23-11-2003 07:20									#1
	Will some sort of Nazism take control of the US if a major terrorist attack occurs? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Some people call me an alarmist. I think of it as my duty to warn (remind) people of what humans are capable of.

People seeking power play to peoples fears or hatred, often the line is blurred. Society has developed sophisticated ways of channeling this sort of concept that lead in the twentieth century to the rise of Nazism.

I'm constantly worried about the United States, not for what it is or is supposed to be but for what it could become.

I deeply sense the climate in the United States as ripe for men of untold evil to take power, much in the same way as the Nazis did in Germany.

You want to know the reason why I support the Consituation and am extremely abhorred and frightned when it is threatened? --Simple, the constitution was made to stop the formation of a regime like that of Nazi Germany that trampeled on the rights of the minorities.

If you start picking away at the consitution then the safeguards are lost as well. And don't be SO arrogant as to presume that people even in the United States are incapable of following a Hitler-like figure and movement.

I agree with Thomas Jefforson that: "People who give up liberty for temporary safety, do not deserve it at all."

It is closing in on the most dangerous time in history once again... will people make the right choices... or is the past doomed to be repeated?

You fill in the gaps needed to see how the US can become the ressurection of Nazi Germany... I think all of you are educated enough that I won't have to walk you through it, if I'm wrong all add to this later.

I pray (and I don't normally do that) and ask that you pray that another major terrorist attack doesn't occur in the United States... or so help us... SIEG HEIL!

	23-11-2003 07:24									#2
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Ironically enough, it was Jefferson who tried to start prison camps for political dissidents during the American Revolution...


And I think that the United States, while not being vulnerable to Nazism as a particular, is well on its way towards a quasi-fascist government... And that's not a shot at Republicans. It's a shot at bureaucrats... from any side. The government becomes more bloated and more intrusive every year. Even those who swear to cut it back, don't ever seem to actually do it.

	23-11-2003 07:25									#3
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The only serious threat for this to occur is for the US to become extremely anti-Islamic. And yes I agree that it is a possiblity. I see it everyday, many Americans don't view Middle Easterners as human, but as evil baby killing mass murders who should be nuked into oblivion.

Its kind of scary some of the things ordinary people express, but hopefully the leadership of the US will be able to hold in check.

	23-11-2003 07:34									#4
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Thorn, why do you think a major terrorist attack will result in the suppression of "minorities?"

Also, my understanding of Naziism is more than just simple racism, although the Nazis were certainly racist. Nazism is the result of combining socialism with extreme nationalism. In my view, the Ba'athist Socialist Party was a good example of a modern Nazi party. It would be strange to think that United States would become like the régime we just overthrew in the name of democracy if we were to be attacked again by terrorists.

	23-11-2003 07:37									#5
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The U.S won't evolve into Nazi Germany but I have to admit I'm concerned regarding the outcome of the post-Sept. 11 outbreak of nationalism. I kind of get the impression that it's difficult to get, say, a pacifist point across without triggering some sort of massive "you don't support the troops" reaction from people. If that perception of things is correct, that's a problem for sure, no matter what your opinion on the matter is.

But on the Franklin part, well that quote is just so used and abused by now... no, I'm not trying to start another taxes-is-theft discussion, but really, you'd have to be a Floydo-Berzerkian hyperlibertarian before you're qualified to use that quote.

Ned, the last Nazis that took the idea of socialism seriously were killed in thirty-something shortly after Hitler came to power. You don't think the Nazis had nice ties to the corporate machine? It's just a name.

	23-11-2003 07:51									#6
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Monk, the Nazi's were indeed coopted to a degree by German industrialists. Still they brought Germany a national health-care system, the Volkswagen, People's resorts and People's cruises, the autobahn in a lot of other pro-Common Man initiatives. The Nazis were enormously popular in Germany for a reason.

As to their relationship with industry, they simply controlled it. They instituted wage and price controls, profit controls and had Nazis on all Board of Directors.

The Nazis were not socialists in name only.

	23-11-2003 07:58									#7
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Personally, I wouldn't regard a country socialist per definition just because it had, say, price and wage controls, gov't financed highway building and national health care. But I reckon you could be right if your definition of the term is to be followed. I guess a word that it's been used for anything from the Scandinavian system or Ralph Nader to Stalin and Hitler can really mean anything you want it to.

	23-11-2003 08:07									#8
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The only difference that I can see between the NAZI form of socialism and the Marxist form is that the latter calls for the ownership of major businesses. Other than that, they were/are pretty much the same thing.

	23-11-2003 08:14									#9
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quote: Originally posted by Monk Personally, I wouldn't regard a country socialist per definition just because it had, say, price and wage controls, gov't financed highway building and national health care. But I reckon you could be right if your definition of the term is to be followed. I guess a word that it's been used for anything from the Scandinavian system or Ralph Nader to Stalin and Hitler can really mean anything you want it to.

Of course, for a country to be socialist, it has to be like Scandanavia , which of course is a evil socialist/communist land where nobody works, everybody is on welfare, and people do nothing but have premarital sex, do drugs, and play volleyball all day

	23-11-2003 08:27									#10
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quote: The Nazis were not socialists in name only.

If the Nazis were socialists you'd expect people with socialist viewpoints to vote for them right? Well if you look at elections results in the decade before the Nazi's took power the combined SocDem/Commie vote stays about stable until right about the end (although Commies get stronger and SocDems get weaker) and voter turnout stays relatively stable. So where did the Nazi votes come from? Its pretty easy to see, as the Nazi votes go up votes for moderate/pro-capitalist parties go down. Also Nazis always did horribly with the most traditional socialist slice of the population, industrial laborers and instead did very good with people like teachers (go figure) and, to a somewhat lesser extent, farmers no exactly the sort of people who had traditionally been socialists in Germany at all.
There was a socialist wing of the Nazi party but it never enjoyed any real broad base of support and got squished by Hitler who was never very socialist at all.

	23-11-2003 08:30									#11
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The commie/socialists were not nationalists. They were appeasers and internationalists. Nationalism is what divided the two camps.

	23-11-2003 08:40									#12
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The US is already becoming fascist, with 9/11 being the excuse. Basically, you are a terrorist if you criticise King George now. If the Neo-cons try to make Bush de facto dictator a bullet from my rifle is going to be in Shrub's head!

	23-11-2003 09:04									#13
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Odin, Are you trying to imply, that the US is in fact fascist, and was only looking for a reason (9/11) to justify it to come out of the closet? If so, how have you come to this? IMO it's only natural to 'support the troops' when you have your boys somewhere, no matter what. Support for presidents choices are another matter, that people shouldn't support no matter what he decides to do.

I don't see the big problem with Georges decisions. After all, as the president his number one.. number one duty is to protect the citizen. It comes before anything else. He has two choices. Either go after baddies around the world and while at it, blow few dictators out of the way too. The other choice is to draw troops from many countries, if that is seen one of the reasons of terrorism and their anger. By pulling troops, there are no guarantees what's going to happen, but one thing is sure and that is, that the balance of things changes around the world, and it is unpredictable move and definitely not risk free. It can cost dearly, even more than going after baddies in their own countries and getting some bad PR while at it from various places.

Anyway, these are only my opinions and not proved facts. You have your opinions and you base them on your experiences. So I'm not really here to argue with you about the presidents decisions.

But even if I was dissent there, I wouldn't say words like that, because those are dangerous. Most of us would guess that you're only talking loud, but who knows, maybe someone monitors and takes this more seriously. Or maybe someone feels like it is his/her duty to inform about what you just said......

.

Just wanted to point that out. Not here to argue.

	23-11-2003 09:15									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Pekka Odin, Are you trying to imply, that the US is in fact fascist, and was only looking for a reason (9/11) to justify it to come out of the closet? If so, how have you come to this? IMO it's only natural to 'support the troops' when you have your boys somewhere, no matter what. Support for presidents choices are another matter, that people shouldn't support no matter what he decides to do.

I was exaggerating, but the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, and Bush is using the old nationalist trick of getting people to thing that you have to support thw war to support your troops. Ashcroft and his BS reminds me of J. Edgar Hoover and the Commie witch hunts of the late 40's and early 50's. Now it is people who are against the Neo-Con agenda and PNAC. I wish the crap Bush is doing comes to light and he rots in jail!

	23-11-2003 09:17									#15
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Odin, yeah.. I don't know too much about the Patriotic Act, and I'm not a citizen either so I just give up and let you continue from here on .

	23-11-2003 09:27									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Pekka Odin, yeah.. I don't know too much about the Patriotic Act, and I'm not a citizen either so I just give up and let you continue from here on .

Basically, ANYONE cane be thrown in jail indefinitely without being charged with a crime, you can be wire-tapped without a judge's order, government agents can check library records so they can see what people are reading, plus alot more crap I can't rember of the top of my head.

	23-11-2003 09:32									#17
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quote: Originally posted by Pekka Odin, ...

Why are you taking the leftist Fez seriously?

	23-11-2003 09:33									#18
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Never underestimate your enemy...
Assumption is the mother of all **** ups... and so on.

Just kidding

I'm tired, it's 6.30 am here. I should go to sleep.

	23-11-2003 10:35									#19
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Sure the whole Patriot act et al. isn't quite right, but the last thing we really need is another Vietnam quagmire. Gulf War I made the US soft regarding casualties in wars... take 1/125th the casualties of Korea or Vietnam and everyone is up in arms about the "cost" of things.

Heaven forbid if a pre-WWII situation arose which might actually require more than a few dozen deaths...

	23-11-2003 11:23									#20
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Yes, Hitler is going to rise again and the US will throw Jews in Concentration Camps.

	23-11-2003 12:15									#21
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The terrorist attack has happened , and the US is already slipping into quasi-fascism . When you have SS agents interrogating schoolboys without regard to their rights and without the consent of the parents , when a student is arrested for sharing an inhaler with a asthamatic suffering an attack , whan students are expelled for their childish fantasies , what do you have but fascism ?

	23-11-2003 12:17									#22
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What nonsense -- we may be in the midst of the most serious foreign policy crisis in recent times.


HOWEVER, you did not see the Nazi party rise in power after 9/11, did you?? God -- find something better to theorize.

	23-11-2003 12:18									#23
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Um... you have a democratic republic perhaps

Calling the US as quasi-fascism is what those who prefer to live in fantasy like to say.

	23-11-2003 12:19									#24
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Yes -- similar to the fantasy world that Reagan was a hero who saved the United States from a "Dark Ages" or who single-handily overthrew the Soviet Union.

	23-11-2003 12:23									#25
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So you believe the US is quasi-fascist?

	23-11-2003 12:40									#26
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quote: It would be strange to think that United States would become like the régime we just overthrew in the name of democracy if we were to be attacked again by terrorists.

'In the name of democracy,' ah, the phrase reminds me of how righteous we are in spreading the True ideals to the rest of the world.

It wouldn't be so strange to think that the United States would become like the regime we supported in the name of our corporations if we were to be attacked again by terrorists. Not to mention that when the Kurds and various Shi'ite groups rebelled after Bush I called them to, they begged for help in overthrowing Saddam and we said no. Thousands of were then killed, many of them innocents, all within the proximity of US troops, and we did nothing.

	23-11-2003 12:44									#27
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quote: Not to mention that when the Kurds and various Shi'ite groups rebelled after Bush I called them to, they begged for help in overthrowing Saddam and we said no. Thousands of were then killed, many of them innocents, all within the proximity of US troops, and we did nothing.

The funny part is that many leftists consider that to be a failure of US policy, when it would be contrary to a UN mandate and would be a regime change... basically Gulf War '03, which they opposed in record numbers.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

	23-11-2003 12:52									#28
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One serious issue is the effect that free trade is having. We are looking at decades of major employment upheaval that potentially could result in the creation of an underclass with extreme bitterness towards the government. This could become a political base for a movement such as Hitler launched in Germany.

Things will have to get really bad and I can't see that happening. Both parties are now willing to expand entitlements to quiet unrest.

Insofar as a terrorist act causing a permanent shift in government, I don't think so. The knee-jeck reaction in the wake of the 9-11 incident will be reigned in as soon as the next Democratic administration takes over.

If perchance a nuclear terror attack materializes, sure, we will lose much of our normal liberties but that would be justified.

	23-11-2003 13:37									#29
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quote: The funny part is that many leftists consider that to be a failure of US policy, when it would be contrary to a UN mandate and would be a regime change... basically Gulf War '03, which they opposed in record numbers. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The situations were clearly different; since we were already there, and since large parts of the country were rebelling against the gov't, we should've finished the job. At the very least, we shouldn't have stood by as the the Shia were slaughtered.

The difference this time around is that we could've waited for the gov't to put out a coherent and just plan subject to public scrutiny regarding the post war Iraq as there wasn't a rebellion going on at the moment.

	23-11-2003 14:55									#30
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Actually, it will not be Nazism but a quasi-religious right-wing state more akin to a Christianized version of Iran. For those of you not in the USA, under the Patriot Act a special court originally intended for special warrants concerning domestic anti-foreign intelligence surveillance warrants can now put you in jail, sift your email, search your house with a secret warrant (while nobody is home), go through your financial, library, heck any records, etc. Plus, the government is trying to claim it can unilaterally strip a US citizen of his rights to due process by claiming they are an enemy combatant (specifically forbidden since the Civil War, Lincoln pulled a similiar stunt, and we've had presidents try to weasel around it in every major conflict since - it actually predates that, but Lincoln's cases were egregious and political, in areas outside the combat zones).

Commercial databases, that have minimal or no accountability for their accuracy, are now being tapped to amass dossiers on all US citizens, and then analyzed using modern data-mining techniques to determine who is a potential terrorist. One of these databases red-flagged peace activists opposed to the intervention in Irag so they couldn't board aircraft flights, it seems they were security risks. How convenient. Of course this was stopped after Congress threw a fuss. Well, sort of stopped, mostly stopped, and we'll get around to telling you when we stop.

The Catholic church in the USA for years has had no problem seperating its religious versus secular functions, i.e. churches versus hospitals. While legal under US law, it does not permit churches to tap the money directly and discriminate in hiring at the same time. I have already written emails, to no avail, to the Republican National Committe, concerning the new "Faith Based Initiative". That will permit churches to take the money and only hire church members to deliver social services. As my wife is Jewish and an Art Therapist/Psychologist, in an area primarily Baptist/Catholic, I wanted to know will she have to convert? Or will she be alright to hire since her husband is Christian?

Our Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health are being required to rewrite their web pages to parrot the propoganda of the Religious Right-Christian Coalition groups. Things including that Condoms don't work against aids, abortion causes breast cancer, etc. I've posted before on these, these positions are distortions and deliberately deceptive, which in my book makes them lies.

Laws are written to deliberately intimidate those who disagree with the Religious Right's position. The new so-called "Partial Birth Abortion" law is so vaguely worded that some clinics have stopped doing second trimester abortions altogether. The law does not use standard medical terminology, and since the Republican leader of our Senate (upper chamber of legislation) is a physician, I cannot believe this is an accident. I am not talking just about the law, or even if the procedure it claimed to eliminate was wrong. I am talking about the deliberately vague wording designed to initimdate beyond the claimed sope of the law. With a prison sentence if you guess wrong and perform a procedure you thought was safe.

Our President, when talking about not granting homosexuals equal dometic rights, talks about them as "sinners." Well, not exactly

quote: Press conference: Question: .... As someone who's spoken out in strongly moral terms, what's your view on homosexuality? BUSH: Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners...

He goes on to try to backpeddle on what that means. Context, though context. Question concerning homosexuals - first sentence is we are all sinners. Conclusion - gays are sinners! I have to give him that he then says not to persecute them, just that they are sinnners. Right, and I'm little orphan annie.

We just had a murder conviction in Alabama, over the killing of a man with a turban that a bubba (for non-USA uneducated, deliberately so, narrow-minded resident of the Southern USA usually implying male, overweight, and pro-Confederate flag, but only since the 1950's when they started using this flag to intimdate black voters) thought was one of those dirty arabs. The poor sod was a Sikh, which was ironic because I work in a secure facility and I had just had to explain that to one of our training specialists, who was trying to tell me who to be careful of (THOSE people with TURBANS). Historical and cultural morons. I told him maybe I shoud also be careful of blond haired 30ish Caucasian males, the second worse terrorism attack in the USA (Mr. McVeigh, anyone?). That didn't go over well, but I have a friend whose a Sikh and I just got soooo irritated.

So this is the new USA. Intolerant, religious as defined by a narrow interptation of Christianity. Individual rights only when they are convenient to law enforcement, with a new NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL SECURITY - oops, I meant Homeland Security Mr. Cheka commisar. Don't publicly disagree with the governent, you become a security risk on a secret database and never get to fly again. Since my wife is not a member of any of the recognized religions via the new "Faith-based Initiative" she can't work in her field - though her married Christian name might let he get lucky. Don't wear you're turban if you are a Sikh, don't let anybody know you're moslem, and just remember that Christians get to deliver those social services. Good right-wing Christians.

By the way, I am a domestic libetarian, and do like to quote Franklin: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. .