Thom Hartmann -fascism, dismantling middle class,

[anaturalwoman]

Hartmann has written a very astute piece on what the GOP is up to, and it’s ‘fascist’ approach. Includes a very fine studying of what fascism is, and how it operates: dismantling the underpinnings of a middle class --and the means by which it uses fear and prejudice, suppression of a free press, destruction of safety net "entitlements" to gain power.


https://www.populist.com/24.20.hartmann.html

"[The] disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition… is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” Adam Smith, 1759

History shows that the two primary regulators within a capitalist system that provide for the emergence of a middle class are progressive taxation and a healthy social safety net… Tragically, Republicans are today planning to destroy both… in obsequious service to their billionaire paymasters… dismantling the last remnants of the New Deal and the Great Society.

Hartmann proceeds to define fascism, and its relationship to what we are experiencing happening in the U.S. and internationally.

…in early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”
“ The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information… With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public,” Wallace continued, “but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America: “American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, [and] the deliberate poisoners of public information...”

He could have been describing Fox “News,” right-wing hate radio, and the billionaires who keep today’s GOP in power.

Noting that, “Fascism is a worldwide disease,” Wallace further suggested that fascism’s “greatest threat to the United States will come after the war” and will manifest “within the United States itself.”

Watching the Republicans of his day work from the same anti-worker playbook they are today, Wallace added:
“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.”

As Wallace wrote, some in big business “are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage.”

In a comment prescient of Donald Trump’s trashing of “Mexican rapists” and “gangs” in Chicago, Wallace wrote:
“The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.”

[Shepherd]

This makes excellent reading and lots of sense. It appears to accurately describe what we are currently experiencing here in the US, as well as in a growing number of countries, such as Brazil. We need to exercise our Constitutional and Bill of Rights values, while we can. One example would be the Families for Families gathering today from 1-3 at the Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa.

Hartmann has written a very astute piece on what the GOP is up to, and it’s ‘fascist’ approach. Includes a very fine studying of what fascism is, and how it operates: dismantling the underpinnings of a middle class --and the means by which it uses fear and prejudice, suppression of a free press, destruction of safety net "entitlements" to gain power.

https://www.populist.com/24.20.hartmann.html

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[Stevez]

We are in a Constitution crises due to lack of will on the part of congress. This president and his regime must be removed, and replaced with a democratic president, vice president, supreme court, justice department and cabinet. Voting on Tuesday could help, but we have much more work to do that includes returning the congress to democrats and independents, and removing corporations from owning and running the news media. Voting is currently our only was to impact his process peacefully; massive street action will likely only be effective in much larger numbers than we have seen; millions rather than thousands.

[american dream]

I've enjoyed Thom Hartmann;s show for a long time now - He's very alert, insightful and well-informed.

Hartmann has written a very astute piece on what the GOP is up to,...
https://www.populist.com/24.20.hartmann.html
...