[quote=“Comrade Stalin”]
And…Have either of you ever actually lived under either a fascist or a communist regime?[/quote]
Does China count? How about back in 1986?
Ok, fine, I’ll play: This analysis says nothing of substance about the U.S. becuase:
- Nationalism is always high in a time of war, so what?
- Disdain for human rights my @$$. The U.S. (including Bush) on the whole has an overwhelmingly positive effect in this area.
- Right – Bush is fairly moderate on this point – as I recall he wasn’t the one flipping out over an Arab company buying port administration rights.
- Once again so what – you could say the same of the U.S. in the early 1940’s.
- Rapant Sexism? from the guy who’s closest advisor is a woman? Has Bushed tried to outlaw homosexuality? How does opposition to abortion differ from most presidents the U.S. has had?
- Controlled media – you gotta be kidding me, if anything the majority of the media has been anti Bush.
- Gee you think security might be important post 911? also once again W. wasn’t the one freaked out over Dubbai ports.
- OH my God a religious guy’s in office – I recall a certain other recent president who got a lot of votes by being a Southern Baptist…hmm let me think
9 & 10) I recall the steel cases – definitely a protection of labor there, to the detriment of certain corporations and proably the national economy. - Right – this from a Ivy league grad who married a librarian and originally ran on a platform that was almost entirely based on educational reform.
- National Police force with Unlimited power? Even if all the worst allegations of domestic spying are true they don’t even start to approach that level.
- Ok, perhaps – though hardly to the extent of the regimes listed.
- Sorry, Al Gore had his day in court and he lost–show me where Bush bought off the judges – smear campaigns went both ways in the last election – nobody got assassinated.
Why are you so anti-American? America has helped me escape the Chinese oppression that my Tibetan relatives are suffering right now. Plus communists are anti-semitic
Gee! How could you forget “silly accent”? “Ze Schwarzenhuberhumpenen!” 
Didn’t you learn ANYTHING from history GingerMan?
The simple fact is that America has swung more towards the totalitarian end of the political spectrum than at any time in its history – and is continuing to inch in that direction.
The justification is that some freedom has to be sacrificed to strengthen the government’s hand against a ruthless enemy with the potential to inflict grievous harm on innocent Americans at any time and any place.
What the future holds is anyone’s guess but it’s constructive to point out the danger of an out-of-control totalitarian future for the U.S. if it isn’t careful.
With the notable exception of gays, women seeking abortions, and “enemy combatants”.
Uniforms should ideally suggest an S&M or sado-gay orientation . . . however, given historical accidents, this can’t always be trusted.
HG
:bravo: 
:braveheart:
Best post of thread, IMO of course.
Simple question that cuts to the center of the issue.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini.
(bechtel, halliburton, KBR, Caryle Group, ConAgra, EliLilley, etc. etc. etc.)
Note: A good weekly read is Bill Gallagher at niagarafallsreporter.com (peabody award winning journalist).
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Seems like a good list of characteristics of fascist regimes to me. Do you have any quarrel with the 14 characteristics he identifies, CS?
And Toe Tag, this is for you:
[/quote]
Well said, and its not terrorism when we do it either! God is on our side!
Not sure what we can expect from someone who takes on the mantle of Stalin as their tag.
Amusing to me to see that immediately the fascists try to hijack the thread by attacking the author rather than discussing the facts he presents. A classic tactic of Goebbels and his proteges.
I don’t think that anyone can argue the fact that corporations are much more involved in the running of overseas wars than they ever used to be. It used to be the army and the CIA didn’t it? Now it’s the footsoldiers, Halliburton and host of corporations the general public can’t even remember the names of. There has been a change, that’s for sure, and it’s an interesting question whether this change matches the patterns of fascism. I have no idea. And it’s all semantics anyway isn’t it? Do we need to call it fascism in order to call it evil? I say not. But it’s still an interesting question.
One sizeable branch of the conspiracy theory tree does sincerely believe that the new American empire (the neocons, or whoever it is getting called fascist) is in fact descendent from the real Nazis, some of whom were brought to the US after the war to ‘help out’ or something. And of course, there were lots of unrepentent Nazi admirers in the US all through the 30’s early 40’s. Surely some of them never really changed their stripes.
Gee! How could you forget “silly accent”? “Ze Schwarzenhuberhumpenen!”
Didn’t you learn ANYTHING from history GingerMan?[/quote]
That’s right! The silly accent! Oliver Cromwell, for one, totally slipped my mind. Those pommie bahsterds doan even ken hae to spek da lingo, y’ken?
Actually, i slept all thru small “h” history. When I wasn’t checking out the gaps… 
Well, I hardly would call any poster on here as fascist. That’s usually one of these finger-pointing lines one utters while four fingers point back to oneself. Dilutes also the meaning of the word fascist, sometimes these days I get the impression it just means “someone who happens to disagree with me”.
That asides - what I find really amusing is that in his very first reaction CS associated the U.S. with the list … and the USSR, the PRC, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam only in his second post.
Convincing me that knee-jerk reactions are exactly the same on the left as well as on the right.
PhDs are for pussies. The only think you need is rich parents.
No lets.
Do what? Do you mean when we deliberately target innocent civilians?
Oh, that’s right… we don’t deliberately target innocent civillians. So, what is your point?
You didn’t take any political science courses or political economy courses, did you?
You’re amused, are you? Well, I guess ignorance really is bliss.
I dunno… duh…
I suppose you love Dick. After all, you have adopted a big picture of Dick as your avatar, right?
Yes ‘we’ do. That’s basically what Fallujah was. You can’t just tell an entire city of that size do move out because you want to raze it to the ground.
And please explain just why so many tons of bombs and shit had to be used to subdue Iraq. ‘We’ probably dropped a ton of bombs for each one of Saddam’s enlisted soldiers. But right, any civilian deaths must have been strictly accidental.
Seeing that a smallish-sized US patrol drove straight to the heart of Bagdhad before ‘victory’ was even achieved kind of proves that the MASSIVE bombing campaign was definitely overkill no matter what ‘our’ objectives were.
And pray tell me what in the name of God ‘we’ need to use depleted uranium for when ‘our’ conventional weapons would do the job perfectly well. (Oh yeah. Nobody likes to talk about depleted uranium. ) BTW, tungsten makes a perfectly good substitute for DU if you really need your anti-tank shells to be the best possible. But tungsten doesn’t combust leaving radioactive dust all over the place for civilians and kids to breathe in.
Open your eyes.
Moral equivalence and “we don’t target civilians”:
"A US B-1 bomber struck the building in the al Mansour residential area in response to intelligence that Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, were meeting inside with senior Iraqi intelligence officials.
The bomber struck the building with four 900 kg guided bombs, two of them bunker busters, US officials said. . . .
Al-Saa’a restaurant, a popular Baghdad eatery that serves grilled fare, appeared intact yesterday, except for blown-out windows and doors.
Three houses were reduced to rubble and at least 20 houses and nearly two dozen nearby shops were damaged, some seriously, from the force of the blast, which left a 500 metre radius of debris and a massive crater.
“It felt like a strong earthquake,” said Nahid Abdullah, 26, who lives in the neighbourhood.
Strewn over surrounding streets were everything from doorknobs or ceiling beams to bits of wooden furniture and light fixtures. The bombs uprooted three orange trees that once stood outside the houses and left a palm tree in one backyard completely charred.
[b]The body of an elderly man was found on Monday night. Today, rescuers using a bulldozer and their bare hands dug out the body of a small boy and the decapitated body of a 20-year-old woman. The bodies were placed in blankets and quilts and put aside on the footpath.
Neighbours said as many as 14 people, including at least seven children, may have been killed. Scores have been injured in adjacent homes and shops, where the debris and shrapnel blew out doors and windows. . . .
While rescue workers searched for more bodies in al-Mansour with the help of neighbours and volunteers, relatives squatted on a footpath across the road. Some wept; others buried their faces in their hands.
When the body of the young woman was brought out, torso first and then her severed head, her mother started crying uncontrollably. She later collapsed and was helped into a car.[/b]
A US official said the Pentagon was confident that Saddam and his sons were in al-Saa’a restaurant before it was bombed."
"Busy Baghdad Restaurant Hit by Car Bomb
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A car bombing outside a busy Baghdad restaurant popular with police officers killed at least seven people and injured more than 80 on Monday, shortly after insurgents waging a relentless campaign against the security services gunned down a top national security official. . . .
In Baghdad’s busy Talibia neighborhood, a car bomb detonated at lunchtime outside the Habayibna restaurant.
“The car was parked in front of the restaurant before it exploded,” police Lt. Zaid Tarek said. He said the explosion occurred at 2:15 p.m. (6:15 a.m. EST) when police officers usually meet at the restaurant for lunch.
Casualties were taken to three Baghdad hospitals, including three dead and 54 injured at al-Kindi hospital, according to admission records."