Fascists? Look who's talking

[go west young man]

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

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

[Double T]

1. It takes ONE to know ONE.........

wonder if anyone in the WH has looked in the mirror in the last six years????

[stepnw1f]

2. Yup, Yup (nt)

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. If you really believed that, you wouldn't be posting here

Come to think of it, if it were true, you wouldn't be posting here.

Iran, on the other hand, does censor the Internet.

[scarletwoman]

5. So, does your post mean you agree with the bush cabal that we who

question the whole "War on Terror" paradigm are "appeasers"?

Does your post mean that you believe that dropping bombs on huge swaths of the population of Middle Eastern countries is the correct means of effecting positive change?

sw

[Fredda Weinberg]

6. Ah, flame-bait ... from an anonymous source, no less

My father survived Hitler, so I grew up sensitized to the easy path toward fascism ... after all, he reminded us, Germans were the most civilized people of the age. Their educational system provided us with some of the greatest philosphers, scientists and artists of all time. And yet, they could be led into disaster repeatedly.

Yes, it could happen here, but my point is that it hasn't. If you want to look for fascist tendencies, look toward authoritarian regimes that suppress dissent with violence or censor public sources of information.

Why one has to choose between on extreme viewpoint or the other is beyond me ... I understand the political motivations, but reject the unfounded conclusion.

[scarletwoman]

7. Does my name matter? I've posted as "scarletwoman" on DU since 2001

I don't post as frequently as I used to, but I've always used the same name. I've never cared what name any DUer uses, one gets to "know" a person by what they write, not by what name they use. Your name is no more "real" than any other name here, we're all basically anonymous unless we personally know each other. (and I do personally know a few DUers in my home state -- as in having met them in the offline world)

I wasn't flame-baiting, I was merely taken aback by what you wrote. Obviously the U.S. hasn't reached the state of full-blown fascism (yet), but there are multitudinous signs of fascist tendencies being incubated and nourished here -- and it's only sensible to "resist the beginnings and consider the end", as Milton Mayer, the author of They Thought They Were Free wrote. http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free_nn4.html

Iran, it seems to me, is basically a modified theocracy. It is not entirely totalitarian -- freedoms are limited to be sure, but it is a far less restrictive theocracy than the Wahabist regime of Saudi Arabia. And the Iranians do retain a memory of their earlier democratic impulse -- an impulse short-circuited by the CIA sponsored coup of 1953 that deposed their democraticly elected leader Mosaddeq, because he wanted to nationalize Iran's oil resources.

What I find particularily disturbing is the tendency, all too easily fallen into it seems, of portraying all issues regarding the Islamic world in stark black and white. Iranians are educated and intelligent, absent outside interference they are quite capable of evolving their social and political institutions quite well on their own. Labeling them as "fascists" is counter-productive -- they are a people with a millennias-old civilization who are forging their own path to finding their place in the 21st Century.

This is not a matter of either/or -- Western "civilization" vs. Islamic values -- unless one buys into the distorted neocon worldview. I wish the best for the Iranian people, and I have faith that they are up to the challenge of evolving their national institutions and national identity to an eventual state of greater individual freedom and cultural progressiveness. The biggest impediment to this development is the agressive militarism of the U.S.

sw

p.s. -- my real name is Rebecca Donicht (née: Nelson) and I live in Hinckley, Minnesota. I work in the accounting department of the local Indian casino. I am half Norwegian from my father's side (2nd generation immigrant family), and Irish, French and German from my mother's side. I am 56 years old and grew up lower middle class in a family of liberal union-member blue-collar Democrats. Hope that helps to make me less "anonymous".

[Fredda Weinberg]

8. You think my name is an alias?

Go do a search on my real name and add Florida ... you'll see why your question raised a false alternative. You can object to calling the US a fascist state and still not be enthralled by the questionably legitimate regime.

I'm glad we agree that the US not yet a "full-blown" fascist state, but I suggest that your resistance will be more effective if you begin a dialogue with less hostility.

[scarletwoman]

9. I don't suggest that at all. I'm saying that it doesn't matter to me.

I don't care *who* you are, I only respond to what you write. You could be the Pope or the Queen of England for all I care. I would still address your arguments in the same manner -- by their merits as I see them. As I expect my own arguments to be addressed.

sw

[winston61]

4. I guess no one in the west wing owns a dictionary,

if they looked up the meaning of the word they might see who it really applies to.