BlogHer - Naomi Wolf and the End of America - Comments

This is more recent and she is so right.......

Crunchy Carpets — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:58:54 -0500

Why are people not paying attention..stop just nodding and hmming..DO SOMETHING!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

People on BlogHer have laughed at me when I mention the term 'fascism' and here we are...

WAKE UP!

Look for me at http://crunchycarpets.com or check out the ladies at www.wetcoastwomen.com

I been saying it, Miguel. Ain't I been saying it?

Nordette — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:25:34 -0500

That's what the character Russell Casse said to his son in the movie Independence Day. He felt vindicated after years of being assumed nuts because he said aliens had abducted him. It turned out that aliens were very real, not ET-lovable, and on the world's doorstep. But, you know, that's only a movie.

Still, I'm feeling a little Russell Casse now. :-) Ever since 9/11 we've been heading down this strange path, and I use Nazi Germany as an example also to show that it's not as hard to turn free people into crazed robots as people today seem to think it is. We've let a lot slide while entertaining fearmongering and promoting feeling over fact in news coverage.

I also remember when the President's powers were expanded " to designate anyone an 'enemy combatant' -- no probable cause required." Scary.

I don't know what we can do to combat it other than to all be more vigilant and to be more willing to protest through writing, speaking, and voting.

Nordette is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is hosted on another site at this link.

Well, I hope people take notice...

Crunchy Carpets — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:36:27 -0500

as an outsider looking in, she is absolutely right.

The similarities between the current US and historic fascist states is frightenly close..and people just ain't seeing it or refuse to see it or sadly, the propaganda is working....

I hope people listen to her....I hope there is a movement for change.

She rocks by the way...

Look for me at http://crunchycarpets.com or check out the ladies at www.wetcoastwomen.com

Wolf - rockin' it once again.

TCMom — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:10:55 -0500

This book sounds absolutely facinating. The Beauty Myth and Misconceptions (written about her experiences with pregnancy) have both made an enormous impression on my life. An interesting post about her latest stuff. It sounds like she's rockin' it once again.

Caroline

http://morningsidemom.wordpress.com/

I Love Naomi Wolf!

From the 'hood — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:44:07 -0500

Her book "The Beauty Myth" really had an impact on me. This book just went straight to the top of my "must read" list!

Naomi Wolf and the End of America

Kim Pearson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:01:41 -0500

After studying how once-democratic nations slide into fascism, writer Naomi Wolf came to a horrifying conclusion: in the last five years, the United States has taken all of the steps that have historically led to the end of republican government. Wolf issued a call to patriotic dissent in her 2007 book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to A Young Patriot. A sample chapter is available here (.pdf). You can get the gist of her argument by watching this video:

Wolf's meticulously-constructed argument deserves serious consideration. She describes what she calls a "fascist shift" in our country --

"an antidemocratic ideology that uses the threat of violence against the individual to subdue the institutions of civil society so that they in turn can be subordinated to the power of the state."

Wolf's evidence includes the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which allows persons designated enemy combatants to be denied fundamental rights of due process. The kicker is that the President of the United States now has the legal authority to designate anyone an "enemy combatant" -- no probable cause required. The use of interrogation methods widely considered to be torture is further evidence. [Just yesterday, Wolf argued in the Huffington Post that senior Bush administration officials such as Secretary of State Condolezza Rice are, in fact, sex criminals because they sexual humiliation as an interrogation method.]

Bloggers are paying attention. Here's supergirl, who calls it a "must read:"

It’s pretty thorough, and all and all fairly cautious for a book that is essentially a warning and rallying call to try and save our democracy in this country.

Jackie Scheeler heard Wolf's lecture and reported:

[H]er talk begins with an apology and a joke about bringing us valium. then she launches into it, and for the next forty minutes i was riveted. and furious. and scared shitless.

On July 4, 2003, my second day as a blogger, I relayed my own concerns about troubling trends in the news industry that uncomfortably echoed the demise of the free press in Nazi Germany. Oron Hale's 1964 study, The Captive Press Inside the Third Reich, identified several trends that made the German press ripe for cooptation:

1. increased concentration of media ownership,
2. the increased ownership of news organizations by non-news
conglomerates,
3. management decisions that compromised news values in
favor of profits,
4. the blurring of advertising and editorial content,
5. an increased preocuppation with news as entertainment, including an
editorial emphasis on sensationalism, celebrity reporting and lurid
scandals.

These preconditions aided the Nazis in several ways. The increased concentration of ownership meant that there were relatively few industry leaders with whom the Nazis had to treat. Their involvement in other industries gave the Nazis multiple levers of influence and encouraged self-censorship. This in turn encouraged the sensationalism and pseudo-news that came to dominate the news pages. The Nazis fed this demand with a steady supply of tabloid-type tales that demonized Jews and other regime scapegoats while valorizing the "Aryan" heroes and heroines who would restore honor to the Fatherland. It is not difficult to understand how these circumstances contributed to the constriction of public discourse and to tolerance for the brutal treatment of people deemed unacceptable or injurious to the nation.

What do you think Americans can do to ensure the protection of our democracy?