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Kristallnacht is Coming, Soon

chicago dyke's picture
Submitted by chicago dyke on Mon, 10/18/2010 - 11:16am
Departments: 
Department of Eerie Historical Parallels
Thread: 
Fascism Rising
Tags: 
AK senate race
Joe Miller
neofascism

[Update: This. Remember: Batman is a right wing vigilante Galtian richee-worship style "hero" and while he's not allowed to kill in comix, in the adult versions, he can and does, gleefully.] But it will be quieter, and more subtle. Go make friends with a sheriff's deputy, soon. I mean this most sincerely. The roundup of liberals is around the corner, and most of us have a big target on our backs. Just by using English correctly, or having attended a rally for a Democratic politician, or dating interracially... Hitler hated trade unionists and socialists as much or more than he hated "the Jews." 6 million people who died in the camps were not Jewish, but instead social liberals, homosexuals, Gypsies, and plain old white Germans who got turned in by their neighbors. Yes, I'm being polemical, but stories like this really scare me. Miller is a politician, but he's also representative of a new class of people who may freely act outside and above the law with no consequence. We lost the Rule of Law some time ago, and as economic conditions continue to deteriorate, anger will increase, and scapegoats will need to be found.

Alaska Daily News- The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller's private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.

Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.

Hopfinger has not been charged but the owner of the Drop Zone, the private security firm that's been providing Miller's security, accused Hopfinger of trespassing at the public event, a town hall sponsored by the Miller campaign. The owner, William Fulton, also said Hopfinger assaulted a man by shoving him.

Anchorage Police who responded to the call said they would leave it to the District Attorney's office to decide whether to prosecute. They spent more than an hour taking statements, then left.

Hopfinger, who was holding a small video camera, said he was attempting to draw out a statement from Miller on why he was disciplined by the Fairbanks North Star Borough when Miller worked there as a part-time attorney. After Miller walked away, Hopfinger said, he was surrounded by Miller supporters and security guards and felt threatened, so he pushed one of them away.

Fulton said the man shoved by Hopfinger was not hurt.

Hopfinger said that after he shoved the man away, the guards grabbed him, cuffed his hands behind his back with steel handcuffs and sat him in a chair in the school hallway, Hopfinger said.

One of the guards grabbed Hopfinger's video camera. Later, Hopfinger said that when he got the camera back, the segment covering the span of the arrest was missing. An Anchorage police officer offered to take the camera into custody and have it examined in the crime lab to investigate whether evidence had been destroyed, but Hopfinger declined. He said he needed the camera and the remaining video for his work.

The guard who grabbed the camera said Hopfinger had dropped it in the scuffle and denied erasing anything. The guard wouldn't give his name.

While Hopfinger was still in handcuffs, the guards attempted to prevent other reporters from talking to him and threatened them too with arrest for trespass. A Daily News reporter interviewed Hopfinger anyway. No other reporters were arrested, though a few shoving matches and chest bumps ensued as the guards attempted to cordon off Hopfinger and block photographs and videos from being taken of the bizarre school scene.

The Miller campaign released a written one-paragraph statement from Fuller, then followed with a statement titled, "Liberal Blogger 'Loses It' at Town Hall Meeting." In that statement, Miller accused Hopfinger of assaulting someone and of taking advantage of the meeting to "create a publicity stunt."

He said his personal security detail had to take action to detain "the irrational blogger."

Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto declined to comment or to make Miller, himself a witness, available for news interviews.

The 3 p.m. town hall was billed by the Miller campaign as a chance for voters to "hear Joe Miller speak for himself." It was hardly a private gathering. In a Facebook message, the campaign urged Miller supporters to bring their "friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances, neighbors." And continuing what has become its anti-media theme, the campaign added, "Don't let the media skew your views."

I wonder if "liberal blogger" will be the new Jew in what is to come. It certainly seems possible.

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Submitted by libbyliberal on

Obama's disregard for the law is trickling down fast, enabling the goon squads to do their thing more and more for the xenophobic hysterics.

Submitted by libbyliberal on

and more ... Once they get the corrupt judges and courts and over-militarized police force and mercenary securities (the drop zone? geeeeez. how testosteroney!) ... they can soup up charges. Look at Brad Manning facing his 50+ years as the perpetrators of war crimes even caught on film are not even investigated. Of course, cuz that would send accountability up the chain of command. And Obama is the inside man for the psychopathic corps. Well, there is a vast continuum of courage to sell-outness in the media, with most of the courage belonging to alternate media people. But the ones doing their actual jobs in the professional media, if they remain alone and unsupported ... we are in pre-War Germany with chilling consequences to happen more and more. FBI kicking in doors recently and confiscating materials for anti-war activists. What happened to free speech? Civil disobedience declared DOMESTIC TERRORISM!!! I got chills as you reminded us that it was not only Jewish people persecuted by Hitler. And Iraq War killed off a lot of Iraq intellectuals, they got assassinated it has been reported or they fled for their very lives. Their critical thinking was regarded as "enemy energy". Baghdad was the Paris of the Middle East. They didn't think they would be reduced to Afghanistan conditions, but they didn't know the U.S., now did they?

techno's picture
Submitted by techno on

Kristallnacht took place 5 years after the Nazis came to power (Nov 9-10, 1938). It came at a time when Germany had achieved the status of most wealthy nation in Europe. From the depths of the Great Depression, Germany had experienced an economic miracle in a very short time. The Nazis took credit (of course) and claimed their stunning economic successes were due to their policies of removing Jews from economic life. Kristallnacht was intended to eliminate the remaining Jewish economic activity in the country. It had probably been in the planning for months (if not years).

While there are some similarities between USA 2010 and Germany 1938, there aren't many. And worrying that Glenn Beck and the Tea Party crowd will trigger the next Kristallnacht seems a bit misplaced. Compare the spectacle of a Nuremberg Rally to "teabonics". I mean, can you imagine real Nazis providing their followers with misspelled signs?

While I am willing to admit the civil liberties have taken an enormous hit in the past 10 years, I find myself almost totally unconcerned. This government is so crippled by utter incompetence, the only way to get into trouble is by the most random of accidents. We are so far from real Fascism, we couldn't get there if we really tried for 25 years.

Submitted by libbyliberal on

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...

9/25/10 -- It Is Official: The US Is A Police State
By Paul Craig Roberts

“Violent extremism” is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning’s FBI’s foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with “the material support of terrorism,” just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism.

[snip]

... The FBI’s own words clearly indicate that the federal police agency and the judges who signed the warrants do not regard antiwar protesters as Americans exercising their Constitutional rights, but as unpatriotic elements offering material support to terrorism.

“Material support” is another of those undefined police state terms. In this context the term means that Americans who fail to believe their government’s lies and instead protest its policies, are supporting their government’s declared enemies and, thus, are not exercising their civil liberties but committing treason.

As this initial FBI foray is a softening up move to get the public accustomed to the idea that the real terrorists are their fellow citizens here at home, Kelly will get off this time. But next time the FBI will find emails on his computer from a “terrorist group” set up by the CIA that will incriminate him. Under the practices put in place by the Bush and Obama regimes, and approved by corrupt federal judges, protesters who have been compromised by fake terrorist groups can be declared “enemy combatants” and sent off to Egypt, Poland, or some other corrupt American puppet state--Canada perhaps--to be tortured until confession is forthcoming that antiwar protesters and, indeed, every critic of the US government, are on Osama bin Laden’s payroll.

[snip]

Americans are the most gullible people who ever existed. They tend to support the government instead of the Constitution, and almost every Republican and conservative regards civil liberty as a coddling device that encourages criminals and terrorists.

The US media, highly concentrated in violation of the American principle of a diverse and independent media, will lend its support to the witch hunts that will close down all protests and independent thought in the US over the next few years. As the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels said, “think of the press as a great keyboard on which the Government can play.”

An American Police State was inevitable once Americans let “their” government get away with 9/11. Americans are too gullible, too uneducated, and too jingoistic to remain a free people. As another Nazi leader Herman Goering said, “ The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.”

This is precisely what the Bush and Obama regimes have done. America, as people of my generation knew it, no longer exists.

chicago dyke's picture
Submitted by chicago dyke on

notice i use words like "neofascism" and "but more subtle" in this post. i invoke Goodwin's law because it garnished attention, to be sure. but i'm a blogger, fer crying out loud! polemicism (which, again, i admitted to in this post) is a tool. a tool to get people's attention.

as lambert likes to say: history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. that is the point of this post. perhaps a better scenario could be found in fictional imaginations like in the novel/movie "V," in which there is no blatant, overt "Nazi" putsch, but instead a quiet, undiscussed series of neofascist incursions against democratic representative civil rights and freedoms.

shorter me: this time, they'll be coming to take us away, a few at a time, while the corporate media prattles on about Brittney and the unemployment checks get smaller and smaller. and no one will speak up about it, much, because they're all too afraid and need their 2.5 jobs so badly. essentially, China is like this, right now. the overlord class seemingly would like it if the USA were a lot like China. unlike China, we still have a lot of natural resource and economic wealth that can be raped and taken away from the working and middle classes. and unlike in China, there aren't enough of us here, able and willing, who would seriously protest the destruction of what our ancestors have managed to create and grant to us. a Blackwater led coup would be the easiest of things to accomplish, right now, in america. not that they need to bother, when Obama is the Nixon of our times, bringing a social and political reality worse than in China to us even as we speak.

i've quit smoking recently so i'm also going to be really Bitchy at you. do you have any idea what life is like for the urban (brown and black, mostly) poor? cause if you do, you wouldn't be so blithe about suggesting this is an over the top post. the reality of "the concentration camp" and fascism is *already here* for people in those communities. we just call it "prison for violent drug offenders" and "welfare queens don't deserve food" and "police are doing their best in a war zone to protect good citizens." it annoys me greatly when middle class white folk fail to understand that things like "the Rule of Law" and "fairness and opportunity" haven't existed in the 'hood for decades now. it's only that these revocations of Constitutional privilege are today, happening in McMansion land, that privileged white blogging types are noticing now (or not). as i said in a post many moons ago: We're all Niggers now.

ms_xeno's picture
Submitted by ms_xeno on

...is that we get it every single damn time our supposed protectors, The Democrats, are threatened with having their spoiled butts turned out of office.

In the rush to yell, "THE NAZIS ARE COMING!!!!" we're supposed to forget that Democrats are collaborators in the loss of lower-case democracy that we're expected to save somehow by giving them another chance to collaborate in its destruction some more???!!!

No.

I get that you don't mean it that way, but I'm pretty fucking tired of seeing it all over Blogland and in bastions of "progressive" capitulation like Teh Nation. Because that's usually why it exists: as a buildup to blaming those who try to rebel even in trivial ways, not blame for the people in power.

Also, it's quite true that life in this country is already a horror for millions of people who never had two dimes/privileges to rub together. However, carrying on about modern-day Brown Shirts in this context tends to undermine that point, too. Either rollbacks to even modest freedoms have always been with us or they haven't been. Which is it?

scoff's picture
Submitted by scoff on

It seems as though another people in another time thought, "It can't happen here."

But Then It Was Too Late...

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap... between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with.... And it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with [their leader], their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."

Excerpt from They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chica...

Submitted by JuliaWilliams on

the idea for the mortgage fraud came from...."The Producers"...selling the same shares of "Springtime for Hitler" over and over, betting on the failure of the play!

chicago dyke's picture
Submitted by chicago dyke on

i really break it down by race. life in the 'hood is a fucking horror, and has been for several decades now. the war on (some) drugs has demonstrated that neofacism (and if you have a better word, i'm all ears) can and is practiced against a significant segment of our population, and "nobody" cares. which is to say people still part of The Franchise of middle and upper class economic mobility and opportunity, and the politicians they elect and empower, blithely ignore that and seemingly don't care. again: american prisons today. i invite all of you to do a little research into what they are really like. depending on the study, anywhere from 1/4-3/5 of young brown and black men are captured in them, or have been.

it's the "two americas" thesis, i guess. i live and work and socialize with privileged people, but for various reasons i'm critically aware of the plight of the most poor. who are a large and growing segment of our society, and who are utterly ignored by the SCLM and policy makers, except as scapegoats and kicking posts. i perceive the horror that shapes the lives of the poor moving towards its next target; indeed i can and do argue that that horror is already upon the middle class. it's just that a lot of those folks can't or won't see it.

what is happening in this mortgage/foreclosure crisis thingee is disturbingly familiar, if one is of the black middle class and remembers the 70s. african americans were "making it" and breaking glass ceilings and going to college and starting "black owned" successful businesses and electing politicians and all that. and then- boom. the drug war, and (at this point several) an entire generation "taken out." what is happening to middle class (mostly white, but not only) under 40 folks today is much the same. i think most of us agree: there will be no quick "recovery" from the economic devastation that is destroying middle class opportunity and mobility, not for at least a decade. short of revolution, which is very difficult in our Security State. this is why i use the term "neofascist" and i don't directly compare things to the rise of Nazi state. it is my belief that TPTB learned their lesson, to a point. they have chosen the "slowly boiling pot of water and the frog" model, instead of the more exciting and overtly violent model of germany in the 30s. and it's working.

ms_xeno's picture
Submitted by ms_xeno on

Don't know if you've ever read Josh Frank, but his book Left Out! has a very good chapter about how the "War On Drugs" was a product of both Reagan AND his supposed "opponents" across the aisle, like Tip O'Neil.

The more things change...

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