Naomi Wolf and the emerging fascist state

The Broken Donkeys

America is becoming a “totalitarian state before our eyes” under President Biden‘s leadership, feminist author and former Democratic adviser Naomi Wolf told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Monday.

Wolf, who served as an adviser on Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996, told host Tucker Carlson that in her view, the United States is swiftly “moving into a coup situation, a police state” as a result of Biden’s ongoing coronavirus-related economic shutdowns. Wolf added that she believes the orders are being improperly extended under the “guise of a real medical pandemic.”

“That is not a partisan thing,” Wolf told Carlson. “That transcends everything that you and I might disagree or agree on. That should bring together left and right to protect our Constitution.”

Wolf has ramped up her warnings against extended lockdowns on Twitter in recent months. In November, the author wrote on Twitter that Biden’s openness to reinstating additional shutdowns made her question her decision to vote for him.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/naomi-wolf-tucker-clinton-adviser-biden-lockdowns

Comment: I watched this last night. A very impressive person she is. She must be paying an awful price for speaking out.

In ruminating over the rise of the approaching US absolutist police state, I have come to the conclusion that construction of this state is much more like the unholy emergence of Nazi Germany than it is like the creation of the Marxist Leninist monstrosity in what had been the Russian Empire.

In Russia the goal was to sweep all, all, away to build anew socialism in one country as a platform for revolutionary change for all mankind. The extreme Left wokies in the US probably hope for that.

Nevertheless, what happened in Germany and perhaps in Italy is more like reality here in the US where what we are seeing is the merger of power blocks in government and capital centers like Wall Street and Silicon Valley. This is true fascism in the making.

Naomi Wolf is right to fear Biden/Harris et al. There will be no place for her in their world. pl

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72 Responses to Naomi Wolf and the emerging fascist state

  1. John Minnerath says:

    I’ve long felt what’s happening in the US now is much like the development and eventual take over of Germany by the NAZI government.
    There was an Italian connection, Hitler and his cronies greatly admired Mussolini and his Fascist Party and his methods used to gain power.
    And we can’t forget Francisco Franco in Spain.

  2. Eric Newhill says:

    Right now the ANTIFA/Anarchist/Marxist/BLM movement is playing a game of chicken with these fascists. As soon as one side bails out of the game, they’ll all crash and burn. Then the Deplorables will rise to full prominence.

  3. Roger Spenser says:

    I am having similar thoughts. Unless the trends we are watching are deflected it will have terrible consequence

  4. Rick Merlotti says:

    I agree totally with your estimation. In my opinion the Republicans are making a crucial error, and have been for quite some time in characterizing the Dems as socialists. National socialists, perhaps is the more accurate description. Fascism with a democratic face quite literally. I told my wife on the morning after the election that the Dems had stolen the election and that the fascists had won. She thought I was nuts. I wish I were.

    • exiled off mainstreet says:

      That is a good description of what happened. Also, the election fraud was obvious and wide-ranging. As Col. Lang’s article and Naomi Wolf indicate, it is an updated 21st century version of fascism. The national element, though, is missing, since the usage of “political correctness” and “hate speech” indicates contempt for the existing ethnic majority. What they are trying is Naziism but with the pariah caste making up the majority of the population.

      • Pat Lang says:

        Rick Marlotti

        I did not say that the forces that created Nazi Germany are mirrored today. What I argued is that a combination of a strong political movement like the globalist coalition of political forces now running America operating with the support of the major moneyed interests leads to a police state with no effective brakes applied to the power of that combination.

  5. Fred says:

    There will be no place for most of us in that world. The lefties here will be surprised they don’t have a place in it either.

  6. Walrus says:

    Col. Lang,

    I am reminded of the opening paragraphs of Sebastian Hafners “Defying Hitler”. They foreshadow exactly what is coming:

    ” This is the story of a duel.

    It is a duel between two very unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful, formidable, and ruthless state and an insignificant, unknown private individual. The duel does not take place in what is commonly known as the sphere of politics; the individual is by no means a politician, still less a conspirator or an enemy of the state. Throughout, he finds himself very much on the defensive. He only wishes to preserve what he considers his integrity, his private life, and his personal honor. These are under constant attack by the government of the country he lives in, and by the most brutal, but often also clumsy, means.

    With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself available for activities he despises, and deny his past and his individuality. For all this, he must constantly express extreme enthusiasm and gratitude.

    The individual is opposed to all of that, but he is ill prepared for the onslaught. He was not born a hero, still less a martyr. He is just an ordinary man with many weaknesses, having grown up in vulnerable rimes. He is nevertheless stubbornly antagonistic. So he enters into the duet—without enthusiasm, shrugging his shoulders, but with a quiet determination not to yield. He is, of course, much weaker than his opponent, but rather more agile. You will see him duck and weave, dodge his foe and dart back, evading crushing blows by a whisker. You will have to admit that, for someone who is neither a hero nor a martyr, he manages to put up a good fight. Finally, however, you will see him compelled to abandon the struggle or, if you will, transfer it to another plane. “

    • English Outsider says:

      Haffner’s duel didn’t start off as confrontational as all that. As perhaps we’re finding today, I certainly, we’re many of us slow, when faced with wrong turnings, to see where those turnings are taking us.

      So he recounts his time when a young man in what was really a Nazi indoctrination camp as one where the instructors jollied him along rather than forced him. His duel proper couldn’t really start until he’d left Germany. Fair enough. Only martyrs duel at close range in those circumstances.

      A most agreeable and informative writer but I found myself turning away from him, Haffner. “Nie Wieder” is an incontestable theme, but to base a life’s work on it? And Nie Wieder in a country that was to have more than a hand is setting off the Yugoslavian tragedy is, by any reckoning, something of a fake. Certainly is now, after the Ukrainian tragedy. Machtpolitik abroad and sackcloth and ashes at home does not ring true. In lamenting the old faults Haffner seems to have been blind to their repetition in more modern times.

  7. Deap says:

    Add Ben Carson’s warning yesterday, the “swamp” is much deeper and wider than he ever expected to find. To wit: government bureaucrats who are interested only in themselves, and not the good of the country. One needs to look a lot farther than just “Wall Street and Silicon Valley” if one is to attack the malaise currently gripping our country.

    Put the cabal all together since they all work together, along with MSM for some strange reason. Do they even understand they are a very unholy alliance? What makes corporations and Silicon Valley carry out the goals of the deep state swamp. What is in it for them, when the price is losing our country and becoming vassals of the deep state:. the Merrick Garlands amongst us, who have over-reached their Peter Principle pinnacles.

  8. Bakshish says:

    I’ve been arguing this point ever since Obama came to power. Fascism which is the synthesis of Socialism and Nationalism, an idea that was conceived in France in the beginning of the 20th century, is where we’re headed.
    At this point all I can do is ask whether the following phrase still applies:
    “The land of the free and the home of the brave”

    • Deap says:

      Something came to me listening to the black litany against what they see as “systemic white supremacy”.

      In fact what they are seeking is “freedom”, which burns inside them. How they become free from their own mental enslavement, still seeing themselves as victims of white supremacy, remains to be acted out. But this time “freedom” is an inside game; not an outside one.

      Freedom is alive and well. But it takes more subtle and obtuse forms today. We want to be free from black mental enslavement too. I hope all blacks, and self-hating white people, get to to know the vibrant cadre of black conservatives who do know and cherish freedom too.

  9. Deap says:

    I too support the rise of the fascist state analogy. Only problem is the US rescued Europe from fascism’s hideous grip. Who will rise up and now rescue us? Obviously, we have to do this heavy lifting ourselves.

    Will we as the current United States geographically shatter into three new autonomous interest zones – Eastern US, Central US and Western US? Or will renewed states rights push out overly concentrated federalism. The Founders would approve of the later and had no intention of us ever devolving into our current state of federal extremis.

    Ironically, we ourselves became a top heavy federal state after rescuing the rest of the world from WWII fascism. Today I read very few under 40 even know anything about Iwo Jima. What sustainable vision of America do young people hold? Let alone sustain a vision worth fighting for. The economics of visionary “climate change” just don’t cut it for me.

    The one unifying vision I sense younger people share is spending unlimited quantities someone else’s money, for pyrrhic schemes that reasons still unknown have become existential for them.

  10. scott s. says:

    As I understand it, fascism was proposed as an alternative to international socialism that placed the “state” at the center of society. I’m not sure how the modern progressive movement rationalizes the state with globalism.

    • Seamus Padraig says:

      Until there’s a full-blown global state ready to go, the globalists will continue to use their control of the various national states (and proto-global states, such as the EU and the UN) to carry out their will.

      But don’t worry: they’re progressing rapidly. A ‘United States of Earth’ is coming soon …

  11. rkka says:

    I concur.

    Mussolini’s words here are important in this context:

    “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

    We have been on this road for a very long time, on a bipartisan basis, and one of the big indicators has been the privatization or deregulation of formerly public or regulated utilities.

    For those who consider the Nazis to have been some kind of socialists, I’ll merely note was that one of Adolf’s big efforts was the privatization of public assets like city transportation systems.

    https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.20.3.187

    “In the late 1930s and the early 1940s, a number of academic works were devoted to the analysis of economic policy in Germany under the rule of the National Socialist Party. One major work was Maxine Yaple Sweezy’s (1941) The Structure of the Nazi Economy. Sweezy stated that industrialists supported Hitler’s accession to power and his economic policies: “In return for business assistance, the Nazis hastened to give evidence of their good will by restoring to private capitalism a number of monopolies held or controlled by the state” (p. 27). This policy implied a large-scale program by which “the government transferred ownership to private hands” (p. 28). One of the main objectives for this policy was to stimulate the propensity to save, since a war economy required low levels of private consumption. High levels of savings were thought to depend on inequality of income, which would be increased by inequality of wealth. This, according to Sweezy (p. 28), “was thus secured by ‘reprivatization’….The practical significance of the transference of government enterprises into private hands was thus that the capitalist class continued to serve as a vessel for the accumulation of income. Profit-making and the return of property to private hands, moreover, have assisted the consolidation of Nazi party power.”

  12. BillWade says:

    When and where will be the “State of the Union Address”? It was supposed to be tonight but now it’s “to be determined”. Was there more symbolism than we thought when Pelosi tore up last year’s people’s copy?

    “By 2030 you will own nothing and you will be happy”, Klaus Schwab “The Great Reset”

    Political refugees from oppressive state regimes keep flowing into Florida, how many more can we absorb?

  13. Barbara Ann says:

    A brave woman. Tucker’s statement at the end was right on point; “I’m starting to think that we’re being divided as a country precisely so we don’t have conversations like this”.

    My abiding impression of the lessons of 1930’s Germany is the degree to which the Nazis – and Hitler in particular were underestimated. Engagement in politics for Hitler and his clique was solely a means to and end; the destruction of the German democratic state and the assumption of absolute power. His political adversaries and the wider populace were either ignorant or willfully blind to this. They played by one set of rules and he by another – the sheer ruthlessness Sebastian Hafner refers to in Walrus’ quote. So many players; including von Papen, Schleicher and of course Röhm himself, did not appreciate the utter single mindedness of the Nazi inner circle until it was too late.

    The conservative trait of just wanting to left alone is a structural disadvantage in fighting zealots. Normalcy bias is another potentially fatal flaw. I am dismayed at the same people I see bemoaning a stolen election and decrying a fatally compromised democracy just a few months ago, now talking of whether Trump will stand in 2024 and of how the midterms will go. Is this not a definition of madness – to repeat the same actions but expect a different outcome?

    It does not currently look to me as though the next transfer of power in the US can be via the ballot box. That is not the same thing a saying there will be no more elections, but why would they be more than another cheated charade? Whoever is now calling the shots behind the figureheads of Biden and Harris sure as hell ain’t gonna allow another populist candidate to win an election. That is a major part of Trump’s legacy; forcing the mask off the ruthless interests who have systematically subverted the institutions of government and the state – as did the Nazis.

    The wildly dystopian inauguration was a vivid demonstration of what a 21st century police state looks like. All we need do is fight our comfortable notions of normality and believe our own eyes. These new fascists intend to “build back better” and we’d better be happy with owning nothing. The Davos-backed Democrats support a technocratic oligarchy in which a thousand Gates and Fauci’s will ultimately replace political decision-making, for of course, the Greater Good. If you are not on the Progress bus you will find yourself under it faster than you can say “climate change denier”.

    Colonel, do you think the First US Republic is still salvageable or must we look forward to how the second will come into being?

    • Seamus Padraig says:

      Normalcy bias is another potentially fatal flaw. I am dismayed at the same people I see bemoaning a stolen election and decrying a fatally compromised democracy just a few months ago, now talking of whether Trump will stand in 2024 and of how the midterms will go.

      Yup. If they can steal one election right under our noses like that, they can steal any election.

      We need a plan B … and fast.

  14. morongobill says:

    Hopefully Tulsi will weigh in on this real
    danger to our constitutional republic. Tucker’s show would be a good venue.

  15. Artemesia says:

    Disagree with the comparisons; I think they should be reversed: What is taking place in USA at present is Bolshevik; what took place in Germany, at least 1933 – 1939, was nationalistic — “Make Germany Great Again” — intended for the betterment of a people. It was successful.

    btw: Israel is now part of CentCom.

    • Pat Lang says:

      Artemesia

      You ignore the fact that the facts on the ground in Germany were an alliance of very common people among the founders of NSDAP and people like the Krupps who made all possible. I am saddened to know that you cling to the ideals of the left.

    • Deap says:

      Don’t see the rise of Hitler as “Make Germany Great Again” as a betterment policy, but rather make Europe and especially the Jews pay for the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which Germans brought on themselves. Jingoistic, but not necessarily nationalistic – at least not nationalism as a positive quality.

      I would certainly hate to see Trump’s MAGA viewed through such a jingoistic lens. Obama’s self-serving “apology tour” worldwide grovel and giveaway was a self-inflicted wound to this country; not reparations forces on us from outside.

      Did Obama feel his hand was forced due to GW Bush’s unwise war in Iraq? I can buy that. However, in comparison, Trump’s MAGA was remarkably peaceful, contained and productive.

  16. English Outsider says:

    This must be as bitter at the top as it’s ever been in a post-war Western country. Every day one reads of further revenge against Trump being sought, It has now become established meme that he sought to lead a coup at the end of his Presidency. He’s Enemy of the State Number One and Emmanuel Goldstein all wrapped up in one.

    Odd thing is that Trump bobs along seemingly unimpressed by it all. Talks quite cheerfully of maybe standing again, seems to have more of the voters still behind him – the contrast between that and the flat out hysteria now the norm in Washington is quite striking.

    And in the background Covid. A race between mass vaccination and the new variants particularly, I think, the South African variant.

    There was an error made recently. They tested the Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines for efficacy after only the first dose. Came out at just over 50%. So they stuck with the policy of giving the second jab soon after the first. They’re doing that in continental Europe as well.

    Then they discovered the error. There is almost no protection in the two weeks after the jab. For those two weeks you can catch Covid as easily as if you’d never been vaccinated. Strip those two weeks from the calculations though and the efficacy of the first jab goes up to over 90%. Not as high as the near 95% protection you get after both jabs, but good.

    If only the first jab is given you can vaccinate twice as many people. Since the elderly and vulnerable are among the first to get the jab – and since they’re the ones with the highest chance of being hospitalised or dying – that means many thousand of lives can be saved by postponing the second jab for three months.

    That’s what’s being done in the UK. It was called a “gamble” at first. Perhaps it was. But it’s paid off and will lead to the main new variant here, B117, killing far fewer than it otherwise would have.

    The US Covid figures are going down nicely. But that downward slope to the graph could conceal the early stages of one the the new variants getting a foothold. If one of the new variants does get a foothold then we’ll be seeing that graph shooting back up as it did over here and in Ireland and Portugal. It seems the new variants are much easier to catch than the old.

    That race of mass vaccination against the new variants acquires added urgency when one considers the reluctance in the States to endure lockdown measures. Covid has become intensely political in the States mainly because the Democrats made use of it to loosen up the elections rules. So resisting lockdown not only becomes, as for many in England and Germany, resisting the overbearing State. It has that overtone added as well. Like it or not lockdown isn’t going to work as well in the States as it did in Ireland and therefore if the new variants do get a hold their spread will be worse.

    Given that added urgency in the race, the US authorities should now change policy and focus on giving as many as they can that first vaccination, instead of giving only half both. If they do that the saving of lives could well be considerable.

  17. Valissa says:

    OK then, we know what Nationalism + Socialism equals. But the Dems are globalists. And Trump merely was trying to balance the economic problems of globalism by pushing a pro-America platform. This Trumpian version of nationalism not that much like the older forms. Nor do we really have socialism, which is more of a political fashion statement about wanting the gov’t to make life easier than it is about social ownership of the means of production. As always the working class is not interested in Marx’s fantasies, which “forces” the rich to become socialists, and they do own the means of production. The main goal of the so-called socialists of today is equity, a key concept of the CRT religion (Critical Race Theory).

    “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable.” — George Orwell

    What is fascism? by George Orwell (1944) https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
    “For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. ”

    I agree with with Orwell that arguing about ‘who’s the fascist’ is a waste of time. I think the real question is… what does globalism + corporatism + faux-socialism/CRT equal? Neo-feudalism anyone?

    • Pat Lang says:

      Valissa – “we know what Nationalism + Socialism equals” If you mean that those things brought into being Nazi rule in Germany, I do not agree. I do not think that Nazi Germany was really a socialist enterprise no matter what the name of the party was. My point was and is that real fascism results from a combination of extreme nationalism in a massive alliance with the financial and industrial world.

      • Escarlata says:

        “real fascism results from a combination of extreme nationalism in a massive alliance with the financial and industrial world”.

        Agree, I would add…” in a time of acute economic crisis when oligarchs´rate of profit is at risk”…

    • Barbara Ann says:

      Valissa

      Neo-feudalism is exactly what Davos is advertising and they are quite open about it. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall of the agency that got the marketing gig:

      “OK team, so this is a tough one. We need to come up with a strap line for Klaus to sell his Great Reset. Billionaire technocrats will own everything and we get to rent anything we need from them at the prices they set. Who wants to go first? Anyone..”. Might explain how they settled on “You will own nothing and you will be happy”.

      The fact that the whole thing hasn’t seen satirized to death tells you a lot about the sorry state of contemporary comedy writing – a very bad indicator for our civilization. Bob Newhart doing a phone call with Klaus Schwab along the lines of his unforgettable Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco call would have been perfect. Monty Python would similarly have eviscerated the nutty scheme in a single sketch.

  18. Escarlata says:

    Still, we owe the “Marxist-Leninist monstrosity”, the 8 hour labor day, sick leave, holidays leave, public education and health services of a certain quality, wide access to culture and sports for the proletarains, and above all, a feeling of security and certainty we can not find any more anywhere in the Western society….

    The current youth will not only live far worse than their parents, but will live worse even than their grandparents, for first time in history…

    París in the 60s, and nowadays´students´ hunger lines..

    https://twitter.com/ciudadfutura/status/1364499667510300672

    All in all, yeah, nothing is perfect, see effects of Chinese communist indoctrination stretched to the limit…Animalist NGOs should strongly protests

    https://twitter.com/ciudadfutura/status/1364308448771530762

    Also, since we talk about political systems, as I fear nobody has suggested it yet, I think it is being time already someone makes a recount of the victims of capitalism, especially after this pandemic + plandemic + infodemic + pharmafia operation…as have been thoroughly racounted communism victims…

    • Pat Lang says:

      Escarlata

      We have a lot of those benefits in the US because of the collective action of non-Marxist labor unions.

      • Escarlata says:

        Really?
        And how is that you lost them all? And when?

        • Pat Lang says:

          Escarlata

          What is it that you think we lost?

          • Escarlata says:

            As I have understood, average worker in the US has to run from one job to the other, extending through 13 hours a day to be able to live a decent life ( meaning a medium comfortable house, a car or two, and possibility to have a decent health insurance and send the kids to university)

            With this, still students mostly have to incur in almost life long debt to be able to study a career..

            The Saker is always whinning he has to run to vone job to the other and still he finds it difficult to make ends meet…a pity for such prized analyst…

            With these conditions, no wonder there is an army of homeless people who lost the high speed train daily life in your society has become..

            May be the 60s were the golden age of the US?

            The other day I viewed a documental at Spanish Public TV, channel 2, about “Espía Sicre”, were it was told how we were flooded by every kind of electrodomestics from the US at that time, which was one of the reasons Franco´s dictatorship was tolerated by the US, as we became an interesting market of some dozens millions of people for US products…

            I fear our grandpas would have preferred you would have brought us “democracy” then…

          • Pat Lang says:

            I preferred the 50s. I am amused that you don’t seem to know this is the number one preferred destination for immigrants. Why do they want to come to this hell hole?

          • Escarlata says:

            This is the documentary on “Agente Sicre”, in case you are interested, Pat..( available until March 9th )
            https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/otros-documentales/agente-sicre/5800863/

            P.S: Por cierto, no sabía que también habías sido profesor de Español..tú nunca lo cuentas..siempre dices que has sido profesor de árabe, sólamente…

          • Pat Lang says:

            Escarlata

            What was said was that I was capable of teaching Arabic, French and Spanish, not that I had been a professor of Spanish.

        • Deap says:

          Know the critical differences between private sector and public sector unions. Private sector union bargain at arms-length. Public sector unions sit on both sides of the bargaining table. On has essential fairness; the other essential exploitiveness.

        • Deap says:

          Esacarlata, you seem to be on an anti-US disinformation jag.

          Comparing home prices in Madrid, Spain to major US cities – looks like Madrid is more expensive than many US cities when one wants a decent home for their families: https://www.idealista.com/en/venta-viviendas/madrid-madrid/

          Most do not work “two jobs” in the US just to make ends meet, unless they are two part time jobs to create a full time job equivalent, in the US. It is a matter of choice. Many illegals work many jobs in the US, work hard, live very modestly, and send huge amounts of US earned cash back to their home countries. I believe remittences from the US is the second largest revenue source for the budget of Mexico, after petroleum.

          Student loans in the US, creating often staggering debt obligations while obtaining non-renumerative degrees, again is a matter of choice. US has a very extensive and very inexpensive community college system, which provides training for lucrative para-professional careers in just two years full time. Or transfers to four year colleges, which trims two years of college expenses up front for the first two lower division college years.

          College “debt” often buys a piece of paper with more intangible prestige and therefore should come with higher costs. But highly functional lower costs state colleges and universities abound, work study programs are offered, part time student work opportunities abound, and saving on personal living costs while attending college still offers plenty of options to obtain a college degree, embark on a satisfying career and not be burdened with staggering post college student debt.

          Again, this is all a matter of choice; not the only higher educational option in the US.. There are very high costs parts of the US, but what dazzles me is how many parts of the US are quite gorgeous and far, far more affordable than the more high profile locations. Simplistic generalizations about this vast country of 330 million people simply do not hold.

          • Escarlata says:

            No disinfo here, I was not talking about Europe yesterday, where we gallope to the same model at least since the 2008 financial crisis….

            I agree home prices may be more expensive in certain parts of Spain than in the US, and we could be even worse than you, except may be still in the public health care system, whose existence may well be in danger through the whole plandemic operation, taken advantage of to advance the neoliberal reforms which were hardly opposed by the European people then. A lot of foreign hedge funds are behind our hekath system, pensions, telecoms and electrics..We have had an OPA from an Australian pension fund on major electric which has been deemd of national secuirty issue…

            IMO, they are trying to extent this as long as possible to take advantage of the emergence state.

            At this point we are in clear dissadvantage with respect you in the US as we are not allowed any weapon in case things go really openly and shamely fascistic..

            I am not here in any operation, but simply telling the película as I see it., taking advnatage of Pat´s stance in favor of free speech..
            I you do not want me to say as I see it, you have also Twitter, where now you can not criticize NATO either…

            I sometimes use to watch the home reforms program of Los Gemelos, and thus I am aware for the price of a tiny apartment in Spain you can buy a unifamiliar home quite cute in the US.

            P.S: As a sideline, and taking advantage you talk to me, try to avoid playing the satire with me, man….

    • The Twisted Genius says:

      Escarlata, you should read about Samuel Gompers, the American labor leader. He did more for our workers than damned near anyone else in our history. He was not a socialist at all and certainly had no love for Marxist-Leninists. He saw the capitalist owners not as mortal enemies to be vanquished, but as competitors to be bargained with for the good of the workers.

      https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/samuel-gompers

      If you can get a copy of “Images of America” by Raymond Léopold Bruckberger you will learn a lot about America and Gompers. The pertinent chapter is titled: Samuel Gompers and Lenin – “More and More” and “All or Nothing” and pretty much sums up Gompers’ contribution to America. Bruckberger,was a French Dominican priest and French Resistance member who was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the medal of the Legion of Honor for his work in the Resistance. This was a high school textbook of mine which I still read from time to time.

      https://www.amazon.com/Images-America-Political-Industrial-Portrait-ebook/dp/B073RPZ35Z/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1614201236&refinements=p_27%3AR.+L.+Bruckberger&s=books&sr=1-1

    • Tony W says:

      A view from England on the credits taken by Marxist etc. for the 8 hour working day.
      Has somebody brought up in a Yorkshire Mining Village, where the Brass Bands Marched on a Sunday morning, with the trade union banners flying. It had very little to with Marx & Engels. The marches started at the Chapel and banners were mainly based on Methodist principles. The large industrial cities cities such as Manchester it was mainly the values of the protestant reformation and something not publicly advertised the Catholic Church. That was at the grass roots level, further up the line of the academics spoke about Lenin etc. Lay preachers, Priests and other good folk manned the soup kitchens.
      Lenin could not understand why the peasants would not strike during harvest time in 1907, they decided that eating was important. I suppose you could give him the credit for starting the separation of Marxist academic policies from the realty that most folks live.
      The ‘Society of friends’ were introducing shorter working days in England (Cadbury & Rowntree model factories) before Engels parents sent him here.
      Credit should be given where credit is due, not to those who just rant normally at the expense of those they claim to be ranting for.

  19. Mark K Logan says:

    The word fascism isn’t well defined. Would it be fair to say that in an oligarchy the military swears to obey the tycoons, but in a fascist state tycoons swear to obey the military?

    • Pat Lang says:

      Mark K Logan

      In Nazi Germany the wealthy oligarchs did not obey the Wehrmacht. They obeyed the Nazi Party and its SS militia.

  20. Escarlata says:

    As you talk about fascism, for those able to understand Spanish, here some good documentaries broadcasted just today..Available online until March 3rd next week, thus, if you are interested try to watch them this weekend…I think they could be useful due the state of affairs in the world, in the sense..”Know thy enemy”…so that to recall details may be forgotten by those who lived through those terrible times, and which could be important in the fight to come…

    El ascenso del movimiento nazi: Política.

    El ascenso del movimiento nazi: Los seis primeros meses en el poder

    P.S: Gallo rojo adviced to me in his post to get a pistol and a rifle, but I wanted to tell him that that is just impossible here, since owning guns is forbbiden for the population. Even a simple pepper spray must be registered at the nearest police station by presenting yourself with your father there…Así no vamos a ninguna parte…Oh, wait Franco is alive and well…Democracy, which?

  21. Deap says:

    Is this the missing covid link that explains why this afflicts the congregate care elderly more than other age groups, and converts to something more fatal in a few people, but not across the general population? And leaves the very young relatively unscathed?

    This study links “gum disease” (periodontal disease) as a material co-morbidity determining the severity of covid expressions.

    https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/great-health-from-oral-hygiene-practices-during-covid-19/

  22. Deap says:

    “Covid” for fun and profit, as long as you are a California government employee. Convert your public pension into a lifetime, tax-free “covid” disability payout: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/california/article249469115.html

    Democrat “covid” over-reach knows no bounds.

  23. Can we drop the word “fascist””?
    I think what we — and they – are really talking about is a country run by a small group of rich people for the purpose of enriching and empowering themselves and weakening, dividing and impoverishing the rest of us.
    It’s not any kind of political theory thing — it’s just looting.

    • Pat Lang says:

      PA
      No. I don’t think I can do that. The term is too widely used and abused to be able to ignore it. Sorry.

    • Escarlata says:

      Well, Patrick, one thing does not exclude the otherm in fact they come as a whole pack.
      Fascists use to stole everything they wish once in power, as happened in Germany with Jewish people belongings ( even at phisical level..) and in Spain, where republican people were expropiated from their homes to anything they could own by the francoists

  24. Artemesia says:

    Accurate scholarship can
    Unearth the whole offence
    From Luther until now
    That has driven a culture mad,
    Find what occurred at Linz,
    What huge imago made
    A psychopathic god:
    I and the public know
    What all schoolchildren learn,
    Those to whom evil is done
    Do evil in return.

    The man from Linz long dead, the nation he led to doom pacified to the point of soullessness, yet culture is driven to madness unprecedented.
    Accurate scholarship censored and punished, The psychopathic god still lives.
    ___
    Yesterday John Henry and Empire Salon hosted economists Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan, authors of The Great Demographic Reversal, which analyzed the demographics that are most acutely challenging the largest economies in the world. Comparing that challenge to the world wars, they concluded that war being temporary, was ultimately recoverable. But the demographic challenges are too vast; the wrong analyses and policy prescriptions being made, they are pessimistic.

    Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, Mitchell Barak from Israel was empaneled with Hillary Leverett and Iranian Ali Akbar Dareini to discuss whether “Israel will attack Iran,” as an Israeli general implied (and as Biden has, apparently, directed). Responding to Dareini, Barak said, “For Israelis, Holocaust is past, present and future.” https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2021/1/28/will-israel-attack-iran-2

    Where lies Accurate Scholarship: Stuck in a past framed to serve a huge imago, or alert to a fragmenting cultural present and challenging economic future?

    When Croesus misinterpreted the Delphic Oracle he lost his kingdom.

  25. Barbara Ann says:

    Artemesia

    Auden. Perfect, though we are not quite ‘there’ yet. Croesus’ inheritors (the Neocons) seem determined to destroy an empire and similarly oblivious to the fact that it might not be the one they have in mind.

    You are right about our soulless culture’s unprecedented madness. Technology has become our false god. All sense that technological progress should be the enabler of the higher ideal of advancing the progress of the human spirit, seems lost. The role of poets has been relegated from educator to entertainer. Technologists and engineers like Klaus Schwab, like soulless idealists before them, are taking Kant’s metaphor of humanity’s crooked timber, not as an artist would – to work with the grain to create a thing of beauty – but as a challenge. They want to feed us all into the wood chipper, compress the resultant particulate matter along with some transhumanist resin and produce nice straight sections of board. I do not share their aesthetic. I may be an engineer, but I like my timber crooked. In sane times this would be called what it is; evil.

    Where lies the accurate scholarship? Unfortunately this outlying island of sanity appears to me to be one of the major sources of that. Try not to be pessimistic, beauty may yes save us.

    • Artemesia says:

      Thanks for reading my comment, Barbara Ann, but my point of view being more contentious than your generosity admitted, your recommendation of the BBC Nazi series strikes exactly the wrong note.

      I do not believe “accurate scholarship” of the era of the world wars has been adequately undertaken. In an interview with Brian Lamb, Thomas Fleming cited his friend Michael Kammen’s work, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture, https://tinyurl.com/43b5pr8h
      and explained that it takes at least a hundred years for the emotion — and self-serving agendas — of events to be wrung out before coolly objective history can be researched and written.

      What we think we know has been promoted by movies — fictions, really; compromised journalists, equally compromised politicians, and think tanks and lobbies whose agenda is to acquire power and treasure from others in furtherance of their dominance. These are not accurate scholars, they are propagandists, kin to the Devil who tempted Christ in the desert.

      In failing to recognize with courageous clarity Who is doing What to Whom, WE are Croesus; WE are being seduced by the misinterpreted utterings of oracles who “tickle our ears.” We thus allow ourselves to be victimized into losing our nation.

      As long as we can point to the Evil Nazis, and especially if their Evil is distorted, we do not have to ask ourselves, Is it I, Lord? Who has objected effectively to the illicit bombing in Syria?

      In furtherance of that sense of comfort, the Evilness of Nazis is increasingly on display, saturating our thinking almost as relentlessly as Covid.

      I believe the understanding we have of the context and complexity of National Socialism, and of what has been “abusively labeled” fascism, is profoundly flawed, deliberately, for a purpose, and that purpose bodes ill.

      ___
      Col. Lang’s plate of Skirt steak and veal chop reminds that Herodotus recorded the test that Croesus set to determine which oracle had the right stuff: his messenger was to ask each oracle what Croesus was doing at a carefully calculated pre-set time. The Delphic oracle answered, “I smell a shell-covered tortoise, Boiling now on a fire, with the flesh of a lamb, in a cauldron of brass under a brass lid.” The Pythoness knew what was on Croesus’s menu that day.
      Closest I’ve ever come to “shell-covered tortoise boiling on a fire” was Chesapeake Bay terrapin stew.

      • Pat Lang says:

        Artemesia

        You may be a Greek woman general in spirit but neither I nor Larry Johnson will tolerate overtly anti-Semitic comments. That is why two of your comments were deleted by us.

        • Artemesia says:

          It’s your blog, Col. Lang; I’m a guest in your living room.

          To the best of my recollection, those two comments stated a chain of facts based on information gleaned from books and, most likely, C Span interviews — I overdose on them. If my interpretation of those sources is factually or logically in error, correction would be very much appreciated.

          I don’t have anywhere near the education, experience and knowledge of you, your authors and most of the participants here. My writing is often poorly organized. I sit in your living room more as a student than a co-respondent. I’m grateful for that opportunity.

      • Barbara Ann says:

        OK thanks I get your meaning now. If our host’s Skirt steak and veal chop was intended to conjure Herodotus, you and he are evidently communicating on a plane even higher than I had anticipated. I shall need to make an effort to return to the Histories and finish it.

        Of course the Nazis are the lazy go to stereotype of the epitome of evil and omnipresent in our consciousness thanks to the diligent efforts of those tasked with this outcome. I think you and I are in accord over the primary reason for that. I was challenged here on my seemingly suspiciously detailed knowledge of the Nazi rise to power for good reason. There is a whole industry dedicated to ensuring the perpetual perception of Nazism as uniquely heinous – Shoah business I believe it is called.

        Yes we should be aware of this bias and call out examples of other evils where they lay (as I did) but we need to plant our feet on something and we cannot wait 100 years to evaluate recent history. A discussion of the merits of National Socialism is impossible almost everywhere, but I’d love to have such a discussion. Perhaps another time.

        As a good Turcopole, I attempt to evaluate the message separately from the messenger and in the case of the series in question the BBC and their “experts” warranted caution. My recommendation was based on the series setting out very well the potential fragility of a free democracy to a motivated, organized and utterly ruthless enemy. The point I tried to make in my original comment was that we must not underestimate the sheer ruthlessness of today’s enemy as the Nazis’ opponents did.

        On a not unrelated note, I recently tried to source a copy of Rule of the Inferiour by Edgar Jung (himself a victim of the Night of the Long Knives thanks to his authorship of the Marburg speech) I expect you are familiar with it – or at least what it represents. I can shell out several hundred dollars to a single seller on Amazon (by the name of Greenberg) for both volumes of the only extant English translation, but otherwise it appears to have been thoroughly disappeared. Perhaps a little girl somewhere saved a copy before they were all metaphorically or actually burnt.

        • Artemesia says:

          Never heard of Edgar Jung and the booksellers do not seem to keep this title in inventory. Same for libraries, but WorldCat shows another volume he co-authored, Europa : German conservative foreign policy, 1870-1940 : selected readings, can be found at a number of public and university libraries.
          Roshan Magub’s study of Jung’s ideas can be read online https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3AMagub%2C+Roshan%2C&qt=hot_author

          C Bradley Thompson raised some hackles at Cato a few years back during a discussion of his book, Neoconservatism: The Obituary of an Idea.
          In the Q&A, Thompson claimed that young Leo Strauss had been an acolyte of Nazi theoretician Carl Schmitt. As well, Thompson said, “Strauss read Mussolini and Gentile’s Italian encyclopedia article on The Principles of Fascism, and it’s very hard to distinguish between Strauss and Mussolini.” Them’s fightin’ words, but they were not refuted.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oh6DmjQaho

  26. blue peacock says:

    “…what happened in Germany and perhaps in Italy is more like reality here in the US where what we are seeing is the merger of power blocks in government and capital centers like Wall Street and Silicon Valley. This is true fascism in the making.”

    I’ve been noting this for a sometime here at SST. My hypothesis is that “identity” politics, partisanship, the left-right frame, are all designed to divide & distract the population. Take the example of how so many conservatives continue to label Obama & Clinton as “marxists”. They’re clearly not marxists in the classic definition. Their actions along with the actions of the “conservatives” like Bush-Cheney and Ronald Reagan and even Trump have brought us more fascism in the classic sense.

    As rkka notes in a post above:

    Mussolini’s words here are important in this context:

    “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

    This is precisely what has happened here in the US. Steve Bannon has labeled this “merger” the “Party of Davos”, which I like, because it identifies much more clearly who are in power and how they have accumulated power over the past 50+ years. This merger of state & corporate power as Jack (who unfortunately no longer posts here) has stated over the many years is the “symbiotic relationship between Big Business & Big Government”, epitomized by the revolving door. And some of the best examples being Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Steve Mnuchin, Tim Geithner, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Eric Holder, Bill Barr, et al revolving through the door of Big Government & Big Finance.

    It is important to recognize that this accumulation of the levers of power did not occur overnight. It happened over decades. And that it is multi-faceted. It includes economic power achieved through concentration. While the rhetoric remains “free market capitalism”, the reality is that over the decades we have had the unprecedented concentration in market segment after market segment under both the so-called “socialists” and the “capitalists”. Then we have had the financialization of the US economy beginning all the way back to the 70s and the Nixon administration. The complete takeover by Wall St has been best exemplified by the 2008 credit crisis bailouts during the Bush-Obama administrations and the 2020 Covid bailouts under the Trump administration. We’re talking tens of trillions of dollars printed up by the Fed and shoveled to Wall St interests.

    The other major trend clearly noticeable since the Reagan administration with Adm. Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness and Iran-Contra is complete subversion of the rule of law and the natural rights of citizens with increasing powers and impunity of the national security state.

    As concentrated economic power now effectively control the political-media system and the governmental-national security state system has effectively merged through the revolving door, we’ve had fascism for many years. The fascists represented by the Party of Davos are just now demonstrating their complete lock on all levers of powers by acting with complete impunity. They’ve also been extremely successful in dividing & distracting the population with identity politics, partisanship, and the left-right “ideological” battles.

    The question for the Committee is how do you fight the Party of Davos who now have control over all levers of state & corporate power? How do the bottom 80% of the population organize against the common enemy when they’re so easily distracted by partisanship, left-right ideology battles and identity politics?

    • Escarlata says:

      Right diagnosis and delination of the questions at play..

      But, through the whole pandemic, a step further has been made towards a pharma/corporate dictatorship where decission will be made by unelected private corporations/entities and the merging of these with allegedly “elected” governments…”Allegedly elected” governments will increasingly become illegitimate at all lights as real opposition parties will be increasingly forbbiden and harassed and, anyway, even if still not forbbiden, they will not be able to communicate their ideas through the full wall of censure which is being built before our eyes…

      In the end there will be two or three people in charge, Soros at financial level, Gates at pandemic/vaccines, Whoemever ( I d not discard a trans person after Stoltenberg…) at the head of the NATO war machine…

      Voltairenet reports on that during past G7 summit ( a tiny group of countrei aspiring to rule and dictate over the rest..) a renewed power was given to entities like “Covax facility” , “Gavi” and “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”, so that in coming pandemics ( which obviously will come in an unending way, for what it seems..) medical agencies at every country will be surpassed, and vaccines ( or whatever other med they would need to apply us so that to effectively crush dissent…) will be approved without passing the due review by usual official and professional organizations at country level and internationally.

      In this scenario the current suspicious demonization and almost criminalization of every one ( especially amongst medical profession…) who could put in doubt both effectivity and security of current mRNA vaccines and measure taken to fight this pandemic ( who have widely proved totally uneffective at this point…) achieves full sense along with the discrediting and marginalizating those labeled as “conspiracionists” and “negationists”…

      See for yourself…

      https://www.voltairenet.org/article212270.html

      Fortunately, some courageous have decided to speak out from their privileged positions at broadcasting level…

      Spanish actress Victoria Abril…

      https://twitter.com/europapress/status/1364925062940418050

      • Escarlata says:

        Another section of Victoria´s rant…

        https://twitter.com/europapress/status/1364923359457386500

        She is not saying anything many of us have not been thinking of through all this charade

      • Pat Lang says:

        Escarlata

        Who writes this stuff for you?

        • Escarlata says:

          I write it myself on my own, Pat, eventhough it could seem incredible to you…

          I happen to have my serious side when it is required, apart from my comic side you already know…
          Was not you enrolled at National Guard ( illegally…) at 16, well, I am already 17…

          I read a lot of stuff in the net…and connect dots…it is not so difficult, but you need to read a lot ot figure out the whole picture…

  27. Deap says:

    Gutenberg’s printing press brought the light of shared knowledge to the masses. The internet revealed shared knowledge of the soul’s darkness. Two revolutionary moments in humanity’s history.

    One opened the Age of Enlightenment. The other is trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Pandora’s Box once opened, can not be closed. Only adaptation to what spilled forth.

  28. Sam says:

    Shortly before he was assassinated in 1935, the populist Democrat senator Huey Long of Louisiana had a flash of insight. If the U.S. ever winds up with a fascist government, Long said, “we’ll have it under the guise of anti-fascism.”

    https://twitter.com/tuckercarlson/status/1351578501250428932?s=21

    Well, Huey Long’s concerns have borne out.

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