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+--- Thread: Is The U.S.A . A Fascist Police State? (/showthread.php?tid=1155)
Is The U.S.A . A Fascist Police State? - ClassicalLib17 - 09-07-2010
Being an advocate of personal protection, of which my home state only allows law enforcement and elected officials that right, I think even the conservatives on the Supreme Court embrace an inherent sense of the government's duty to protect the public. We are not helpless and most often respond, in a selfless manner , to situations of human plight. Okay, I started drinking a little early today( 11:00 a.m.), but bear with me. If you think about it, we have become soft in the head. Why? Here comes the dead horse. Personal accountability, in that we used to live in close proximity with our family and we used to take care of one another. People do irresponsible things that the rest of society(thoughtful people) shouldn't have to pay for. I strayed way off the topic regarding the posted article. Thank you for taking the time to read this and the following article, of which, I don't necessarily take at face value.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010Is the U.S. a Fascist Police-State?
I lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorshipâI can spot a fascist police-state when I see one.
The United States is a fascist police-state.
Harsh wordsâincendiary, even. And none too clever of me, to use such language: Time was, the crazies and reactionaries wearing tin-foil hats who flung around such a characterization of the United States were disqualified by sensible people as being hysterical nuttersârightfully so.
But with yesterdayâs Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision (No. 08-1498, also 09-89) of the Supreme Court, coupled with last weekâs Arar v. Ashcroft denial of certiorari (No. 09-923), the case for claiming that the U.S. is a fascist police-state just got a whole lot stronger.
First of all, what is a âfascist police-stateâ?
A police-state uses the law as a mechanism to control any challenges to its power by the citizenry, rather than as a mechanism to insure a civil society among the individuals. The state decides the laws, is the sole arbiter of the law, and can selectively (and capriciously) decide to enforce the law to the benefit or detriment of one individual or group or another.
In a police-state, the citizens are âfreeâ only so long as their actions remain within the confines of the law as dictated by the state. If the individualâs claims of rights or freedoms conflict with the state, or if the individual acts in ways deemed detrimental to the state, then the state will repress the citizenry, by force if necessary. (And in the end, itâs always necessary.)
Whatâs key to the definition of a police-state is the lack of redress: If there is no justice system which can compel the state to cede to the citizenry, then there is a police-state. If there exists apro forma justice system, but which in practice is unavailable to the ordinary citizen because of systemic obstacles (for instance, cost or bureaucratic hindrance), or which against all logic or reason consistently finds in favor of the stateâeven in the most egregious and obviously contradictory casesâthen that pro forma judiciary system is nothing but a sham: A tool of the stateâs repression against its citizens. Consider the Soviet court system the classic example.
A police-state is not necessarily a dictatorship. On the contrary, it can even take the form of a representative democracy. A police-state is not defined by its leadership structure, but rather, by its self-protection against the individual.
A definition of âfascismâ is tougher to come byâitâs almost as tough to come up with as a definition of âpornographyâ.
The sloppy definition is simply totalitarianism of the Right, âcommunismâ being the sloppy definition of totalitarianism of the Left. But that doesnât help much.
For our purposes, I think we should use the syndicalist-corporatist definition as practiced by Mussolini: Society as a collection of corporate and union interests, where the state is one more competing interest among many, albeit the most powerful of them all, and thus as a virtue of its size and power, taking precedence over all other factions. In other words, society is a âstreet-gangâ model that I discussed before. The individual has power only as derived from his belonging to a particular faction or groupâindividuals do not have inherent worth, value or standing.
Now then! Having gotten that out of the way, where were we?
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project: The Humanitarian Law Project was advising groups deemed âterroristsâ on how to negotiate non-violently with various political agencies, including the UN. In this 6-3 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court ruled that that speech constituted âaiding and abettingâ a terrorist organization, as the Court determined that speech was âmaterial supportâ. Therefore, the Executive and/or Congress had the right to prohibit anyone from speaking to any terrorist organization if that speech embodied âmaterial supportâ to the terrorist organization.
The decision is being noted by the New York Times as a Freedom of Speech issue; other commentators seem to be viewing it in those terms as well.
My own take is, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project is not about limiting free speechâit's about the state expanding it power to repress. The decision limits free speech in passing, because what it is really doing is expanding the stateâs power to repress whomever it unilaterally determines is a terrorist.
In the decision, the Court explicitly ruled that âCongress and the Executive are uniquely positioned to make principled distinctions between activities that will further terrorist conduct and undermine United States foreign policy, and those that will not.â In other words, the Court makes it clear that Congress and/or the Executive can solely and unilaterally determine who is a âterrorist threatâ, and who is notâwithout recourse to judicial review of this decision. And if the Executive and/or Congress determines that this group here or that group there is a âterrorist organizationâ, then their free speech is curtailedâas is the free speech of anyone associating with them, no matter how demonstrably peaceful that speech or interaction is.
For example, if the Executiveâin the form of the Secretary of Stateâdecides that, say, WikiLeaks or Amnesty International is a terrorist organization, well then by golly, it is a terrorist organization. It no longer has any right to free speechânor can anyone else speak to them or associate with them, for risk of being charged with providing âmaterial supportâ to this heinous terrorist organization known as Amnesty International.
But furthermore, as per Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, anyone associating with WikiLeaksâincluding, presumably, those who read it, and most certainly those who give it information about government abusesâwould be guilty of aiding and abetting terrorism. In other words, giving WikiLeaks âmaterial supportâ by providing primary evidence of government abuse would render one a terrorist.
This form of repression does seem to fit the above definition of a police-state. The state determinesâunilaterallyâwho is detrimental to its interests. The state then represses that person or group.
By a 6-3 majority, the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that Congress and/or the Executive is âuniquely positionedâ to determine who is a terrorist and who is notâand therefore has the right to silence not just the terrorist organization, but anyone trying to speak to them, or hear them.
And let's just say that, after jumping through years of judicial hoops, one finally manages to prove that one wasnât then and isnât now a terrorist, the Arar denial of certiorari makes it irrelevant. Even if it turns out that a person is definitely and unequivocally not a terrorist, he cannot get legal redress for this mistake by the state.
So! To sum up: The U.S. government can decide unilaterally who is a terrorist organization and who is not. Anyone speaking to such a designated terrorist group is âproviding material supportâ to the terroristsâand is therefore subject to prosecution at the discretion of the U.S. government. And if, in the end, it turns out that one definitely was not involved in terrorist activities, there is no way to receive redress by the state.
Sounds like a fascist police-state to me.