Ten Steps To Close Down an Open Society (Ten steps to Fascism) by Naomi Wolf: 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Now we have ISIS and Russia (again) 2. Create a gulag Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal outer space) - where torture takes place. 3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens. When leaders who seek what I call a fascist shift want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. Ferguson anyone? 4. Set up an internal surveillance system In Mussolinis Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched. Thank you Edward Snowden. 5. Harass citizens groups The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone. 6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a list of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list. 7. Target key individuals Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they dont toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chiles Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors. 8. Control the press Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already. 9. Dissent equals treason Cast dissent as treason and criticism as espionage. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of spy and traitor. 10. Suspend the rule of law The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigans militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the states governor and its citizens. Naomi Wolf - The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot: huffingtonpost/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-down-a_b_46695.html
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 23:15:58 +0000
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