GOP Has Turned into a Race Among Oligarchs to Own Everything
By Thom Hartmann A...
Ben Carson’s pathetic attempt to equate Hitler and pro-gun control Democrats was short-lived, but the specter of fascism is still haunting the 2016 presidential race.
When news first broke that Marco Rubio had won the support of billionaire Peter Singer, the media jumped on it as a sign that Rubio, a junior senator from Florida, was now the top “establishment” Republican candidate for president.
And while that may or may not be true, the fact that a billionaire supporting a presidential candidate even counts as news is news in and of itself.
It’s also just the latest example of what former vice-president Henry Wallace was talking about when he warned us 71 years ago about the “American fascists” among us.
In early 1944, the New York Times asked Wallace to, as he noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”
His answer to those questions was published April 9, 1944 in The New York Times, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan, and it is both shocking and prescient.
“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information."
Here, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word “fascist” -- the definition Benito Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word.
As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is, “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this.
In a 1923 pamphlet titled “The Doctrine of Fascism” he wrote, “If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.”
But not a government of, by, and for We The People; instead, Mussolini’s fascist state would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.
In 1938, Mussolini made this vision of fascism a reality when he dissolved the Italian Parliament and replaced it with the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations.
Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Marco Rubio and covertly write legislation through groups like ALEC, they were openly in charge of the government.
Vice-President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his fears about the same thing happening here in America:
“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”
But even so, there were at the time few corporate heads who’d run for political office, and, in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels.
“American fascism will not be really dangerous,” he therefore warned, “until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information....”
Noting that, “Fascism is a worldwide disease,” Wallace then added that fascism's “greatest threat to the United States will come after the war” and will manifest “within the United States itself.”
Of course, American fascists who would want former CEOs as president, vice-president, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader - as was the case during the Bush administration - and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or own up to the harm it does to small businesses and working people.
Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a “them” to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.
But even then, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. They would do so, he said, through their connections in the corporate media.
And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations -- who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease.
“The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,” Wallace wrote. “Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.”
In their subversion of the government to corporate interests, their buying of politicians, and their destruction of the free media, Wallace’s American fascists made a mockery of American democracy.
As Wallace put it in his strongest indictment of the fascist threat,
“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
Almost a decade before Henry Wallace wrote those words, President Roosevelt had actually made a similar warning during his speech at the 1936 Democratic Convention.
Roosevelt, however, used the words “economic royalists” instead of “American fascists” to describe the group that was threatening to take over our democracy.
He said: “These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.” But, he thundered, “Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”
In the election of 2016 we stand once again at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II.
Fascism, economic royalism, or whatever you want to call it, is again on the rise in America, this time calling itself “conservativism.”
The Republican candidates’ and their billionaire donors’ behavior today is exactly like the situation Wallace and Roosevelt laid out in their warnings about the corporate takeover of our democracy.
It's particularly ironic that the “big news” is which billionaire is supporting which Republican candidate.
Like Eisenhower’s farewell address, President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace's warnings are more urgent now than ever before.
Comments
#2
america is already Fascist
Who thinks is is not and how?
#3
Thom, I think you mean Paul Singer, not Peter Singer. Paul Singer,being the hedge fund slime ball, greedy pig and perhaps the most despicable person on earth, a natural for todays Republican traitors. That Rubio takes money from Singer, alone, should disqualify Rubio as a presidential candidate in an American democracy.
#4
So Democrats like Obama who claim to be reaching across the aisle to honor the will of all voters are in reality simply reaching across the aisle to honor the will of the Fascists.
I've said it before, when a Democrat talks about compromise with the Teapublican Party, that tells me they have no idea what freaking time it is...they completely don't get it.
Fox News fills the minds of vulnerable citizens with complete misinformation, lies that cause them to vote against the best interests of 99.9% of us. The Fascists control this weapon of mass misinformation. We need to shun all Fox Reporters in the streets and expose the propaganda machine for what it is...a weapon being used to undo our liberty, and overthrow our Democracy.
The billionaires don't need our help....if you vote republican...you're a god damn fool!
#5
2950-10K, I have to disagree with you a bit. Fox News does not fill the minds of vulnerable citizens with lies. Their minds are already filled with lies and misinformation that they constantly tell to themselves. Fox news only validates what they already think and feel. These fascist bigot nut-bags have been around since humans first oozed out of the mud. Just look at the behavior of the human race throughout history. Greed, torture, war , bigotry, paranoia, etc, etc. It has been around since day one
Fox News realized that their was money to be made and power to be had by giving these right wing extremists what they crave most. A sense that their bigotry and greed is valid behavior and even the preferable social norm. And to be honest, at the lowest level of humankind, it probably is.
One is more likely to be fired from Fox News for telling the truth, than lying. Because, that's what their viewers crave. Just look how Megan Kelly fared after the first Republican debate. Fox had to go into full rightwing attack mode to appease their rightwing junkies. Fox News is like a drug pusher that services a clientele that is addicted to bigotry, lies greed, nationalistic exceptionalism, Christian extremism, and so on.Fox News viewers require a steady stream of the junk. Or they will go find themselves another pusher.
Therefore, Fox News is compelled to peddle to them the dope that they are most addicted to. Not that they have any problem with it. It perfectly serves their corporatist agenda.
#6
Fascism Aided and Abetted\
...a rhyme...
Dang. How awful might the Right wing get?
We see in the news on the internet
that they LIKE stuff Trumpy and Cruzy and Carsony
and plutocrats’ stealings {it’s “grand”, their larceny}.
It’s FASCISM which is
what these sumbitches
stupidly advance, and aid and abet.
=============================
#7
“Of course I was a socialist,” said my professor of his mid-1930s years when he had been an Ivy League student. “We thought that America would otherwise become fascist instead.” This was ‘way back in the early ‘60s, when he added that “fascism threatens still.” [These quotes are pretty much verbatim; I can hear him still.] … Scholars since WWII had been analyzing Hitlerism-etc, - often in terms which were applicable too to subcultures which were ‘way-back-then developing in our own USofA, - and applicable to back-then’s developments inside our perverted forms of capitalism.
#8
The true history of gun control - Timeline
By J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Throughout the history of the world there have been despots, tyrants, dictators and kings who have imposed their will over those they conquered. After defeating rival armies in battle, many of these rulers went on to lead cruel, ruthless and abusive regimes largely by keeping the subjugated powerless to resist.
Men like Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia; Genghis Khan, who founded and ruled the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise; the Caesars of the Roman empire; and the pharaohs of the Egyptian empire all conquered, then kept power, by ruling with iron fists over people who were powerless to resist because they did not have the means to do so. In feudal England, British subjects in Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere were forbidden to bear arms, and as such were forced to remain loyal to the crown (until they won their independence by force of arms).
In more recent times the invention and mass production of the firearm made conquering - and then controlling - entire populations much more difficult, which is why the most heinous despots in the last 150 years have moved to limit or ban access to guns. In our own country, prior to the Revolutionary War, some colonists did own firearms but in the months before, and directly after, the war began King George's generals implemented gun confiscation policies - a primary driver behind the adoption of the Second Amendment by our founding fathers.
As gun control once more becomes an issue, and as some lawmakers, academics, pundits and ordinary Americans call for outright gun bans and confiscation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in mid-December, it is vital and appropriate to examine the history of gun control around the world, and the carnage visited upon the innocent by gun-grabbing tyrants.
Soviet Union - 1929 -- Soviet Russia was established following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when ruling Czar Nicholas II tossed 11 million Russian peasants into World War I. Frustrated and angered by the loss of life, scores of armed Russians - many current or former Russian soldiers who were led by Marxist Vladimir Lenin - rebelled against a ruling regime that was already teetering on the edge of collapse.
Firearms were allowed to remain in the hands of Soviet citizens until 1929, when private gun ownership was abolished - a time which saw the rise of one of the world's most repressive regimes, that was led by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (he ruled from 1941-1953 but was entrenched in the country's leadership by 1928).
From 1929 to the year Stalin died, tens of millions of Soviet dissidents or anyone the country's leadership believed were a threat, were rounded up and either murdered or placed in labor camp/prisons and forced to work, sometimes to their deaths. Early in Stalin's political career, he launched two national collectivization campaigns in order to transform the country into an industrial power. Both campaigns, however, were rife with murder on a massive scale.
"In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance," says a history of his political career at Gendercide.org. "The Five-Year Plans for industry, too, were implemented in an extraordinarily brutal fashion, leading to the deaths of millions of convict laborers, overwhelmingly men.
His "callous disregard for life" was matched only by his paranoia; later, he purged the Communist Party itself of anyone and everyone he believed was a threat - all under the auspices of a total gun ban.
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves," he once said.
The Ottoman Empire - 1911 -- The Ottoman Empire, the origins of which were in Turkey, implemented full gun control in 1911. A few years later, beginning in 1915 and lasting until 1917, some 1.5 million Armenians (out of a total of 2.5 million) living within the empire were rounded up and murdered by the "Young Turks" of the ruling class. In what has since been called the Armenian Holocaust, "Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed," says a short history of the slaughter by the University of Michigan. "Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes."
The Ottoman government established "butcher battalions" which consisted primarily of violent criminals who had been released from prison just to kill ethnic Armenians. Those who were members of the army (which was currently fighting the Allies in World War I) "were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed," said the university history.
Germany - 1938 -- Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany established gun control in 1938, just prior to the implementation of his horrendous, murderous campaign to exterminate the Jews. In the end, 13 million Jews and other perceived lesser races were killed by Hitler and his Nazi Party.
In 1942, at the height of the Second World War and German advances, Hitler said:
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.
China - 1935 -- The Nationalist Chinese government established gun control in 1935, just two years before Japan invaded in 1937. In the period from 1935 to 1952, some 20 million citizens and political dissidents were murdered. The Chinese Cultural Revolution, which was launched by the country's supreme ruler, Mao Zedong, took place from 1966-1976, and "claimed the lives of several million people and inflicted cruel and inhuman treatments on hundreds of million people," says MassViolence.org. "However, 40 years after it ended, the total number of victims of the Cultural Revolution and especially the death toll of mass killings still remain a mystery both in China and overseas." The actual figures remain a highly-classified state secret.
Regarding gun control, Mao once said: "War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
Cambodia - 1956 -- The year this Asian nation issued its total gun control edict was in 1956, but the real carnage did not begin until several years later, during the regime of the demonic Pol Pot. Between 1975 and 1977, his regime murdered as many as 1 million "educated" people whom he believed represented a threat to his power in "killing fields" that were later depicted in a movie by the same name.
In all, more than 56 million people around the world have been murdered as a result of gun control laws imposed by rulers and despots who knew that the only way they could continue to brutalize their own people and stay in power was by disarming them.
And now left-wing pols, politicians, academics and pundits want our leaders to have the same ability to rule unopposed and unafraid of reprisal.
"Our forefathers did not arm the American people for the purpose of hunting, but rather to protect themselves from those who were doing the hunting, namely the tyrant King George," writes Bradlee Dean for WorldNetDaily.
Anyone truly interested in preventing mass murder should not be a supporter of gun control.
Sources:
http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/easteurope/octrev.html
http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html
http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/genocide.html
#9
re the JD Heyes essay: {1} I’ve read histories which analyze quite otherwise. … {2} Methinks that history might not rhyme in the way which Mr Heyes implies. On the contrary, I envision that {perhaps even soon} citizen-gunnery might shoot IN SUPPORT of TYRANNY {rather than Mr Heyes’ notion that ’twould be in Resistance to Tyranny}. F’rinstance, citizen-militias might be scaring us into even further submission to corporate plutocrats, - and into further submission to petty Hitlers’ notions of white-America’s “exceptionalism”. … {3} Perhaps we’re approaching a Hobbesian-type situation of “war of each against each-other” {this time via modern weaponry in citizens’ hands}, - which flat-out Anarchy will resolve {as in Hobbes’ formula} into a Tyranny in order to re-achieve a modicum of “peace” under the auspices of corporatism. … … The above’s thrust is that I doubt the value of Mr. Heyes’ item. {Apologies-in-advance, if I get “flagged as offensive” here.}
#10
Probably the one determining event that established the path we as a country have been on for over seventy years, the decision to drop Wallace from the 1944 presidential ticket that was agreed to by a severely sick Roosevelt who only had months to live. Not much written about this other than to say that it was driven by a strong faction in the Democrat Party of that time. Wallace did have his supporters in the Democrat Party and he was given the position of Secretary of Commerce in the Truman administration as a compromise. In July of 1946, Wallace wrote a letter to president Truman urging him to build “mutual trust and confidence” in order to achieve “an enduring international order.” Truman responded by asking Wallace to resign his position. In March 1947, Truman asked Congress for money “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Thus articulated, the “Truman Doctrine” of containment that served as the rationale for future American Cold War foreign policy initiatives.
Wallace was probably the smartest individual we ever had in Washington and he did run against Truman in 1948, a tough fight for any politician running against his own party's incumbent president who was given credit for using the atomic bomb to end World War II ! There's a better than average chance that a Wallace presidency would have resisted the use of the Atom Bomb to end the war with Japan and he most certainly wouldn't have reversed all of FDR's planned post war policies that would have extended to all Eastern European Countries the right of self determination !
#11
Stopgap: I certainly do not dismiss your theory about Fox viewers. I however am aware of friends and family who innocently became Foxmerized just because the broadcast presented itself as news, so they figured it must be true...afterall it's on TV "news". These are the vulnerable I speak of.....but I'm sure your category of people who hate is numerous, and they gravitated to the hate. It doesn't matter, they're all stumbling around in the same darkness with Fascists like the Kochs.
#12
Hey man, if anyone had to register as a Dem to vote for Bernie in the primary...like myself...check your local voting regs....you may have to vote in the general election today to qualify to vote in the primary.
#13
UNC: You just made a great case for not having a standing army. There's no way your weapons can compete with the US military...LMAO . Alexander inherited his great army from his father Phillip II. Others like the Persians were well armed too, it didn't matter, he prevailed. Alexander's mother convinced him she had sex with a God and he was the result, destined for greatness...the ultimate self puffed dude! Without true democracy we get stuck with individuals who are not unlike their evil predecessors. In a true Democratic Socialist system, we the people have control , not the Alexanders.
#14
BINGO, Thom! You have just highlighted my #1 favorite issue: AMERICAN FASCISM! Since those Nazi engineers and other professionals got imported here from Germany via Operation Paperclip. in the immediate aftermath of WWII, how could anyone assume their worldview and agenda would just go "poof", like water evaporating into the air?! Now it’s their kids and grandkids we’re dealing with, promoting that same fascist filth.
Our best chance of overthrowing these self-appointed Lords Of The Universe is to elect Bernie Sanders and OVERHAUL CONGRESS. Throw out all the Republicons and corporate Dems, so that we have a Congress Bernie can actually work with, and… ‘BYE-‘BYE FASCISTS! Wheee! Then the economic terrorism they're promoting will be behind us so that we can take our country back. Imagine a system that works for all of us; a system where that proverbial “ladder to success” is within reach of everyone, not just a few!
This election is mind-bogglingly consequential. No vote is a vote for fascism. So... GET OUT THERE AND VOTE.
#15
Good News - Bad New: Yes, Amendment 1 in Ohio addresses gerrymandering in Ohio. Regrettably, it does NOT apply to US Congressional Districts. It is baby step in the right direction, but ... Disappointed in Ohio, StanJoy
#16
UNC, sounds like the problems were mostly bigotry and lack of democracy.
Bigotry means that disarmament is selective, kind of how white people in Texas can open carry, and crazy armed white guys get talked down by police while black people get shot down for reaching for their wallet on request. Scotland and Ireland were treated as subject nations, not full partners. The white Americans that are paranoid about the government coming after them, however, are on the top, not the bottom.
When leaders are replaced frequently, they can't be despots long enough. Think of the Bush Administration disarming people after Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. government isn't concentrated enough in one person. After 1953, the USSR separated executive powers in order to avoid having another Stalin. (BTW, you kind of lost me when you said that Soviet Russia began in 1929. It actually began in 1917 with the October Revolution and the breakup of the Russian Empire. The 15 separate soviet nations were put together into the USSR in 1929.)
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My mid-‘70s-course-re-“Whither America?” studes understood this threat-to-America, - and ‘way back then were hip to what this piece says: F’rinstance, Henry Wallace’s take that “The dangerous American fascist … method is to poison the channels of public information”. And that “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. And that it’s “a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and bidness leadership, along with belligerent nationalism”.
. . . . . . .