As an historian who views American history as the complex unfolding of
events that it is, I feel invigorated upon hearing someone like
Wolf-especially the Wolf of feminist Beauty Myth fame-part company with
the presentation of the Founders as "dead white men" inwardly tormented
by various hypocrisies, such as the ownership of slaves and the
subordination of women. Yes, Jefferson owned slaves and fathered six
children by one of them, but what gets lost in that drama and other
colorful stories of the Founders is that they were also thinking,
speaking, and writing highly subversive thoughts. "You are not taught,"
says Wolf, that "these men and women were radicals for liberty; that
they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the
rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of
nations; and that they were wiling to die to make that desperate vision
into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see."
(27) I do not wish to romanticize the Founders and their generation
living in a milieu replete with racism, misogyny, and classism, but
neither will I throw their achievements out with the bathwater of
political correctness, nor is Wolf willing to do so in her examination
of them.
In the "10 easy steps" outlined by Wolf, countries move from open to
closed and repressive societies by devolving past certain markers, and
Wolf makes a powerful case for the way in which the United States is
following a similar pattern without any significant deviation. In each
instance she compares and contrasts how America's adherence to the
pattern compares or contrasts with the pattern in pre-World War II
Germany. The 10 steps are:
- Invoking an external and internal threat
- Establishing secret prisons
- Developing a paramilitary force
- Surveiling ordinary citizens
- Infiltrating citizens' groups
- Arbitrarily detaining and releasing citizens
- Targeting key individuals
- Restricting the press
- Casting criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason"
- Subverting the rule of law
As noted in the quote from Justice Douglas above, the
fascist shift is a protracted process; it never happens overnight, and
in U.S. History Uncensored, I offer an historical narrative describing
exactly how we have arrived where we are-at "the end of America". Some
aspects of the process were generated before the U.S. Civil War, but
our recent history is nothing less than the story of the acceleration
of the fascist agenda and the death of the Republic.
Frequently, books come into our lives with momentous timing. Several
weeks ago a friend of mine was traveling through a small town in
upstate New York looking for the location of a meeting he was scheduled
to attend. Realizing that he was lost, he spotted a police officer in a
marked car and waived to the officer to pull over. The officer pulled
over, and my friend innocently got out of his car to walk back to the
officer's car. Suddenly, the officer's voice came blasting across a
loud speaker, "Get back in the car! Stop where you are! Get back in the
car!" My friend returned to his vehicle and waited for the officer to
approach his driver's side window. The officer, with a hand on his
holstered firearm, angrily asked my friend what he wanted. When my
friend asked him for directions, he replied with hostility that he
didn't know the location of the place for which my friend was searching
and once again repeated, "Never get out of your car when you're dealing
with a police officer." So much for asking directions from a police
officer these days.
On another occasion, two friends of mine returning from Canada were
detained at the U.S./Canadian border, and while one of them had a U.S.
passport, the other had forgotten to bring his. He produced a variety
of identification but was taken aside, questioned, shouted at, and
harassed in an extremely hostile manner as if he were an enemy of the
state. Fortunately, after over-the-top intimidation from a couple of
surly customs officers, he was allowed to enter the U.S.
About three weeks ago I was returning from a routine visit to the
dentist in Mexico and had a U.S. passport with me, even though none
will be required for returning from Mexico until January, 2008. I was
told by a very aggressive female customs agent to pull over to the
center where vehicles are detained. I was ordered in a very hostile
manner to give her my driver's license and the keys to my vehicle and
stay in my vehicle. When I asked what the problem was, I was told to be
quiet and again, to stay in my vehicle. Having taught in Mexico for
three years, returning to the U.S. every day and rarely having to show
any identification whatsoever, I found this procedure to be
astonishingly rigid and unnecessary. I have made many trips to Mexico
in recent months and have never had any problem when the automatic
photos that are taken of every license plate crossing the border
appeared on U.S. Customs computer screens.
After what seemed like an eternity the female officer returned and told
me that it appeared that I had had an expired vehicle registration four
years ago which I had not taken care of and that I needed to do so at
once. She gave me the name of the court where the offense was allegedly
registered. The very next day I contacted the court and discovered that
indeed I had been stopped four years ago for an expired registration
for which I was given a warning. Every year since, I have purchased my
annual registration well before the deadline, but the offense was never
brought to my attention, and I even acquired a new driver's license
last year through the motor vehicles division and was not informed of
the offense. Not wanting any further hassle regarding the "heinous
crime" of having an expired registration four years ago, I agreed to
pay the small fine imposed by the court.
Some readers may assume that I was harassed because of who I am and my
open delivery of alternative news and opinions on this website daily.
I, on the other hand, do not believe that this was "all about me."
Whether or not it was, it is blatantly obvious to me that the behavior
of law enforcement in the United States has shifted dramatically in
recent months. Whether or not I was targeted, which I sincerely doubt,
this kind of treatment is becoming standard in law enforcement
procedure throughout the United States.
And now fast-forward to yesterday, September 18, 2007, at the
University of Florida and the tasering of a student questioning John Kerry
regarding the 2004 elections and Kerry's membership in Skull and
Bones-an incident which has been viewed by millions on the internet and
on mainstream TV news broadcasts. Writing of this debacle, Wolf's
article "
A Shocking Moment For Society" appeared on various internet sites this morning, and in it she states:
There is a chapter in my new book, The End of America,
entitled "Recast Criticism as ‘Espionage' and Dissent as ‘Treason,'"
that conveys why this moment is the horrific harbinger it is. I argue
that strategists using historical models to close down an open society
start by using force on ‘undesirables,' ‘aliens,' ‘enemies of the
state,' and those considered by mainstream civil society to be
untouchable; in other times they were, of course, Jews, Gypsies,
Communists, homosexuals. Then, once society has been acculturated to
that use of force, the ‘blurring of the line' begins and the parameters
of criminalized speech are extended - the definition of ‘terrorist'
expanded - and the use of force begins to be deployed in HIGHLY
VISIBLE, STRATEGIC and VISUALLY SHOCKING WAYS against people that
others see and identify with as ordinary citizens. The first ‘torture
cellars' used by the SA, in Germany between 1931 and 1933 - even before
the National Socialists gained control of the state, during the years
when Germany was still a parliamentary democracy - were informal and
widely publicized in the mainstream media. Few German citizens objected
because those abused there were seen as ‘other' - even though the abuse
was technically illegal. But then, after this escalation of the use of
force was accepted by the population, students, journalists, opposition
leaders, and clergy were similarly abused during their own arrests.
Within six months dissent was stilled in Germany.
What is the lesson for us from this and from other closing societies,
some of them democracies? You can have a working Congress or
Parliament; newspapers; human rights groups; even elections; but when
ordinary people start to be hurt by the state for speaking out, dissent
closes quickly and the shock chills opposition very, very fast. Once
that happens, democracy has been so weakened that major tactical and
strategic incursions - greater violations of democratic process - are
far more likely. If there is dissent about the vote in Florida in this
next presidential election - and the police are tasering voters' rights
groups - we will still have an election.
What we will not have is liberty.
We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt
people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on the leisurely
time of a strong democracy - the ‘Oh gosh how awful!' kind of time. It
is time to take to the streets. It is time to confront those committing
crimes against the Constitution. The window has now dropped several
precipitous inches and once it is closed there is no opening it without
great and sorrowful upheaval.
As I read Wolf's latest article, I realized that despite my enormous
admiration for her and The End Of America, there are a number of areas
where I must disagree with her.
First, the only thing shocking to me about the University of Florida
incident is that so many Americans are shocked that it happened. Last
night I
posted a communication to her mailing list regarding the incident from former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who says:
No police officer should be in the business of denying
Constitutional rights to anyone; I am particularly chagrined when it
appears that a black police officer participated in this attack on an
innocent student.
What is happening to us???? How much more will the people accept?? I
was outraged as early as 2000 when Florida was stolen and the Democrats
said nothing!!!! Now, innocent students get tasered just for asking
questions.
What kind of US Senator do we have who can't or won't answer a question about his own election that affects all of us???
Wolf has given us a compendium of civil and Constitutional rights
stolen from us during the past eight years of the Bush administration.
If one understands this odyssey of oppression, then yesterday's
tasering of a questioning student makes perfect sense. I appreciate why
Wolf used the word "shocking" in her most recent article, but I'd be
willing to bet that she isn't shocked at all-not after the
extraordinary documentation she has given us in The End Of America.
What I do believe she wishes to clarify is the intentionally
traumatizing methodology of law enforcement to maintain social control.
Secondly, I must take issue with Wolf regarding her statement that
"...we on the left must snap out of our
‘it's-all-the-WTO-the-two-parties-are-the-same' torpor...We have to
reengage in an old-fashioned commitment to democratic action and
believe once again in an old-fashioned notion of the Republic. We need
to help lead a democracy movement in America like the ones that have
toppled repressive regimes overseas." (141)
Again, let's fast forward not to yesterday, but today and the headline "
Senate bars bill to restore detainee rights"-a
decision which supports the Bush administration's denial of habeas
corpus to Guantanamo prisoners who want to challenge their imprisonment
in court. Need we reiterate one more time that since the 2006
elections, the Democrats have done virtually nothing to end the
occupation of Iraq? Need we watch the video one more time of John Kerry
standing mute and statue-like on the University of Florida auditorium
stage-saying or doing nothing as a student was tasered for asking him
why he handed the 2004 election to George W. Bush? Does anyone
seriously believe that in a world where fellow students applaud as
police remove and taser a questioning student and do nothing to speak
up against such an outrage that we will see a viable, effective
"democracy movement in America like the ones that have toppled
repressive regimes overseas"?
As for Wolf's suggestion in today's article that we "take to the
streets", the police state is preparing for that eventuality as well by
letting us know that it has developed severely
injuring electromagnetic crowd control technology that will dramatically limit how many and how often people can "take to the streets." Welcome to full-spectrum "1984".
I repeat: the police state is right here, right now!
Moreover, some pivotal factors that Wolf has not addressed are global
energy depletion, climate change, and global economic meltdown which
are exacerbating the fascist shift about which she so brilliantly
writes and which will continue to embolden that shift as energy
scarcity,
climate chaos,
and financial crises add fuel to the fires of terrorism that the ruling
elite have so consciously and carefully incited and fanned throughout
America. As American society continues to unravel, the fascist shift
will escalate, and what is left of our civil liberties will further
evaporate.
As for political parties, I prefer the definition offered by Mike Ruppert in "
America: From Freedom To Fascism"
in which he explains that the two major parties are like two crime
families-the Genoveses and the Gambinos. They function like players in
a crap game that feign opposition to each other, but when the chips are
down, they will always unite to serve their common interests. (If the
Iraq occupation is not a case in point, then I don't know what is.)
When we vote in presidential elections for corporately-owned candidates
or "the lesser evil", we are merely choosing between the two crime
families, and even if one candidate were not a crime family member, our
votes in the past two presidential elections, as Bev Harris has so
astutely demonstrated,
have been hacked. In the throes of the current, and I might add,
rapidly-accelerating fascist shift, what evidence do we have for
assuming that if there is an election in 2008, anything will be
different? Tell me again, what's the definition of insanity?
At this moment another Naomi comes to mind-Naomi Klein whose book
Shock Doctrine
I shall soon review on this site. In that work Klein documents one of
the key strategies of fascist empires: shocking their citizens into
submission in a variety of ways from widespread societal terrorism to
the administering of electroshock therapy to individuals. What we
witnessed at the University of Florida yesterday, and what we are
likely to see more frequently in America, are deliberate shock tactics
applied by law enforcement to citizens for the purpose of achieving
massive social control.
Some of my students who are criminal justice majors tell me that the
latest strategies now being taught to police officers are "shock
doctrine" techniques which terrorize and intimidate civilians in order
to control them. Law enforcement officers are no longer encouraged to
"keep a cool head" but to "follow their own instincts" (which usually
means their own internal, adrenaline-charged state of terror) and react
with full force because it's easier to apologize (or encounter a
lawsuit) than to ask permission or risk being killed. Terrified people
should not be wearing a badge and carrying a gun, and when they are, a
fully terrorized society is guaranteed.
In spite of my disagreements with Naomi Wolf's suggested solutions, I
cannot recommend The End Of America enthusiastically enough. It is now
a permanent part of my U.S. history curriculum and is an ideal tool not
only for educators, but for parents who want to teach their children
where all those civil liberties we used to have actually came from as
well as how and why they are disappearing in the present moment.
Writings 
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness. 
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