scapegoats – The View from a Drawbridge

Fascism: The Warning Signs

Very often, I hear people confuse Communism and Socialism and Fascism. They use the terms interchangeably, which makes me realize they really haven’t a clue as to each system’s basic tenets. They have just been taught that they mean “bad” and feel that’s all they need to know. I find this very disheartening, and potentially dangerous. Knowledge is power.

At this moment in history, I am particularly concerned about Fascism. What follows is a basic primer, Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism, by Dr. Lawrence Britt. I will leave it to you to decide if these characteristics seem eerily familiar. Heaven help us all.

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Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are wide spread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum

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The Plight of Haitian-Dominicans

It’s a small island. You’d think Haitians and Dominicans would have learned to get along by now. Not so much.

In May, the Dominican Republic ruled that if you were born of Haitian parents any time after 1929 (which means, basically, all of them) you would be stripped of your Dominican citizenship and deported. Never mind that these people have lived there all their lives, and have never even been to Haiti.

But to make matters even worse, the government is refusing to provide them with any proof of their existence. Haitian-Dominicans cannot get their birth certificates or any form of identification. That means even if they do get deported, no one will take them. And if they stay, they can’t go to university or get any kind of white collar job, and have to live in constant fear of being stopped on the street by police and asked for papers that they can’t produce. People with bright futures, who have been offered full ride scholarships, are forced to become construction workers. These people have no options. They are basically without citizenship and without hope, simply because of who their parents were.

What did they do to deserve this? Maybe it’s because it’s a small island. You’ve got two groups of culturally distinct people competing for limited resources, and Haiti is one of the poorest countries on the planet, so that has got to count for some border tension.

Here’s what’s wrong with the small island theory: North America is a big continent, and America shares a border with a much poorer Mexico, and we’ve been treating Mexican-Americans like crap for as long as there have been Mexicans and Americans. So size apparently doesn’t matter in this instance.

I think it has more to do with economics, fear and prejudice than anything else.

When the economy is bad and there are few jobs to go around, people get scared and they want to blame someone. In this case, the Haitian-Dominican minority makes an excellent scapegoat. The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. The economy tanked, so the people blamed the Jews.

And then there’s prejudice. I could go on for pages offering up examples of groups of people who have been abused and marginalized simply because of their race or creed. Apparently Dominicans tend to reject their African heritage, whereas Haitians embrace it, and, well, we can’t have that, now, can we?

Suffice it to say it’s not a good time to be Haitian-Dominican. And while all this is going on the world apparently feels content to look the other way. Why should we get involved, after all? It’s not like they have oil or anything. It’s not like this tiny island has any significance to our daily lives, right?

I leave you with this poem written in 1946 by Martin Niemöller, a German theologian and Lutheran pastor.

“First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”

[Image credit: The Record at Fordham Law]

Ignorance

It’s what causes women in backward villages to be stoned to death. It justifies the withholding of the truth. It encourages people to demonize scientific proof. It suggests that if children are not taught sex education, there will be no teen pregnancies. It allows us all to focus on one group and make them the scapegoats for all evil. It permits women to vote for the very politicians who are hell-bent on undermining their human rights. It advocates female genital mutilation despite documented health threats. It’s the reason there’s a spike in domestic violence during the Super Bowl. It asserts that two people who love each other should not be allowed to marry if they are not members of the mainstream. It convinces people that others will go to hell if their beliefs do not align with their own. It advocates violent solutions, and claims that most rape victims are asking for it. It allows people to believe that background checks for gun purchases is a bad thing, and that this opinion is not motivated by politics and greed. Does your very life depend on a certain diet? Ignorance will allow you to remain in denial about that until you’ve thrown away the very gift that should never be returned. It advocates censorship, because God knows we shouldn’t be allowed to form our own opinions or draw our own conclusions. It supports changing the facts of history in order to alter belief systems.

And most of all, ignorance promotes a hatred of knowledge and turns intellectualism into a dirty word, because in the presence of intelligence and insight, ignorance cannot survive.

History Repeats Itself

Here in America most of us think of the Great Depression as being something that impacted our country alone. Not so. The depression did originate in the United States after the stock market crashed in 1929, but it spread throughout the world, causing drops in personal income, tax revenue, and international trade. Unemployment went sky high. Construction came to a grinding halt in many places. Sound familiar?

In Germany, unemployment soared as American loans meant to help rebuild the country after World War I dried up. As people became more and more afraid, their political system got increasingly extreme. The German people were looking for someone to blame, and the Jews, who were so culturally different from them, became good scapegoats. “They” were not like “Us”.

Cartoons like these, demonizing the Jews, became quite common. We all know what happened from there, and most people, if they have any sense at all, are horrified and ashamed at the deterioration of humanity that resulted in the holocaust.

That could never happen again, right? Well, I came across this cartoon today.

In the present day, it’s not the Jews we are targeting with our fear. It’s the Islamics. Even people that I care about very much are saying things like “All of them are evil.” “They all want to destroy us.” And every day you see more and more news about Islamic atrocities, as if in our culture sexual abuse, kidnapping, murder, bombers, and hatred don’t exist. As if we all agree with our government 100 percent of the time, and can therefore be tarred by the same brush. As if “they” are animals that are incapable of love, humanity, integrity, intelligence and goodness like “us.”

When I hear this kind of ignorance spewing forth, I want to shake people and say “Look what you are doing! Again! Can’t you see?” When you start convincing yourself that a certain group of people is less than human, it leads to worldwide destruction. We will all lose.

We’re sliding down a slippery slope, people. I want to at least be able to say that at some point, I had the decency to say, “Stop.” But my voice doesn’t carry very far. If you stand with me, it will carry farther. Don’t let the hatred and fear that is being spoon fed to all of us override your common sense. For the sake of humanity.