Whenever this question, or a similar one, is asked, linking the Republicans with the Nazis, reactionary pimps for capitalism like Joe Scarborough, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Burton W. Folsom, Thomas L. Friedman and the clowns at the CATO Institute as well as the American Enterprise Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just go apoplectic. They'll fume and sputter about "socialism is bad" and how they are "conservatives, not Nazis" and that its just as bad to call Republicans Nazis is it is for black U.S. Representative Allen West (R-FL) to say that 78 to 80 members of the Democratic Party are communists...oh wait, Scarborough was the only one to denounce that (very mildly). And you thought McCarthyism was gone. So are they the NSGOP?
THE NAZI PLATFORM OF 1920
Here's the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) or NSDAP, i.e. NAZI party, 25 point plan from 1920. On the surface it would be hard to compare these points, for the most part, with Republican positions today. Maybe 3 through 6, and 24 sound similar to Republican positions today. The rest are heavy on the "Socialist" (and pro-trade unions) and light on the "Nationalist". Keep one thing in mind though, then as now, party platforms are window dressing, and are made to be ignored. For example, nationalization of all trusts (13), profit sharing in large industries (14) and expropriation of land (from the rich) without compensation, while helping the poor and working class, would all serve to alienate the wealthy ruling class that the party needed to finance it; therefore it is safe to presume these planks are window dressing to satisfy the rank and file. Similarly, plank 22, abolition of the regular army and creation of a national (volks or people's) army, would alienate the Junkers, the Prussian professional military men that the party also needed on its side. It was just such a threat to the army by SA leader Ernst Rohm that led to his arrest and murder, and the decapitation of the SA leadership, the left wing of the NSDAP, on 30 June 1934. The SA faithful had taken the "Socialism" part of National Socialism seriously and wondered why they weren't getting any spoils that they expected to go along with being the protector and muscle of the party, now that it was in power. Both Republicans and Democrats regularly disappoint supporters by ignoring party platforms and taking positions that help to further enrich their financial supporters, regardless of what they said they were going to do in the platform committees. They are not going to bite the hand that feeds them (Super PACs, the Koch brothers, George Soros, Sheldon Adelson) . That is why the Republicans continually push for tax cuts for the rich, say that corporations are people and try to destroy unions (as the Nazis did), destroy the working class, destroy the middle class and destroy programs like medicare and medicaid that help the poor and elderly; whom Republicans repeatedly show contempt for; and vote against extending
unemployment benefits. The Democratic Party (whom Republicans are always calling "socialists" or "Social Democrats") are also bought by corporate interests (former Democratic congressman Harold Ford Jr went to work for banksters Morgan Stanley and before that he was a Vice Chairman for Merrill Lynch and is a big time pimp for Wall Street) which reinforces my view that Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin, giving the American people the illusion of choice.
After murdering the left of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) who truly believed in the 25 points of that 1920 platform, who took "Socialist" seriously, Adolph Hitler went about the real business of fascism. That business is channeling the public's money into corporations and the merchants of death (today called "defense industries") as well as bankers pockets, busting unions (and sending union leaders to concentration camps), "gun control" so the public couldn't resist, persecution of religious minorities and clergy that spoke out against their policies, demonizing the opposition to their policies, federal control of and militarization of police, control of the press, agitating for war, because it's good for business, as this article points out, and for war profiteers. Apparently so are natural disasters (uber fascist Larry Kudlow of CNBC said we should grateful that the "human toll looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that", and this scumbag is still on the air). Benito Mussolini was someone who knew a thing or two about fascism, and this was his definition : "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power". Sounds just like America today, and exactly like the Republican Party.
AMERICAN COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS 1933 THROUGH THE END OF THE WAR
Quite a few American corporations and companies and Wall Street, did business with the Nazis both before and during the Second World War.
Author Anthony Sutton (Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, The Order of Skull and Bones) speaks here for 40 minutes on American corporations dealing with and financing the Nazis, as well as communist regimes, especially the Soviet Union.
Writer and retired businessman Laurence W. Britt wrote an article for Free Inquiry magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism, called "Fascism Anyone?" that listed 14 characteristics of seven fascist states studies, all 14 apply to the United States today, and in particular apply to the Republican Party. These 14 characteristics are taken from Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Pinochet's Chile, Suharto's Indonesia and Papadopoulos' Greece. They are by no means the only defining characteristics of fascism or a fascist state, but are common to all seven of those states. They are:
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. Supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with "national security"
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections
One doesn't have to go back more than a dozen years in most of these to find a plethora of examples of these things in the USA.
1) You can't go to any sporting event at any level, children to professional, without seeing uniformed "color guards" carrying flags on the field, the national anthem being played (as the late comedian George Carlin asked, why are we the only ones with a national anthem with bombs and rockets in it?), flags waving. Schools have a "pledge of allegiance" and it says "one nation, indivisible" (a slap at secession). Ever since the false flag "terrorist attacks" of September 2001 cars have flags waving from them or flag stickers stuck on them as well as jingoistic, simplistic slogans, the NFL put flag stickers on the back of every helmet of every team. As actor Peter Fonda said, when he wore a flag on the back of a leather jacket when they were about to start filming Easy Rider in 1968, cops pulled him over and hassled him about "desecrating" it; now every cop in the country, as well as firemen and EMT's, have flags on the sleeves of shirts and jackets.
2) See Alberto Gonzalez and his comments about the Geneva Convention being "quaint" and "obsolete" for this one. Not to mention "extraordinary rendition", waterboarding, the atrocities and war crimes at Abu Ghraib and Iraq in general, in Afghanistan, Panama, Vietnam, Waco, Ruby Ridge, The Move in Philadelphia, the grossly misnamed PATRIOT Act, the star chamber military trials, Guantanamo gulag, the 'other losses' war crimes against German POWs, the rounding up of Japanese, German and Italians into concentration camps in World War II, etc.
3) Here we can think of the use of terms like "Islamofascists", the attacks on Islam, referring to anyone who opposes U.S. forces in their country as a "terrorist", Bush's "you're either with us or with the terrorists" crack, FOX "News" constant racist attacks against Muslims, the hysteria against Ozzie Guillen for saying something insufficiently demonizing about Fidel Castro, the Palmer Raids/McCarthyism witch hunts against "communists" (while ignoring the Soviet agents in FDR's cabinet), demonizing war protesters and resisters.
4) The colossal glorification of the military today, especially in comparison with the way Vietnam veterans were treated, is amazing. It too is a result of the false flag "terrorist attacks" of 11 September 2001. Even a mundane event like the NFL draft, as well as football games and other sporting events, feature men and women in uniforms being feted, lavish spending on recruiting ads ("the U.S. Navy, a global force for good"), universities being forced to admit military recruiters if they accept federal funds for anything, military discounts, a huge DoD budget, the constant use of the word "hero" for anyone in a military uniform regardless of what they have or haven't done. It's like Sparta, ancient Rome or Imperial Japan.
5) The Republican Party is a particular offender on this one. Rush Limbaugh's use of the word "slut" to describe a woman who testified before Congress, the defeat of the Paycheck Fairness Act, Mitt Romney's refusal to denounce Limbaugh (who was caught with prescription for Viagra in someone else's name coming back from the Dominican Republic--child sex capital of the world) for the "slut" comment, the attack on Planned Parenthood and insurance coverage of contraceptives, trying to force women to bear children of rape or incest, the T&A television shows and commercials, Herman Cain, etc.
6) The mass media in the United States of America is owned by just a few corporations. Bain Capital (Mitt Romney's vulture capitalism co.)/Thomas H. Lee Partners owns Clear Channel, the largest radio station owner in the U.S., they have 866 radio stations which run the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity shows. The Walt Disney Co.owns ABC, ESPN, 42% of the following: A&E, Lifetime, History Channel, Biography Channel, Lifetime Real Women, Lifetime Movie Network, History International, Live Well Network; also SOAPnet, Pixar, 277 radio stations, 8 TV stations, Marvel Publishing, Marvel Entertainment, about 4 record labels. CBS owns CBS television including 29 TV stations, CBS radio including 130 radio stations, 50% of CW network (formerly WB and UPN), Showtime cable network, Smithsonian Networks, Simon & Schuster publishing, Pocket Books, Scribner. Time Warner owns Warner Brothers Television Group (including Warner Brothers Pictures), TBS, TNT, CNN, Headline News (CNN), HBO, Cinemax, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Cartoon Network, truTV (formerly Court TV), New Line Cinema, DC Comics...Time Warner is the 2nd largest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Viacom is the 4th largest media conglomerate in the world, it owns 160 networks that reach over 600 million people around the world; including MTV, VH1, BET, CMT, Nickelodean, Comedy Central, TV Land, Spike TV, Viacom Filmed Entertainment. News Corp is owned by Zionist sleazebag Rupert Murdoch, it owns FOX News Channel, FOX Business Channel (which is home to Don Imus), FX, National Geographic Channel, FSN, Hulu, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, TV Guide, Barron's, SmartMoney, HarperCollins publisher, 20th Century Fox, NY Daily News, News International (the Times, Sunday Times and the Sun), and more. You can find others like Gannett here.
7). If that doesn't define the Republicans, nothing does. Those two magic words, "national security", are a catch-all for anything that the government, especially Republicans, don't want the public to know. And the crushing of civil liberties, the shredding of the Constitution via the grossly misnamed PATRIOT Act (that Obama campaigned against but keeps extending), withholding of documents, redacting documents under Freedom of Information Act requests, indefinite "detention", "extraordinary rendition", FICA court after-the-fact warrants, what they're doing to Bradley Manning and much more are all done in the name of "national security".
8) Think that guys like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggert, Pat Robertson got where they are without toeing the line set by the ruling elite in this country? Think they get the airtime and tax-exempt status they enjoy without playing ball with the Israel lobby, the Department of Defense, State Department, corporations and people named Rockefeller, Rothschild and Warburg? Think again, because they and others are all pushing a Zionist, government agenda. Zionism is a political philosophy, and many a "Christian" has devoted himself or herself to it, to the point that they're hoping for a nuclear war to usher in the return of Christ (in their minds); in that philosophy Palestine only belongs to one people, and Arab Muslims aren't it. These guys are leading a push for war, against Iran, and against a lot of Americans. They'll preach obedience and subservience to the government and quote a scripture like "Render unto Caesar" to try to support it, and get taken care of in return. And they're all Republicans telling the faithful to vote for the Republican candidate.
9) Think Mitt Romney on this, "corporations are people, my friend". Think also of guys like Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and his infamous "slush fund" and "shakedown" comments during a congressional hearing questioning British Petroleum's CEO Tony Hayward about the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster that killed 11 men, and two more from sunstroke during the cleanup (Hayward is now CEO of Genel Energy, a Turkish oil and gas company operating in Iraq, which was bought by Vallares Plc, an investment firm co-founded by Hayward and Nathaniel Rothschild). Barton also was trying to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and cut it's power to enforce clean air regulations of power plants and oil refineries. Barton is a pimp for the oil industry, he has received $1,448, 380 from the oil industry since 1990 as of June 2010. The constituency of the Republican Party is the rich, and corporations; and it always has been.
10) Seen what's just happened in Wisconsin with a fascist governor named Scott Walker? New Jersey under that fat bastard Chris Christie? Michigan? "The Republicans have traded scabs and club-wielding goons for legislation to destroy unions. They have managed to demonize unions in the minds of non-unionized Americans until only 10% of Americans belong to unions any more. Their talking heads have convinced the gullible that unions caused our economic collapse instead of the guys in the banking and financial industries that are right now paying themselves tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. The history of the labor movement in America got dropped from our history curriculum so people don’t understand what a union is anymore." What the Republicans are doing in union busting is putting more money into the pockets of their owners, the 1%, at the expense of everyone else, and it's to de-fund the Democratic Party.
11) As George Carlin said, the owners of this country aren't interested in a smart, educated populace cable of critical thinking. That doesn't help them. This article hits it on the head also, like Carlin did:
"What was until recently a difference in ideology has devolved, in a little over a decade, into a difference in intellect. Somewhere along the way, Ronald Reagan gave up his throne to Sarah Palin; George Will and Charles Krauthammer took a back seat to Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity; and the likes of Joe the Plumber replaced the likes of Colin Powell as the heroes of the New Republicans.
"It's not that the existing Republicans actually got dumber; but that the torch was somehow passed without the brains...
"By painting educated, well-earning, science-embracing, articulate, introspective, intellectual citizens as un-American, the Republican party has built an entire base made up of those who not only don't possess these attributes, but enthusiastically abhor those who do. Not only are these factions now split along lines of educational achievement, socioeconomic status, and cultural and religious values, but most significantly, along an 'intellectual divide'.
"The Republicans have been able to coalesce around them a base of voters that are on the more vulnerable and malleable side of this divide. Karl Rove scored twice in the election and re-election of George W. Bush by effectively -- and impressively -- constructing political strategy on the working assumption that the majority of people are ignorant and/or intellectually deficient, and therefore manipulable. So, if you can be loud enough and simultaneously inject enough fear into your target population (WMD's in Iraq, Saddam causing 9/11, gays getting married, or Obama = socialism = Hitler), they will believe whatever you tell them. This is what enabled wealthy politicians and oil corporations to send economically disadvantaged teenagers to war and lay off their blue collar working class parents -- as their jobs were sent overseas for cheap labor and massive profits -- and yet still get them to vote them back into office."
12) A lot is said about crime, and harsher sentences. Nixon ran as a "law and order" candidate, and every Republican since has. The United States has the highest percentage of its population incarcerated than any other country in the world. 1 out of 100 people in the United States is in prison, from 1990 to 2005 the number of incarcerated people grew by a whopping 700%! "The rate of imprisonment for all men above age 18 is one in 54; for Latinos it is one in 36; and for Blacks it is one in 15". A lot of that is for "drug crimes", including marijuana. For-profit prisons have a lot to do with that too, part of the Republicans plan to "privatize" everything. A lot of money is to be made in this virtual slave labor system, but companies like Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in America, are making money hand over fist. CCA has a plan to buy prisons from cash-strapped states.
13) There are not many places you'll look where there isn't corruption, and a lot cronyism. Cities like Chicago and New York (from even before the Boss Tweed era) are famous for it. The federal government and state governments almost daily have stories of it. How was it that Halliburton got all those no-bid contracts in Iraq after the U.S. invasion? Well who was the CEO of Halliburton until he was put on the Republican ticket in 2000...Dick Cheney. Billions of dollars in cash disappeared in Iraq, as much as $27.2 billion is unaccounted for. Enron collapsed destroying employees pensions, but top execs skated out with millions, run by Bush crony Kenneth Lay. Neil Bush presided over Silverado Savings and Loan during the S&L scandal of the 1980's, he enriched himself and cronies like Kenneth L. Good, Bill Waters and Larry Mizel. Bush managed to not be charged (he was a member of the Board of Directors), it helps when your dad is the Vice President of the United States and a life-long CIA man and Skull & Bones member, but faced a civil suit by the FDIC for which he paid a mere $50,000 as his settlement. Bush family was also pals with the Hinkley family, and Neil was to have dinner with John Hinkley's older brother the night after the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Privatizing the Iraq War with mercenaries (and now doing it in Somalia), excuse me, "security contractors", cost the American public billions of dollars.Former Halliburton branch Kellogg/Brown/Root was linked to the vast majority of war-zone fraud cases, about $13 billion in questioned claims (KBR made $32 billion from 2001 to 2009, the largest single beneficiary of the war).
14) See 2000 election theft and the horrible consequences of it for the world. Also see 2004 election theft. You can go back to the 1876 election for that matter.
I would add a 15) Gun control/confiscation It is a hallmark of all fascist and totalitarian regimes and systems to take away the people's means to resist. This is usually done through the other side of the coin, the Democrats, but they are doing the bidding of what Carlin, and movie director John Carpenter, called our owners.
So, are the Republicans the spiritual successors to the Nazis? You bet your jackboots they are. As Michael C. Ruppert said to an audience at Portland State University in November 2001, "the Third Reich did not lose the Second World War, it just changed venues". It changed names too, and the Republicans ought to be known as the NSGOP.
THE NAZI PLATFORM OF 1920
Here's the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) or NSDAP, i.e. NAZI party, 25 point plan from 1920. On the surface it would be hard to compare these points, for the most part, with Republican positions today. Maybe 3 through 6, and 24 sound similar to Republican positions today. The rest are heavy on the "Socialist" (and pro-trade unions) and light on the "Nationalist". Keep one thing in mind though, then as now, party platforms are window dressing, and are made to be ignored. For example, nationalization of all trusts (13), profit sharing in large industries (14) and expropriation of land (from the rich) without compensation, while helping the poor and working class, would all serve to alienate the wealthy ruling class that the party needed to finance it; therefore it is safe to presume these planks are window dressing to satisfy the rank and file. Similarly, plank 22, abolition of the regular army and creation of a national (volks or people's) army, would alienate the Junkers, the Prussian professional military men that the party also needed on its side. It was just such a threat to the army by SA leader Ernst Rohm that led to his arrest and murder, and the decapitation of the SA leadership, the left wing of the NSDAP, on 30 June 1934. The SA faithful had taken the "Socialism" part of National Socialism seriously and wondered why they weren't getting any spoils that they expected to go along with being the protector and muscle of the party, now that it was in power. Both Republicans and Democrats regularly disappoint supporters by ignoring party platforms and taking positions that help to further enrich their financial supporters, regardless of what they said they were going to do in the platform committees. They are not going to bite the hand that feeds them (Super PACs, the Koch brothers, George Soros, Sheldon Adelson) . That is why the Republicans continually push for tax cuts for the rich, say that corporations are people and try to destroy unions (as the Nazis did), destroy the working class, destroy the middle class and destroy programs like medicare and medicaid that help the poor and elderly; whom Republicans repeatedly show contempt for; and vote against extending
unemployment benefits. The Democratic Party (whom Republicans are always calling "socialists" or "Social Democrats") are also bought by corporate interests (former Democratic congressman Harold Ford Jr went to work for banksters Morgan Stanley and before that he was a Vice Chairman for Merrill Lynch and is a big time pimp for Wall Street) which reinforces my view that Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin, giving the American people the illusion of choice.
After murdering the left of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) who truly believed in the 25 points of that 1920 platform, who took "Socialist" seriously, Adolph Hitler went about the real business of fascism. That business is channeling the public's money into corporations and the merchants of death (today called "defense industries") as well as bankers pockets, busting unions (and sending union leaders to concentration camps), "gun control" so the public couldn't resist, persecution of religious minorities and clergy that spoke out against their policies, demonizing the opposition to their policies, federal control of and militarization of police, control of the press, agitating for war, because it's good for business, as this article points out, and for war profiteers. Apparently so are natural disasters (uber fascist Larry Kudlow of CNBC said we should grateful that the "human toll looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that", and this scumbag is still on the air). Benito Mussolini was someone who knew a thing or two about fascism, and this was his definition : "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power". Sounds just like America today, and exactly like the Republican Party.
AMERICAN COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS 1933 THROUGH THE END OF THE WAR
Quite a few American corporations and companies and Wall Street, did business with the Nazis both before and during the Second World War.
Author Anthony Sutton (Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, The Order of Skull and Bones) speaks here for 40 minutes on American corporations dealing with and financing the Nazis, as well as communist regimes, especially the Soviet Union.
"This build-up for European war both before and after 1933 was in great part due to Wall Street financial assistance in the 1920's to create the German cartel system, and to technical assistance from well-known American firms which will be identified later, to build the German Wehrmacht. Whereas this financial and technical assistance is referred to as 'accidental' or due to the "short-sightedness" of American businessmen, the evidence presented below strongly suggests some degree of premeditation on the part of these American financiers. Similar and unacceptable pleas of "accident" were made on behalf of American financiers and industrialists in the parallel example of building the military power of the Soviet Union from 1917 onwards. Yet these American capitalists were willing to finance and subsidize the Soviet Union while the Vietnam war was underway, knowing that the Soviets were supplying the other side.
"The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations before 1940 can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities. For instance, in 1934 Germany produced domestically only 300,000 tons of natural petroleum products and less than 800,000 tons of synthetic gasoline; the balance was imported. Yet, ten years later in World War II, after transfer of the Standard Oil of New Jersey hydrogenation patents and technology to I.G. Farben (used to produce synthetic gasoline from coal), Germany produced about 6 1/2 million tons of oil — of which 85 percent (5 1/2 million tons) was synthetic oil using the Standard Oil hydrogenation process. Moreover, the control of synthetic oil output in Germany was held by the I. G. Farben subsidiary, Braunkohle-Benzin A. G., and this Farben cartel itself was created in 1926 with Wall Street financial assistance."
These companies were such as Standard Oil (Rockefellers), Chase National Bank (which acquired Equitable Trust Company of New York in 1930, major stockholder was John D. Rockefeller Jr), Bank of the Manhattan Company (through a merger in 1929 made Paul Warburg its chairman) which merged with Chase in 1955, Kuhn, Loeb & Company, General Electric, J.P. Morgan, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, du Pont.
Then there's the Brown Brothers Harriman link to the Nazis, and their agent, Prescott Bush, who dealt with and handled business dealings with the Nazis and their Union Banking Corporation and German industrialist Fritz Thyssen well after the United States and Nazi Germany were at war with each other (and was taken over by the U.S. Government in October 1942 under the Trading With The Enemy Act). Prescott Bush, of course, became a U.S. Senator and was the father of George Herbert Walker Bush, grandfather to George Walker Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Mallon Bush and Marvin Bush. Not to mention the corrupt Harriman brothers, especially the snake-in-the-grass W Averell Harriman, who was a Democrat (his brother E. Roland was a Republican (as I said, two sides of the same coin) and their corrupt lawyers who worked for the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles brothers. John Foster Dulles was the chief contact for S&C with the Nazis, and became Secretary of State under Eisenhower from 1953 to his death in 1959; he was instrumental in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 and the overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954. Allen Dulles was a former chairman and treasurer of the Council on Foreign Relations and met Hitler and Mussolini while a "legal adviser" to the League of Nations. He became Director of the CIA in 1953 until relieved in November 1961 by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster; then was placed as a member of the Warren Commission as a fox in the hen house. At the CIA he controlled the overthrow of Mossadegh and Arbenz, the murder attempts against Fidel Castro, the penetration of American and foreign media outlets by CIA agents (like William F. Buckley and Joseph Alsop) and the sabotage of Francis Gary Powers U-2 flight to destroy the summit between Khrushchev and Eisenhower.
All but W. Averell Harriman were officially Republicans. The Harriman brothers, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush and William F. Buckley are all Skull & Bones.
BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW FDR IN 1933
In the summer of 1933 (a year after Hoover and MacArthur destroyed the Bonus Army march) a plot was hatched by some of the wealthiest members of the ruling class in America, connected to big time corporations such as du Pont and J.P. Morgan bank, to overthrow or coerce President Franklin D. Roosevelt to adapt fascist policies to deal with the financial crisis these uber capitalist Republicans created, the Great Depression. It became known as The Business Plot. The plan was for a force of half a million men made up mostly of members of the American Legion (an organization that at the time Butler distrusted, believing to be controlled by banking interests and it's leaders to have sold out the membership) to be led by retired USMC Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, a highly decorated (including two Medals of Honor) veteran of the Spanish-American War, "Philippine Insurrection", Boxer Rebellion, various invasions of the "Banana Wars", action at Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914 and World War I.
Butler said that he had been approached, in an attempt at recruiting, by Gerald G. MacGuire, a former Connecticut American Legion commander and a bond salesman for Robert Sterling Clark, a wealthy Wall Street banker and stock broker. When MacGuire flashed a big bankbook and talked about a lot of cash for the plot, Butler, who was playing along just to see how deep this ran and who all was involved, demanded to meet Clark. During the meeting, Clark said Roosevelt was weak and would go along, 'return to his class'. A reporter named Paul Comly French also met with MacGuire. The plotters had created an organization called The Liberty League, "({t}he League was was funded by donations from US Steel, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank, Standard Oil, Goodyear and the Dupont family, among others. Not surprisingly, the League would later actively oppose almost every major piece of New Deal legislation, including, but not limited too Social Security).
" 'According to the former general, MacGuire described to Butler 'what was tantamount to a plot to seize the government, by force if necessary.' MacGuire, said Butler, explained that he had traveled to Europe to study the role played by veterans' groups in propping up Mussolini's fascist Italy, Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the French government. MacGuire lauded France's Croix de Feu as 'an organization of super-soldiers' with profound political influence. Then the man with the silver plate in his cranium announced that 'our idea here in America' is to 'get up an organization of this kind' because 'the political setup has got to be changed a bit.' "
General Butler eventually reported all this to a congressional committee, the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, the forerunner of the House Un-American Activities Committee, run by Rep. John W. McCormack (D-MA) and Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), a Lithuanian (Russian Empire at the time) born Jew who turned out to be a paid agent of the NKVD, the Soviet intelligence and secret police agency. Despite the testimony of General Butler and reporter French, the committee did really nothing. Butler had named as being involved such prominent people as:
* Irenee du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.
* Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.
* William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.
* John Davis - Former Democratic presidential nominee (1924) and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.
* Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York (Democratic nominee 1928) and a co-director of the American Liberty League. Smith was in bed with the NY mafia. When told they were backing Roosevelt (Frank Costello's favorite), Smith was crushed and started turning against Roosevelt.
* John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party, and president of General Motors. In later decades, Raskob would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.
* Robert Sterling Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers.
* Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.
All denied any involvement and none but MacGuire was called to testify. Butler said the names of these people were edited out of transcripts, even though they plotted treason (Prescott Bush was one of the conspirators too). Clark was right when he said "we have the newspapers", the New York Times called General Butler's testimony "a giant hoax" and Time, owned by right-wing Republican Henry Luce, Skull & Bones, called it "a plot without plotters".
Was the Business Plot a False Flag Operation to make FDR more acceptable
There is some reason to think, as Dr. Henry Makow states, that the Business Plot was a false flag operation designed to make the rich Roosevelt more acceptable to average Americans. Butler had been forced to retire at the end of 1931, he'd been threatened with court-martial in 1924 for repeating gossip about Benito Mussolini being in a hit-and-run accident and calling him a "mad dog" and saying Mussolini and his cohorts were about to break loose in Europe. Butler had, since his retirement, been on the lecture circuit talking about how he and the military had been used as "gangsters for capitalism" and "high class muscle" for corporations in the Caribbean during the various invasions of the "Banana Wars". He donated most of his speaking fees to unemployed veterans. He'd turned against Hoover after being a life-long Republican after the Bonus Army debacle. Butler was denouncing capitalism when he was approached by MacGuire, and after the McCormack-Dickstein hearings, published his book War Is A Racket. MacArthur proved he's a guy who would have carried out the desires of the fascist Republican capitalists but was hated by many veterans for what he did to the Bonus Army along with Patton and Eisenhower. Smedley Butler was the last guy you'd ask to commit treason and lead an army to overthrow the government to install fascism, unless it was your intention to have it exposed and have your alleged victim look good. Why was no one but MacGuire called to testify? Why were portions of General Butler's testimony excised from the report? Why was there no mention of The American Liberty League, or any of it's big shot members and financiers? Why was no one prosecuted? None of these questions were ever answered.
And it was fear of the Bonus Army, not Depression Era gangsters, that led to the National Firearms Act of 1934. Congress was scared shitless when the unarmed Bonus Army marchers were demonstrating outside the capital, two were murdered by police and two babies were murdered with tear gas by MacArthur's troops. The collective thought had to have been "wow, we can't let trained veterans have automatic weapons". This came after food riots in America and elsewhere in 1931 and Hunger Marches in 1932, including the violent (by Ford goons) Ford Hunger March were taking place before and at the same time as the Bonus March. The rich that own both parties got scared.
14 SIGNS OF FASCISM--And the Republicans display them allThese companies were such as Standard Oil (Rockefellers), Chase National Bank (which acquired Equitable Trust Company of New York in 1930, major stockholder was John D. Rockefeller Jr), Bank of the Manhattan Company (through a merger in 1929 made Paul Warburg its chairman) which merged with Chase in 1955, Kuhn, Loeb & Company, General Electric, J.P. Morgan, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, du Pont.
Then there's the Brown Brothers Harriman link to the Nazis, and their agent, Prescott Bush, who dealt with and handled business dealings with the Nazis and their Union Banking Corporation and German industrialist Fritz Thyssen well after the United States and Nazi Germany were at war with each other (and was taken over by the U.S. Government in October 1942 under the Trading With The Enemy Act). Prescott Bush, of course, became a U.S. Senator and was the father of George Herbert Walker Bush, grandfather to George Walker Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Mallon Bush and Marvin Bush. Not to mention the corrupt Harriman brothers, especially the snake-in-the-grass W Averell Harriman, who was a Democrat (his brother E. Roland was a Republican (as I said, two sides of the same coin) and their corrupt lawyers who worked for the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles brothers. John Foster Dulles was the chief contact for S&C with the Nazis, and became Secretary of State under Eisenhower from 1953 to his death in 1959; he was instrumental in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 and the overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954. Allen Dulles was a former chairman and treasurer of the Council on Foreign Relations and met Hitler and Mussolini while a "legal adviser" to the League of Nations. He became Director of the CIA in 1953 until relieved in November 1961 by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster; then was placed as a member of the Warren Commission as a fox in the hen house. At the CIA he controlled the overthrow of Mossadegh and Arbenz, the murder attempts against Fidel Castro, the penetration of American and foreign media outlets by CIA agents (like William F. Buckley and Joseph Alsop) and the sabotage of Francis Gary Powers U-2 flight to destroy the summit between Khrushchev and Eisenhower.
All but W. Averell Harriman were officially Republicans. The Harriman brothers, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush and William F. Buckley are all Skull & Bones.
BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW FDR IN 1933
In the summer of 1933 (a year after Hoover and MacArthur destroyed the Bonus Army march) a plot was hatched by some of the wealthiest members of the ruling class in America, connected to big time corporations such as du Pont and J.P. Morgan bank, to overthrow or coerce President Franklin D. Roosevelt to adapt fascist policies to deal with the financial crisis these uber capitalist Republicans created, the Great Depression. It became known as The Business Plot. The plan was for a force of half a million men made up mostly of members of the American Legion (an organization that at the time Butler distrusted, believing to be controlled by banking interests and it's leaders to have sold out the membership) to be led by retired USMC Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, a highly decorated (including two Medals of Honor) veteran of the Spanish-American War, "Philippine Insurrection", Boxer Rebellion, various invasions of the "Banana Wars", action at Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914 and World War I.
Butler said that he had been approached, in an attempt at recruiting, by Gerald G. MacGuire, a former Connecticut American Legion commander and a bond salesman for Robert Sterling Clark, a wealthy Wall Street banker and stock broker. When MacGuire flashed a big bankbook and talked about a lot of cash for the plot, Butler, who was playing along just to see how deep this ran and who all was involved, demanded to meet Clark. During the meeting, Clark said Roosevelt was weak and would go along, 'return to his class'. A reporter named Paul Comly French also met with MacGuire. The plotters had created an organization called The Liberty League, "({t}he League was was funded by donations from US Steel, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank, Standard Oil, Goodyear and the Dupont family, among others. Not surprisingly, the League would later actively oppose almost every major piece of New Deal legislation, including, but not limited too Social Security).
" 'According to the former general, MacGuire described to Butler 'what was tantamount to a plot to seize the government, by force if necessary.' MacGuire, said Butler, explained that he had traveled to Europe to study the role played by veterans' groups in propping up Mussolini's fascist Italy, Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the French government. MacGuire lauded France's Croix de Feu as 'an organization of super-soldiers' with profound political influence. Then the man with the silver plate in his cranium announced that 'our idea here in America' is to 'get up an organization of this kind' because 'the political setup has got to be changed a bit.' "
General Butler eventually reported all this to a congressional committee, the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, the forerunner of the House Un-American Activities Committee, run by Rep. John W. McCormack (D-MA) and Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), a Lithuanian (Russian Empire at the time) born Jew who turned out to be a paid agent of the NKVD, the Soviet intelligence and secret police agency. Despite the testimony of General Butler and reporter French, the committee did really nothing. Butler had named as being involved such prominent people as:
* Irenee du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.
* Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.
* William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.
* John Davis - Former Democratic presidential nominee (1924) and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.
* Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York (Democratic nominee 1928) and a co-director of the American Liberty League. Smith was in bed with the NY mafia. When told they were backing Roosevelt (Frank Costello's favorite), Smith was crushed and started turning against Roosevelt.
* John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party, and president of General Motors. In later decades, Raskob would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.
* Robert Sterling Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers.
* Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.
All denied any involvement and none but MacGuire was called to testify. Butler said the names of these people were edited out of transcripts, even though they plotted treason (Prescott Bush was one of the conspirators too). Clark was right when he said "we have the newspapers", the New York Times called General Butler's testimony "a giant hoax" and Time, owned by right-wing Republican Henry Luce, Skull & Bones, called it "a plot without plotters".
Was the Business Plot a False Flag Operation to make FDR more acceptable
There is some reason to think, as Dr. Henry Makow states, that the Business Plot was a false flag operation designed to make the rich Roosevelt more acceptable to average Americans. Butler had been forced to retire at the end of 1931, he'd been threatened with court-martial in 1924 for repeating gossip about Benito Mussolini being in a hit-and-run accident and calling him a "mad dog" and saying Mussolini and his cohorts were about to break loose in Europe. Butler had, since his retirement, been on the lecture circuit talking about how he and the military had been used as "gangsters for capitalism" and "high class muscle" for corporations in the Caribbean during the various invasions of the "Banana Wars". He donated most of his speaking fees to unemployed veterans. He'd turned against Hoover after being a life-long Republican after the Bonus Army debacle. Butler was denouncing capitalism when he was approached by MacGuire, and after the McCormack-Dickstein hearings, published his book War Is A Racket. MacArthur proved he's a guy who would have carried out the desires of the fascist Republican capitalists but was hated by many veterans for what he did to the Bonus Army along with Patton and Eisenhower. Smedley Butler was the last guy you'd ask to commit treason and lead an army to overthrow the government to install fascism, unless it was your intention to have it exposed and have your alleged victim look good. Why was no one but MacGuire called to testify? Why were portions of General Butler's testimony excised from the report? Why was there no mention of The American Liberty League, or any of it's big shot members and financiers? Why was no one prosecuted? None of these questions were ever answered.
And it was fear of the Bonus Army, not Depression Era gangsters, that led to the National Firearms Act of 1934. Congress was scared shitless when the unarmed Bonus Army marchers were demonstrating outside the capital, two were murdered by police and two babies were murdered with tear gas by MacArthur's troops. The collective thought had to have been "wow, we can't let trained veterans have automatic weapons". This came after food riots in America and elsewhere in 1931 and Hunger Marches in 1932, including the violent (by Ford goons) Ford Hunger March were taking place before and at the same time as the Bonus March. The rich that own both parties got scared.
Writer and retired businessman Laurence W. Britt wrote an article for Free Inquiry magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism, called "Fascism Anyone?" that listed 14 characteristics of seven fascist states studies, all 14 apply to the United States today, and in particular apply to the Republican Party. These 14 characteristics are taken from Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Pinochet's Chile, Suharto's Indonesia and Papadopoulos' Greece. They are by no means the only defining characteristics of fascism or a fascist state, but are common to all seven of those states. They are:
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. Supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with "national security"
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections
One doesn't have to go back more than a dozen years in most of these to find a plethora of examples of these things in the USA.
1) You can't go to any sporting event at any level, children to professional, without seeing uniformed "color guards" carrying flags on the field, the national anthem being played (as the late comedian George Carlin asked, why are we the only ones with a national anthem with bombs and rockets in it?), flags waving. Schools have a "pledge of allegiance" and it says "one nation, indivisible" (a slap at secession). Ever since the false flag "terrorist attacks" of September 2001 cars have flags waving from them or flag stickers stuck on them as well as jingoistic, simplistic slogans, the NFL put flag stickers on the back of every helmet of every team. As actor Peter Fonda said, when he wore a flag on the back of a leather jacket when they were about to start filming Easy Rider in 1968, cops pulled him over and hassled him about "desecrating" it; now every cop in the country, as well as firemen and EMT's, have flags on the sleeves of shirts and jackets.
2) See Alberto Gonzalez and his comments about the Geneva Convention being "quaint" and "obsolete" for this one. Not to mention "extraordinary rendition", waterboarding, the atrocities and war crimes at Abu Ghraib and Iraq in general, in Afghanistan, Panama, Vietnam, Waco, Ruby Ridge, The Move in Philadelphia, the grossly misnamed PATRIOT Act, the star chamber military trials, Guantanamo gulag, the 'other losses' war crimes against German POWs, the rounding up of Japanese, German and Italians into concentration camps in World War II, etc.
3) Here we can think of the use of terms like "Islamofascists", the attacks on Islam, referring to anyone who opposes U.S. forces in their country as a "terrorist", Bush's "you're either with us or with the terrorists" crack, FOX "News" constant racist attacks against Muslims, the hysteria against Ozzie Guillen for saying something insufficiently demonizing about Fidel Castro, the Palmer Raids/McCarthyism witch hunts against "communists" (while ignoring the Soviet agents in FDR's cabinet), demonizing war protesters and resisters.
4) The colossal glorification of the military today, especially in comparison with the way Vietnam veterans were treated, is amazing. It too is a result of the false flag "terrorist attacks" of 11 September 2001. Even a mundane event like the NFL draft, as well as football games and other sporting events, feature men and women in uniforms being feted, lavish spending on recruiting ads ("the U.S. Navy, a global force for good"), universities being forced to admit military recruiters if they accept federal funds for anything, military discounts, a huge DoD budget, the constant use of the word "hero" for anyone in a military uniform regardless of what they have or haven't done. It's like Sparta, ancient Rome or Imperial Japan.
5) The Republican Party is a particular offender on this one. Rush Limbaugh's use of the word "slut" to describe a woman who testified before Congress, the defeat of the Paycheck Fairness Act, Mitt Romney's refusal to denounce Limbaugh (who was caught with prescription for Viagra in someone else's name coming back from the Dominican Republic--child sex capital of the world) for the "slut" comment, the attack on Planned Parenthood and insurance coverage of contraceptives, trying to force women to bear children of rape or incest, the T&A television shows and commercials, Herman Cain, etc.
6) The mass media in the United States of America is owned by just a few corporations. Bain Capital (Mitt Romney's vulture capitalism co.)/Thomas H. Lee Partners owns Clear Channel, the largest radio station owner in the U.S., they have 866 radio stations which run the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity shows. The Walt Disney Co.owns ABC, ESPN, 42% of the following: A&E, Lifetime, History Channel, Biography Channel, Lifetime Real Women, Lifetime Movie Network, History International, Live Well Network; also SOAPnet, Pixar, 277 radio stations, 8 TV stations, Marvel Publishing, Marvel Entertainment, about 4 record labels. CBS owns CBS television including 29 TV stations, CBS radio including 130 radio stations, 50% of CW network (formerly WB and UPN), Showtime cable network, Smithsonian Networks, Simon & Schuster publishing, Pocket Books, Scribner. Time Warner owns Warner Brothers Television Group (including Warner Brothers Pictures), TBS, TNT, CNN, Headline News (CNN), HBO, Cinemax, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Cartoon Network, truTV (formerly Court TV), New Line Cinema, DC Comics...Time Warner is the 2nd largest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Viacom is the 4th largest media conglomerate in the world, it owns 160 networks that reach over 600 million people around the world; including MTV, VH1, BET, CMT, Nickelodean, Comedy Central, TV Land, Spike TV, Viacom Filmed Entertainment. News Corp is owned by Zionist sleazebag Rupert Murdoch, it owns FOX News Channel, FOX Business Channel (which is home to Don Imus), FX, National Geographic Channel, FSN, Hulu, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, TV Guide, Barron's, SmartMoney, HarperCollins publisher, 20th Century Fox, NY Daily News, News International (the Times, Sunday Times and the Sun), and more. You can find others like Gannett here.
7). If that doesn't define the Republicans, nothing does. Those two magic words, "national security", are a catch-all for anything that the government, especially Republicans, don't want the public to know. And the crushing of civil liberties, the shredding of the Constitution via the grossly misnamed PATRIOT Act (that Obama campaigned against but keeps extending), withholding of documents, redacting documents under Freedom of Information Act requests, indefinite "detention", "extraordinary rendition", FICA court after-the-fact warrants, what they're doing to Bradley Manning and much more are all done in the name of "national security".
8) Think that guys like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggert, Pat Robertson got where they are without toeing the line set by the ruling elite in this country? Think they get the airtime and tax-exempt status they enjoy without playing ball with the Israel lobby, the Department of Defense, State Department, corporations and people named Rockefeller, Rothschild and Warburg? Think again, because they and others are all pushing a Zionist, government agenda. Zionism is a political philosophy, and many a "Christian" has devoted himself or herself to it, to the point that they're hoping for a nuclear war to usher in the return of Christ (in their minds); in that philosophy Palestine only belongs to one people, and Arab Muslims aren't it. These guys are leading a push for war, against Iran, and against a lot of Americans. They'll preach obedience and subservience to the government and quote a scripture like "Render unto Caesar" to try to support it, and get taken care of in return. And they're all Republicans telling the faithful to vote for the Republican candidate.
9) Think Mitt Romney on this, "corporations are people, my friend". Think also of guys like Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and his infamous "slush fund" and "shakedown" comments during a congressional hearing questioning British Petroleum's CEO Tony Hayward about the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster that killed 11 men, and two more from sunstroke during the cleanup (Hayward is now CEO of Genel Energy, a Turkish oil and gas company operating in Iraq, which was bought by Vallares Plc, an investment firm co-founded by Hayward and Nathaniel Rothschild). Barton also was trying to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and cut it's power to enforce clean air regulations of power plants and oil refineries. Barton is a pimp for the oil industry, he has received $1,448, 380 from the oil industry since 1990 as of June 2010. The constituency of the Republican Party is the rich, and corporations; and it always has been.
10) Seen what's just happened in Wisconsin with a fascist governor named Scott Walker? New Jersey under that fat bastard Chris Christie? Michigan? "The Republicans have traded scabs and club-wielding goons for legislation to destroy unions. They have managed to demonize unions in the minds of non-unionized Americans until only 10% of Americans belong to unions any more. Their talking heads have convinced the gullible that unions caused our economic collapse instead of the guys in the banking and financial industries that are right now paying themselves tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. The history of the labor movement in America got dropped from our history curriculum so people don’t understand what a union is anymore." What the Republicans are doing in union busting is putting more money into the pockets of their owners, the 1%, at the expense of everyone else, and it's to de-fund the Democratic Party.
11) As George Carlin said, the owners of this country aren't interested in a smart, educated populace cable of critical thinking. That doesn't help them. This article hits it on the head also, like Carlin did:
"What was until recently a difference in ideology has devolved, in a little over a decade, into a difference in intellect. Somewhere along the way, Ronald Reagan gave up his throne to Sarah Palin; George Will and Charles Krauthammer took a back seat to Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity; and the likes of Joe the Plumber replaced the likes of Colin Powell as the heroes of the New Republicans.
"It's not that the existing Republicans actually got dumber; but that the torch was somehow passed without the brains...
"By painting educated, well-earning, science-embracing, articulate, introspective, intellectual citizens as un-American, the Republican party has built an entire base made up of those who not only don't possess these attributes, but enthusiastically abhor those who do. Not only are these factions now split along lines of educational achievement, socioeconomic status, and cultural and religious values, but most significantly, along an 'intellectual divide'.
"The Republicans have been able to coalesce around them a base of voters that are on the more vulnerable and malleable side of this divide. Karl Rove scored twice in the election and re-election of George W. Bush by effectively -- and impressively -- constructing political strategy on the working assumption that the majority of people are ignorant and/or intellectually deficient, and therefore manipulable. So, if you can be loud enough and simultaneously inject enough fear into your target population (WMD's in Iraq, Saddam causing 9/11, gays getting married, or Obama = socialism = Hitler), they will believe whatever you tell them. This is what enabled wealthy politicians and oil corporations to send economically disadvantaged teenagers to war and lay off their blue collar working class parents -- as their jobs were sent overseas for cheap labor and massive profits -- and yet still get them to vote them back into office."
12) A lot is said about crime, and harsher sentences. Nixon ran as a "law and order" candidate, and every Republican since has. The United States has the highest percentage of its population incarcerated than any other country in the world. 1 out of 100 people in the United States is in prison, from 1990 to 2005 the number of incarcerated people grew by a whopping 700%! "The rate of imprisonment for all men above age 18 is one in 54; for Latinos it is one in 36; and for Blacks it is one in 15". A lot of that is for "drug crimes", including marijuana. For-profit prisons have a lot to do with that too, part of the Republicans plan to "privatize" everything. A lot of money is to be made in this virtual slave labor system, but companies like Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in America, are making money hand over fist. CCA has a plan to buy prisons from cash-strapped states.
13) There are not many places you'll look where there isn't corruption, and a lot cronyism. Cities like Chicago and New York (from even before the Boss Tweed era) are famous for it. The federal government and state governments almost daily have stories of it. How was it that Halliburton got all those no-bid contracts in Iraq after the U.S. invasion? Well who was the CEO of Halliburton until he was put on the Republican ticket in 2000...Dick Cheney. Billions of dollars in cash disappeared in Iraq, as much as $27.2 billion is unaccounted for. Enron collapsed destroying employees pensions, but top execs skated out with millions, run by Bush crony Kenneth Lay. Neil Bush presided over Silverado Savings and Loan during the S&L scandal of the 1980's, he enriched himself and cronies like Kenneth L. Good, Bill Waters and Larry Mizel. Bush managed to not be charged (he was a member of the Board of Directors), it helps when your dad is the Vice President of the United States and a life-long CIA man and Skull & Bones member, but faced a civil suit by the FDIC for which he paid a mere $50,000 as his settlement. Bush family was also pals with the Hinkley family, and Neil was to have dinner with John Hinkley's older brother the night after the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Privatizing the Iraq War with mercenaries (and now doing it in Somalia), excuse me, "security contractors", cost the American public billions of dollars.Former Halliburton branch Kellogg/Brown/Root was linked to the vast majority of war-zone fraud cases, about $13 billion in questioned claims (KBR made $32 billion from 2001 to 2009, the largest single beneficiary of the war).
14) See 2000 election theft and the horrible consequences of it for the world. Also see 2004 election theft. You can go back to the 1876 election for that matter.
I would add a 15) Gun control/confiscation It is a hallmark of all fascist and totalitarian regimes and systems to take away the people's means to resist. This is usually done through the other side of the coin, the Democrats, but they are doing the bidding of what Carlin, and movie director John Carpenter, called our owners.
So, are the Republicans the spiritual successors to the Nazis? You bet your jackboots they are. As Michael C. Ruppert said to an audience at Portland State University in November 2001, "the Third Reich did not lose the Second World War, it just changed venues". It changed names too, and the Republicans ought to be known as the NSGOP.
