10-09-2007, 10:10 PM
We are in a true crisis, and it is heartening that in the last little while it seems that Americans are beginning to awaken to the nature and gravity of the threat against us. I argue in The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, that there are ten classic-, time-tested steps that would-be despots always take when they are seeking to close down an open society or crush a democracy movement, and that we are seeing each of these steps unfolding in America today. I looked at Italy in the 20's, Germany in the 30's, East Germany in the 50's, Czechoslovakia in the 60's, Chile in the coup of 1973, and China in the 1980's, and so many echoes leap from the pages that it is hard to avoid the hypothesis that someone influential in this administration has studied these great successes in the coercion of civil society and is reproducing not only tactics but language, imagery, scenes, photo-ops and actual laws that worked the first time around to shut down democracy or crush democracy movements, and press citizens increasingly to yield to a violent state authority.
There is an historical blueprint for what I call a `fascist shift' -- the point at which the state starts to use force against individual citizens, and other aggressive measures, in a systematic pushback against democracy. I argue that there are crucial moments -- which you can predict by looking at `the blueprint' -- that show turning points in the pressure to close down a society. One such turning point was the day that we established a network of secret prisons where torture takes place -- that is Step Two, `Establish Secret Prisons.' Another turning point was reached when the President claimed the power to call anyone -- you or me or your son or daughter or mother or father -- an `enemy combatant', no matter that we are innocent US citizens, and hold us in solitary confinement for months or years awaiting the filing of charges. Certainly a turning point is the revelation in yesterday's Washington Post that the State has compiled a database on essentially anyone's reading material, friends, personal contacts, visiting destinations, seatmate, and other minutiae related to your travel that would put the Stasi files to shame. Last week we saw one such turning point, when Andrew Meyer, 21, was tasered at a University of Florida event when he asked a question.
(Amazon community members should know that the University of Florida is a state school which means that the President reports to the Board of Regents -- which in turn reports to Jeb Bush. My chapter `Target Key Individuals' shows how Mussolini in Italy and the National Socialists in Germany both systematically used political pressure on regents to press state universities to target dissenters, and shows that this pattern, among many others engineered by the great mid-twentieth century dictaors, and emulated later by petty dictators or would-be dictators around the would, has begun to emerge in the US as well). If you were familiar with the blueprint that The End of America identifies, you would have predicted last fall that if the State began with establishing a network of secret prisons where some kinds of abuse were legalized, and those tortured were at first those seen as `other' -- Muslims, brown people, non-English speakers -- that by the time the Military Tribunals were up and running some of the first prisoners to be tried would be white and English speaking (that took place five months ago) and that it would take about six months after that for people whom we identify with as `ordinary Americans -- say, an Andrew Meyer -- to get hurt by the State when asking a question that challenges the group in power. `The blueprint' of this kind of shift is extraordinarily frightening -- especially because, as a certain point, usually just as people begin to wake up to the dangers, the assaults start to cascade, as we are seeing them do now. But history also shows that this is a moment of great opportunity because if we wake up in time, recognize the ten steps and their signposts in time and push back in time, we can still save our nation -- and, not least, ourselves.
Those who would like to know more should visit Crooks and Liars. This link shows a clip of a conversation I had on "The Colbert Report" that conveys my key message. Other links to visit include my author blog on Powells.com, and my recent writings on the Huffington Post website.
Readers who recognize themselves or their own recent experiences in my description of the ten steps now being put into place have been sending me emails -- I am grateful, since their collective testimony confirms the larger picture. For instance, I wrote about how the Transportation Security Administration has been putting critics of the administration on Watch Lists and even No-Fly lists and I have been sent chilling furher testimonies about those stories and about a new wave of experiences that people are having when they fly -- that TSA agents suddenly shout to passengers waiting in line at security to `Freeze!' -- for up to half an hour -- in scenes that, like so many others I recount in The End of America, reproduce techniques developed by the despots of the 20's and '30's that progressively frightened members of civil society and intimidated dissenters. Please keep the emails coming; and please know that each of the streams of stories now developing along these lines -- the TSA `watch list' story, the `we know what you are reading on the plane' story, the tasering of a student, the reframing of criticism as `treason' and `impugning the honor of the armed forces', the FISA wiretappping developments, the attempted purge of the US Attorneys (see Goebbels, April 1933), the invocation of the 1917 Espionage Act against New York Times reporters and editors, and so many others, actually make a new kind of sense when you are familiar with `the blueprint' that has always worked historically, in many times and places, to close down a democracy. I will be tracking and explaining those stories here and please go to the American Freedom Campaign website to sign up if you are ready to do as the Founders asked -- to confront those who are committing crimes against our system of government, and to drive an American democracy movement to restore the rule of law in time -- that is, while we are still free enough to do so.
-Naomi Wolf, September 24, 2007