Adolf sure did - and that book is a best-seller in the Middle East today.

For 100 years America has been sliding into fascism. Yet the gulags and gas chambers always seem to be happening some where else. Is this a trend or just happenstance?

Outsourcing, perhaps?

:)

Wasn't it Tom Wolfe who said: 'The dark night of fascism is always falling over America, but it keeps landing in Europe'?

"He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe."

It's already started. I've spent the past 25 years confined to a cubicle farm, bleeding from multiple paper cuts.

If fascism is when a government lets people own property, including their own body, in name only and then proceeds to not only tell them, but to force them to use their way or no way, then I don't see a gnat's difference between Bush and the conservatives and the Democrats. I'm convinced it has nothing to do with freedom or even results. All it has to do is controlling money and power. Now, that's either massively cynical or exactly how it's going. I don't see an effective voice for political freedom anywhere on the horizon.

S.Butterbaugh,

You are like a fish who cannot see water.

Freedom is all around you, you live in the freest times men and women have ever known (improved markedly by the internet) and yet you are driven to complain that there is no effective voice for political freedom. Perhaps that is because it is like arguing for a cure against polio - it is no longer necessary.

Somebody is misreading the tea leaves or reading into them what they want them to be saying. Total freedom means no freedom for anyone because the bad guys would rule.

First they came for the mass murdering terrorists, but I said nothing, for I wasn't a mass murdering terrorist...

Oh, almost forgot. This post needs to be linked to an .mp3 of Europe's "Final Countdown" so that cool keyboard riff comes on when people read the post.

There are meds for this level of paranoid schizophrenia; given how widespread BDS is I'm ready to start adding them to the water supply.

So a wild-eyed, historically ignorant Leftie accuses Bush of being a fascist for political gain. I have lost all capacity to be surprised by this even when the author is a formerly respected writer from the NYT.

"The dark night of fascism is always descending on America, but it always seems to land in Europe." Truer words never spoken?

Ok - I just finished reading the article in the link and Hedges doesn't come off as a historically ignorant Leftie. But his willingness to make *huge* leaps in his reasoning is extremely disconcerting. He's picked his evil villains and he's sticking by them even in the presence of an economic and political reality that flatly contradicts his views.

For example, some of his "given" facts are flat out false. Can he really say that America is in horrible economic straits and keep a straight face? The fact that there are people who struggle to make ends meet does not mean that economic chaos is upon us...it means that life is no different now than at any other point in history.

The presence of ignorant, hateful preachers in the Midwest is troublesome, but can he *really* argue that there are no "countervailing forces" that will prevent them from gaining absolute rule? Is there really any indication whatsoever that Bush *won't* be out of office by Feb of 2009?

This guy has *got* to be smoking something nasty...

"I have lost all capacity to be surprised by this even when the author is a formerly respected writer from the NYT."
Now if that isn't a oxymoron I do not know what is. For all you blinded hacks on the other side, look it up...
Hint: respected..NYT

Don't the characteristics of fascism include a tendency to claim that the community is uder assault from sinister soulless influences? By that criterion, Chris Hedges sounds fascist.

Good thing the Republicans stole the elections again in '06 to ensure the success of their fascism agenda...

Hitler was in power in 1933, but it took him until the late '30s to begin to consolidate his program.

Oh, yeah? He became Chancellor on January 30, 1933 - by mid '33, he and his pals had pretty well dismantled the democratic process in Germany (read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to marvel at the shocking speed of it), and by early '34 the last vestiges of the old republic had been swept away...

I believe it was Thomas Wolf(e?) who said, "Fascism is always falling on America, but it always lands somewhere else."

I sometimes wonder if a certain paranoia regarding the "Fascism" of the government you openly, freely, and in many cases, profitably criticize might not be some sort of quasi-religious martyrdom/savior type o' deal.

Bush as Satan, Hedges as the Annointed One who will save us from the Devil who is stupider than dirt, yet wily enough to allow the Truth Tellers to continue spreading the Gospel openly and unmolested, for he realizes (despite being stupid) that The Truth out in the open will be ignored by the fools who don't deserve to be saved by Hedges, but he'll do it anyway because he's just that kind of guy.

It will be interesting to see how Mr. Fascist is going to hold on to power after the next presidential election. Maybe he'll retire to his ranch, and engage in nefarious activities that look to the uninitiated an awful lot like maintaining a distance on politics and just trying to enjoy life.

"raw anti-Semitism didn't play out with the German public"

ahem, from the time Germany became a nation in the late 1800's they saw the Jews as a scourge to be rid of. Hitler was a product of this rage against the Jews, he was NOT the initiator of it.

Let's see ... the MSM and Democrats want to censor political speech (campaign finance laws), institute thought control (the campus PC movement), have their own genuine brownshirts (anti-war protestors), rail against a religious minority as engaged in sinister plots for world domination (conservative Christians), and undermine free elections (by counting chads, dimples, pimples, etc. instead of votes). Not to forget the in-your-face anti-Semitism of Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, and others.

Never mind all that – Bush is the real danger. Chris Hedges says so. So there!

Yep, Tom Wolfe:

“The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe."

See:

http://volokh.com/posts/1139878045.shtml

(And an additional interesting quote from Gunter Grass below.)

I don't see why anyone should deign to acknowledge "Bushitler" screeds any more.

Frankly, they should be below our notice. They minimize the horror of the holocaust and WWII, and they make us all look stupider.

Please, let's all stop paying attention to these loons.

Actually, Dan, I think the loons' views should brodcasted everywhere, because the simple fact that they are expressing them freely completely contradicts everything they are saying. If we were really being oppressed by a fascist dictatorship, then their protestations against "Bushitler" would never see the light of day--they would be lying in the dirt with bullets in their skulls instead of writing mass market political tracts. This is what I love about America--the idiots are perfectly free to expose themselves as idiots.

Hedges obviously hopes that his readers will not look up "Hitler's Speeches and Proclamations," edited skilfully by Max Domarus and readily available in libraries.

Yes, he is historically ignorant. He´s not funny, either. To make such facile comparisons is immoral. I live an hours drive from former Dachau concentration camp, in business since 1933.

Check out this 1933 article from the Guardian. That´s what a fascist takeover looks like.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1735980,00.html

wf...dont you see the parallel process that has gone on in our government? We have more people in prison than any other country. Halliburton has been given the right to build large detention camps in the US. All it will take is one more 9/11 for martial law to be declared. A 9/11 that looks like the fire at the Reichstag.....wake up!!!