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The Police
State Is Right Here, Right Now
By Carolyn Baker
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does
oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when
everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a
twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however
slight-lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness.
~Justice William O. Douglas~
09/20/07 "ICH"
--- -- In
April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's
article, "Fascist
America, In 10 Easy Steps" posted in several places online.
I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating
her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had
been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of
the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might
clarify for my history students the extent to which America has
become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but
her just-published book,
The
End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from
which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller
picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil
liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most
poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I
have encountered since Thomas Paine's Common Sense. No wonder
then, that the book's cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract
by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.
One
of the most frightening realities of teaching college history is
that most students rarely have a clue what fascism is. They know
about Hitler and the extermination of Jews, but they see little
connection with Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s and the current
political milieu in the United States. Overwhelmingly, they
cannot define fascism, nor can they define socialism or
democracy. After all, they were pre-occupied during grammar
school with becoming standardized human beings by way of taking
standardized "No Child's Behind Left" tests, five hours a day,
four days a week. So why would they know the definitions of
fascism, socialism or democracy?
Refreshingly, Wolf is not shy about using the term fascism and
lets the reader know why. "I have made a deliberate choice in
using the terms fascist tactics and fascist shift when I
describe some events in America now. I stand by my choice. I am
not being heated or even rhetorical; I am being technical." (20)
She explains that where Americans tend to see the various
political "isms" as all-or-nothing, that perception is often
inaccurate because of what she calls a "range of authoritarian
regimes, dictatorships, and varieties of Fascist states...there
are many shades of gray on the spectrum from an open to a closed
society." (20)
Wolf also emphasizes that
America has flirted with fascism openly in the 1930s when
numerous corporations and robber barons helped finance Hitler
and when as Edwin Black notes in
IBM And The
Holocaust, some American corporations assisted the Nazi
regime in carrying out its "final solution" to the "Jewish
problem." In fact, several of these corporate tycoons
attempted to stage a coup d' etat to overthrow Franklin
Roosevelt in 1933 and restructure the American government under
fascist control. A thorough investigation of American politics
and society from the end of the Civil War until the present
moment reveals, as I have carefully traced in my book U.S.
History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell
You, that much of recent American history is replete with a
preference on the part of corporations and the politicians they
own for an economic and political system on the far right end of
the spectrum. In fact, resistance to fascism in the United
States has been an arduous and daunting struggle for those who
have been able to understand and oppose the appeal that fascism
has to the corporatocracy, and in fact, take seriously
Mussolini's fundamental definition of fascism: "Fascism should
more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of
state and corporate power."
As an historian who views
American history as the complex unfolding of events that it is,
I feel invigorated upon hearing someone like Wolf-especially the
Wolf of feminist Beauty Myth fame-part company with the
presentation of the Founders as "dead white men" inwardly
tormented by various hypocrisies, such as the ownership of
slaves and the subordination of women. Yes, Jefferson owned
slaves and fathered six children by one of them, but what gets
lost in that drama and other colorful stories of the Founders is
that they were also thinking, speaking, and writing highly
subversive thoughts. "You are not taught," says Wolf, that
"these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a
vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest
of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order
of nations; and that they were wiling to die to make that
desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they
would never live to see." (27) I do not wish to romanticize the
Founders and their generation living in a milieu replete with
racism, misogyny, and classism, but neither will I throw their
achievements out with the bathwater of political correctness,
nor is Wolf willing to do so in her examination of them.
In the "10 easy steps" outlined
by Wolf, countries move from open to closed and repressive
societies by devolving past certain markers, and Wolf makes a
powerful case for the way in which the United States is
following a similar pattern without any significant deviation.
In each instance she compares and contrasts how America's
adherence to the pattern compares or contrasts with the pattern
in pre-World War II Germany. The 10 steps are:
-
Invoking an external and
internal threat
-
Establishing secret prisons
- Developing a paramilitary
force
- Surveiling ordinary
citizens
- Infiltrating citizens'
groups
- Arbitrarily detaining and
releasing citizens
- Targeting key individuals
- Restricting the press
- Casting criticism as
"espionage" and dissent as "treason"
- Subverting the rule of law
As noted in the quote from
Justice Douglas above, the fascist shift is a protracted
process; it never happens overnight, and in U.S. History
Uncensored, I offer an historical narrative describing exactly
how we have arrived where we are-at "the end of America". Some
aspects of the process were generated before the U.S. Civil War,
but our recent history is nothing less than the story of the
acceleration of the fascist agenda and the death of the
Republic.
Frequently, books come into our
lives with momentous timing. Several weeks ago a friend of mine
was traveling through a small town in upstate New York looking
for the location of a meeting he was scheduled to attend.
Realizing that he was lost, he spotted a police officer in a
marked car and waived to the officer to pull over. The officer
pulled over, and my friend innocently got out of his car to walk
back to the officer's car. Suddenly, the officer's voice came
blasting across a loud speaker, "Get back in the car! Stop where
you are! Get back in the car!" My friend returned to his vehicle
and waited for the officer to approach his driver's side window.
The officer, with a hand on his holstered firearm, angrily asked
my friend what he wanted. When my friend asked him for
directions, he replied with hostility that he didn't know the
location of the place for which my friend was searching and once
again repeated, "Never get out of your car when you're dealing
with a police officer." So much for asking directions from a
police officer these days.
On another occasion, two friends
of mine returning from Canada were detained at the U.S./Canadian
border, and while one of them had a U.S. passport, the other had
forgotten to bring his. He produced a variety of identification
but was taken aside, questioned, shouted at, and harassed in an
extremely hostile manner as if he were an enemy of the state.
Fortunately, after over-the-top intimidation from a couple of
surly customs officers, he was allowed to enter the U.S.
About three weeks ago I was
returning from a routine visit to the dentist in Mexico and had
a U.S. passport with me, even though none will be required for
returning from Mexico until January, 2008. I was told by a very
aggressive female customs agent to pull over to the center where
vehicles are detained. I was ordered in a very hostile manner to
give her my driver's license and the keys to my vehicle and stay
in my vehicle. When I asked what the problem was, I was told to
be quiet and again, to stay in my vehicle. Having taught in
Mexico for three years, returning to the U.S. every day and
rarely having to show any identification whatsoever, I found
this procedure to be astonishingly rigid and unnecessary. I have
made many trips to Mexico in recent months and have never had
any problem when the automatic photos that are taken of every
license plate crossing the border appeared on U.S. Customs
computer screens.
After what seemed like an
eternity the female officer returned and told me that it
appeared that I had had an expired vehicle registration four
years ago which I had not taken care of and that I needed to do
so at once. She gave me the name of the court where the offense
was allegedly registered. The very next day I contacted the
court and discovered that indeed I had been stopped four years
ago for an expired registration for which I was given a warning.
Every year since, I have purchased my annual registration well
before the deadline, but the offense was never brought to my
attention, and I even acquired a new driver's license last year
through the motor vehicles division and was not informed of the
offense. Not wanting any further hassle regarding the "heinous
crime" of having an expired registration four years ago, I
agreed to pay the small fine imposed by the court.
Some readers may assume that I
was harassed because of who I am and my open delivery of
alternative news and opinions on this website daily. I, on the
other hand, do not believe that this was "all about me." Whether
or not it was, it is blatantly obvious to me that the behavior
of law enforcement in the United States has shifted dramatically
in recent months. Whether or not I was targeted, which I
sincerely doubt, this kind of treatment is becoming standard in
law enforcement procedure throughout the United States.
And now fast-forward to Monday,
September 17, 2007 (U.S. Constituion Day), at the University of
Florida and the tasering of a student questioning John Kerry
regarding the 2004 elections and Kerry's membership in Skull and
Bones-an incident which has been viewed by millions on the
internet and on mainstream TV news broadcasts. Writing of this
debacle, Wolf's article "A
Shocking Moment For Society" appeared on various internet
sites this morning, and in it she states:
There is a chapter in my new book,
The End of America, entitled "Recast Criticism
as ‘Espionage' and Dissent as ‘Treason,'" that conveys why this
moment is the horrific harbinger it is. I argue that strategists
using historical models to close down an open society start by
using force on ‘undesirables,' ‘aliens,' ‘enemies of the state,'
and those considered by mainstream civil society to be
untouchable; in other times they were, of course, Jews, Gypsies,
Communists, homosexuals. Then, once society has been
acculturated to that use of force, the ‘blurring of the line'
begins and the parameters of criminalized speech are extended -
the definition of ‘terrorist' expanded - and the use of force
begins to be deployed in HIGHLY VISIBLE, STRATEGIC and VISUALLY
SHOCKING WAYS against people that others see and identify with
as ordinary citizens. The first ‘torture cellars' used by the
SA, in Germany between 1931 and 1933 - even before the National
Socialists gained control of the state, during the years when
Germany was still a parliamentary democracy - were informal and
widely publicized in the mainstream media. Few German citizens
objected because those abused there were seen as ‘other' - even
though the abuse was technically illegal. But then, after this
escalation of the use of force was accepted by the population,
students, journalists, opposition leaders, and clergy were
similarly abused during their own arrests. Within six months
dissent was stilled in Germany.
What is the lesson for us from this and from other closing
societies, some of them democracies? You can have a working
Congress or Parliament; newspapers; human rights groups; even
elections; but when ordinary people start to be hurt by the
state for speaking out, dissent closes quickly and the shock
chills opposition very, very fast. Once that happens, democracy
has been so weakened that major tactical and strategic
incursions - greater violations of democratic process - are far
more likely. If there is dissent about the vote in Florida in
this next presidential election - and the police are tasering
voters' rights groups - we will still have an election.
What we will not have is liberty.
We
have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to
hurt people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on
the leisurely time of a strong democracy - the ‘Oh gosh how
awful!' kind of time. It is time to take to the streets. It is
time to confront those committing crimes against the
Constitution. The window has now dropped several precipitous
inches and once it is closed there is no opening it without
great and sorrowful upheaval.
As I
read Wolf's latest article, I realized that despite my enormous
admiration for her and The End Of America, there are a
number of areas where I must disagree with her.
First, the only thing shocking
to me about the University of Florida incident is that so many
Americans are shocked that it happened. Last night I
posted a
communication to her mailing list regarding the incident
from former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who says:
No
police officer should be in the business of denying
Constitutional rights to anyone; I am particularly chagrined
when it appears that a black police officer participated in this
attack on an innocent student.
What is happening to us???? How much more will the people
accept?? I was outraged as early as 2000 when Florida was
stolen and the Democrats said nothing!!!! Now, innocent
students get tasered just for asking questions.
What kind of US Senator do we have who can't or won't answer a
question about his own election that affects all of us???
Wolf has given us a compendium
of civil and Constitutional rights stolen from us during the
past eight years of the Bush administration. If one understands
this odyssey of oppression, then yesterday's tasering of a
questioning student makes perfect sense. I appreciate why Wolf
used the word "shocking" in her most recent article, but I'd be
willing to bet that she isn't shocked at all-not after the
extraordinary documentation she has given us in The End Of
America. What I do believe she wishes to clarify is the
intentionally traumatizing methodology of law enforcement to
maintain social control.
Secondly, I must take issue with
Wolf regarding her statement that "...we on the left must snap
out of our ‘it's-all-the-WTO-the-two-parties-are-the-same'
torpor...We have to reengage in an old-fashioned commitment to
democratic action and believe once again in an old-fashioned
notion of the Republic. We need to help lead a democracy
movement in America like the ones that have toppled repressive
regimes overseas." (141)
Again, let's fast forward not to
Monday, but today and the headline "Senate
bars bill to restore detainee rights"-a decision which
supports the Bush administration's denial of habeas corpus to
Guantanamo prisoners who want to challenge their imprisonment in
court. Need we reiterate one more time that since the 2006
elections, the Democrats have done virtually nothing to end the
occupation of Iraq? Need we watch the video one more time of
John Kerry standing mute and statue-like on the University of
Florida auditorium stage-saying or doing nothing as a student
was tasered for asking him why he handed the 2004 election to
George W. Bush? Does anyone seriously believe that in a world
where fellow students applaud as police remove and taser a
questioning student and do nothing to speak up against such an
outrage that we will see a viable, effective "democracy movement
in America like the ones that have toppled repressive regimes
overseas"?
As for Wolf's suggestion in
today's article that we "take to the streets", the police state
is preparing for that eventuality as well by letting us know
that it has developed severely
injuring electromagnetic crowd control technology that will
dramatically limit how many and how often people can "take to
the streets." Welcome to full-spectrum "1984".
I repeat: the police
state is right here, right now!
Moreover, some pivotal factors
that Wolf has not addressed are global energy depletion, climate
change, and global economic meltdown which are exacerbating the
fascist shift about which she so brilliantly writes and which
will continue to embolden that shift as energy scarcity,
climate chaos, and financial crises add fuel to the fires of
terrorism that the ruling elite have so consciously and
carefully incited and fanned throughout America. As American
society continues to unravel, the fascist shift will escalate,
and what is left of our civil liberties will further evaporate.
As for political parties, I
prefer the definition offered by Mike Ruppert in "America:
From Freedom To Fascism" in which he explains that the two
major parties are like two crime families-the Genoveses and the
Gambinos. They function like players in a crap game that feign
opposition to each other, but when the chips are down, they will
always unite to serve their common interests. (If the Iraq
occupation is not a case in point, then I don't know what is.)
When we vote in presidential elections for corporately-owned
candidates or "the lesser evil", we are merely choosing between
the two crime families, and even if one candidate were not a
crime family member, our votes in the past two presidential
elections, as Bev Harris has so
astutely demonstrated, have been hacked. In the throes of
the current, and I might add, rapidly-accelerating fascist
shift, what evidence do we have for assuming that if there is an
election in 2008, anything will be different? Tell me again,
what's the definition of insanity?
At this moment another Naomi
comes to mind-Naomi Klein whose book
Shock
Doctrine I shall soon review on this site. In that work
Klein documents one of the key strategies of fascist empires:
shocking their citizens into submission in a variety of ways
from widespread societal terrorism to the administering of
electroshock therapy to individuals. What we witnessed at the
University of Florida yesterday, and what we are likely to see
more frequently in America, are deliberate shock tactics applied
by law enforcement to citizens for the purpose of achieving
massive social control.
Some of my students who are
criminal justice majors tell me that the latest strategies now
being taught to police officers are "shock doctrine" techniques
which terrorize and intimidate civilians in order to control
them. Law enforcement officers are no longer encouraged to "keep
a cool head" but to "follow their own instincts" (which usually
means their own internal, adrenaline-charged state of terror)
and react with full force because it's easier to apologize (or
encounter a lawsuit) than to ask permission or risk being
killed. Terrified people should not be wearing a badge and
carrying a gun, and when they are, a fully terrorized society is
guaranteed.
In spite of my disagreements
with Naomi Wolf's suggested solutions, I cannot recommend
The End Of America enthusiastically enough. It is now a
permanent part of my U.S. history curriculum and is an ideal
tool not only for educators, but for parents who want to teach
their children where all those civil liberties we used to have
actually came from as well as how and why they are disappearing
in the present moment.
Carolyn is an adjunct professor
of history, a former psychotherapist, an author, and a student
of mythology and ritual. Visit Carolyn's website
http://carolynbaker.net/
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