Rising fascism in the US

"Intellectually Dishonest", did I hear max was lurking? Somebody turn that rock back over..........

He's around and complaining about Planned Parenthood.

As we all cringe and fret about the threat of "rising fascism" in American it's important to remember that white-power populism is not a new thing for Americans. A resurgent KKK reached 3 million in membership in the 1920's. Not a good thing, to be sure, but the country got through it.

For some reason my history class glossed over the history of the Klan when I was in school. I wouldn't have known how powerful they got if I hadn't seen them parading around Washington in a YouTube video of Nina Simone's "Sinnerman".

Here's a primer:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/second-klan/509468/

That was by plan. And,



Is a central plank of tRumpism.....

The author of the Atlantic article that Kolyo refers to must have a shallow knowledge of post-bellum politics in the United States. After the American civil war, organizations arose which organized the black vote for the Republican Party, the Union League being the largest and most influential. The first Klan was organized by Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee in 1867, and probably by John Brown Gordon in Georgia (the organization was so secretive that very likely no one will ever know). Congressional hearings in 1870 and 1871 into "night rider" organizations lead Forrest to disband the first Klan in 1870--Forrest and Gordon (both served as Lieutenant Generals in the Confederate States army) were exonerated of any involvement with "night riders." Gordon freely admitted however, that there was a "peace police" in Georgia who worked to keep the peace in the South. He undoubtedly referred tot the night riders, but had nothing further to say on the subject.

Wright Cuney, a black leader of the Union League in Texas, coined the term "Lily Whites," probably in 1886 (I have been unable to confirm the date of the quote) when he became the Chairman of the Texas Republican Party. Lily in the coinage refers to Protestant Christians, a term already long in use in the United States. In Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic written in 1861, the first line of the last verse begins: "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea . . . " She was referring specifically to the Protestant abolition movement. But the Lily Whites to whom Cuney referred were those opposed to the political rise of blacks. The article is correct about the foundation of the second Klan in 1915, by the defrocked minister, William Simmons. But it was not the Klan which organized white American protestants in the United States--effectively, the Klan did not exist between 1870 and 1915. It was the informal but very popular Lily White movement. Lily Whites became the backbone of the resurgent Democratic Party in the South, as well as in states outside of the South. Both the Urban League and the NAACP were organized in response to lynchings in northern states.

Simmons did not just respond to The Birth of a Nation, the popular motion picture by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish. In 1913, Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager in Atlanta, was accused of the murder of a young girl whose body was found in the basement of the factory. He was convicted, and sentenced to death. The Governor of Georgia, considering the trial transcripts and evidence not presented at trial, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. But in 1915, a band of armed men "kidnapped" him from the prison, and lynched him in the girl's hometown. It was this, more than the motion picture, which Simmons used to re-found the Klan. The motion picture was originally entitled The Clansman, based on a trilogy of novels by William Dixon, and the play The Clansman in which Dixon condensed the story in the novels. The film was retitled The Birth of a Nation and re-released in the spring of 1915, at the time that Leo Frank was lynched. Griffith's film provided the dramatic images which Simmons' Klan quickly adopted, a decade before the march in Washington.





The blood drop cross, as it is called, has become the symbol of the Klan, and is prominently used to this day.



It was the Lily White movement that organized white supremacists, antisemites, anti-Catholics and anti-immigrants into a single social movement in late 19th century and early 20th century America.

Well, he's the of the University of Alabama history department (link), and it seems, he has a special interest in this subject.

https://www.thenation.com/article/noam-chomsky-neoliberalism-destroying-democracy/

Noam Chomsky: Well, a brief summary I think is if you take a look at recent history since the Second World War, something really remarkable has happened. First, human intelligence created two huge sledgehammers capable of terminating our existence—or at least organized existence—both from the Second World War. One of them is familiar. In fact, both are by now familiar. The Second World War ended with the use of nuclear weapons. It was immediately obvious on August 6, 1945, a day that I remember very well. It was obvious that soon technology would develop to the point where it would lead to terminal disaster. Scientists certainly understood this.


In 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inaugurated its famous Doomsday Clock. You know, how close the minute hand was to midnight? And it started seven minutes to midnight. By 1953 it had moved to two minutes to midnight. That was the year when the United States and Soviet Union exploded hydrogen bombs. But it turns out we now understand that at the end of the Second World War the world also entered into a new geological epoch. It’s called the Anthropocene, the epoch in which humans have a severe, in fact maybe disastrous impact on the environment. It moved again in 2015, again in 2016. Immediately after the Trump election late January this year, the clock was moved again to two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest it’s been since ’53.

So there’s the two existential threats that we’ve created—which might in the case of nuclear war maybe wipe us out; in the case of environmental catastrophe, create a severe impact—and then some.

A third thing happened. Beginning around the ’70s, human intelligence dedicated itself to eliminating, or at least weakening, the main barrier against these threats. It’s called neoliberalism. There was a transition at that time from the period of what some people call “regimented capitalism,” the ’50s and ’60s, the great growth period, egalitarian growth, a lot of advances in social justice and so on—

Glitterbag, I like the fact that you dragged this into the Me Too thread. Really these two threads are very similar. I am glad that you noticed that.

The liberal echo chamber is labeling anyone who opposes their particular political stances as fascism (or sexism depending on the thread). It is group think that is logically consistent only to people who are in the bubble with you.

My point with abortion is to try to get you to consider something from a point of view outside of your ideological bubble. To do this you have to be willing to understand how people with different viewpoints feel. There are people (including people I know well) who feel that abortion is murder... they have the same strong feelings that you do. Only for different issue.

The point is that people who disagree with you, and people with different viewpoints, are still human. To label them as "fascist" is a failure to acknowledge this fact.

The left wing in the United States just lost an election to Donald J. Trump. An idiot with no qualifications who makes crude remarks on camera and says whatever he has to say to get support. He isn't a fascist, he is a reality TV buffoon, his comments are all over the map.

The reason that the left lost the election is because to much of America, the left is more ridiculous than Donald Trump. Running around calling everyone a fascist is not a way to show that you can lead the country. The election was lost the moment that Hillary Clinton called out "deplorables". She was basically saying "Vote for me because they are Fascists!". And now we have at 4 years of Donald Trump (and 8 if you keep this bullshit up).

Instead of this constant outrage and hysteria, let's have a reasonable progressive movement that provides responsible and practical policy ideas while listening to and reaching out to other constituencies to look for common ground.

I didn’t label anyone as a fascist. That’s just the bubble you have convinced yourself I’m in. You often rail about ‘no one is willing to have an honest conversation with you’. Honestly I don’t understand why. Most people enjoy being berated by strangers on the internet with incredibly thin skin and wild imagination.

Right now you are posting on the ‘me too thread’ about your belief everyone you don’t like is like a fascist.......AND you are posting on the ‘fascist thread’ about Planned Parenthood and Abortion. You don’t even take yourself seriously, why do you think I should?

That may well be, but either he has not carefully studied the post-bellum political situation, or he just knocked off that article in a hurry. The conditions which favored, one might even say fostered, white supremacist, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States existed long before the resurrection of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915--for almost 70 years. That was the point I was making about those who Wright Cuney called the Lily Whites.

(The usual pettiness is going on here--someone voting down posts for no good reason--I'll vote your post up again.)

Do you know what thread you are in? Just look at the title?

Whether you take me seriously or not is your business. You do seem to keep responding to my posts.... just sayin'.

I don't bother the voting down or up, but thanks!

And I just wanted to say that he seems to have some (specialist) knowledge.

I am sure that diversity has existed since the Yamna culture. I remember when I was young the USA was talked about as being so young, now it is touted as the oldest Democracy. Depends on point of view! The right and the left in politics will always exist and the extremes of both will always be Authoritarian/Totalitarian. The people will group accordingly. Civility isn't innate, it is learned and governed. I do believe equality is innate and then changed by environment though.

A lot of people around here do that--in fact, that's what this thread was all about, originally.

In that case, I'd say he just knocked the article off in a hurry. Of course, he may also have felt a constraint on how much time and space he could devote to the details of post-bellum politics, and the rise, the fall and the resurrection of the Ku Klux Klan.

In that case, let's take a test of this administration:

Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.co
5-28-3


Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_constitution&Number=642
109&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=-1

Check yes to all as being true or there is an attempt by this Administration with Congressional help to make it so!

I suspected you'd come through for us with something like that.

(Thanks for bringing our knowledge to the next level.)

It is kind of you to say so, thank you.

Very good, Bill.