<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> From: Dennis Perrin <dperrin@comcast.net> Well, I think "McCarthyism" as pejorative is pretty played out. The old drunk's been dead a long time, and I'm sure we can find another term. In the radio interviews I've been doing lately, I've been using "antidemocratic bullying" -- not as pithy as McCarthyism, but accurate, and in the follow-up I break it down for the listeners who, in many cases, have no idea what freedom means. I'm sad to see the Chicks back down, but not surprised. Country music culture is quite jingoistic and, at times, simply insane. Last night, after a couple glasses of a fine Australian Cab, I flipped across MTV's country music channel and saw what seemed like a redneck Nuremberg rally. -clip- DP</BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^^ CB: Since you perhaps rightly sense you are seeing something like a Nuremberg rally ( a very scary reality), why not call it potentially fascist or pre-fascist. John Pilger qutoes Norman Mailer as calling this a pre-fascist atmosphere. Pilger seems to favor "crypto-fascist". What now? Cover story New Statesman John Pilger Monday 17th March 2003... [http://www.johnpilger.com] ...... ..."My guess," wrote Norman Mailer recently, "is that, like it or not, or want it or not, we are going to go to war because that is the only solution Bush and his people can see. The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance in our lives. And, before it is all over, democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way . . . Indeed, democracy is the special condition that we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascist atmosphere in America already." In the military plutocracy that is the American state, with its unelected president, venal Supreme Court, silent Congress, gutted Bill of Rights and compliant media, Mailer's "pre-fascist atmosphere" makes common sense. The dissident American writer William Rivers Pitt pursues this further. "Critics of the Bush administration," he wrote, "like to bandy about the word 'fascist' when speaking of George. The image that word conjures is of Nazi storm troopers marching in unison towards Hitler's Final Solution. This does not at all fit. It is better, in this matter, to view the Bush administration through the eyes of Benito Mussolini. Dubbed 'the father of fascism', Mussolini defined the word in a far more pertinent fashion. 'Fascism,' he said, 'should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.' " Bush himself offered an understanding of this on 26 February when he addressed the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute. He paid tribute to "some of the finest minds of our nation [who] are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds. I want to thank them for their service." The "20 such minds" are crypto-fascists who fit the definition of William Pitt Rivers. The institute is America's biggest, most important and wealthiest "think-tank". A typical member is John Bolton, under-secretary for arms control, the Bush official most responsible for dismantling the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, arguably the most important arms control agreement of the late 20th century. The institute's strongest ties are with extreme Zionism and the regime of Ariel Sharon. Last month, Bolton was in Tel Aviv to hear Sharon's view on which country in the region should be next after Iraq. For the expansionists running Israel, the prize is not so much the conquest of Iraq but Iran. A significant propor-tion of the Israeli air force is already based in Turkey with Iran in its sights, waiting for an American attack. Richard Perle is the institute's star. Perle is chairman of the powerful Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon, the author of the insane policies of "total war" and "creative destruction". The latter is designed to subjugate finally the Middle East, beginning with the $90bn invasion of Iraq. Perle helped to set up another crypto-fascist group, the Project for the New American Century. Other founders include Vice-President Cheney, the defence secretary Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz.... <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>