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
- Create a gulag
- Develop a thug caste
- Set up an internal surveillance system
- Harass citizens’ groups
- Engage in arbitrary detention and release
- Target key individuals
- Control the press
- Dissent equals treason
- Suspend the rule of law
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere – while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: “dogs go on with their doggy life … How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster.”
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are “at war” in a “long war” – a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president – without US citizens realising it yet – the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
How long do you think it will be before US citizens start paraphrasing Martin Niemöller?
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
casa azahar 
Substitute Muslim for Jew and you’re almost there already.
And it’s all about creating a climate of fear.
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You might be interested in three entries I wrote on this sort of thing on my old Warwick University blog last year:
First they came for the terrorists…
Who will come for us?
Why are we afraid?
The discussion in the comments section on the first two is quite good too.
Personally, I think the danger of a fascist government is higher in Europe than in America.
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another view that might be of interest.
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Argh, that link didn’t work out right.
Another view
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The second link works – thanks for that, Dan. Indeed it may seem like a bit of a cop-out to label Bush a fascist, except it walks and talks like one, you know?
I don’t think this means that the Democrats are thought to be ‘the saviours’ of American democracy and basic human rights, but for the moment they appear to be the “lesser of two evils”.
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Also just found your comment 2, Dan – because there were three links in it I was asked to moderate the comment and only saw it now. Off to check out the links …
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Comparing Blair with the Tories might give some idea of what a Democrat US might look like.
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Dan, just finished reading the posts you linked to on your other blog. Two discussion points you put forth were:
1. Why are people afraid of terrorism? Is this related to the fact that some people who are perfectly happy to drive are afraid to fly, even though flying is about the safest thing you can do?
2. Is it possible to conduct a rational risk analysis of the threat of terrorism and to balance that with civil liberties? What sort of results would we expect?
I liked the mention of Spain in the Grauniad article where Naomi Wolf says:
First thing the Spanish people did when they found out their president was lying to them about who was responsible for the Madrid bombings – they took to the streets in protest and voted him out of office three days later. Previously he had been a shoo-in for re-election.
Terrorist attacks seem a very unlikely way to die, yet they are somehow deemed ‘scarier’ than other disasters, like high-speed trains jumping the track or jets crashing.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s neglectful mishandling of the Katrina disaster ended up killing hundreds – to me that is scarier than any threat of terrorism.
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Well you of course know more about the situation in Spain than I do, but generally speaking I wouldn’t say that European reactions to the threat of terrorism have been more rational than American ones. Or at least – not much more. In the UK, the reaction has been massively disproportionate (reviewed ad nauseam on my blogs and most of the ones I’ve linked to there). We’ve pretty much got proof that Blair and most of his senior ministers lied to us to go to war in Iraq and yet we do nothing.
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Is it because we’ve lived through it all so many times before in Europe? Isn’t the reason we call them ‘Terrorists’ linked to the ‘Terror’ of France and Europe at the end of the 18thC and the draconian laws enacted at that time to counter the threat of a bloody revolution?
Even further back – during the English Commonwealth and previously under the Tudors and Stuarts – English governments have created laws allowing judicial torture, arrest without charge and detainment without trial, as well as limiting civil liberties such as the right to free assembly and a free press – all to deal with the perceived threat of terrorism from Catholics… later the same laws were used against agrarian protesters.
Just because the threat was ‘real’ and the plots were uncovered (witness the Gunpowder plot amongst others) doesn’t mean the measures taken against those threats were effective in preventing the kind of feeling which created the terrorists in the first place.
On the contrary. And we’re still creating new terrorists today by alienating and demonising others.
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“but generally speaking I wouldn’t say that European reactions to the threat of terrorism have been more rational than American ones.”
You may be right, Dan, but I also don’t think one should include the UK response as being a ‘European reaction’. As far as I know, other than the ousted Spanish prime minister there was no other European head of state that so obviously supported the US invasion of Iraq.
“And we’re still creating new terrorists today by alienating and demonising others.”
Very true, truce, and to the detriment of ever finding a solution.
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Fair point az. News of disproportionate terrorism legislation in other European countries occasionally comes my way, but looking it up now it certainly seems as if the UK has gone much further than anywhere else in Europe.
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The oddest thing in all this is that I believe that the guys on 9/11 succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
First in that they did far more damage to the Twin Towers than even they thought they could, and secondly, in that they made America restrict it’s own civil rights into the bargain.
Making Americans face that their “good guy” nation does nasty tricks like torture and “arrest without charge and detainment without trial”, that’s just terrorist gravy.
PS — that Martin Niemöller quote? It’s been in use for a few years now in a couple of different forms, not that it will do much good.
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Apparently the Niemöller quote has gone through many permutations over time – the one I quoted was from a website that said it was the original one given to them by Niemöller’s wife.
Yes, I quite agree that with every civil right that is removed from US citizens, the *terrorists* keep on winning and winning, without even having to raise a finger.
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