Incredibly powerful summary of how we got where we are. More excerpts from Truthdig.
The first and deadliest salvo in the war on dissent came in 1971 when Lewis Powell, a corporate attorney and later a Supreme Court justice, wrote and circulated a memo among business leaders called “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” It became the blueprint for the corporate coup d’état. Corporations, as Powell recommended in the document, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the assault, financing pro-business political candidates, mounting campaigns against the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and the press and creating institutions such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Federalist Society and Accuracy in Academia. The memo argued that corporations had to fund sustained campaigns to marginalize or silence those who in “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, and the intellectual and literary journals” were hostile to corporate interests.
Powell attacked Ralph Nader by name. Lobbyists flooded Washington and state capitals. Regulatory controls were abolished. Massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy were implemented, culminating in a de facto tax boycott. Trade barriers were lifted and the country’s manufacturing base was destroyed. Social programs were slashed and funds for infrastructure, from roads and bridges to public libraries and schools, were cut. Protections for workers were gutted. Wages declined or stagnated. The military budget, along with the organs of internal security, became ever more bloated. A de facto blacklist, especially in universities and the press, was used to discredit intellectuals, radicals and activists who decried the idea of the nation prostrating itself before the dictates of the marketplace and condemned the crimes of imperialism, some of the best known being Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Ward Churchill, Nader, Angela Davis and Edward Said. These critics were permitted to exist only on the margins of society, often outside of institutions, and many had trouble making a living.
The financial meltdown of 2008 not only devastated the global economy, it exposed the lies propagated by those advocating globalization. Among these lies: that salaries of workers would rise, democracy would spread across the globe, the tech industry would replace manufacturing as a source of worker income, the middle class would flourish, and global communities would prosper. After 2008 it became clear that the “free market” is a scam, a zombie ideology by which workers and communities are ravaged by predatory capitalists and assets are funneled upward into the hands of the global 1 percent. The endless wars, fought largely to enrich the arms industry and swell the power of the military, are futile and counterproductive to national interests. Deindustrialization and austerity programs have impoverished the working class and fatally damaged the economy.
The establishment politicians in the two leading parties, each in service to corporate power and responsible for the assault on civil liberties and impoverishment of the country, are no longer able to use identity politics and the culture wars to whip up support. This led in the last presidential campaign to an insurgency by Bernie Sanders, which the Democratic Party crushed, and the election of Donald Trump.
Barack Obama rode a wave of bipartisan resentment into office in 2008, then spent eight years betraying the public. Obama’s assault on civil liberties, including his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush. He accelerated the war on public education by privatizing schools, expanded the wars in the Middle East, including the use of militarized drone attacks, provided little meaningful environmental reform, ignored the plight of the working class, deported more undocumented people than any other president, imposed a corporate-sponsored health care program that was the brainchild of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and prohibited the Justice Department from prosecuting the bankers and financial firms that carried out derivatives scams and inflated the housing and real estate market, a condition that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. He epitomized, like Bill Clinton, the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. Clinton, outdoing Obama’s later actions, gave us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the dismantling of the welfare system, the deregulation of the financial services industry and the huge expansion of mass incarceration. Clinton also oversaw deregulation of the Federal Communications Commission, a change that allowed a handful of corporations to buy up the airwaves.
The corporate state was in crisis at the end of the Obama presidency. It was widely hated. It became vulnerable to attacks by the critics it had pushed to the fringes. Most vulnerable was the Democratic Party establishment, which claims to defend the rights of working men and women and protect civil liberties. This is why the Democratic Party is so zealous in its efforts to discredit its critics as stooges for Moscow and to charge that Russian interference caused its election defeat.
@Walter Hinteler,
As stated, Google has changed the definition of fascism to avoid the charge.
I won’t be using their definition.
They are the most potent force toward fascism currently operating to my knowledge. I’d like to know about Jeff Bezos’ lucrative deal with the CIA...
@Lash,
Lash wrote:As stated, Google has changed the definition of fascism to avoid the charge.
I wasn't replying to "Google has chanced the definition". (And besides that, I neither would call
Google an expert in history, nor political sciences, nor linguistics.)
DONALD TRUMP TO SPEAK AT HATE GROUP'S ANNUAL EVENT, A FIRST FOR A PRESIDENT
BY HARRIET SINCLAIR, Newsweek
President Donald Trump will be the first sitting president to address the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described as a “rogues' gallery of the radical right.”
Trump will be the keynote speaker at Friday's event, which will also be attended by his former strategist, Steve Bannon. Other speakers include the founder of anti-Islam group ACT for America and former Trump strategist, Sebastian Gorka.
Continuing with the linked article from Truthdig:
In January there was a report on Russia by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report devoted seven of its 25 pages to RT America and its influence on the presidential election. It claimed “Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary [Hillary] Clinton.” This might seem true if you did not watch my RT broadcasts, which relentlessly attacked Trump as well as Clinton, or watch Ed Schultz, who now has a program on RT after having been the host of an MSNBC commentary program. The report also attempted to present RT America as having a vast media footprint and influence it does not possess.
“In an effort to highlight the alleged ‘lack of democracy’ in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates,” the report read, correctly summing up themes on my show. “The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’ ”
It went on:
RT’s reports often characterize the United States as a ‘surveillance state’ and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.
RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. Some of RT’s hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and have predicted that government corruption and “corporate greed” will lead to US financial collapse.
Is the corporate state so obtuse it thinks the American public has not, on its own, reached these conclusions about the condition of the nation? Is this what it defines as “fake news”? But most important, isn’t this the truth that the courtiers in the mainstream press and public broadcasting, dependent on their funding from sources such as the Koch brothers, refuse to present? And isn’t it, in the end, the truth that frightens them the most? Abby Martin and Ben Norton ripped apart the mendacity of the report and the complicity of the corporate media in my “On Contact” show titled “Real purpose of intel report on Russian hacking with Abby Martin & Ben Norton.”
In November 2016, The Washington Post reported on a blacklist published by the shadowy and anonymous site PropOrNot. The blacklist was composed of 199 sites PropOrNot alleged, with no evidence, “reliably echo Russian propaganda.” More than half of those sites were far-right, conspiracy-driven ones. But about 20 of the sites were major left-wing outlets including AlterNet, Black Agenda Report, Democracy Now!, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truthout, CounterPunch and the World Socialist Web Site. The blacklist and the spurious accusations that these sites disseminated “fake news” on behalf of Russia were given prominent play in the Post in a story headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during the election, experts say.” The reporter, Craig Timberg, wrote that the goal of the Russian propaganda effort, according to “independent researchers who have tracked the operation,” was “punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy.” Last December, Truthdig columnist Bill Boyarsky wrote a good piece about PropOrNot, which to this day remains essentially a secret organization.
The owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, also the founder and CEO of Amazon, has a $600 million contract with the CIA. Google, likewise, is deeply embedded within the security and surveillance state and aligned with the ruling elites. Amazon recently purged over 1,000 negative reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new book, “What Happened.” The effect was that the book’s Amazon rating jumped from 2 1/2 stars to five stars. Do corporations such as Google and Amazon carry out such censorship on behalf of the U.S. government? Or is this censorship their independent contribution to protect the corporate state?
@Walter Hinteler,
So, you believe everything else Truthdig writes? Funny with all the dire implications, that mild statement is what you mention.
@Walter Hinteler,
I wouldn’t call Trump an expert in those things either, but you believe he has the power to make fascist changes in America.
I think google has more power.
@Lash,
Keep dragging them out of the year 1532, Lash.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:So, you believe everything else Truthdig writes?
I don't think so - it just now has been the first time I've searched that website.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:I wouldn’t call Trump an expert in those things either, but you believe he has the power to make fascist changes in America.
I think google has more power.
I certainly believe that Trump can do so. But that doesn't change the meaning of the term "fascist".
And a search engine can't change that, too.
@Walter Hinteler,
They can change anything.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:They can change anything.
Well, I admit that it had been done here ... didn't last the predicted thousand years, though, nor did it really work.
@Walter Hinteler,
And, in the case of Germany, the change came with much less power than these communication czars who can control what is seen and heard.
And we already see them exerting that control.
I’m feeling like we’ve already lost, and we’re just trapped spectators of a slow-mo denouement.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:And, in the case of Germany, the change came with much less power than these communication czars who can control what is seen and heard.
You are just pretending ignorance, aren't you? Or are you really so uneducated about the Nazi period?
@Lash,
LOL. What's the new definition of fascism imposed by Google, pray tell?
@Walter Hinteler,
I don’t think the technology Hitler had access to rivals today’s. Do you?
@Lash,
Google’s alteration of the definition is covered in the first link.
Lash wrote:
True. When a political party or powerful entity controls media, that is also a fascist agenda.
I think what Google is doing stinks of fascism. First, they have decided to change the definition of fascism, likely because of the stink on them.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2017/02/04/google-redefines-the-word-fascism-to-smear-conservatives-protect-liberal-rioters/
Second, they are ******* with the results of searches to quiet progressive voices.
Why does Amazon have a $600 million contract with the CIA? What personal information about you has been recorded by Google? Why do you blame everything on Russian interference rather than take stock of what our government is actively doing to us?
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-silencing-of-dissent/
These moves against freedom are much more dangerous that what Donald Trump is threatening to do. Trump is fumbling around stupidly, threatening to do things the people will not allow, while the snake of actual power behind the scenes has already wildly successfully chipped away at our privacy, made criminals of whistle blowers, broken countless laws and stripped us of tiers of self-determination while training the idiots among us to blame Russia.
