What is Fascism, really?

The word Fascism is thrown around very freely these days. We’ve had “Red Fascists,” “Islamofascists,” and Lord knows how many other “fascists.” The word is equated with evil, dictatorships, or just plain different.

What is fascism? Where does it come from? Are there real fascists today? Let’s take a look.

Fascism comes from the Fasces, a bundle of rods around an axe, carried by Roman Lictors and symbolic of power. You have probably heard the old story about the old man who gave his sons each a stick, then told them to break them. They did. Then he gave each of them another stick and told them to tie them all together in a bundle, then directed them to break it. None could, the bundle was too strong. Then the father told his sons that if they would stick together, they would be strong and unbeatable.

In Italy, during the 20's, 30's and early 40's, Mussolini’s supporters were the Fascist party. Their symbol was the tightly bound bundle of rods with an axe inside. Mussolini himself stated that his government would be better described as a “corporate state.” Let’s look at a corporate state from the point of view of that symbol.

If corporations compete with one another, they can be broken, by unions, by alliances of several corporations against them. However, suppose the corporations formed their own group, their own bundle of rods. They would be mutually strengthened. Now, let’s put the axe of government in the bundle and see what we get. The ideal corporate state! That was approached in Italy, but Mussolini was not as well organized in those days as corporations are today.

The ideal corporate state is one in which all major corporations band together for mutual profit and power (the bundle of rods) wrapped around the axe of government, which exists to protect the corporate profits from attack. The corporations then support (or buy) the government and all backs are scratched.

Fascism was supposed to have died, along with National Socialism (Nazis) at the end of WW-II. Like the legendary Hydra, however, when you cut off a head, it grows two more.

When you look at fascism using this definition, there are only a few of them, and it is not Islam, it is no longer "red," it rests much closer to home. It is more powerful than anyone guesses and, it is preparing for a Nazi style of oppression if its aims are in any way thwarted.

Does this sound familiar?

Beware the Corporate State, wherever it raises its ugly head.

What Happened to My Country?

Some of my blog entries will be retrospective, but sadly not obsolete. During the Cheney/Bush years, I had over a hundred articles posted or published. Most were to try to awaken the American People as to what was being done to us by the regime. With a name change, they are as current as today's newspapers. What Happened to My Country? was published in early 2006, but written shortly after the start of the Iraq and Afghan wars. It first appeared in CommonDreams on February 17th 2006 and was picked up and circled the world. It was translated into German, Russian, Italian, French, Spanish and, I am told, Arabic.

Sadly, it seemed to have little impact here. Now, it is many times more accurate and we are in much more desperate straits than we were then. They were just getting started then. Now, Mr. "Change" and his gang have escalated it almost beyond belief. So, for your interest and, if you wish, your comments, here is What Happened to My Country?
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I grew up an American, and proud of it. I was taught in school about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. My brother was a Merchant Marine Officer during the war and had three ships sunk beneath him. We beat the Nazis, the Fascists and the Japanese and made the world safe for democracy. After the war came Nuremberg and the assurance that things like the holocaust could never happen again. The Marshal Plan helped to rebuild the shattered portions of the world. America, Democracy, compassion and help. It was good to be an American. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sad, but necessary to end the war and save lives, we were told.

We read George Orwell’s 1984, which could happen in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but we could never have thought police and endless war here in the United States. Then came the Cold War, McCarthy, Korea, and later on Vietnam. My service time crossed those wars, but I thanked my stars I didn’t have to fight in them. I was at Bikini for the Hydrogen Bomb tests in 1956, which taught me the unthinkable horror of nuclear war.

Vietnam taught us the danger and folly of going to war on a false pretext. Tonkin Gulf was to be a lesson to us all, as was the intended impeachment of Nixon for violating the law and the Constitution. We wouldn’t let that happen again; no president was ever going to spy on his own people again, or persecute people who didn’t agree with him or his policies.

Yes, the United States was a nation of great wealth. A nation that took care to see to the freedom and well being of its citizens, and welcomed the downtrodden foreigner to the new land. It was a nation that pioneered the exploration of space and gloried in the advance of science. I was proud to be an American!

My God! What has happened to my nation? My nation that no longer pays more than lip service to its Constitution and Bill of Rights, which have been a beacon to the world for over two centuries. My nation that unilaterally discards treaties that were the hope for a world of peace, guided by law and diplomacy. My nation that will wage a war of aggression against a far off nation that was no threat to it, but that has lots of oil. My nation that gives all of its wealth to the rich and is satisfied to leave its citizens to starve, homeless, unemployed and sickly.

What happened to that Constitution that so wisely divided the government into three separate units, to provide a system of checks and balances against any one branch usurping power? How did we wind up with a President that refers to the Constitution that he swore to protect and defend as “just a goddamned piece of paper” and a Congress that seems willing to rubber stamp any giveaway the President demands? How did we find ourselves with a Supreme Court that will set aside the Constitution in favor of unlimited presidential power for the duration?

Now I live in an America I don’t dare leave for fear of being spat upon, shot, bombed or kidnapped. I am looked upon as a citizen of a rogue nation that has no concept or respect for any law except bullying and strength. I need a passport even to visit Canada, which was to be our sister nation with open borders forever. I must expect to be required to show my “papers” at any time, to any official. I must accept that the government can break into my house and rifle my belongings and papers any time it wishes on the thinnest of excuses and it is not even required to let me know it has violated my home and my privacy. I must accept the fact that the government can listen in to my private conversations, my phone, my e-mail, can probably read my snail mail if they wish and can put a gag order on anyone who has information about me so I may not even be made aware that I am being spied upon. George Orwell’s absolute dictatorship has crept into my home and my life and thrown out my beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights. The difference between the United States, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is steadily and inexorably diminishing and the people are letting it happen while they remain paralyzed with fear. Fear incited by the gang that runs the White House and their cronies in the propaganda ministry that used to be our last bulwark against tyranny; our once free press.

So now my pride in America is for our past; my sadness for our present; my fear for our future. I am no longer proud to be an American, but I have no place to go.
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So, here we are in 2010, a "new" administration, populated by many of the same gang that ran things in 2000 - 2006. They have consolidated their gains, at our expense. There is no end in sight. What happened to my Country?

Arms Race and Arms Reduction are Not Identical

Mr President, Building Up the Nuclear Weapons Complex Is NOT Nuclear Disarmament

When the CCCP collapsed and the cold war ended, the MIC was terrified! They were looking at the specter of having to make refrigerators and stoves, perhaps even get into real estate. A guy buys a refrigerator or a stove and he keeps it twenty years. Guy buys a house, he may be in it for many years. One sale! Where is the profit in that?

Guy buys a thousand pound bomb and, BOOM!, he buys another. That, my friends is real profit. Especially when your Corporation can sell thousand pound bombs to both sides of any conflict.

Phasing out nuclear power and coal/gas for solar/wind/wave/geothermal power cuts into huge profits by the associated corporations, heavily invested in by other corporations.

Nuclear weapon development has always been a protected multi-billion dollar cash cow. The SALT talks, the Outer Space Treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and others; all of these were anathema to those who control us, and the government, through their purse strings.

Bush unilaterally (and illegally) tore up those treaties, restarted the cold war and a nuclear arms race. Obama, instead of pushing for a reinstatement of those treaties, is aiding and abetting the increase of military power at the expense of We the People and the world at large, but at greatly increased profits to the MIC. The bought and paid for Legislative branch goes along with it, and the bought Supreme Court will proceed to make it all legal.

Those few who still read and study history will recognize the parallels with 1930's Germany.

The German people failed to turn theirs around. Thousands were executed for making attempts to do so as Hitler consolidated his power. Millions died because they no longer had any power to do anything but heil der Fuhrer and do what they were told.

Now that the Corporations, the Oligarchy if you will, have consolidated their power to the point where they can come out in the open, we are rapidly finding ourselves in the same position. Our Constitutional Right to air our grievances and demand redress is getting ever more brutally suppressed by police. Heavily armed pre-emptive raids are made on people who are only planning or discussing a protest. Our alleged representatives either ignore our communications, or send us form letters which are puff pieces bragging about inconsequential legislative victories while ignoring our call for a return to the Constitutional form of government we once had.

I am no seer, but I see that the concentration camps built during the Bushwhacking years are still there, maintained and ready. NorthCom is training combat brigades in "suppressing civil unrest," the number of foreclosed, homeless, jobless, hungry and ill people is increasing exponentially. Sooner or later, the kettle is going to start to boil over. They are ready for it.

In ancient days, when Ug and Og went from throwing sticks and rocks to inventing the spear, they did not resist using it. When others developed the same thing, Ug stockpiled spears until his cave could outgun the other. Then someone invented the bow and arrow and so it went.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed what could be done. East and West began yet another arms race, which finally stalemated. Now, many of our caves have nuclear weapons, but we have the most and have proven ourselves unstable enough to use them.

Sooner or later, someone is going to try a sneak attack on someone else. That will escalate, through fear (Am I next?) or retaliation. Probably, most of civilization (as we consider it) will be destroyed. Science Fiction is becoming fact far too rapidly these days.

Einstein once said, "I don't know what weapons world war three will be fought with, but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones."

* * *

He looked out of the mouth of the cave at the devastation before him, then, cautiously, clutching his spear, he went out to forage for food for his hungry family...

Hot Zone Expands in Nuclear Plant Aquifer

CommonDreams had an article on the above subject. This was my comment to the article.

Sometimes, the Nuclear Dragon swats us with its tail or rends us with its claws and jaws. Other times, it poisons us with its fetid breath. Now, apparently, it poisons us by pissing in our aquifers.

In 1956, (Operation Redwing, Bikini) I saw its claws and felt its jaws, I was poisoned by its breath, but (so far) have survived. Not very many of us left.

Chernobyl; was not an explosion, just a very stubborn fire in radioactive fuel. A huge area so contaminated that it will be three to six hundred years before it can again be occupied. Most of Europe was contaminated by the fallout. People have had elevated cancers, genetic damage to their children, etc., ever since.

We have had a number of accidents at our own Nuclear Dragon cages. Three Mile Island, the Fermi Breeder Reactor near Detroit, the Hanford Plant in Washington, on which million$, perhaps billion$ have been spent trying to prevent the leakage from entering the Columbia River. The list goes on and on. Statistically, the number of cancers, birth defects, etc., is much higher in those areas, compared with areas far away, and not downwind of the plants.

The same with the native populations of the Marshal Islands exposed by our testing in the '40's and '50's. Then there was our own testing in Nevada, which used our own citizens as guinea pigs (classified by the Eisenhower government as underutilized segments of the population).

As these contaminants get into our aquifers, there is no way to avoid them. You just have to take your chances, play the odds. People have to drink.

The only way to avoid the situation is to cease this endless twisting of the Dragon's tail. The only safe nuclear reactor is approximately 93,000,000 miles from earth and delivers more than adequate energy, if we will just take the effort to learn to harness it.

Remember, we already have mountains of spent fuel which we have as yet found no safe way to dispose of. All of this leads to still more contamination, more exposure, more cancers, birth defects and deaths.

I won't even discuss the horror that awaits us as Depleted Uranium spreads around the world from our endless wars.