– 2007-12-04 19:56:17
• Watch the YouTube video, “Talk by Naomi Wolf – The End of America” Her message is getting out all over the place. It is approximately 47 minutes.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/naomi-wolf-on-colber.html
Naomi Wolf on Colbert Report: 10 steps to fascism
Naomi Wolf was on The Colbert Report last night talking about her book, The End of America, A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which outlines ten steps that “fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders [employ to] seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies.”
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law
http://www.infowars.com/articles/bush/fascist_coup_owes_to_bush_nazi_grandfather_wolf.htm
Naomi Wolf: America’s Fascist Coup
Owes to Bush’s Nazi Grandfather
Paul Joseph Watson / Prison Planet
(November 29, 2007) — Author Naomi Wolf, who made headlines earlier this year after she identified the ten steps to fascism that were being followed to a tee by the Bush administration, spoke publicly for the first time yesterday about the origins of what we see unfolding today, Prescott Bush’s attempt to launch a Nazi coup in 1930’s America.
Speaking on the Alex Jones Show, Wolf said that she was first alerted to begin researching America’s slide into fascism when her friend, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, warned her that the same events that laid the foundations for the rise of the Third Reich in early 1930’s Germany, when it was still a Parliamentary democracy, were being mirrored in modern-day America.
“A small group of people began very systematically to use the law and dismantle the Constitution and put pressure on citizens to subvert the law – and that opened the door for everything that followed,” said Wolf.
“When I started reading, not only are tactics and strategy being reproduced exactly right now by the Bush administration – but actual sound bytes and language and images and scenarios are being reproduced,” she added.
Wolf’s essay, Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps, has received plaudits for how it succinctly describes the ways in which dictatorships the world over throughout the 20th century have evolved by following the exact same blueprint for tyranny that we see unfolding in America today.
“Everybody that wants to close down a Democracy does the exact same ten things, the same classic steps and unfortunately we’re starting to see these ten steps being put in place in the United States,” said Wolf.
For the first time publicly, Wolf traced the origins of contemporary developments back to President Bush’s Nazi grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his plan to launch a fascist coup in the 1930’s.
“There was a scheme in the 30’s and Prescott Bush was one of the leaders of this scheme, an industrialist who admired fascism and thought that was a good idea – to have a coup in the United States along the lines of the coup they saw taking place in Italy and Germany,” said Wolf, referring to the testimony of Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, who was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush – the current President’s grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush
A recent BBC radio report confirmed that there was an attempted coup led by Prescott Bush.
“Smedley Butler had been involved with violent regime change throughout his career, but he was approached by these conspirators, including Prescott Bush, and he outed them and he testified to Congress that they were planning a coup in the United States – it’s in the Congressional record,” said Wolf, adding that the coup was being bankrolled by German industrialist and one of Hitler’s chief financiers Fritz Thyssen.
“What is amazing to me and resonant to me is that when the Nuremberg trials were finally put in place, these Nazi industrialists, some of whom had colluded with Americans including IBM, were about to be brought to trial and sent to prison – there was a moment at which they were going to look into turning the spotlight on their American partners,” said Wolf.
The author added that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were consciously designed to protect current President Bush and his co-conspirators from being indicted for war crimes, harking back to Prescott Bush’s history.
“The family history is that you can make so much money uniting corporate interests with a fascist state that violently represses people, that’s why when I saw the recycling of so much Nazi language, Nazi tactics, Nazi strategies, Nazi imagery in the Bush White House and then finally belatedly people brought to me this history of Prescott Bush’s attempted coup and Smedley Butler’s revelations – it gives me absolute chills,” said Wolf.
The fact that Bush’s grandfather was a Nazi cannot be presented alone as proof that President Bush is carrying on the legacy, but his policies and rhetoric, which in her essay Wolf clearly documents are borrowed from the Nazi playbook, and in particular the recent move to smear administration critics as potential terrorists, are evidence that George W. Bush is the figurehead for a modern-day fascist coup in America led by the Neo-Cons.
Wolf concluded that history shows the only safe course for preserving freedom in such a climate is to prosecute and jail the protagonists of the coup as early as possible, a process many would argue should have been enacted several years ago.
Click here to listen to the MP3 interview with Naomi Wolf.
Naomi Wolf is getting a lot of attention after writing her book “The End of America”, giving many interviews on talk shows like Alex Jones, Randi Rhodes, NPR, Fox News, etc. I have not read her book, but I listened to the YouTube video below in which she gave a talk at the University of Washington, which I encourage everyone to listen to.
The list above is a very simplistic list. I tried to write down the 10 steps she came up with based on her the words in her talk and found it quite difficult. After step 5, she doesn’t delineate them very well. I elaborated on the steps a little more then she did and wrote them down below. I really don’t think her information is anything new that has not already been written about.
There was The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism I sent out in spring of 2003 which differ from her steps somewhat. But she is doing a good job of bringing current situation to more public awareness and connecting the tactics of G.W. and the neocons’ with Prescott Bush and the stuff that went on in the 1930’s, which is a good thing. Personally, I think she is missing a few steps:
1) I think mass propaganda should one of her steps, which is seen as a major tool all though out history;
2) Restriction of travel of people with some kind of national identification; the Bush administration is working on this;
3) Confiscation of firearms. I know you could own a gun in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, but you still usually see this as one of the steps. Stalin traded food for firearms. We saw examples of this in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina;
4) Strong nationalism, if you are specifically referring to fascism;
5) Rampant cronyism and corruption;
6) Corporate power is protected (i.e. protecting the telecommunication companies in the illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens);
7) Disdain for the recognition of human rights, (she alludes to this, but doesn’t just come out and state it as one of the steps;
8) Fraudulent elections;
9) Obsession with national security. Naomi has created a grass roots organization called American Freedom Campaign (5 million members so far). She said she tried to get the presidential candidates to sign a statement that they would defend and restore the constitution. She said Obama and Hillary finally signed it reluctantly. Anyone who believes Hillary will defend and restore the constitution has to be brain dead. According to Tara (Jennifer Lee Reports – faction 3 sources), the real Hillary is in an overseas prison without a passport and the one we see now is a clone.
Naomi said of all the republican candidates currently running for President, only Congressman Ron Paul has signed the agreement. I believe a more appropriate title for Naomi’s book and this YouTube video would be:
“A Blueprint For Tyranny” -B
Talk by Naomi Wolf – The End of America
Talk by Naomi Wolf author of “The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot” given October 11, 2007 at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. (47 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
The blueprint a despot or dictator uses to crush democracy and close an open society (taken from her talk)
• 1) Invoke a terrifying internal and external threat. (Create an enemy and play upon peoples’ fear.)
• 2) Create a secret prison system in which torture takes place that is outside the rule of law. Military tribunals are usually also established to eliminate due process. Once abuse and torture is legalized or accepted against a ‘so called enemy’, it will inevitably be enacted on the countries own citizens.
• 3) Create a name (category) for all dissenters of the official government line (i.e. enemy combatants) and a paramilitary force (i.e. TSA, blackwater, etc.) to intimidate citizens and round up dissenters.
• 4) Create a surveillance apparatus on local citizens and place ‘problem people’ on a list. (no fly list, watch list, etc.) People on the list will loose privileges, job opportunities, welfare benefits, etc.
• 5) Arbitrarily detain citizens
• 6) Infiltrate non-terrorist citizens’ groups (anti-war groups, environmental groups, anti-tax groups, patriot groups, etc.) Demonize these groups and make examples of these groups or individuals in these groups. Expand your definitions of the enemy to include more groups.
• 7) Target key individuals in the media, press, academia and performing arts. (Derail their careers. Make them crash and burn. i.e. Dixi Chics, Dan Rather, Phil Donahue, Bill Maher)
• 8) Restrict the press, media and Internet
• 9) Recast government criticizers as traitors, unpatriotic, etc.
• 10) Subvert the rule of law and/or declare martial law.
The more people wake up, the more they crack down on the people.
http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org/ (AFC has 5 million members, shooting for 20 million) Join to help stop tyranny. -B
About American Freedom Campaign
The Constitution protects American Freedom. With checks and balances, and basic legal rights, it has prevented tyranny and safeguarded our liberty. Yet today, under the pretense of the “war on terror,” the White House is dismantling the Constitution, concentrating power in the President and undermining the rule of law. THIS IS UN-AMERICAN. The American Freedom Campaign is dedicated to confronting and correcting these abuses of our America.
The mission of the American Freedom Campaign (AFC) is threefold. Our initial goal is to educate American citizens about the current Constitutional crisis in this country, about their individual rights, and about our Founders’ vision. As we educate, our secondary goal is to motivate and inspire individuals in order to build a grassroots citizens’ democracy movement. Finally, with the strength of this grassroots movement at our side, the American Freedom Campaign – through its advocacy arm, the American Freedom Campaign Action Fund – will push for the enactment of statutes that would end the infringement of fundamental rights by the executive and restore the Constitution’s hallowed system of checks and balances.
The American Freedom Campaign Agenda will work to restore the roles of Congress and the federal judiciary to protect against injustice and prevent abuses of executive power.
Americans’ support for restoring checks and balances and protections against the abuse of power transcends partisanship. In advancing the American Freedom Campaign Agenda, we are neither Conservative nor Liberal; neither Republican nor Democrat. We are above all Americans who cherish the Constitution. Thus, we call on Americans across the political spectrum to join us. The enactment of the American Freedom Campaign Agenda would mark one of America’s finest Constitutional hours and restore the core rights of our citizens while making the nation safer.
Naomi Wolf Likens Bush to Hitler
Day to Day, November 19, 2007 · In her new book, The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, social critic Naomi Wolf argues that many of the Bush administration’s actions have paralleled those of notorious dictators. Alex Cohen speaks with Wolf as well as Josef Joffe, a Hoover Institution scholar, who disagrees with her premise.
