Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

As anyone knows who has not been confused by the newer distorted political spectrums, conservatism can edge its way into fascism just as liberalism has the potential to slip into communism.

With the recent election of a black man with minority support among white folks and the up-surge of politically motivated violence, the flirtations with secession, the over-heated rhetoric from the far right and now the mobs trying to shut down the townhall meetings, anyone who has been paying attention should be getting alarmed.

The link is to a good summary of academic work on what fascism is and the steps a society goes through to arrive there. It is not a cheerful happy-talk self-congratulatory article. Sorry.

"It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return."

http://www.alternet.org/politics/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/?page=entire

It's my guess that conservatives of good conscience and intent will continue to remain in their state of denial, refusing to see where their allies are headed, because to do anything less would be to challenge their own point of view and question their own virtue.

It's my guess that liberals of good conscience and intent will remain alseep and allow the panicky minority to steal the country from them.

[visitorq]

Buying into the false left/right wing paradigm is about on par with believing professional wresting to be real...

Anyway, to address your topic, fascism (often known as corporatism) is the merger of state and corporate business power, calluding to impose their control over the public. This invariably includes goverment sponsored monopolies, forcing workers' wages down while taxing them into submission. The US strongly resembles a fascist state now, even though the government is ostensibly a democracy.

The main government sponsored monopoly is the fiat currency issued by the Federal Reserve banking cartel, backed by US legal tender laws. This money is issued by this privately owned entity at interest, with no other currency allowed. This is most important form of callusion between the US government and private business, and the most important reason for the current economic problems the middle class is facing at present.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I see you didn't bother to read the lady's article. Not too surprising. Conspiracy theorists rarely read anything outside their sweaty little hot house of mutual self-abusers.

[bacasper]

I read the article.

Gee, Yat, you sure came around fast. All the time I have been warning of this, you always dismissed me as a conspiracy theorist. Oh, I get it: now you believe it because she is blaming it on Republicans.

As the first commenter wrote:

[ManintheMiddle]

Ya-Ta Boy warned:

[Pluto]

No, those who oppose health care "reform" are not just fascist, but are angry, white and racist.

[thoreau]

Corporations have bought both parties in Congress. If Facism comes in the U.S., it will arrive having been pulled by the Dems and pushed by the Republicans.

For example, I'm pretty sure Mr. Obama has more former Wall Street executives in his cabinet and working as advisers than Mr. Bush ever did. If I'm wrong, then Mr. Obama has more Wall Street people than a democrat should.

[visitorq]

[visitorq]

[bacasper]

[mises]

[mateomiguel]

Watching the world's single remaining superpower morph into a fascist state would be a glorious and wonderful thing to behold, on par with watching a nuclear bomb test. Its even better that its my country.

Screw all you haters, I'm tempted to go home just so I can be a part of this. Oh, the weeping and gnashing of teeth that Canadians would do in their powerlessness. The tasty, tasty, rich tears of the disenfranchised. Sign me up for one heaping helping of american fascism please!

[manlyboy]

How did that crypto-theo-fascist takeover that liberals were whining about under Bush work out?
Obviously by "fascist" you mean anyone who chooses not to be a drone in the leftist hive, so by that definition, yes, there are many "fascists" out there.

[RJjr]

I wonder what our great-grandparents would think if they could see how America is sending its sons and daughters to fight for oil companies. It wasn't that long ago when Americans didn't use much oil and it wouldn't really be that big of a deal if we went back to horse-drawn wagons, bicycles, etc. But we've gotten so spoiled that we'd rather send Chuck and Emily to Iraq to kill and perhaps die than to train a couple of horses or mules per household.

I'm amazed Korea can find Americans willing to teach English since walking to work is so common in Korea. Or do most Americans take a cab every day?

[cwflaneur]

Unless and until "fascism" includes all the following characteristics, "fascism" isn't fascism:

* compulsory leader worship
* commitment to a racial or ethnic cult mythology
* commitment to the ethnic purification of the national blood
* obsession with past national "humiliations"; obsession with getting revenge for them
* hostility to modernity
* the thorough destruction of civil liberty
* physically perilous to be an intellectual
* physically perilous to vocalize opposition to the State
* anti-Jewish hysteria (or for other unrooted, cosmopolitan minorities)

Without these defining points, the very word fascism would never have been coined.

The Third Reich and the United States both had (have) national flags. That would be as good a reason to suggest equivalence between the two as the comparison of their "corporatism".

I await anyone's evidence that any of these things are taking serious root in the United States, or even threatening to do so.