Is the U.S. a Fascist Police-State?

[girl gone mad]

Is the U.S. a Fascist Police-State?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-us-fascist-police-state

I lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship—I can spot a fascist police-state when I see one. The United States is a fascist police-state. Harsh words—incendiary, even. And none too clever of me, to use such language: Time was, the crazies and reactionaries wearing tin-foil hats who flung around such a characterization of the United States were disqualified by sensible people as being hysterical nutters—rightfully so. But with yesterday’s Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision (No. 08-1498, also 09-89) of the Supreme Court, coupled with last week’s Arar v. Ashcroft denial of certiorari (No. 09-923), the case for claiming that the U.S. is a fascist police-state just got a whole lot stronger.

First of all, what is a “fascist police-state”?

A police-state uses the law as a mechanism to control any challenges to its power by the citizenry, rather than as a mechanism to insure a civil society among the individuals. The state decides the laws, is the sole arbiter of the law, and can selectively (and capriciously) decide to enforce the law to the benefit or detriment of one individual or group or another. In a police-state, the citizens are “free” only so long as their actions remain within the confines of the law as dictated by the state. If the individual’s claims of rights or freedoms conflict with the state, or if the individual acts in ways deemed detrimental to the state, then the state will repress the citizenry, by force if necessary. (And in the end, it’s always necessary.)

What’s key to the definition of a police-state is the lack of redress: If there is no justice system which can compel the state to cede to the citizenry, then there is a police-state. If there exists apro forma justice system, but which in practice is unavailable to the ordinary citizen because of systemic obstacles (for instance, cost or bureaucratic hindrance), or which against all logic or reason consistently finds in favor of the state—even in the most egregious and obviously contradictory cases—then that pro forma judiciary system is nothing but a sham: A tool of the state’s repression against its citizens. Consider the Soviet court system the classic example.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-us-fascist-police-state">more...

[midnight]

1. I'm still waiting to hear if Don Siegelman's justice is just as

important as Ted Stevens. http://crooksandliars.com/2008/02/25/60-minutes-the-prosecution-of-don-siegelman

[jaxx]

2. I noticed a lot of the comments on this article were from the

'take our country back' mindset, using their guns no doubt. But it's interesting to see the polar opposites in this country.

[girl gone mad]

5. Zero Hedge embraces its inner nihilist.

They correctly diagnose the illness in our society, government, and economy, but their cure is to just let the patient die. I gave up hope long ago, but I'm not beyond working for justice.

The posters there tend to be Randian idiocrats, but that's the case on so many web sites these days. 30 years of right wing brainwashing and the rightward sway of our political pendulum have taken their toll. I will give them credit for generally understanding that extreme corporatism is as dangerous as they imagine socialism to be.

[ElboRuum]

17. But at the end of it all, they get it wrong.

Which is really not understanding anything.

[girl gone mad]

20. They get some things wrong, but..

they've been dead on with respect to the trouble with high frequency trading, manipulation in the markets, the faux recovery, the corruption on Wall St., our sold out politicians, and the generally dangerous state of our empire and the globalized economy.

[Hawkowl]

21. I agree

Nobody gets everything right. However, Zerohedge gets say 75% of it right, and the part they get right is the part nobody else is even whispering about in the beginning.

So yes, it is a frightening group. Certain truths are the most frightening of all. C'est La Vie. Non?

[Cleita]

3. I lived in Chile before the Pinochet dictatorship and

I believe the author is right about the USA. I never felt as free to express myself here in the USA as I did in Chile before the coup. Let's face it Henry Kissinger brought fascism to Chile under the authority of the American government. American conservatives are pretty good at it.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. US corporate heads and bankers have been supportive of Facism since BEFORE WWII.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8632732&mesg_id=8632796

[indepat]

19. Could be argued the likes of Kissinger have brought fascism to the US, something I had hoped

BHO would quash in a moment rather than seemingly nurturing it in an infinite variety of ways. :P

[Goldstein1984]

4. Yes

And, from the perspective of nations with resources or strategic locations that represent "vital national interests," we are a threat to peace.

Contrary to the national mythology, past and present.

[RKP5637]

6. I find it uncomfortable here. I remember the Joseph McCarthy investigations quite well,

watching them on TV way back when. I'm uncomfortable with the mood of the country. I think it's unstable and borders on being a Fascist Police-State if the right sequence of events were to occur.

I'm concerned as to what will happened if this country moves further right combined with the religious nuts. The corporate marriage with the gov. is bad enough, but we well might be headed toward a CF if the right politicians were to get in some of whom are real nut cases IMO.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. Rhetorical question, right?

[azul]

9. Serve them right if the president decides, unilaterally, that these rulings

by the SCOTUS are recruiting terrorists, and tosses the lot of them into Gitmo.

They must have assurances that they cannot be impeached, as their bold work demonstrates.

[Newest Reality]

10. Just look into the contrived face that stares at you right now!

Can you see its expression and are you aware of how it is gradually creeping up on you like a dark mist on a cold, Winter's night?

How many examples do you need to finally tip your current immersion into a media-driven consensus reality into a more pragmatic and honest assessment of what is going on and where we are now?

If you wait too long then, just like we see with the homeless and those on food stamps who struggle, or those who are the working poor or the unemployed poor, then it won't take long to come upon many of you. You will then certainly understand what was meant by, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee!"

The worst part about choosing to stay in the simulation and hope for the best why you enjoy your current lack of poverty and fret is that your clinging to that false security and penchant for not empathizing with those who have already fallen in this ruthless, (but well managed) and relentless class war is that you become more and more vulnerable to your impending downfall and all the horrors of want and need that it will thrust you into, head first. How prepared and girded can you loins be to your own fate when you cannot even grapple with the trail of tears so many of your own fellow citizens are already treading upon with gritted teeth and bitterness unto death?

A police state is our current state and it is growing stronger each day as we watch our own people grow weaker and more impoverished. Do you think and do nothing at all at this stage? Do you deny that is without question when most reasonable people would tell you it is so?

[tom_paine]

11. Sure it is, but it's the Newest Version: Kinder and Gentler, with double the Plausible Deniability

of previous ham-fisted regimes, with their overt assaults and murders and such.

Our is sanitized in a way that pays homage to Ed Bernays and all the monstrous evil of the advertising/PR/marketing industry, which informs and penetrates virtually every aspect of Modern Imperial Life these says.

One suspects that this "Inverted Totalitarianism" (kudos to Dr. Sheldon Wolin for giving it an Official Name) is something of a hothouse flower and that when Classical Totalitarianism is required by our Aristocratic Elite, it will be reimplemented witha stonishing speed, given that all it's prerequisites are present in it's current "marketable" form.

But hey, enjoy it while it lasts. It's better to be systematically censored and ignored than murdered by Freeper-KKK-Nazi types at 3 am, isn't it?

REVEL in our "kinder and gentler" totalitarianism for what it is, the ultimate expression of human governance and the pinnacle of the fact that nothing really changes in humanity except the new skin the old snake is dressed in.

[ixion]

13. I believe if you happen to be on the receiving end of it

it is neither kind nor gentle.

[tom_paine]

15. Well, Bushies aren't making soap and lampshades from Liberals anymore.

"Kinder and gentler" is a relative term.

And yes, I will argue that what faces dissenters for now is quite a bit "kinder and gentler" than what the spiritual antecedents of the Bushies, the Nazis, had in store for them.

[ixion]

18. You think the jack-booted thugs who kick people's doors in are doing nicer?

Just curious.

[tom_paine]

22. Compared to the scope, scale, and ruthlessness of what the Nazis did? C'mon.

What The Empire is doing is bad, very bad - but nowhere near the scope, scale, and ruthlessness of Nazis.

They couldn't get away with it, these days.

[ixion]

24. hmmmm... perhaps not on the same scale

but the open ruthlessness, albeit thinly-veiled by such bromides as "protect and serve" is well on display.

Heck, all you need to do today to find our how violent the system really is this: Try and videotape a cop while he's harassing someone, and you'll likely wind up in tasered and in jail. Sure, you're not getting sent to Dachau, but it's still an unpleasant, violent, life-altering experience.

To be fair, I put violent crime in the same category as law enforcement. That is, I see assault as violent whether the person is a "peace" officer or not.

[ixion]

12. Of course it is.

It has been since the 80's, IMO, and simply become worse (and more apparent) over time.

[leveymg]

14. The German jurist Karl Schmidt summed it up: "Law Is Politics, Politics is Power."

The group that has effective control over the state decides the law. That's the way it works. In the US today, that's the multinational corporations, the banks, and the military-intelligence-postindustrial complex. The veneer of "A Nation of Law Not Men" has worn through, and beneath the all white marble and platitudes about American exceptionalism is the same old iron fist. Anyone who has actually opposed the system knows that.

That is not to say that the system is utterly incapable of reform. But, it tends to change the individuals who care to set out and try to reform institutions more than institutions, themselves, actually change. Institutions rarely if ever give up power.

The reason the pretense of Constitutionalism is still invoked is because (to a diminishing degree) it's still cheaper and easier to pretend to gain the acquiescence of the population. Democracy, as it actually exists in America today, is a Big Lie among many commercial falsehoods. The actual consent of the governed has largely become a convenient myth.

If that makes the US a fascist police state, then it is.

[rhett o rick]

16. Can't be. No swastikas or goose stepping.

Not sure what it will take to wake up the public.

[TheWatcher]

23. Yes. Complete with a New and Improved Pravda, with Prettier Talking Heads

Basically the Soviet Union with better TV, and Predatory Capitalism.

Keep preaching The Truth Tovarich! :)