186 replies to this topic

[AsteroidX]

Yes. Certain officers even death camp ones were allowed into America after WW2. We still find one here and there. The ones put on trial were the fall guys.

[Br Cornelius]

acidhead, on 27 January 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Just curious...

Would you include Obama in this fascist group you believe is embedded in the American GOV?

The fact that a bones man, John Kerry, has been appointed to secretary of state is very suggestive. He certainly seems to have surrounded himself with much the same cast of characters to suggest he's just another face on the revolving door.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 27 January 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[Br Cornelius]

Frank Merton, on 27 January 2013 - 06:13 AM, said:

I pointed out how the Fascist rhetoric makes the posts extremist and irrational.  Obviously it had no effect considering the response I got, in effect telling me I don't know anything, so I have to conclude that many of those posting here are simply to be ignored as marginal and of little or no value.

The funny thing is, I am a socialist working and living in a socialist country, and I see this better than Americans.

I have no interest in persuading anyone of my position on this, its one which took me years to arrive at. If you are interested I offered a few keys and its up to you to persuade yourself - or not.

Br Cornelius

[Br Cornelius]

Yamato, on 27 January 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

A short ambulance ride to the ER, a quick in and out of the hospital after a few rudimentary tests and the price tag exceeded $10,000.   Not bad for less than an hour's work.

People don't make the association of what causes prices to come down for common products they use every day to their health care.  They just hear a politician talk a bunch of flowery sugar-coated crap during campaign season and then vote for spending other peoples' $$ on that.  That doesn't bring costs down, it just drives them ever higher.   People think that costs are simply a matter of point-of-sale costs for the consumer of those health services which has nothing to do with it.  The cost problem is what the industry is billing the insurance companies, which thanks to government subsidies, is always the maximum they can charge.

But fully public health systems consistently cost half the price of fully insured systems - and produce better outcomes. This is definitely one of those cases where utility trumps ideology.

Br Cornelius

[AsteroidX]

The application of the utility is important yes Br ? That is my argument.

[Br Cornelius]

These three quotes perfectly describe the situation in America;

Quote

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy

"Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism'. I'm afraid, based on my own long experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."

Sen. Huey Long

"Fascism is capitalism in decay."

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

And how many of the following describe America at the moment;

Quote

- Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism -
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Dr. Lawrence Britt

Quote

"A few years ago, William E. Shirer, whose monumental The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich certainly qualifies him as a penetrating observer, commented that America may be the first country in which fascism comes to power through democratic elections... The main source of this new-style despotism is not the frenetics of the extreme right - the know-nothings, the private militias, the Ku Klux Klan, or the openly neo-fascist parties. Nor is it the crazies of the extreme left. True, either of these might play facilitating, tactical or triggering roles. But the new order is likely to emerge rather as an outgrowth of powerful tendencies within the establishment itself. It would come neither by accident nor as the product of any central conspiracy. It would emerge, rather, through the hidden logic of capitalist society's transitional growth and the groping responses to mounting crisis in a dwindling capitalist world."

Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism, 1979

How well does the following describe Americas economic state - especially under Bush Junior and Obama;

Quote

"Mussolini resorted to a subterfuge to pay contractors without increasing his budget. He would make a contract with a private firm to build certain roads or buildings. He would pay no money but sign an agreement to pay for the work on a yearly installment plan. No money was paid out by the government. And hence nothing showed up in the budget. Actually the government had contracted a debt just as much as if it had issued a bond. But because no money passed, the whole transaction was omitted from the treasury's books. However, after making such a contract, each year the government had to find the money to pay the yearly installments which ran from ten to fifty years. In time, as the number of such contracts increased, the number and amount of the yearly payments grew. By 1932 he had obligated the state for 75 billion lire of such contracts.

The yearly payments ran to billions. What he did by this means was to conceal from the people the fact that he was plunging the nation ever deeper into debt. If these sums were added to the national debt as revealed in the treasury admissions, the actual debt was staggering ten years after Mussolini's ascent to power on a promise to balance the budget. According to Dr. Salvemini's calculations, the debt of 93 billion lire, when Mussolini took office, had grown to 148,646,000,000 lire in 1934. . Mussolini made no secret of the fact that he was spending. What he concealed was that he was loading the state with debt. The essence of all this is that the Fascist architect discovered that, with all his promises, he had no formula for creating employment and good times save by spending public funds and getting those funds by borrowing in one form or another - doing, in short, precisely what Depretis and Crispi and Giolitti had been doing, following the long settled practice of Italian governments.

Thus spending became a settled part of the policy of Fascism to create national income, except that the Fascist state spent upon a scale unimaginable to the old premiers save in war. But in time the Fascist began to invent a philosophical defense of his policy. What the old prewar ministries had done apologetically the Fascists now did with a pretension of sound economic support. "We were able to give a new turn to financial policy," says an Italian pamphlet, "which aimed at improving the public services and at the same time securing a more effective action on the part of the state in promoting and facilitating national progress."[3] It was the same old device plus a blast of pretentious economic drivel to improve its odor. Thus we may now say that fascism is a system of social organization that recognizes and proposes to protect the capitalist system and uses the device of public spending and debt as a means of creating national income to increase employment."
John T. Flynn, What Is Fascism

  

http://www.fascismusa.com/

This is an excellent summery of the state America is in and the brilliant minds who saw in coming from a long way  off. Know your enemy.

Those who would seek to oppose the takeover of their country should boldly state their liberal credentials becaause they are the antithesis of fascism. Know your friends.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 27 January 2013 - 03:39 PM.

[lightly]

Good stuff Br.    Thanks for posting it.            Capitalism a cult?  i dunno.  Some vague understanding of it certainly has many devotees ..  but doesn't a cult usually need a leader?
Capitalism has no leader.. it's a dog eat dog system.    When unchecked it becomes anti capitalistic, devouring all competitors not necessary to it's advancement, until it stand alone and all powerful.

[AsteroidX]

We have a capitalist leader. Sort of. And certainly the Fed chief has the power of one. With a flip of his pen Interest rates are changed altering the course of millions of lives.

Edited by AsteroidX, 28 January 2013 - 08:35 PM.

[lightly]

AsteroidX, on 28 January 2013 - 08:34 PM, said:

We have a capitalist leader. Sort of. And certainly the Fed chief has the power of one. With a flip of his pen Interest rates are changed altering the course of millions of lives.

    You mean the president is THE  "capitalist leader"?   ... Capitalism is bigger than presidents?        ...   as for the pen flipper.. that sounds more like an abuse of a purely capitalistic system?    A collusion with capitalists.

[Frank Merton]

A national economy has to be managed, and to do that certain officials have to have the mandate and the tools.  I prefer that this be in the hands of a non-political group, and it seems to me that the States have it just about right.

What the Federal Reserve has done over the last few years has been largely disaster control -- preventing a world-wide depression by keeping interest rates down and pumping money into the economy.  Traditional monetary conservatives think this will cause inflation, but they miss the point that to have inflation you have to have full employment.  So long as there is significant unemployment of workers and resources, you need to do everything you can to keep the steam pressure up.

[Yamato]

Br Cornelius, on 27 January 2013 - 09:06 AM, said:

But fully public health systems consistently cost half the price of fully insured systems - and produce better outcomes. This is definitely one of those cases where utility trumps ideology.

Br Cornelius

Consistently and definitely baseless claims unless you can convince me with the evidence.  Please don't start talking about prices consumers of health care pay in response to this.  I'm referring to the costs that consumers don't see.  The fungible costs paid for on the back-end in taxes.

[Br Cornelius]

Yamato, on 31 January 2013 - 06:56 AM, said:

Consistently and definitely baseless claims unless you can convince me with the evidence.  Please don't start talking about prices consumers of health care pay in response to this.  I'm referring to the costs that consumers don't see.  The fungible costs paid for on the back-end in taxes.

I have discussed this extensively in threads on the European board. Go find them or take my word for it. This covers total per capita costs to the population.
Consistently half the cost for better outcomes. Even the US government has investigated this and found it to be true.

Br Cornelius

[Frank Merton]

AsteroidX, on 27 January 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

Yes. Certain officers even death camp ones were allowed into America after WW2. We still find one here and there. The ones put on trial were the fall guys.

I would think they'd all be dead by now.

[Br Cornelius]

Frank Merton, on 31 January 2013 - 07:50 AM, said:

I would think they'd all be dead by now.

Jesus died 2000years ago - but it hasn't stopped there been christians.

Br Cornelius

[questionmark]

Br Cornelius, on 31 January 2013 - 03:02 PM, said:

Jesus died 2000years ago - but it hasn't stopped there been christians.

Br Cornelius

And given the existence of the American Nazi Party, the German NPD, the  Spanish ultranationalists  and the Italian neo fascists we must conclude that brain amputated do not die out.