[lbo-talk] anti-fascist agitation

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> Jon Johanning:
> All of this was very different from the U.S. Constitution, of course,
> and needs to be taken into account if one wants to compare the course
> of events in Weimar Germany with the U.S. situation.

These are legal technicalities, Jon.  We can debate them ad nauseam, and
while I fully agree with you that we should thinks analytically and
refrain from unwarranted hyperboles, I also know that I will not be like
those Weimar Jews - watching what the Nazis telling they would do, then
seizing power, and then starting doing it - while hoping (some of them
at least) that this would go away, that they Germans are such a
civilized nation, and all that Nazi stuff is hot air.  I will not wait
hoping the US paper goods - the Constitution, the legal system, the
freedom of speech - to protect me.  I will buy a one way ticket BEFORE
the AA (Ashcroft Abteilung) starts rounding up people like me here. 
 
Anyone who believes that fascism cannot happen here is fooling himself
(or herself).  It can happen anywhere, especially here - see for example
Richard Rubenstein, _The cunning of history: the holocaust and the
American future_.  The argument there is that every nation has a
potential of becoming fascist, all it takes is the government willing to
go that road and a small band of zealots willing to follow.  

The US has both ingredients.  The only curious about the US in this
regard is its "asymptotic fascism" - always treading close to it, almost
getting there, but to date not actually crossing the line.  We can, of
course, debate whether or when the US actually crosses that line, but I
also believe that it is better to be safe than sorry.  Once bitten twice
shy, as they say.  Hence I already have a European passport.

Wojtek