Is it just me, but I find this very sccary?

I'm totally in agreement with you on this one Newton.

There is also a religious dimension, not mentioned in this report, to this rising fascism in America. The pyramid starts with plutocrats like the Kochs, but many others, buying the political system and playing on the fears of conservative voters by controlling the media. The RNC controls FOX News, which provides talking points for a vast network of right wing religious fundamental radio networks like Clear Channel. The devotees of this propaganda system are all trained to automatically disbelieve all other media sources ("Don't believe the liberal media), so they are isolated from facts and rational analysis of issues.

There are two main groups whose ideology provides a convenient means for the plutocracy to manipulate them into supporting economic programs that are in the interest of the plutocracy: these are libertarians and "small-government" conservatives, and the religious conservatives. The Tea Party combines both of these groups, which simplifies the propaganda efforts. This tea party phenomenon is traceable back to paranoid anti-communists such as the John Birchers of the 50s and 60s, and also to a phenomenon identified by the journalist Richard Hofstadter known as the "pseudo-conservative". The Tea Party are classic "pseudo-conservatives" as Hofstadter described 50 years ago. The Republican Party ties this group also to southern racism and southern resentment through the ideology of "States Rights", which was effectively a civil war battle cry that still echoes today.

This perfect trifecta of libertarian small-government property based freedom, old southern white racial anxiety and lingering civil war resentments, and conservative christian apocalyptic fundamentalism is most strongly expressed in the Tea Party, but also in the aptly named Republican party "base".

The interests of corporate plutocratic fascism is able to win and keep their political support with the issues of guns, gays, and God, and by espousing small government and low taxes, also known among the devotees as "freedom," though being victimized by corporate dystopia is not my idea of freedom.

This is the dream agenda for the plutocracy: eliminate environmental protections, eliminate all government regulation, eliminate taxation and all wealth redistribution for education, health care, and safety net, and a military way over-sized for what is needed to protect our borders, but enables the the plutocracy to direct the government to use military power protect plutocratic business interests abroad, a perfect system of fascist corporate protectionism with right-wing reactionary romanticized legends of a perfect god blessed Christian nation that is trying to reject and eliminate the sources of impurity: liberals, immigrants, racial minorities, gays, atheists, academic elites, hollywood pop media and entertainment industry.

It has everything that Nazi Germany had except for the explicit anti-semitism; liberals, academics, entertainment professionals, immigrants, and minorities, stand in for Jews as the scapegoat, which ends up affecting a lot of Jewish Americans by default. Actually, these religious nuts believe they love Jews and Israel because they will hasten the return of Jesus. (They love the Jews until it gets to the part where either they convert to Christianity or get swallowed up in Jesus' apocalyptic fires).

Here is a glimpse into the religious dimension of this fascist movement; this video contains outtakes from the documentary "Jesus Camp" about training children to become "Religious Warriors". Also check out the poison coming from groups like the Family Research Council, and the historical revisionism (mythologizing, an essential element of Nazism) going on over at David Barton's site WallBuilders. The PFAW website Right Wing Watch can help you keep tabs on what these dangerous movements are up to.

Thanks for that Jeff. I fully agree with the religious dimension as this is the primary ingrediant for mass indoctrination, and all the worst possible ingredients are at play in the US today. Why this is shocking for me is that, as a non-US citizen, I've only heard of these guys today, and that their aganda indeed reflects post-depression Germany...

Welcome back, Fundamentalism!
It won't fly here in America, don't worry.
None of us likes being told what to do or think.
Emerson , in a tie with Lincoln for Greatest Truest American:
"Politics
Every actual State is corrupt.
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
What satire on government can equal
the severity of censure conveyed in the word Politic,

which now for ages has signified cunning,
intimating that the State is a trick?"

I do what i please & never hurt anyone.
In fact, it brings me pleasure to see others happy.
That is my rugged individualist patch of spacetime in the
locality of this political entity "america"...

Lincoln, in a letter to Horace greely, 1862:

"I shall do less whenever I shall believe
what I am doing hurts the cause,
and I shall do more whenever
I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors;
and I shall adopt new views
so fast as they shall appear to be true views." (ha!)


Don't worry about these ogres.
We shall get good gossipy evidence of their corrupt souls
and display it in our Media, which is still free.......
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Jimbo, never say never, the Germans also aspired to some lofty ideals as well, yet an ogre like Hitler eventually won the day. It's not that the majority feels this way, but that apathy may yet win the day...

Reductio ad Hitlerum - When an opponent's view is compared to a view that would be held by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party. Once such a comparison is made, the debate is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

That view is reductionism in itself. It doesn't have to be, and indeed, it is prudent to reflect on the possibility. We have to learn from history, or else there is a tendency to repeat it and the German's of the late 19th century was quite a philosophically sophisticated bunch.

We are obliged to ask the question: how did they go from there, to Hitler and the Holocaust?

Well, one of the ways is through the manipulation of religion and the religious to achieve political ends. Any of that ring any bells today?

It simply is that politics in the US today (as viewed from an outsider) appears to be more theological in nature than political. The major difference is that the political method—with all its floors—tends to converge towards compromise, while the theological tends towards fundamentalism, bipartisanship, and ultimately, disaster.

This radical theologization of the right by very powerful vested interests is what I see as the danger, and this is no different from Germany after the Great Depression. That is bearing in mind that the great recession of 2008 appears to be very far from over, and usually the electorate tend to lose their perspective when financial problems lingers for too long.

You seem like a smart guy and a good writer. We might have had an interesting debate. However, the systematic killing of segments of a population is not the same level of what any major political party in the United States is trying to accomplish.

Are you saying that Americans are incapable of that?

Remember Vietnam, napalm, and all the associated horror inflicted there. And of course the legacy of your previous president and the death and mayhem he committed in the name of the red white and blue.

But hey, nobody's saying that the holocaust is the end, which indeed, is reductionism on your part. There are parallels to the pre-Nazi Germany, however, and when religious motives and manipulation come in to play as currently is the case, you never know where it will end.

But hey, the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history…