A few years ago Lawrence Britt released his study of common characters of the more infamous fascist regimes of the 20th Century in which he found that the most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions through relentless propaganda and disinformation against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, and homosexuals. Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.
Today’s conditions of global economic crisis mirror the one same one in the 1920s and 30s that provided fertile ground for two of the most notorious fascist regimes to rise to power. With two weeks to go until the people of this country decide our nation’s future the Republican Party unleashed their surrogates to attack the character of the man who now dares remove their grip from the political power which they secured and maintained by fear mongering and ignorance only to abuse that power for the better part of the past forty years.
The apologists claim that if they want to win this election the Republican Party has no choice but to go negative. They really have nothing to say about the issues which occurred during their watch that have resulted in present day American angst. 9/11, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Katrina now concluding with trickle down economic policies that may lead to a global depression thus precluding any discussion of issues.
Yet mainstream media never seems capable of connecting the dots. The modern Republican Party came to power through Nixon’s southern strategy dividing people based on race. Today’s Republican Party is attempting to divide people by creating the “us verses them” situation in which “the others” are labeled anti-Americans. Liberal, leftist, socialist, and pro-terrorist sympathizer are terms used to describe Barak Obama the leading anti-American and all of his supporters.
Acting as a McCain surrogate Michele Bachmann was interviewed by Chris Matthews Friday evening. She is a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota who believes intelligent design should be given equal time with evolution in science classes. She is also a member of a church whose doctrine teaches that the Roman Catholic papacy is the Anti-Christ.
More importantly, according to this representative of the people God was calling for her to run for public office and she and her husband fasted and prayed for three days before accepting Gods calling to Congress to demonize “the others”. The same God spoke to George Bush and Sarah Palin. Personally I think politicians should keep their imaginary friends at home and not force their organized superstition on the American public.
Her political resume includes such notables as proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, voting against a bill that would extend the Civil Rights Act, voting against a bill that would increase financial aid to college students, opposes any increase to the minimum wage, fully supports President Bush on Iraq and favors privatization of Social Security.
This is the Christian fundamentalist religious and political bio of a member of Congress questioning Senator Obama’s character by implying that since he has associated with terrorists and because a man is known by the company he keeps suggesting Sen. Obama is at the very least a terrorist sympathizer begging the question “who is Barak Obama” and hoping no one asks “who is Michele Bachmann”.
The McCain campaign seems to have taken on the aspects of hate speech in their advertising and certainly in their stump speeches which resemble many of the key elements of “hate speech” i.e. speech that degrades, intimidates or incites violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people based on among other variables moral or political views.
Yet the most disturbing and chilling portion of the interview was when this member of Congress who took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States called for the mainstream media to investigate Congress to identify “liberal, leftist, possibly anti-American” members because such intolerance and extremist views by today’s Republican Party fit the description of that which characterized the fascist regimes of the last century.
Sadly John McCain’s campaign of fear mongering has sown the seeds of division that appears to be completely ignorant of the tragic consequences that may one day erupt because even after the election half of the country will either believe that the president elect is a terrorist sympathizer or the other half will believe we have another fraud as president pretending to put country first while resorting to labeling the opposition as terrorists thus begging the more important question: “who is the real John McCain?”
