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The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
The End of America is now a feature-length documentary film by the award-winning filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern. Give Me A Handbook for American Revolutionaries is the sequel to The End of America.It illustrates the breathtaking changes that can take place when ordinary citizens engage in the democratic system the way the founders intended and tells how to use that system,right now, to change your life, your community, and ultimately, the nation.
193 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2007
195 people are currently reading
3626 people want to read
About the author
Naomi Wolf
40 books1,496 followersNaomi Wolf is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Beauty Myth, The End of America and Give Me Liberty. She has toured the world speaking to audiences of all walks of life about gender equality, social justice, and, most recently, the defense of liberty in America and internationally. She is the cofounder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, which teaches ethics and empowerment to young women leaders, and is also a cofounder of the American Freedom Campaign, a grass roots democracy movement in the United States whose mission is the defense of the Constitution and the rule of law.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 395 reviews
October 15, 2007
I heard Wolf speak at a local bookstore yesterday, as well as on Stephen Colbert a couple of weeks ago, and was thoroughly blown away. Then I bought the book (short, fast read) and spent most of the night reading it. Everyone should, as I did, put aside whatever they are doing, buy this book, read it, pass it on to a friend who promises to read it and pass it on. And then hit the streets.
One of the things that Wolf talked about (in person, not in the book) is that once you are familiar with the system and examples from history everything becomes predictive since you know what the next step will be. And I predict that in a month or two, you won't be able to buy this book, so get it now.
In “The End of America” Naomi Wolf tells the story about how American citizens are being set up to lose their freedom and liberty in “10 easy steps" that are common to all modern fascist shifts. She sheds light on a veritable business
plan or blueprint on how to hijack open democratic systems of government and turn them into closed systems through campaigns of disinformation, terror and brutality, based on examination of the Italy in the 20s, Russia and Germany in the 30s, and some examples from East Germany in the 50s-80s and Chile in the 70s. These 10 steps
are:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law
Obviously this all sounds familiar if you pay even casual attention to the news.
She also talks discusses how the framers of the Constitution were real worried about how this could happen here, which is why they created the system of checks and balances and the Bill of Rights, all of which are going rapidly down the tubes. I know that civil liberties seem kind of abstract and not all that relevant to our daily lives, but that is because most of us have always had them. When you lose them, life really changes, even for people who aren't political and generally keep their mouths shut and out of trouble.
Most distressing are the new laws mean that any one of us can be named as an enemy combatant at the whim of the president with no evidence, detained indefinitely without trial and tortured. Also that the president can nationalize the state national guards (or use private militias such as Blackwater) as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or "other condition". These are recent laws, written by the Administration and passed by a Congress that is too cowed to stand up for our rights.
Wolf sees the next few months at being critical at finalizing the closure of our society before the 2008 elections. She is trying to do a Tom Paine kind of thing with this book and it works pretty well. Its purpose is not to depress us but to wake us up and motivate us not to let it happen. Read it! Now!
One of the things that Wolf talked about (in person, not in the book) is that once you are familiar with the system and examples from history everything becomes predictive since you know what the next step will be. And I predict that in a month or two, you won't be able to buy this book, so get it now.
In “The End of America” Naomi Wolf tells the story about how American citizens are being set up to lose their freedom and liberty in “10 easy steps" that are common to all modern fascist shifts. She sheds light on a veritable business
plan or blueprint on how to hijack open democratic systems of government and turn them into closed systems through campaigns of disinformation, terror and brutality, based on examination of the Italy in the 20s, Russia and Germany in the 30s, and some examples from East Germany in the 50s-80s and Chile in the 70s. These 10 steps
are:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law
Obviously this all sounds familiar if you pay even casual attention to the news.
She also talks discusses how the framers of the Constitution were real worried about how this could happen here, which is why they created the system of checks and balances and the Bill of Rights, all of which are going rapidly down the tubes. I know that civil liberties seem kind of abstract and not all that relevant to our daily lives, but that is because most of us have always had them. When you lose them, life really changes, even for people who aren't political and generally keep their mouths shut and out of trouble.
Most distressing are the new laws mean that any one of us can be named as an enemy combatant at the whim of the president with no evidence, detained indefinitely without trial and tortured. Also that the president can nationalize the state national guards (or use private militias such as Blackwater) as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or "other condition". These are recent laws, written by the Administration and passed by a Congress that is too cowed to stand up for our rights.
Wolf sees the next few months at being critical at finalizing the closure of our society before the 2008 elections. She is trying to do a Tom Paine kind of thing with this book and it works pretty well. Its purpose is not to depress us but to wake us up and motivate us not to let it happen. Read it! Now!
September 10, 2016
If you love democracy and want to see its ideals preserved, then this book offers a guide for its perpetuation. The founders of the American Constitution were so profound in their construction of democracy that they installed a series of checks and balances to power. Wolf examines history to offer a warning shot that portrays how past authoritarian and dictatorial regimes upset a democratic balance of power to enable ambitious regimes to come to oppress nations. If we are to preserve democracy, then it's essential to understand the ploys which could leave its power tragically unbalanced. Essentially, Wolf is advising that if we stay true to the expressed ideals articulated in the Constitution, then American democracy will work. However, insofar as the executive, congressional or judiciary branches stray, then shifts of power could occur. She follows the political journeys of history's great oppressors to show how they maneuvered and manipulated their government to gain absolute power. Wolf is deeply and rightly concerned that these same Orwellian tactics are now in play in America to threaten democracy here. Wolf cites ten specific measures which have been used to weaken democracies in the past: we must learn from the lessons of history in order not to repeat them. 1) Invoke an internal or external threat 2) establish secret prisons 3) develop a paramilitary force 4) surveil ordinary citizens 5) infiltrate citizens' groups 6) arbitrarily detain and release citizens 7) target key individuals 8) restrict the press 9) cast criticism as espionage and dissent as treason 10) subvert the rule of law. These warnings should be heeded by members both of the left and right in order to preserve democracy: for once there is a unifying motive. Wolf emphasizes that democracy is fragile and its perpetuity should not be taken for granted as other nations which have lost it sadly know from brutal experience. I highly recommend this cautionary tale by Yale grad and Rhodes Scholar, Naomi Wolf. This is an important book of warning by an American patriot designed to heighten the vigilance of other patriots toward the preservation of democratic ideals threatened by the hubris of adversaries externally and internally who thirst for power.
December 8, 2008
I cannot give this book any less than five stars. I so greatly admire Naomi Wolf for having the courage and audacity to warn her fellow Americans about what is still happening right under their noses.
Other reviewers here have covered the details of the book, so I won't do so. It's only about 150 pages, so if you care about your rights as an American citizen, you can read for yourself. This is not an idiotic partisan rant in the manner of that Coulter cow. Wolf wants to motivate ALL Americans to speak up and demand a return to the rule of law. Her claims and references are documented.
In short, Wolf devotes one chapter each to ten steps would-be dictators take when they want to kill democracy and free speech. She covers how Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet and others took these steps. Then she gives real examples of comparable things Bush and his cronies have done that parallel each of these same ten steps.
Wolf's purpose is to wake people up in America and show them, "Yes, it CAN happen here." The U.S. Constitution has been greatly undermined over the past few years, with most changes sheepishly sanctioned by Congress. Getting rid of Bush does not make the problem go away. The losses of rights and protections are now part of laws enforceable by all future presidents.
The title of the book comes across as a little extreme, but it's not really. She gives certain possible scenarios and asks, "If this happened, would that be the end of America?" So anyway, that's where the title comes from.
Other reviewers here have covered the details of the book, so I won't do so. It's only about 150 pages, so if you care about your rights as an American citizen, you can read for yourself. This is not an idiotic partisan rant in the manner of that Coulter cow. Wolf wants to motivate ALL Americans to speak up and demand a return to the rule of law. Her claims and references are documented.
In short, Wolf devotes one chapter each to ten steps would-be dictators take when they want to kill democracy and free speech. She covers how Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet and others took these steps. Then she gives real examples of comparable things Bush and his cronies have done that parallel each of these same ten steps.
Wolf's purpose is to wake people up in America and show them, "Yes, it CAN happen here." The U.S. Constitution has been greatly undermined over the past few years, with most changes sheepishly sanctioned by Congress. Getting rid of Bush does not make the problem go away. The losses of rights and protections are now part of laws enforceable by all future presidents.
The title of the book comes across as a little extreme, but it's not really. She gives certain possible scenarios and asks, "If this happened, would that be the end of America?" So anyway, that's where the title comes from.
July 22, 2009
This is a dishonest book clearly geared to make money from those who are predisposed to 'Bush Bashing'.
By 'dishonest' I mean the following:
- While many excellent examples of how previous pseudo-democratic societies have been subverted are given, very little evidence is shown that the Bush administration was following the same extremes. In essence, Wold was saying, "This could happen so you'd better be shaking in your boots." These were not-so-subtle attempts to strike fear in those susceptible to propaganda just prior to an election.
- Very similar or even identical behavior by liberal/progressive presidents was completely omitted. This omission makes me conclude that this was simply an attack on Bush, someone the author despises.
- The standards to which Wolf expects Bush and 'conservatives' to follow are conveniently not applied to her liberal/progressive friends.
Here are three examples just from pg. 76:
1) "In Florida in 2000 ... angry mobs of young men ... refused to give their names ..."
I saw reports of this on television and they were hardly mobs, unless Wolf would like to use the Clintonism: "It depends on what you mean by 'mobs'." Further, any person-of-color would immediately contact the ACLU if they had were required to give their name by a 'mob'—why should a young man have to give their name?
2) "...one group made it clear to officials behind the glass that they could see who was doing what."
And at the same time, there were similar groups of Democrats making it clear to vote counters in other areas that they were watching, too. I saw this latter in television reports, as well, but I didn't see any intimidating white-folk doing as Wolf claims. So I claim that Wolf is making this up.
3) "Some groups of aggressive young men also congregated menacingly outside voting booths in districts in which there is a majority of African-American voters""
"Were these menacing, aggressive young men wearing Black Panther arm-bands and dressing up in fatigues and carrying police batons as happened in Philadelphia?" I ask sarcastically.
So the bottom line is that this book is bogus. If you're inclined to hate conservatives and/or Bush then this book will resonate with you (much as a Glenn Beck book would resonate with a conservative).
I did not like Bush myself (and did not vote for Bush) but then liberals and progressives have done far more damage to democracy and freedom in the U.S. and around the world than conservatives ever have. May I suggest that Wolf next consider looking into how money and the management thereof (i.e. redistribution) affects freedoms and democracy.
By 'dishonest' I mean the following:
- While many excellent examples of how previous pseudo-democratic societies have been subverted are given, very little evidence is shown that the Bush administration was following the same extremes. In essence, Wold was saying, "This could happen so you'd better be shaking in your boots." These were not-so-subtle attempts to strike fear in those susceptible to propaganda just prior to an election.
- Very similar or even identical behavior by liberal/progressive presidents was completely omitted. This omission makes me conclude that this was simply an attack on Bush, someone the author despises.
- The standards to which Wolf expects Bush and 'conservatives' to follow are conveniently not applied to her liberal/progressive friends.
Here are three examples just from pg. 76:
1) "In Florida in 2000 ... angry mobs of young men ... refused to give their names ..."
I saw reports of this on television and they were hardly mobs, unless Wolf would like to use the Clintonism: "It depends on what you mean by 'mobs'." Further, any person-of-color would immediately contact the ACLU if they had were required to give their name by a 'mob'—why should a young man have to give their name?
2) "...one group made it clear to officials behind the glass that they could see who was doing what."
And at the same time, there were similar groups of Democrats making it clear to vote counters in other areas that they were watching, too. I saw this latter in television reports, as well, but I didn't see any intimidating white-folk doing as Wolf claims. So I claim that Wolf is making this up.
3) "Some groups of aggressive young men also congregated menacingly outside voting booths in districts in which there is a majority of African-American voters""
"Were these menacing, aggressive young men wearing Black Panther arm-bands and dressing up in fatigues and carrying police batons as happened in Philadelphia?" I ask sarcastically.
So the bottom line is that this book is bogus. If you're inclined to hate conservatives and/or Bush then this book will resonate with you (much as a Glenn Beck book would resonate with a conservative).
I did not like Bush myself (and did not vote for Bush) but then liberals and progressives have done far more damage to democracy and freedom in the U.S. and around the world than conservatives ever have. May I suggest that Wolf next consider looking into how money and the management thereof (i.e. redistribution) affects freedoms and democracy.
June 6, 2008
Although I agree with most of Wolfe's statements about our modern American dilemma, and was grateful that this book warns of a good portion of the grave dangers that our recent history has imparted upon the rights (or lack thereof) of the American people, this book was just flat-out not written well. The message was for the most part 3-4 stars, but I could have edited this book better in my sleep. Rife with grammatical errors and typos, this book was at times poorly enough edited to make it difficult to read. However, I do respect the fact that this is more than likely the result of Ms. Wolf's attempt to rush this book onto our shelves, knowing full well that her message of warning was time-sensitive and far too important for grammatical delays. That being said ... for me personally, the content of the book often lends itself to an overly-naive take on our "forefathers" and how seemingly noble their intentions were. Recognizing the failures of our most recent administrations is a good start toward a productive disillusionment, but we must then ask ourselves, "is our current situation, at least in part, a result of the shortcomings of our forefathers' plan and/or their limited foresight?" Good message; important subject to read on; written marginally and with a lack of eloquence; edited atrociously.
January 22, 2008
A Clarion Call for Patriots, January 20, 2008
What Naomi Wolf sees in the current state of affairs in America is a "fascist shift" - a subtle (and not so subtle) erosion of our Constitutional Democracy in the post 9/11 reality of perpetual global war. It is worth noting that according to Mussolini, fascism rejects pacifism. And, as he proclaimed in a 1932 Italian Encyclopedia article, "fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace..." (What is Fascism)
Wolf has studied both historians and political scientists who have identified 10 salient characterists of fascist states. Wolf examines how these have played out throughout the course of modern history and then draws striking parallels with what is happening right here at home under our very noses. And it ain't a pretty picture.
But this slender tome is not merely a delineation of the abuses of power endemic to the current administration; it is, indeed, as the subtitle has it, a "warning" to all Americans to resist this downward spiral into an American version of fascism that will come draped in the flag.
As the Executive Branch has progamatically consolidated power in this Age of Terror, it is worth noting, once again, Mussolini's belief that "Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society..." Thus, the abrogation of our participation in Federal government to the Executive Branch, corporate lobbyists and special interests is perfectly in line with his philosophy and does not bode well for We the People. Given the prerogative of presidential 'signing statements', the Congress, notes Wolf, has become little more than an advisory body with little real power.
We are, apparently, too much concerned with celebrities and feel-good pharmacuticals to take an active role in preserving our liberties in the face of "the global war on terror". But as Benjamin Franklin warned, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Contributions to the Conference on February 17 (III) Fri, Feb 17, 1775)
That the cover and chapter heads of this volume evoke Thomas Paine is no accident. Paine's voice echoes throughout this "Letter...To A Young Patriot". And as General Washington insisted that his rag-tag militamen read Paine, so each citizen who would resist the tide of creeping fascism ought to read Wolf and prepare to do battle with forces foreign and domestic that would strip us of our liberties.
The Founding Fathers knew what it was to live under a tyrannical government. Their wisdom and their vision insured that we, their posterity, would inherit a government responsive to the will of the People. It is that very legacy that is in danger of being co-opted by forces that assume they can shape our history.
Read this book. Resist the powers that be.
What Naomi Wolf sees in the current state of affairs in America is a "fascist shift" - a subtle (and not so subtle) erosion of our Constitutional Democracy in the post 9/11 reality of perpetual global war. It is worth noting that according to Mussolini, fascism rejects pacifism. And, as he proclaimed in a 1932 Italian Encyclopedia article, "fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace..." (What is Fascism)
Wolf has studied both historians and political scientists who have identified 10 salient characterists of fascist states. Wolf examines how these have played out throughout the course of modern history and then draws striking parallels with what is happening right here at home under our very noses. And it ain't a pretty picture.
But this slender tome is not merely a delineation of the abuses of power endemic to the current administration; it is, indeed, as the subtitle has it, a "warning" to all Americans to resist this downward spiral into an American version of fascism that will come draped in the flag.
As the Executive Branch has progamatically consolidated power in this Age of Terror, it is worth noting, once again, Mussolini's belief that "Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society..." Thus, the abrogation of our participation in Federal government to the Executive Branch, corporate lobbyists and special interests is perfectly in line with his philosophy and does not bode well for We the People. Given the prerogative of presidential 'signing statements', the Congress, notes Wolf, has become little more than an advisory body with little real power.
We are, apparently, too much concerned with celebrities and feel-good pharmacuticals to take an active role in preserving our liberties in the face of "the global war on terror". But as Benjamin Franklin warned, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Contributions to the Conference on February 17 (III) Fri, Feb 17, 1775)
That the cover and chapter heads of this volume evoke Thomas Paine is no accident. Paine's voice echoes throughout this "Letter...To A Young Patriot". And as General Washington insisted that his rag-tag militamen read Paine, so each citizen who would resist the tide of creeping fascism ought to read Wolf and prepare to do battle with forces foreign and domestic that would strip us of our liberties.
The Founding Fathers knew what it was to live under a tyrannical government. Their wisdom and their vision insured that we, their posterity, would inherit a government responsive to the will of the People. It is that very legacy that is in danger of being co-opted by forces that assume they can shape our history.
Read this book. Resist the powers that be.
October 26, 2007
I learned of this book when I saw Wolf on Colbert Report. The premise is that there are 10 steps a government takes to move from an open society/democracy to fascism. Guess how many are underway in America right now?
The first couple of chapters scared the hell out of me. If this is true, and if we don't take our country back soon, people with reading lists like mine will be "disappeared." I am fearful of our future.
Now that I have read about halfway through, though, I must say that I wish Wolf would flesh out her arguments more. The book is designed to be like a colonial-era "pamphlet" and therefore thinner. I think it would be much more powerful and interesting, though, if it were more like 500 pages. For the most part, she states her point, then offers one-sentence examples from Stalin, Mussolini, etc., then a multi-paragraph example from Hitler. Frankly, the constant comparison to Nazis is losing me. If her premise is that this has happened time and again throughout the western world, then she would be better served to provide broader examples.
Still, I would recommend that people at least read the introductory chapters, setting the stage. After that, anyone educated on current affairs can just read the table of contents (to see the 10 steps listed) and fill in the blanks for him/herself.
There is, in the back, a page or two with websites for organizations fighting for our civil liberties right now. This is a good resource for anyone wanting to fight the good fight while we still have some semblance of free speech. (Did you know that right now, if Bush read my book list, he could declare me an enemy combatant, and you'd never hear from me again? Really. It's happened already -- to our own military, no less!)
***Add on comments, later: I finally decided to move this off my "currently reading list," because it's been so long since I picked it up. That's because I get so riled up when I read it, that I realized I needed to be careful about doing so -- otherwise I'd face insomnia! I will finish this book for sure, but I thought it best to move it off the "current" list.
The first couple of chapters scared the hell out of me. If this is true, and if we don't take our country back soon, people with reading lists like mine will be "disappeared." I am fearful of our future.
Now that I have read about halfway through, though, I must say that I wish Wolf would flesh out her arguments more. The book is designed to be like a colonial-era "pamphlet" and therefore thinner. I think it would be much more powerful and interesting, though, if it were more like 500 pages. For the most part, she states her point, then offers one-sentence examples from Stalin, Mussolini, etc., then a multi-paragraph example from Hitler. Frankly, the constant comparison to Nazis is losing me. If her premise is that this has happened time and again throughout the western world, then she would be better served to provide broader examples.
Still, I would recommend that people at least read the introductory chapters, setting the stage. After that, anyone educated on current affairs can just read the table of contents (to see the 10 steps listed) and fill in the blanks for him/herself.
There is, in the back, a page or two with websites for organizations fighting for our civil liberties right now. This is a good resource for anyone wanting to fight the good fight while we still have some semblance of free speech. (Did you know that right now, if Bush read my book list, he could declare me an enemy combatant, and you'd never hear from me again? Really. It's happened already -- to our own military, no less!)
***Add on comments, later: I finally decided to move this off my "currently reading list," because it's been so long since I picked it up. That's because I get so riled up when I read it, that I realized I needed to be careful about doing so -- otherwise I'd face insomnia! I will finish this book for sure, but I thought it best to move it off the "current" list.
March 18, 2009
I used to read horror stories to get myself scared. Now all you have to read is recent history. If you are like me, you have the feeling that America has changed in recent years. Feels like the government is marching to a slightly different tune than what the people desire. You also probably felt some of the things being done were wrong: aggressive interrogation, jailing reporters, use of signing statements to over Congressional rule, Guantanomo, etc.......
Naomi Wolf's book compares 2000's USA to Germany in the 1920's and the similarities are frightening and give cause for concern. Putting America in a perpetual state of emergency creates an opportunity for abuse. Government has systematically increased powers of the executive branch, while simultaneously removed/ignored citizens rights. 1920's Germany created a mythological enemy, funded creation of a paramilitary force, created a secret prison system, encouraged surveillance of citizens, practiced arbitrary detainment of citizens, harassed/infiltrated citizen's groups, targeted writers, entertainers and dissenters, recast dissent as treason and eventually ended the rule of law. Sound familiar?
Naomi Wolf's book compares 2000's USA to Germany in the 1920's and the similarities are frightening and give cause for concern. Putting America in a perpetual state of emergency creates an opportunity for abuse. Government has systematically increased powers of the executive branch, while simultaneously removed/ignored citizens rights. 1920's Germany created a mythological enemy, funded creation of a paramilitary force, created a secret prison system, encouraged surveillance of citizens, practiced arbitrary detainment of citizens, harassed/infiltrated citizen's groups, targeted writers, entertainers and dissenters, recast dissent as treason and eventually ended the rule of law. Sound familiar?
August 30, 2020
What a trip down memory lane. Remember Naomi Wolf? Remember Bush?
Unfortunately, Naomi Wolf has a reputation for poor fact checking and I have no interest in fact checking this book myself. But you know, sometimes she makes really good points. Other times she sounds really dumb. Like toward the end she has this whole part about how bloggers can save us. I wonder what she would say about that now.
But yeah, I don't know. I only read this book because I have a physical copy that I probably bought 10 years ago and I'm trying to pare down all my books so they fit on my bookcase. It's really not that bad, but it does have that Naomi Wolf way of being kind of irritating. Seriously, so many people could benefit from an editor who's a real hardass and Naomi Wolf is definitely one of them.
But it was interesting stepping back in time to 2007. Man.
Unfortunately, Naomi Wolf has a reputation for poor fact checking and I have no interest in fact checking this book myself. But you know, sometimes she makes really good points. Other times she sounds really dumb. Like toward the end she has this whole part about how bloggers can save us. I wonder what she would say about that now.
But yeah, I don't know. I only read this book because I have a physical copy that I probably bought 10 years ago and I'm trying to pare down all my books so they fit on my bookcase. It's really not that bad, but it does have that Naomi Wolf way of being kind of irritating. Seriously, so many people could benefit from an editor who's a real hardass and Naomi Wolf is definitely one of them.
But it was interesting stepping back in time to 2007. Man.
February 6, 2017
Sigh.
Books like this are almost unreadable these days. I wish I had read this earlier, because I think I was woefully ignorant of the abuses and unconstitutional postures taken by the Bush administration until at least the beginning of my law school days, but the scope creep of the executive from Bush to Obama to Trump is almost too baleful to contemplate under the current administration.
In highest dudgeon I've certainly lobbed my fair share of insults at the current president. I wonder if I'll be flagged as a subversive?
A few things in particular stand out as prescient--particularly regarding "fake news"--after a grueling first week of the Trump presidency:
And this profoundly sad final note from the last part of the book reminds me of a joke a friend told me recently. He said that in the 1980s a Republican went over to a Democrat's house to play a game of checkers. They agreed on the rules, made a few moves, and then at some point the Republican got up, threw a bomb at the house, and began spraying kerosene everywhere. Meanwhile, inside, the Democrat is looking out for double-jumps and opportunities to get kinged.
It's long past time to wake up.
Books like this are almost unreadable these days. I wish I had read this earlier, because I think I was woefully ignorant of the abuses and unconstitutional postures taken by the Bush administration until at least the beginning of my law school days, but the scope creep of the executive from Bush to Obama to Trump is almost too baleful to contemplate under the current administration.
In highest dudgeon I've certainly lobbed my fair share of insults at the current president. I wonder if I'll be flagged as a subversive?
A few things in particular stand out as prescient--particularly regarding "fake news"--after a grueling first week of the Trump presidency:
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims of a big lie than a small one" Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf.
Fascists rely on perception management: what the intelligence community calls "info ops" because their tactics won't stand scrutiny by a free press. So, in a fascist shift, as real reporters are being frozen out, smeared, or faced with unemployment, there is an increasing use of spectacle in conveying a message, and the spectacle is accompanied by the production of fake news and false documents. The messaging, combined with the spectacle, can be stunning in a fascist ascendancy. Fascist messaging has advantage that democratic communications and advocacy, even of the highest sophistication, just cannot demonstrate. You can use a monolithic, harmonized voice and vision, unimpeded by dissent, rather than trying to break through a clash of pluralistic arguments. This power of epic messaging--in combination with power of spectacle--is a well known aspect of the seduction of fascism.
Dictatorships specialize in faking news and falsifying documents. Hitler wrote that "All effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points, and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand." He argued that good propaganda speaks to feelings and not reason, and that it should never admit a glimmer of doubt in its own claims or concede the tiniest element of right in the claims of the other side.
After a certain point in a fascist shift, it doesn't matter whether most people believe the faked news or not. Eventually, they simply don't have access to enough good information to assess what is real and what is not.
Sending a current of lies into the information scene is part of classic psychological operations to generate a larger shift, a new reality in which the truth can no longer be ascertained and no longer counts. In this reality, citizens no longer feel empowered or able to establish the truth on either side, and therefore give up their agency. At this point, people can be manipulated into supporting almost any state action, for how can citizens know what is right? Truth itself has been cheapened, made subjective, and internal, not absolute and external.
And this profoundly sad final note from the last part of the book reminds me of a joke a friend told me recently. He said that in the 1980s a Republican went over to a Democrat's house to play a game of checkers. They agreed on the rules, made a few moves, and then at some point the Republican got up, threw a bomb at the house, and began spraying kerosene everywhere. Meanwhile, inside, the Democrat is looking out for double-jumps and opportunities to get kinged.
We in America are used to a democratic social contract in which there is agreement about the rules of the game. When Congress demands an answer, for instance, the President does not simply refuse to pick up the phone. So we keep being startled when the steps of the democratic interplay are ignored. "He can't do that!" It's time to notice that they are playing a different game altogether.
It's long past time to wake up.
September 10, 2020
Una versión extendida y cargante de «¿Sabes quién era vegetariano también? ¡Hitler!». Por ahí anda el nivel, no hay mucho más. Y a América la van a salvar los bloggers, claro que sí, guapi.
December 9, 2015
This was a quick read, and I wavered on whether to rate it 2 or 3-stars. Ultimately 2, because although what she says is valid in drawing attention to our government quickly eroding "unalienable" rights in the name of security and national integrity, Wolf rushed to draw dramatic parallel to outrageously fascist regimes.
I believe the style and pacing of the book felt like someone blowing a steady stream of hot air onto your face - it was clear she wanted her words to mirror a revolutionary pamphlet and affect the American population thusly. In hilarious parallel to her namesake, Naomi seems to be crying wolf about the demise of America, and perhaps more concerned with demonizing a particular administration by unfairly squashing it into the historical context of fascist dictatorships only concerned with world dominion.
The sad truth of America's gradual erosion of liberty is that it was borne not of external imperialistic ambition, but of fear. The United States has whipped up fear as a political tool to exert control over an increasingly unpredictable world, not out of any ambition to conquer it.
Here's what I think: America is not dead. It cannot die, because it is an idea. We do desperately need to evolve our government to adhere to this idea and its influence in the world, but not whip American citizenry into a further frenzy of fear and complicit doom. We need to think differently; optimistically, constructively, as a revolutionary, which Naomi does not do. But in her own words:
"Here's what we're not taught: Those words ["...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."] at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. These men and the women who supported their work were walking further out into the unknown - betting on ordinary people's capacities - than anyone had ever walked in the history of the human race. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of the world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see." (p.27)
Let's hearken back to that intrinsic American motivation and enthusiasm, predicated on building a better world, rather than withdrawing into a fearful, pessimistic one.
I believe the style and pacing of the book felt like someone blowing a steady stream of hot air onto your face - it was clear she wanted her words to mirror a revolutionary pamphlet and affect the American population thusly. In hilarious parallel to her namesake, Naomi seems to be crying wolf about the demise of America, and perhaps more concerned with demonizing a particular administration by unfairly squashing it into the historical context of fascist dictatorships only concerned with world dominion.
The sad truth of America's gradual erosion of liberty is that it was borne not of external imperialistic ambition, but of fear. The United States has whipped up fear as a political tool to exert control over an increasingly unpredictable world, not out of any ambition to conquer it.
Here's what I think: America is not dead. It cannot die, because it is an idea. We do desperately need to evolve our government to adhere to this idea and its influence in the world, but not whip American citizenry into a further frenzy of fear and complicit doom. We need to think differently; optimistically, constructively, as a revolutionary, which Naomi does not do. But in her own words:
"Here's what we're not taught: Those words ["...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."] at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. These men and the women who supported their work were walking further out into the unknown - betting on ordinary people's capacities - than anyone had ever walked in the history of the human race. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of the world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see." (p.27)
Let's hearken back to that intrinsic American motivation and enthusiasm, predicated on building a better world, rather than withdrawing into a fearful, pessimistic one.
February 16, 2023
This was written in 2007 and lays out what Wolf saw as threats to American democracy and familiar threads between then contemporary America and historical fascist regimes. I would be interested to see her updated version because it almost feels more relevant to now. The progression of the US since this book should terrify those familiar with history...
November 10, 2021
“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be more aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” - Justice William O. Douglas
“As would-be dictators consolidate power . . . Things proceed fairly routinely in many areas in the earliest years” (31). Italian peasants celebrated their harvest festivals in 1919 when Mussolini’s arditi were beating local communists. Journalists wrote about urban style, nightlife, fashion, and architecture while Hitler consolidated power around himself. A Jewish professor gardened, repaired his car, went to the movies, and chatted with Nazi neighbors “even as he became increasingly aware of persecution, arrests, theft of property, and new discriminatory laws; even as he was certain of an inevitable catastrophe” (31).
Many of our freedoms were taken away during war time. Communists were arrested during WWI, Japanese were placed in camps in WWII, and Bush removed many freedoms after 9/11/01. Now covid-19 is being used to take away freedoms. Liberals used to be the victims of oppression, but now they are the ones calling for censorship and loss of freedom to anyone who goes against the mainstream narrative.
Totalitarianism is defined as a mass movement with a leadership that requires total domination of the individual (20). Mussolini coined the term fascism, but the Nazis didn’t think he was tough enough to be a true fascist. Some have defined fascism as a violent dictatorship “that uses state terror and other kinds of control to subordinate the population and crush democratic impulses” (21). The Columbia Encyclopedia defines fascism as a “philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life” (21). Naomi Wolf defines fascism as a militaristic system opposed to democracy that seeks to crush it using state terror (21). By “fascist shift,” she means “an antidemocratic ideology that uses the threat of violence against the individual in order to subdue the institutions of civil society, so that they in turn can be subordinated to the power of the state” (21).
It’s interesting that these definitions define communist Russia and China too, even though fascism is supposed to be far right while communism is far left. Naomi Wolf uses Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy as examples throughout the book, but she doesn’t mention Russia or China much. Bush was a right winger who took away many of our freedoms, but now it’s the democrats doing it. Maybe Trump upset the elites’ plans for right wing fascism, so they decided to go with left wing communism instead.
“When America gets fascism it will be called anti-fascism.” - Huey Long
Naomi Wolf published this book in 2007. She wrote, “We are not wracked by rioting in the streets or a major depression here in America today” (36). Well now in 2020, covid-19 was used as the reason to force the economy into a depression, and highly publicized black deaths were used to encourage rioting in the streets.
The Antifa rioters use black people’s deaths to destroy small business capitalism and perhaps also the local police. Democrat politicians help fund them. The people are afraid to go against Antifa because then they would get labeled racist bigots. When the bolder republicans dare to stand up to Antifa or demand fair democratic elections, the left wing controlled media labels them violent extremists while ignoring the violence caused by Antifa, thus making people side more with Antifa than with those who oppose them. It seems obvious to me that the left is trying to eradicate the republican party so that America becomes a one party country. That leads to totalitarianism, just as no competition in business leads to monopolies.
“When a minority of citizens is terrorized and persecuted, a majority live out fairly normal lives by stifling dissent within themselves and going along quietly with the state’s acts of violent repression. The authors of an oral history of Nazi Germany point out that, though it may sound shocking, fascist regimes can be ‘quite popular’ for the people who are not being terrorized” (23). That’s going on now with covid-19. The government wants to restrict or ban those who aren’t vaccinated. Most of the vaccinated don’t care since they’re not the ones being targeted.
The ten steps to turning a country into a fascist one:
1. Invoke an external and internal threat (35). The terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 were the external threat that made people tolerate Bush taking away our freedoms. “Free citizens will not give up freedom for very many reasons, but it is human nature to be willing to trade freedom for security. People fear chaos and violence above all. . . . In both Italy and Germany, many citizens were eventually relieved when fascists came to power because they believed that order would be restored” (36). “What matters to a fascist leader is not to get rid of the enemy but rather to maintain an enemy. (Because this is what really counts, Arendt points out that the ‘enemy’ status can be shifted from group to group: when the nazis had overcome the ‘enemy’ represented by Jews, they moved on to demonize the Poles)” (37). The War on Terror never ends. Although ironically it sort of did end when Biden recently pulled the troops out of Afghanistan. But I guess the elites are okay with ending that war, since now they have covid-19 to terrorize people with. The Reichstag was set on fire on 2/27/33. “That would be like someone trying to set fire to the Capitol . . . Some historians believe he Nazis engineered this attack themselves” (41). Just like leftists caused the capitol violence on 1/6/21, and the republicans got blamed for it!
2. Establish secret prisons. “The secret prison system expands, slowly or quickly but inexorably to seize civil-society leaders, journalists, clergy, and the political opposition” (46). In Nazi Germany, a concentration camp for political prisoners was opened. “Within 30 days, the SA and SS had rounded up, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or often simply shot dead tens of thousands of Communists, Social Democrats, other opposition leaders, labor leaders, journalists, and clergy” (49). Bush created a torture prison at Guantanamo Bay “long before the administration asked Congress to make the abuse legal in 2006” (51). I guess this prison is legal since it’s not in the US? The prisoners there are treated much worse than prisoners in the US, which is sad considering that the US prisoners have actually been convicted of crimes, whereas the prisoners in Guantanamo have only been suspects. Guantanamo prisons have a lot in common with Stalin’s gulags (53). Common torture techniques: humiliation, standing for a long time, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, extremes of heat and cold (61-63). “Vague, loose definitions of what a criminal is are typical of fascist legislation: The Nuremberg Laws of 1938, for instance, turned an ordinary German into a criminal if his girlfriend was Jewish, and turned a German Jew into a criminal if he or she displayed the German flag” (59). Defense lawyers or whistleblowers are punished (64-68). “As Alexander Hamilton put it in ‘The Federalist No. 83,’ ‘Arbitrary impeachments, arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offenses, and arbitrary punishments upon arbitrary convictions have ever appeared to me to be the great engines of judicial despotism’” (72). Arbitrary impeachments . . . Sounds like what Nanci Pelosi and the other democrats were doing to Trump.
3. Develop a paramilitary force—“aggressive men who have no clear, accountable relationship to the government or the party seeking power” (73). Antifa fits this definition.
4. Surveil ordinary citizens. “All the societies we are looking at . . . Used state surveillance against ordinary citizens to make them docile” (82). Edward Snowden revealed this happening in the US.
5. Infiltrate citizens’ groups. Spy, basically. Happened in Italy, Russia, and Germany. “In Germany, National Socialist agents infiltrated groups of anti-Nazi students, Communists, and labor activists” (89). “In dictatorships, infiltrators are joined by agents provocateurs at marches and rallies. These provocateurs don’t just act and dress like the protesters: Their task is to provoke a violent situation or actually to commit a crime. . . . Provocateurs also serve a PR purpose: they set up protesters to look like lawless threats to society, thus providing would-be dictators with the rationale for declaring martial law as a means to ‘restore public order’” (90). That’s likely what happened during the 1/6/21 capitol protest. The media made a big deal about it being an “insurrection,” but they don’t like to admit the violence that went on for months when Antifa joined BLM protests. Politicians didn’t respond with more force when the latter happened; their response was the opposite—to defund police. In contrast, the response to the capitol protest was to increase military presence around the White House for months after Biden was sworn in.
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens, restrict movement/travel, and prevent protest (93). The US president and his lawyers claim the authority to designate any US citizen as being an enemy combatant even if you committed no crime. Anyone in the executive branch can put you in a cell or isolation for years, delay your trial repeatedly, and make it hard for you to communicate with your lawyer. You can be threatened and tortured (16). “Making it more difficult for people out of favor with the state to travel back and forth across borders is a classic part of the fascist playbook” (98). It happened in Germany and in Russia. Now it’s happening worldwide where you can’t travel to certain areas if you haven’t been vaccinated. “This is why a dictatorship restricts the movements and assembly of its citizens—usually through municipal ordinances and curfews: Mussolini’s arditi, for instance, warned Italian citizens to stay indoors during the fascists’ mass rallies. In Mexico, police shot at and wounded student protesters in 1968. General Pinochet’s forces also fired at protesters in 1982. Suppression of protests habituates citizens to the idea that the state has the right to direct their movements and to disperse large groups or to keep them from gathering in the first place” (104). Currently in Australia, it’s a crime for people to be too far from their home if even one person in the area has tested positive for covid. In the US, it wasn’t okay to leave the home for non-essential reasons during lockdown, but Antifa rioters were allowed to riot without masks or social distancing, and the few who got arrested for violence were soon released.
7. Target key individuals. First by job loss or career setbacks (106). College professors who question the mainstream narrative are punished. Back in the early 2000s, it was the liberals who were punished (107). Now it’s the conservatives. “Students and academics are always democracy’s foot soldiers,” meaning that these people defend democracy (110). Then how sad it is that our current students and academics are the ones doing the censoring or calling for it. Evidence of the corruption of science: “In 2001, the National Science Foundation made it clear that its grants would no longer go to research on the basis of the science alone if that research undermined the Bush administration’s agenda” (106).
8. Restrict the press and create propaganda (114). “No one hurts reporters in the United States in 2007. But reporters are getting hurt under U.S. oversight in Iraq” (116). Now in 2020-2021, US reporters ARE getting hurt if they try to cover Antifa. Antifa purposely wants no one to film them doing what they’re doing, and assaults anyone who tries. Andy Ngo is one example. “Each fascist leader we have been looking at has sought aggressively to control the press and been successful at securing that control in short order” (122). Bush did a photo opp called “Mission Accomplished” which has a lot of similarities to Hitler’s “Triumph of the Will” propaganda film (124-125). In 2003, 51% of Americans believed that Iraqis were involved in 9/11 (128). Biased liberal news was constantly attacking Trump. Certain topics or ideas are not allowed to be reported on, such as anything the advertisers wouldn’t like or anything that makes liberals look bad. “Dictatorships specialize in faking news and falsifying documents” (126). Hitler said that good propaganda speaks to feelings and not reason, and that “it should never admit a a glimmer of doubt in its own claims, or concede the tiniest element of right in the claims of the other side” (126). Feelings, not reason - that’s what the liberals push today. Fauci never admits to being wrong or doing wrong even when the evidence is overwhelming. Naomi Wolf suggests that the media lies as a psy-op “in which the truth can no longer be ascertained and no longer counts. In this reality citizens no longer feel empowered or able to establish the truth on either side—and therefore give up their agency. At this point people can be manipulated into supporting almost any state action. For how can citizens know what is right? Truth itself has been cheapened, made subjective and internal, not absolute and external” (127).
9. Cast criticism as espionage and dissent as treason. “Leaders introduce and then seek to establish new categories of offenses that criminalize citizens’ ideas, actions, or speech” (133-134). Freedom of speech has not always been protected in America. “A year after the 1917 Espionage Act was passed, Rev. Clarence Waldron was sentenced to prison for 15 years for passing out a pamphlet that said that war was un-Christian” (91). A peace activist wearing an anti-war T-shirt got arrested for unlawful conduct; a Republican wore a pro-war T-shirt in the same place, but was only asked to leave (91). (Notice how it used to be democrats under attack, and now it’s the opposite.) Google accepted the Chinese restrictions on citizens’ Internet use; Yahoo! And AOL gave data to the Justice Department about millions of US users’ searches (140-141). “We are not in danger of a military coup. But home-grown American versions of the same steps that all dictators have advanced may yet create an American in which all our institutions are intact—but functioning weakly; in which citizens have in theory the right to dissent, and some may do so mutedly, but most are afraid to exercise that right robustly; in which the press is subdued, the opposition is pulling its punches, and people are worried about expressing their true opinions, because it may cost them their jobs, or worse” (33). This is happening now. If you say anything against BLM, LGBTs, or covid vaccines, you will lose your job. An America “in which you can lose your job if you say to a colleague that you voted against the grain,” will be an America in which we no longer have real freedom, and it will be “the end of the America the Founders created” (34). People are being banned from Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. if they say anything that goes against the CDC/WHO.
10. Subvert the rule of law (142). “Historically, the shift to martial law, or to government by emergency decree, generally takes place during a crisis. A crisis allows a would-be dictator even in a democracy to use emergency powers to restore ‘public order.’ This kind of thing won’t happen in America (146). Unfortunately it may happen. We’re in the covid crisis. When the president invokes section 333, he is allowed to declare martial law and control with National Guard without governor permission. He can tell us to stay in our homes (147). We already had a lockdown, and a more severe one could be in our future. “Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition’” (147).
One example of these steps being followed to turn a democracy into a police state was Thailand in 2006. Within days, military leaders “deployed armed guards in residential neighborhoods, sent lawmakers home, shut down the free press, took over the state-run television, threatened critics with arrest, put new limits on travel, restricted protest, and discontinued the Parliamentary rule of law” (14).
Random other interesting bits of info:
- Forcing citizens to ingest liquids - happened in Mussolini’s Italy, Nazi Germany, and in Bush’s America (7).
- Conditioning people to have patriotism by calling their country “the homeland” - happened in Nazi Germany and Bush’s America (7).
- Your medical records are no longer private - Nazi Germany & Bush’s USA Patriot Act.
- Chinese communists leaders studied Stalin, who studied Hitler, who studied Mussolini, who studied Lenin. And now the US helped develop a training center called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly School of the Americas) to train various procapitalist Latin American leaders in the theory and practice of violent dictatorship (30).
What Wolf proposes as solutions:
Become a blogger who reports on the facts (131).
Be clean of (or honest about) anything that can be used against you as blackmail (153).
Have courage and be willing to be smeared (154)
Gather together and inform others (154)
Demand that our politicians restore freedoms (154)
“As would-be dictators consolidate power . . . Things proceed fairly routinely in many areas in the earliest years” (31). Italian peasants celebrated their harvest festivals in 1919 when Mussolini’s arditi were beating local communists. Journalists wrote about urban style, nightlife, fashion, and architecture while Hitler consolidated power around himself. A Jewish professor gardened, repaired his car, went to the movies, and chatted with Nazi neighbors “even as he became increasingly aware of persecution, arrests, theft of property, and new discriminatory laws; even as he was certain of an inevitable catastrophe” (31).
Many of our freedoms were taken away during war time. Communists were arrested during WWI, Japanese were placed in camps in WWII, and Bush removed many freedoms after 9/11/01. Now covid-19 is being used to take away freedoms. Liberals used to be the victims of oppression, but now they are the ones calling for censorship and loss of freedom to anyone who goes against the mainstream narrative.
Totalitarianism is defined as a mass movement with a leadership that requires total domination of the individual (20). Mussolini coined the term fascism, but the Nazis didn’t think he was tough enough to be a true fascist. Some have defined fascism as a violent dictatorship “that uses state terror and other kinds of control to subordinate the population and crush democratic impulses” (21). The Columbia Encyclopedia defines fascism as a “philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life” (21). Naomi Wolf defines fascism as a militaristic system opposed to democracy that seeks to crush it using state terror (21). By “fascist shift,” she means “an antidemocratic ideology that uses the threat of violence against the individual in order to subdue the institutions of civil society, so that they in turn can be subordinated to the power of the state” (21).
It’s interesting that these definitions define communist Russia and China too, even though fascism is supposed to be far right while communism is far left. Naomi Wolf uses Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy as examples throughout the book, but she doesn’t mention Russia or China much. Bush was a right winger who took away many of our freedoms, but now it’s the democrats doing it. Maybe Trump upset the elites’ plans for right wing fascism, so they decided to go with left wing communism instead.
“When America gets fascism it will be called anti-fascism.” - Huey Long
Naomi Wolf published this book in 2007. She wrote, “We are not wracked by rioting in the streets or a major depression here in America today” (36). Well now in 2020, covid-19 was used as the reason to force the economy into a depression, and highly publicized black deaths were used to encourage rioting in the streets.
The Antifa rioters use black people’s deaths to destroy small business capitalism and perhaps also the local police. Democrat politicians help fund them. The people are afraid to go against Antifa because then they would get labeled racist bigots. When the bolder republicans dare to stand up to Antifa or demand fair democratic elections, the left wing controlled media labels them violent extremists while ignoring the violence caused by Antifa, thus making people side more with Antifa than with those who oppose them. It seems obvious to me that the left is trying to eradicate the republican party so that America becomes a one party country. That leads to totalitarianism, just as no competition in business leads to monopolies.
“When a minority of citizens is terrorized and persecuted, a majority live out fairly normal lives by stifling dissent within themselves and going along quietly with the state’s acts of violent repression. The authors of an oral history of Nazi Germany point out that, though it may sound shocking, fascist regimes can be ‘quite popular’ for the people who are not being terrorized” (23). That’s going on now with covid-19. The government wants to restrict or ban those who aren’t vaccinated. Most of the vaccinated don’t care since they’re not the ones being targeted.
The ten steps to turning a country into a fascist one:
1. Invoke an external and internal threat (35). The terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 were the external threat that made people tolerate Bush taking away our freedoms. “Free citizens will not give up freedom for very many reasons, but it is human nature to be willing to trade freedom for security. People fear chaos and violence above all. . . . In both Italy and Germany, many citizens were eventually relieved when fascists came to power because they believed that order would be restored” (36). “What matters to a fascist leader is not to get rid of the enemy but rather to maintain an enemy. (Because this is what really counts, Arendt points out that the ‘enemy’ status can be shifted from group to group: when the nazis had overcome the ‘enemy’ represented by Jews, they moved on to demonize the Poles)” (37). The War on Terror never ends. Although ironically it sort of did end when Biden recently pulled the troops out of Afghanistan. But I guess the elites are okay with ending that war, since now they have covid-19 to terrorize people with. The Reichstag was set on fire on 2/27/33. “That would be like someone trying to set fire to the Capitol . . . Some historians believe he Nazis engineered this attack themselves” (41). Just like leftists caused the capitol violence on 1/6/21, and the republicans got blamed for it!
2. Establish secret prisons. “The secret prison system expands, slowly or quickly but inexorably to seize civil-society leaders, journalists, clergy, and the political opposition” (46). In Nazi Germany, a concentration camp for political prisoners was opened. “Within 30 days, the SA and SS had rounded up, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or often simply shot dead tens of thousands of Communists, Social Democrats, other opposition leaders, labor leaders, journalists, and clergy” (49). Bush created a torture prison at Guantanamo Bay “long before the administration asked Congress to make the abuse legal in 2006” (51). I guess this prison is legal since it’s not in the US? The prisoners there are treated much worse than prisoners in the US, which is sad considering that the US prisoners have actually been convicted of crimes, whereas the prisoners in Guantanamo have only been suspects. Guantanamo prisons have a lot in common with Stalin’s gulags (53). Common torture techniques: humiliation, standing for a long time, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, extremes of heat and cold (61-63). “Vague, loose definitions of what a criminal is are typical of fascist legislation: The Nuremberg Laws of 1938, for instance, turned an ordinary German into a criminal if his girlfriend was Jewish, and turned a German Jew into a criminal if he or she displayed the German flag” (59). Defense lawyers or whistleblowers are punished (64-68). “As Alexander Hamilton put it in ‘The Federalist No. 83,’ ‘Arbitrary impeachments, arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offenses, and arbitrary punishments upon arbitrary convictions have ever appeared to me to be the great engines of judicial despotism’” (72). Arbitrary impeachments . . . Sounds like what Nanci Pelosi and the other democrats were doing to Trump.
3. Develop a paramilitary force—“aggressive men who have no clear, accountable relationship to the government or the party seeking power” (73). Antifa fits this definition.
4. Surveil ordinary citizens. “All the societies we are looking at . . . Used state surveillance against ordinary citizens to make them docile” (82). Edward Snowden revealed this happening in the US.
5. Infiltrate citizens’ groups. Spy, basically. Happened in Italy, Russia, and Germany. “In Germany, National Socialist agents infiltrated groups of anti-Nazi students, Communists, and labor activists” (89). “In dictatorships, infiltrators are joined by agents provocateurs at marches and rallies. These provocateurs don’t just act and dress like the protesters: Their task is to provoke a violent situation or actually to commit a crime. . . . Provocateurs also serve a PR purpose: they set up protesters to look like lawless threats to society, thus providing would-be dictators with the rationale for declaring martial law as a means to ‘restore public order’” (90). That’s likely what happened during the 1/6/21 capitol protest. The media made a big deal about it being an “insurrection,” but they don’t like to admit the violence that went on for months when Antifa joined BLM protests. Politicians didn’t respond with more force when the latter happened; their response was the opposite—to defund police. In contrast, the response to the capitol protest was to increase military presence around the White House for months after Biden was sworn in.
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens, restrict movement/travel, and prevent protest (93). The US president and his lawyers claim the authority to designate any US citizen as being an enemy combatant even if you committed no crime. Anyone in the executive branch can put you in a cell or isolation for years, delay your trial repeatedly, and make it hard for you to communicate with your lawyer. You can be threatened and tortured (16). “Making it more difficult for people out of favor with the state to travel back and forth across borders is a classic part of the fascist playbook” (98). It happened in Germany and in Russia. Now it’s happening worldwide where you can’t travel to certain areas if you haven’t been vaccinated. “This is why a dictatorship restricts the movements and assembly of its citizens—usually through municipal ordinances and curfews: Mussolini’s arditi, for instance, warned Italian citizens to stay indoors during the fascists’ mass rallies. In Mexico, police shot at and wounded student protesters in 1968. General Pinochet’s forces also fired at protesters in 1982. Suppression of protests habituates citizens to the idea that the state has the right to direct their movements and to disperse large groups or to keep them from gathering in the first place” (104). Currently in Australia, it’s a crime for people to be too far from their home if even one person in the area has tested positive for covid. In the US, it wasn’t okay to leave the home for non-essential reasons during lockdown, but Antifa rioters were allowed to riot without masks or social distancing, and the few who got arrested for violence were soon released.
7. Target key individuals. First by job loss or career setbacks (106). College professors who question the mainstream narrative are punished. Back in the early 2000s, it was the liberals who were punished (107). Now it’s the conservatives. “Students and academics are always democracy’s foot soldiers,” meaning that these people defend democracy (110). Then how sad it is that our current students and academics are the ones doing the censoring or calling for it. Evidence of the corruption of science: “In 2001, the National Science Foundation made it clear that its grants would no longer go to research on the basis of the science alone if that research undermined the Bush administration’s agenda” (106).
8. Restrict the press and create propaganda (114). “No one hurts reporters in the United States in 2007. But reporters are getting hurt under U.S. oversight in Iraq” (116). Now in 2020-2021, US reporters ARE getting hurt if they try to cover Antifa. Antifa purposely wants no one to film them doing what they’re doing, and assaults anyone who tries. Andy Ngo is one example. “Each fascist leader we have been looking at has sought aggressively to control the press and been successful at securing that control in short order” (122). Bush did a photo opp called “Mission Accomplished” which has a lot of similarities to Hitler’s “Triumph of the Will” propaganda film (124-125). In 2003, 51% of Americans believed that Iraqis were involved in 9/11 (128). Biased liberal news was constantly attacking Trump. Certain topics or ideas are not allowed to be reported on, such as anything the advertisers wouldn’t like or anything that makes liberals look bad. “Dictatorships specialize in faking news and falsifying documents” (126). Hitler said that good propaganda speaks to feelings and not reason, and that “it should never admit a a glimmer of doubt in its own claims, or concede the tiniest element of right in the claims of the other side” (126). Feelings, not reason - that’s what the liberals push today. Fauci never admits to being wrong or doing wrong even when the evidence is overwhelming. Naomi Wolf suggests that the media lies as a psy-op “in which the truth can no longer be ascertained and no longer counts. In this reality citizens no longer feel empowered or able to establish the truth on either side—and therefore give up their agency. At this point people can be manipulated into supporting almost any state action. For how can citizens know what is right? Truth itself has been cheapened, made subjective and internal, not absolute and external” (127).
9. Cast criticism as espionage and dissent as treason. “Leaders introduce and then seek to establish new categories of offenses that criminalize citizens’ ideas, actions, or speech” (133-134). Freedom of speech has not always been protected in America. “A year after the 1917 Espionage Act was passed, Rev. Clarence Waldron was sentenced to prison for 15 years for passing out a pamphlet that said that war was un-Christian” (91). A peace activist wearing an anti-war T-shirt got arrested for unlawful conduct; a Republican wore a pro-war T-shirt in the same place, but was only asked to leave (91). (Notice how it used to be democrats under attack, and now it’s the opposite.) Google accepted the Chinese restrictions on citizens’ Internet use; Yahoo! And AOL gave data to the Justice Department about millions of US users’ searches (140-141). “We are not in danger of a military coup. But home-grown American versions of the same steps that all dictators have advanced may yet create an American in which all our institutions are intact—but functioning weakly; in which citizens have in theory the right to dissent, and some may do so mutedly, but most are afraid to exercise that right robustly; in which the press is subdued, the opposition is pulling its punches, and people are worried about expressing their true opinions, because it may cost them their jobs, or worse” (33). This is happening now. If you say anything against BLM, LGBTs, or covid vaccines, you will lose your job. An America “in which you can lose your job if you say to a colleague that you voted against the grain,” will be an America in which we no longer have real freedom, and it will be “the end of the America the Founders created” (34). People are being banned from Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. if they say anything that goes against the CDC/WHO.
10. Subvert the rule of law (142). “Historically, the shift to martial law, or to government by emergency decree, generally takes place during a crisis. A crisis allows a would-be dictator even in a democracy to use emergency powers to restore ‘public order.’ This kind of thing won’t happen in America (146). Unfortunately it may happen. We’re in the covid crisis. When the president invokes section 333, he is allowed to declare martial law and control with National Guard without governor permission. He can tell us to stay in our homes (147). We already had a lockdown, and a more severe one could be in our future. “Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition’” (147).
One example of these steps being followed to turn a democracy into a police state was Thailand in 2006. Within days, military leaders “deployed armed guards in residential neighborhoods, sent lawmakers home, shut down the free press, took over the state-run television, threatened critics with arrest, put new limits on travel, restricted protest, and discontinued the Parliamentary rule of law” (14).
Random other interesting bits of info:
- Forcing citizens to ingest liquids - happened in Mussolini’s Italy, Nazi Germany, and in Bush’s America (7).
- Conditioning people to have patriotism by calling their country “the homeland” - happened in Nazi Germany and Bush’s America (7).
- Your medical records are no longer private - Nazi Germany & Bush’s USA Patriot Act.
- Chinese communists leaders studied Stalin, who studied Hitler, who studied Mussolini, who studied Lenin. And now the US helped develop a training center called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly School of the Americas) to train various procapitalist Latin American leaders in the theory and practice of violent dictatorship (30).
What Wolf proposes as solutions:
Become a blogger who reports on the facts (131).
Be clean of (or honest about) anything that can be used against you as blackmail (153).
Have courage and be willing to be smeared (154)
Gather together and inform others (154)
Demand that our politicians restore freedoms (154)
March 27, 2017
I definitely could have used half stars here. It's a good book but it is very depressing. 2.5 presidential terms after the book was released and nothing has changed. If anything it's worse.
May 9, 2008
Naomi Wolf's short, straightforward book is a warning that the prospects for fascism emerging in America are real and growing. She lays out 10 steps that governments take in order to concentrate power and stifle dissent, on the road to fascism, all of which are underway in the good ol' US of A.
1. Invoke an External and Internal Threat
2. Establish Secret Prisons
3. Develop a Paramilitary Force
4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens
5. Infiltrate Citzens' Groups
6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens
7. Target Key Individuals
8. Restrict the Press
9. Cast Criticism as 'Espionage' and Dissent as 'Treason'
10. Subvert the Rule of Law
This issue is obviously incredibly relevant today, and I happen to agree that fascism is an imminent threat in the US. But I wasn't terribly impressed by this book. Although I believe the author is or maybe was a radical, the arguments here are very very much within the liberal framework, or even right-libertarian framework, and the pro-U.S., pro-Constitution rhetoric, while serving a function here, does actually cover up the fact that this nation was built on state terror and repressive violence. It's not a new thing.
I think this book also alienated me a bit because it's heavy on scare-tactic language, and even some implications bordering on conspiracy theory. These all served to make the book something more of interest to the (largely white, male) middle class as opposed to the truly dispossessed of this nation, who would actually be the ones likely to suffer most under a fascist system.
What this book DOESN'T do is probably the most important thing, inspire HOPE that regular people can actually PREVENT emergent-fascism, or undo it. Wolf tries, but ultimately I think the effect is to actually scare us and the impression one gets is a gloomy, we're-fucked, bleak future. Intellectually, that may be alright, but if the intent is to move people to action, this fails horribly and may actually be counterproductive.
Worth skimming, but there should be, and probably are, much better books on the subject of the U.S.' decline into fascism.
1. Invoke an External and Internal Threat
2. Establish Secret Prisons
3. Develop a Paramilitary Force
4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens
5. Infiltrate Citzens' Groups
6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens
7. Target Key Individuals
8. Restrict the Press
9. Cast Criticism as 'Espionage' and Dissent as 'Treason'
10. Subvert the Rule of Law
This issue is obviously incredibly relevant today, and I happen to agree that fascism is an imminent threat in the US. But I wasn't terribly impressed by this book. Although I believe the author is or maybe was a radical, the arguments here are very very much within the liberal framework, or even right-libertarian framework, and the pro-U.S., pro-Constitution rhetoric, while serving a function here, does actually cover up the fact that this nation was built on state terror and repressive violence. It's not a new thing.
I think this book also alienated me a bit because it's heavy on scare-tactic language, and even some implications bordering on conspiracy theory. These all served to make the book something more of interest to the (largely white, male) middle class as opposed to the truly dispossessed of this nation, who would actually be the ones likely to suffer most under a fascist system.
What this book DOESN'T do is probably the most important thing, inspire HOPE that regular people can actually PREVENT emergent-fascism, or undo it. Wolf tries, but ultimately I think the effect is to actually scare us and the impression one gets is a gloomy, we're-fucked, bleak future. Intellectually, that may be alright, but if the intent is to move people to action, this fails horribly and may actually be counterproductive.
Worth skimming, but there should be, and probably are, much better books on the subject of the U.S.' decline into fascism.
November 20, 2008
Although, much like a textbook in presentation, and perhaps sounding a bit dated, now that we are all basking in the afterglow of a historic presidential election, I still think this is a very important book for all Americans to read. First off, it reminds us that the people who established are country lived under such tyrannical rule that they would lay down their life to fight for their liberty and rights. But, these same liberties and rights can be stripped away gradually and subtly if the people are not vigilant in their "civic life."
This book clearly outlines the ten steps towards a fascist government takeover with chilling examples in historical regimes that we have looked on with disgust and disbelief, and how it has happened, and still is happening in our own country.
I am hoping that the grass roots organizing that got many disenfranchised people out to vote, some for the first time in their lives, and showed that their involvement can make a difference, will also re-engage people into insisting that all branches of the government stick to the checks and balances to prevent our country from falling into fascist tendencies. Wolfe makes a very strong case that our current administration has spent a lot of time, in the name of security and the war on terrorism, to strip away these checks and balances to fulfill their objectives, which is profits for the many defense contractors that have made a lot of money in security and surveillance.
Freedom is not to be taken for granted. It is a full time job for each citizen. Read this short little book and then insist on accountability from your government.
This book clearly outlines the ten steps towards a fascist government takeover with chilling examples in historical regimes that we have looked on with disgust and disbelief, and how it has happened, and still is happening in our own country.
I am hoping that the grass roots organizing that got many disenfranchised people out to vote, some for the first time in their lives, and showed that their involvement can make a difference, will also re-engage people into insisting that all branches of the government stick to the checks and balances to prevent our country from falling into fascist tendencies. Wolfe makes a very strong case that our current administration has spent a lot of time, in the name of security and the war on terrorism, to strip away these checks and balances to fulfill their objectives, which is profits for the many defense contractors that have made a lot of money in security and surveillance.
Freedom is not to be taken for granted. It is a full time job for each citizen. Read this short little book and then insist on accountability from your government.
October 6, 2008
I encourage you, regardless of political party affiliation, to pick up and read this book. It strikes a comparison between the rise to power of the dictators of the past (Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, etc.) and what she calls the "fascist shift" in American to an antidemocracy that has our founding fathers rolling in their graves. I was struck by the same stomach wrenching feelings I had while watching John Adams that our predecessors who gave their all for our freedom would be horrified by what is taking place in American society today.
In comparing the 'echoes' of fascism, as some claimed her comparison to Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy was not like the American situation, she says: "there is no guarantee that America is different if Americans fail to take up the Patriot's task".
Defintely a lot to think about. Her ten steps to dictatorship are compelling in light of the similarities between the government's tactics post 9/11 and the tactics of Hitler and the Nazi party. Yikes!
In comparing the 'echoes' of fascism, as some claimed her comparison to Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy was not like the American situation, she says: "there is no guarantee that America is different if Americans fail to take up the Patriot's task".
Defintely a lot to think about. Her ten steps to dictatorship are compelling in light of the similarities between the government's tactics post 9/11 and the tactics of Hitler and the Nazi party. Yikes!
December 19, 2020
This is a book that really gets you thinking about the rights culture we live in. It examines the US administrations approach to the Iraq war at home and abroad (I was especially intrigued by the look at the Patriot Act). I found myself thinking, how far are we willing to go for freedom? When you take security to unbelievable extremes can you really call it freedom? Is our society so consummed with a 'rights rehtoric' that we get lost in what we think we deserve?
It was a book that made you question what has become second nature in our society: a belief that we have an unlimited amount of rights and are entitled to these rights. But is it possible for some people to take the rights revolution to far? and will the price of freedom cost us our fundamental rights?
It was a book that made you question what has become second nature in our society: a belief that we have an unlimited amount of rights and are entitled to these rights. But is it possible for some people to take the rights revolution to far? and will the price of freedom cost us our fundamental rights?
June 15, 2019
Only a partisan hack would write a book with a solid premise and then entirely discredit herself by soley blaming one political party for straying from the founder's vision.
While I am no great fan of either President Bush, comparing them to the Nazi party is offensive and ridiculous. Especially in light of ignoring the fact that the first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the Democratic National Convention of 1868. Perhaps Naomi didn't feel that was subversive?
While I am no great fan of either President Bush, comparing them to the Nazi party is offensive and ridiculous. Especially in light of ignoring the fact that the first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the Democratic National Convention of 1868. Perhaps Naomi didn't feel that was subversive?
August 25, 2008
Enjoyable read. A lesson to us all.
October 26, 2024
Clearly one sided but still a helpful recounting of the horrible direction of our nation.
September 16, 2025
Lil preachy but yeah America is in full scale facism
November 23, 2025
We’re so cooked.
April 11, 2021
I don't know a whole lot about the inner workings of American politics, but I saw Naomi Wolf interviewed on the HighWire with Del Bigtree and I had to pick up this book and read it. It's an eye opener - written in the mid 2000s but super relavent to today's "terrorist" threat we are all experiencing.
I was drawn to Wolf as she is characterized as an activist with mostly Democratic history, but yet aligns exactly with my way of thinking on the state of the world now where the vaccine passports are concerned. It is such a threat to liberty that it has the unexpected possible consequence of unifying the left and right.
Great read - highly recommended.
I was drawn to Wolf as she is characterized as an activist with mostly Democratic history, but yet aligns exactly with my way of thinking on the state of the world now where the vaccine passports are concerned. It is such a threat to liberty that it has the unexpected possible consequence of unifying the left and right.
Great read - highly recommended.
December 24, 2020
A good book for a beginning liberal, but ultimately this book is long on problems and short on solutions. I mostly agreed with Wolf throughout, but lost patience with her arguments after awhile, anxious for solutions that never came. I probably should have known better just by looking at the conclusion, "A Patriot's Task," which is a whopping two pages long.
Wolf presented a lot of valuable information, and a lot of the book works well as a history lesson. Particularly enlightening and frightening to me were chapters 3 ("Establishing Secret Prisons"), 4 ("Develop a Paramilitary Force") and 7 ("Arbitrarily Detain and Release Prisoners," about the disintegration of habeas corpus). In the "Restrict the Press" chapter, she makes some important points about the delegitimization of Truth, as well as making her most effective pitch at a solution when she calls upon bloggers to start taking their jobs more seriously.
But overall, I got tired of the comparisons to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia, modern China, Pinochet's Chile, and other dictatorships. I don't actually disagree with Wolf's point, they just provoked a "Yeah, yeah, what next then?" response. Preaching to the choir. A big problem I had with the book was my impression that Wolf exaggerates at times. An example would be, when talking about surveillance:
For example, does Wolf really believe that G-Dub thought, "You know what we need to do? We need to break down our citizens' sense of being able to act freely against us."? It is true that many of the tactics she describes lead to abridged freedom, but I don't think she does lefties a service by fabricating this evil right wing empire-in-waiting, when most evidence points to it being a much more organic process, without one or even a group of evil masterminds guiding it. It's scary enough as it is, and we need to discuss it honestly in order to figure out how to stop it. Wolf -- perhaps unintentionally -- injects a fair amount of irrational dogmatism into the conversation. . .
. . . And then her solution is that people should magically become more informed and politically active, and just better in general. And everyone should just magically get along and learn how to cooperate and work together to demand their freedom. Very helpful, Naomi. NOT.
As an aside, the book would have gained much credibility just from a more thorough proof-reading. It's hard to take a book with so many typos seriously.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
Wolf presented a lot of valuable information, and a lot of the book works well as a history lesson. Particularly enlightening and frightening to me were chapters 3 ("Establishing Secret Prisons"), 4 ("Develop a Paramilitary Force") and 7 ("Arbitrarily Detain and Release Prisoners," about the disintegration of habeas corpus). In the "Restrict the Press" chapter, she makes some important points about the delegitimization of Truth, as well as making her most effective pitch at a solution when she calls upon bloggers to start taking their jobs more seriously.
But overall, I got tired of the comparisons to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia, modern China, Pinochet's Chile, and other dictatorships. I don't actually disagree with Wolf's point, they just provoked a "Yeah, yeah, what next then?" response. Preaching to the choir. A big problem I had with the book was my impression that Wolf exaggerates at times. An example would be, when talking about surveillance:
One reason dictators demand access to such private data is that this scrutiny breaks down citizens' sense of being able to act freely against those in power.You know what, that may very well be one reason, but I can guarantee you it's not the main reason, at least in the case of the U.S. Call me naive, but I believe that illegal wiretapping probably stems from a genuine desire to catch terrorists. Throughout the book, Wolf assigns this conspiratorial thinking where I'm not sure it exists. D
For example, does Wolf really believe that G-Dub thought, "You know what we need to do? We need to break down our citizens' sense of being able to act freely against us."? It is true that many of the tactics she describes lead to abridged freedom, but I don't think she does lefties a service by fabricating this evil right wing empire-in-waiting, when most evidence points to it being a much more organic process, without one or even a group of evil masterminds guiding it. It's scary enough as it is, and we need to discuss it honestly in order to figure out how to stop it. Wolf -- perhaps unintentionally -- injects a fair amount of irrational dogmatism into the conversation. . .
. . . And then her solution is that people should magically become more informed and politically active, and just better in general. And everyone should just magically get along and learn how to cooperate and work together to demand their freedom. Very helpful, Naomi. NOT.
As an aside, the book would have gained much credibility just from a more thorough proof-reading. It's hard to take a book with so many typos seriously.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
March 22, 2008
This is a very important book, especially for these times. Not only should every patriotic American read this, but anyone anywhere who values freedom of and for the people.
The author, without being emotive, draws on evidence from the last century, right up to last year to paint a picture of how a change in government direction can insidiously take place until almost suddenly there is a real risk of liberties being eroded and replaced with a form of dictatorship. Wolf describes this as a "fascist shift". She shows examples of what happened in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy and then shows examples of what is happening in the USA; the reader is left with an unavoidable sense of deja vu.
She covers the reasons behind the creation of the US constitution and the Founders desire to ensure that tyranny could not happen again in the USA. She then shows how the fears of the Founders are as valid today and urges all citizens to stand up for democracy and the values that the constitution was built upon.
Wolf shows, how this fascist shift takes place, again using examples from history and suggesting that the reader consider if and how those elements have and are taking place in the USA today. She does this covering what she calls the ten steps to fascism:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Establish secret prisons
3. Develop a paramilitary force
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Infiltrate citizens groups
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens
7. Target key individuals
8. Restrict or control the press
9. Cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason"
10. Subvert or suspend the rule of law
Watts is not scaremongering. She is not a "wild lefty" or "conspiracy nut". She is not suggesting that the USA will go the way of Nazi Germany. She is, however, issuing a much needed warning, that the citizens of the USA are in danger of allowing the foundations of democracy to be "fatally corroded" under their noses. It is not a pleasant task to consider that freedom, which is taken for granted by many, may indeed be under attack. It is a task that we all should be undertaking.
Even for readers who are already aware of the shift away from personal liberties and freedoms can find much of value in this book. It is the sort of book that one could consider giving to anyone whom you wished might consider some difficult questions about freedom today.
Naomi Wolf's book is a very readable and easy to understand starting place for those who may for the first time be faced with really opening their eyes to what has been and is happening to freedom and democracy. She provides many references from which readers can begin to test for themselves just what direction the USA is headed in.
The author, without being emotive, draws on evidence from the last century, right up to last year to paint a picture of how a change in government direction can insidiously take place until almost suddenly there is a real risk of liberties being eroded and replaced with a form of dictatorship. Wolf describes this as a "fascist shift". She shows examples of what happened in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy and then shows examples of what is happening in the USA; the reader is left with an unavoidable sense of deja vu.
She covers the reasons behind the creation of the US constitution and the Founders desire to ensure that tyranny could not happen again in the USA. She then shows how the fears of the Founders are as valid today and urges all citizens to stand up for democracy and the values that the constitution was built upon.
Wolf shows, how this fascist shift takes place, again using examples from history and suggesting that the reader consider if and how those elements have and are taking place in the USA today. She does this covering what she calls the ten steps to fascism:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Establish secret prisons
3. Develop a paramilitary force
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Infiltrate citizens groups
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens
7. Target key individuals
8. Restrict or control the press
9. Cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason"
10. Subvert or suspend the rule of law
Watts is not scaremongering. She is not a "wild lefty" or "conspiracy nut". She is not suggesting that the USA will go the way of Nazi Germany. She is, however, issuing a much needed warning, that the citizens of the USA are in danger of allowing the foundations of democracy to be "fatally corroded" under their noses. It is not a pleasant task to consider that freedom, which is taken for granted by many, may indeed be under attack. It is a task that we all should be undertaking.
Even for readers who are already aware of the shift away from personal liberties and freedoms can find much of value in this book. It is the sort of book that one could consider giving to anyone whom you wished might consider some difficult questions about freedom today.
Naomi Wolf's book is a very readable and easy to understand starting place for those who may for the first time be faced with really opening their eyes to what has been and is happening to freedom and democracy. She provides many references from which readers can begin to test for themselves just what direction the USA is headed in.
July 8, 2008
This book is a well-researched, well-developed argument for the dangerous direction that America has been headed. Wolf outlines 10 steps to close an open society that have been repeated again and again throughout history. She further outlines how the US is well on its way to following these 10 steps. While she stops short of suggesting that we are headed toward a dictatorship, she points out that we are very much headed toward something less than a democracy.....something less than what our Founders intended. The wording of the Constitution is no accident. It is based on experiences that led the Founders to anticipate the problems a democracy could face. Perhaps most importantly, Wolf encourages us to wake up, to take action and to be aware. While we wait for the pendulum to swing back, we are slowly becoming accustomed to the way things are, forgetting about the way things used to be.
Wolf is able to put these arguments together in a more documented, clearer and more substantiated way than myself, but I will just briefly mention the ten steps to closing an open society and a word or two on how this applies to the United States today. You decide if reading further is warranted.
Invoke an External and Internal Threat --- an endless Worldwide war on Terror
Establish Secret Prisons --- Guatanamo and more, New ideas of Torture
Develop a Paramilitary Force --- Blackwater (scary)
Surveil Ordinary Citizens --- Wire tapping, email surveillance....the LIST
Infiltrate Citizens Groups ---infiltrating antiwar groups, Talon
Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens --- again the list, Cat Stevens for example
Target Key Individuals --- Dixie Chicks, Bill Maher, entertainers and political figures
Restrict the Press --- the book cites many fabulous examples of this, but do you ever get the feeling that the press isn't reporting the whole truth. Think Fox News
Cast Criticism as "espionage" and Dissent as "Treason" --- Scary stuff. Treason is supposed to mean waging war against your country......these terms are being thrown around an awful lot lately.
Subvert the Rule of Law --- ousting attorneys that don't agree with administration that aren't "loyal", taking control of national Guard away from States, Can we guarantee a fair election given all of the above........
Wolf is able to put these arguments together in a more documented, clearer and more substantiated way than myself, but I will just briefly mention the ten steps to closing an open society and a word or two on how this applies to the United States today. You decide if reading further is warranted.
Invoke an External and Internal Threat --- an endless Worldwide war on Terror
Establish Secret Prisons --- Guatanamo and more, New ideas of Torture
Develop a Paramilitary Force --- Blackwater (scary)
Surveil Ordinary Citizens --- Wire tapping, email surveillance....the LIST
Infiltrate Citizens Groups ---infiltrating antiwar groups, Talon
Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens --- again the list, Cat Stevens for example
Target Key Individuals --- Dixie Chicks, Bill Maher, entertainers and political figures
Restrict the Press --- the book cites many fabulous examples of this, but do you ever get the feeling that the press isn't reporting the whole truth. Think Fox News
Cast Criticism as "espionage" and Dissent as "Treason" --- Scary stuff. Treason is supposed to mean waging war against your country......these terms are being thrown around an awful lot lately.
Subvert the Rule of Law --- ousting attorneys that don't agree with administration that aren't "loyal", taking control of national Guard away from States, Can we guarantee a fair election given all of the above........
November 11, 2008
Naomi Wolf outlines the ten steps that are historically followed by a government wishing to take an open society to a closed society. It is chilling as well as inspiring.
It was a chilling read because I realized to what extent I'd been asleep. I take my freedoms in this country far too much for granted, as I think most Americans do. I also don't want to believe that those we entrust with our freedoms have designs to take them away, but Wolf makes the important and historically correct point that people in power desire to retain that power, and that to do so they must close a society. She points to some of the famous dictators of the past and draws parallels between their governments and ours. This is not a popular course of action unless you are a political pundit with leanings to the far left, but I found Wolf credible because of her lack of bias. She also correctly points out that these dictators used the law to close their societies, slowly tightening the noose around the necks of the citizens until they had no room to breathe.
However, this book was an inspiring read, despite the sleepless nights it gave me. Wolf does not thrive on the doom and gloom aspect of our potential fate and then leave us in depression. She points out that we, the People, must return to our duties to be constantly watching those in power. It is up to us to be educated and enlightened so that we can take steps, if needed (and they are needed all the time), to retain our freedoms as the Constitution outlined. She calls us to be patriots like those who fought against Britain to make us a free country. And she reminds us that the common people of the early United States constantly read, debated about and made their voices heard about government policies. We need to return to that kind of dedication and education. We have fallen asleep.
It was a chilling read because I realized to what extent I'd been asleep. I take my freedoms in this country far too much for granted, as I think most Americans do. I also don't want to believe that those we entrust with our freedoms have designs to take them away, but Wolf makes the important and historically correct point that people in power desire to retain that power, and that to do so they must close a society. She points to some of the famous dictators of the past and draws parallels between their governments and ours. This is not a popular course of action unless you are a political pundit with leanings to the far left, but I found Wolf credible because of her lack of bias. She also correctly points out that these dictators used the law to close their societies, slowly tightening the noose around the necks of the citizens until they had no room to breathe.
However, this book was an inspiring read, despite the sleepless nights it gave me. Wolf does not thrive on the doom and gloom aspect of our potential fate and then leave us in depression. She points out that we, the People, must return to our duties to be constantly watching those in power. It is up to us to be educated and enlightened so that we can take steps, if needed (and they are needed all the time), to retain our freedoms as the Constitution outlined. She calls us to be patriots like those who fought against Britain to make us a free country. And she reminds us that the common people of the early United States constantly read, debated about and made their voices heard about government policies. We need to return to that kind of dedication and education. We have fallen asleep.
June 21, 2008
This is a chilling read. Wolf describes various repressive dictatorships and then compares their practices to recent political actions. Her comparison of George Bush's flight-suit-plane-landing to a plane landing of Hitler filmed by famed propagandist Leni Riefenstahl is disturbing. Very disturbing. I don't know if I am with her 100%, but even 60% of her truth is terrifying. Simple language- simply stated. Horrifying conclusions.
And when I think think "hey we are voting the bums out!" She attacks my naiveté with this stinging comment: "Leaders who are willing to abuse signing statements, withhold information from congress, make secret decisions, lie to the American people, use fake evidence to justify a preemptive war, torture prisoners, tap peoples phones, open their mail and email, break into their houses and now simply ignore congress altogether, leaders with currently a 29% approval rating will surely say, come 2008, "The decision rests in the hands of the people, let the votes be fairly counted!" ouch.
I sent some $$ to the ACLU and pledge to get off my butt as well as keep informed.
And when I think think "hey we are voting the bums out!" She attacks my naiveté with this stinging comment: "Leaders who are willing to abuse signing statements, withhold information from congress, make secret decisions, lie to the American people, use fake evidence to justify a preemptive war, torture prisoners, tap peoples phones, open their mail and email, break into their houses and now simply ignore congress altogether, leaders with currently a 29% approval rating will surely say, come 2008, "The decision rests in the hands of the people, let the votes be fairly counted!" ouch.
I sent some $$ to the ACLU and pledge to get off my butt as well as keep informed.
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