Fascists? Look who's talking (Jim Lobe)

[laststeamtrain]

Fascists? Look who's talking
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The aggressive new campaign by the administration of President George W Bush to depict US foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Network and the Weekly Standard, as well as the Washington Times, which is controlled by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and the neo-conservative New York Sun, have consistently and with increasing frequency framed the challenges faced by Washington in the region in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, according to a search of the Nexis database.

All of those outlets, as well as two other right-wing US magazines - the National Review and The American Spectator - far outpaced their commercial rivals in the frequency of their use of keywords and names such as "appeasement", "fascism" and "Hitler", particularly with respect to Iran and its controversial president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

For example, Nexis cited 56 uses of "Islamofascist" or "Islamofascism" in separate programs or segments aired by Fox News, compared with 24 by CNN, over the past year. Even more striking, the same terms were used in 115 different articles or columns in the Washington Times, compared with only eight in the Washington Post over the same period, according to a breakdown by Nexis.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI02Ak04.html

[orpupilofnature57]

1. What does he think the " Good Old Boy " network, Poppies Daddy

help build is ? That would make him your grandfather Shrub.

[captcorajus]

2. Theocrats, not fascists

Theocratic extremist would be more appropriate a term. Looking at the 14 points of fascism, the Islamic fundamentalist miss many of the key points such as rampant corporatizm and national security issues.

When look at it objectively, there is another power that more closely fits the bill.

Hmmm, who could it be?

[Vincardog]

3. Bingo Cap, What they do is accuse you of their crimes

[rodeodance]

4. "fascist" or "fascism" seach results:

.....A search on Nexis for articles and columns that included "Iran" and "fascist" or "fascism" found that the Sun and the Times topped the newspaper list by a substantial margin, as did the Review, the Spectator, and the Standard among the magazines and journals. Nearly one-third of all such references over the past year were published in August, according to the survey.

Nexis, which also surveys the Canadian press, found that newspapers owned by CanWest Global Communications, a group that owns the country's Global Television Network as well as the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette and several other regional newspapers, were also among the most consistent propagators of the "fascism" paradigm and ranked far ahead of other Canadian outlets in the frequency with which they used keywords such as "appeasement" and "fascist" in connection with Iraq and Iran.

The CanWest Global group is run by members of the Asper family whose foreign-policy views have been linked to prominent hardline neo-conservatives in the US and the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.

[brg5001]

5. Exactly, laststeamtrain. Pot calling kettle black.

Fascist is as fascist does! I've never seen so much demagoguery or so many straw men. Since the wingnuts brought the up the f-word (fascist, that is), I am annoyed that none of our Senators have been willing to flat-out say that the REAL fasicsts to be feared are all working for Bushco, since their methods are inciting religious extremism on all sides. When Bushco was selected, we were told that the "adults" were in charge now. Instead, we get name-calling, prevarication, harrassment and demonization on a scale not seen since the McCarthy era.

Has anyone noticed that the deification of Chucklenuts and his team of double-talking demagogues has been accompanied by resurrecting the traditional fascist targets -- artists, writers, racial and gender minorities, dissidents -- really, anyone who dares to raise his/her voice against their policies? Meanwhile, we get castigated for HATING BUSH. That's all you hear. Well, it's time to turn the tables on these monsters and call them exactly what they are: BUSH WORSHIPPERS. The unification of corporate and military power with a personality cult has resulted in a team of power-mad fascists running THIS government.

PS: I thought that the Bible said that soft, kind words can turn away wrath. OOOPPS! Silly me. That could possibly result in peace, which would kick the legs out from under the Fear Regime. I also thought that our government can't do anything right, but it seems that under the spell of Chucklenuts, government can't do anything wrong. Conservatives claim loyalty to a consistent ideology, but really, the ideology is whatever Chucklenuts decides it is. How fascist of them!

[lapfog_1]

6. Neocons are, by and large, Likud supporting American Jews

so the language being used is to evoke sympathy for the war by drawing a comparison between Islamofascists and
Nazi Germans of WWII era.

Of course, in the modern dumbed down America, very few of the every day folks even know what the term Fascist means,
only that it is "evil" (like a commie only different somehow).

[Justitia]

7. I can't believe anyone who knows the definition of fascism falls for this.

It is so obviously NOT fascism, but it is coming straight from the mouths of our current day fascist poseurs.

I know, I know, I give too much credit to their receptive listeners, expecting them to actually know the definition of the word "fascism", but come on already! This crapola is not even close!

It is so desperate to the point of absurd laughter, but it's not funny at all.

Trying to win the propaganda war on the backs of 11 million Holocaust victims - disgusting.

[Goel]

8. Another Fact Sheet

I thought some might enjoy this, after the Outrageous 'Fact Sheet' released by the neoconservatives in the White House yesterday:

Another Fact Sheet: Winning the Struggle Between Freedom and Terror in the Middle East

Cheers,

G.