It all started a year ago. a New Mexico high school teacher was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics. In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel. A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq...After firing Nevins and terminating the teaching and reading of poetry in the school, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own as they raised the flag outside the school. The Art students were next.

Rev. Rich Lang is pastor of the Trinity United Methodist Church in Seattle. On March 4, he gave this powerful speech. "We are seeing today the emergence of a 'fascist movement'. It is bankrolled and organized by Corporations, and articulated through the ideology of neo-conservatism. But the troops come out of the right wing church. And that church, drawing upon the Holiness/Holy War Biblical narratives of Apocalyptic-Dominionism theology, is growing in this country. This is not a battle between intellectual and institutional elites. It is far more intimate than that. It's a battle in our homes, our families, friendships, neighborhoods and within our faith communities. Let me make a rather audacious prophecy: WHOEVER CONTROLS THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE WILL CONTROL THE FUTURE OF THIS NATION. In other words it's the vision of Pat Robertson or Martin Luther King."

"In an interview published yesterday by the Spectator, Italy's prime minister appeared to defend the actions of his country's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. 'Mussolini never killed anyone,' the magazine quoted him saying. 'Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them.' Italy's fascist leader ordered the brutal 1935-36 occupation of Ethiopia, led Italy into the second world war and headed a Nazi puppet government which rounded up and dispatched Italian Jews to Hitler's concentration camps. Coming from a prime minister who relies heavily on the hard right, 'post-fascist' National Alliance, Mr Berlusconi's comments touched a hyper-sensitive nerve in a country whose postwar democracy was founded on an anti-fascist consensus... There was a near-apoplectic reaction from the leftwing opposition. Senator Cesare Salvi, of the formerly communist Democratic Left, called Mr Berlusconi's remarks 'genuinely disgraceful'. He said Mussolini's victims 'cried out for vengeance'"

"The controversial new cards will be held by everyone in Britain by 2013 and will be based on existing passports and possibly on driving licences in a 3 billion [British pounds] project. Home Secretary David Blunkett said the scheme would include 'biometric' details such as someone's fingerprints or an image of their eye, stored on a microchip in each card. They will have to be produced to see a doctor, get a job and claim benefits. The Government will set up a National Identity Register to hold details of all 60 million people in the UK, including their fingerprints or other biometric details, so that their identities can be authenticated when they produce their cards." The last time a European country imposed national identity cards was Nazi Germany. Can it happen here? It's happening before our eyes!

"Cindy Hunter and her husband, Sam Nickels, opposed Bush's war against Iraq. 'For the last seven months, we've been putting up a sign on our property,' says Hunter. [By October, the sign read] '8,109 Iraqi civilians. 6,000-plus U.S. wounded. 345 U.S. and British soldiers.' At 4:50 a.m. on October 20, Hunter and Nickels were asleep. So were their three children, ages 7, 8, and 11. And so was Adama Sow, a 30-year-old refugee from Mauritania, who was living upstairs. 'Our smoke alarm went off, and my husband I got out of bed and saw smoke and got the kids out and our roommate out,' Hunter says. 'It was immediately clear to me that the sign had burned because the only fire you could see was on the right front of the house where the sign used to be.' The fire department investigated it as a case of arson. 'The sign had somewhat of a political message on it,' Harrisonburg Fire Chief Larry Shifflett told the Daily News-Record. 'It appears somebody may have set that sign on fire.'"

Ed Bishop writes, "Limbaugh and his ilk have gone beyond the legitimate conservative arguments-that, in the long run, in most cases, individual effort is better than collective effort; that the marketplace foresees and adjusts to economic and social problems better than governments do; and that a weak federal government is best for the general welfare. They have become propagandists for much more, for things that can only be described as fascist. To make sure we're on the same page here, I'm going to get pedantic for a minute: Fascism is a form of totalitarian government whose hallmarks are a leadership that cannot be questioned, aggressive nationalism, racism, close ties to capitalist elites and the absence of legal due process. The hallmarks of fascist propaganda are half-truths, lies, appeals to patriotism, and verbal bombast and threats that seek to cut off debate and cower opponents. This propaganda counts on the acquiescence of good people in order to succeed."

From Swissinfo.com: "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has set off a fresh political storm by portraying former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a benevolent leader with no blood on his hands. When asked by the Spectator magazine and Italy's La Voce di Romagna newspaper if Mussolini was 'benign', Berlusconi replied: 'Yes'. Mussolini biographer Richard Bosworth estimates at least one million people died as a result of his 20-year rule, with 'atrocious massacres of Libyans, Ethiopians, inhabitants of the ex-Yugoslavia and, after 1943, thousands of Italian Jews'. Mussolini introduced Italy's first anti-Semitic laws in 1938, opening the way for the eventual deportation of around 7,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Some 5,910 died."

The Houston Chronicle reports: "Republicans in Harris County have pounded their Democratic opponents time and time again at the ballot box during the past decade. Sunday, they intend to throw a grand old party to batter the Democrats' former headquarters in Midtown. Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill is asking local Republicans to bring sledgehammers and other implements of destruction to help level the building the Democrats vacated three months ago... Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Gerry Birnberg was quick with a metaphor. That's what Republicans do, he said, 'tearing things down, destroying them.' 'They did it to our economy, to our jobs market, to our voting rights, to our democracy, to civility in government, to civil rights, to health care for children, to fair pay for teachers -- they took out their sledgehammers and smashed them to smithereens.'" Stalinism or Fascism -- whatever name you give it -- it's totalitarian behavior by a fanatical mob.

Boston Globe: "The Department of Defense is already funding a research program with far creepier implications [than the terrorism stock market]. The $24 million enterprise called Brain Machine Interfaces is developing technology that promises to directly read thoughts from a living brain -- and even instill thoughts as well. The research, some of which is being done at MIT, is already surprisingly advanced. Monkeys in a laboratory can control the movement of a robotic arm using only their thoughts. And last year scientists in New York announced they could control the skittering motions of a rat by implanting electrodes in its brain, steering it around the lab floor as if it were a radio-controlled toy car. It does not take much imagination to see in this the makings of a 'Matrix'-like cyberpunk dystopia: chips that impose false memories, machines that scan for wayward thoughts, cognitively augmented government security forces that impose a ruthless order on a recalcitrant population."

Boy, you can tell Spanish PM Jose' Aznar has hung around Bush too long. He has turned into a spiteful, belligerently posturing little Mussolini. With his popularity in the cellar -- and 9 out of 10 Spaniards having failed to back his decision on Spain -- he answer is -- Make them pay! Aznar wants to make it punishable by up to six years in prison to participate in anti-war protests - which, of course, would have tossed about 2 million of his countrymen in jail. But Aznar is clearly on his way out and, as the Spanish defense minister confided to a reporter, there isn't much chance of a change in Spain's laws, Aznar tantrum notwithstanding.

Laurie Manis writes, "Nazism was a form of government that restricted personal freedom but permitted private ownership of property. It called for aggressive nationalism, militarism and expansion of Germany's spheres of control through military conquest. The Nazis glorified Germany and its people, claiming that other nationalities were inferior. It promised to build a harmonious, orderly and prosperous society for the Germans. Instead it brought terrorism, war and mass murder. "

Karen J. Gould compiled a list of violations of our rights and attacks on our freedom which is long and getting longer. These heavy handed police-state actions are threatening our way of life.

After Steve Downs was arrested for wearing a 'Give Peace a Chance' T-shirt, Mike Hersh writes: "I've read the history of authoritarianism and wondered how could people let it happen? In every case I've studied, people refused to face facts... They refused to face the fascism growing in their midst, much less stand up against it. Many people knew about the arrests and intimidation, the loss of liberty and the rising fear of the abusive 'authority.' ... What can we do? I suggest we collect and publish a litany of these authoritarian actions [that] our 'own' government - federal, state and local - commits or encourages. Include actions and statements of harassment and intimidation committed by unofficial but well-connected agents of the Bush Occupation in the mass media. Please join the effort. Email reports of abuses to antifascism@mikehersh.com. I will compile, update and discuss them on my website."

Way back in 1944, when the NY Times supported Democracy rather than Corporatism, they asked FDR's Vice President Henry Wallace about the danger of fascism in America. He wrote: "American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery." What a terrifying description of the Bush Administration! The "cartelists" are led by Dick Cheney, who assembled the energy cartel in February 2001 to plan US domestic and foreign policy. The "poisoners of public information" are led by Karl Rove, who works around the clock to get his lies into the media. The "KKK demagogues" have no leader willing to be public, but they hold their secret meetings in John Ashcroft's office. Stop the rise of fascism in America!

Sheldon Drobny writes, "Fascism in modern terms has the following characteristics: 1) The state has the ultimate authority over production and distribution without (as in socialism) actually owning the means of production and distribution. 2) Control is generally accomplished through cartelization, the creating of industry-wide councils in which the representatives of the most powerful firms set policy in conjunction with representatives of government. Some economists have renamed fascism 'corporatism'... Although the U.S. is a democratic [sic] republic, the economic power structure is corporatism. And that is - or should be - a very disquieting thought. The recent corporate accounting scandals... are minor compared to the continuing corruption associated with government contracts, especially contracts for military expenditures. The real scandal of waste and corruption rests in what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex."

Most of us remember Dr. Seuss for the brilliant artist and children's author he was. But early in his career, he was raising the red flags about the relationship between the GOP and Nazi Germany as an editorial cartoonist for the New York nightly "PM". In this series of cartoons, Dr. Seuss attacked the GOP for their unquestioning support of Hitler and the Nazism and Fascism of the day, and issues such as Jim Crow. The University of California at San Diego has painstakingly collected and reproduced these cartoons (see Jan. 1, 1942 for a particularly good one stating the facts of the matter) for the sake of historical posterity and possibly as a warning to us all of the dangers of Republican Fascism.

"On the first day of fascism
John Ashcroft gave to me
A Department of Homeland Security

On the second day of fascism
John Ashcroft gave to me
Two detained Muslims
And a Department of Homeland Security

On the third day of fascism
John Ashcroft gave to me
Three wiretappings
Two detained Muslims
And a Department of Homeland Security."

So begins this chilling Carol!

Molly Ivins writes, "I don't use the f-word myself - in fact, for years, I've made fun of liberals who hear the approach of jackbooted fascism around every corner. But to quote a real authority on the subject, 'Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.' - Benito Mussolini...Paul Krugman recently quoted 'the quite apolitical website Corporate Governance, which matter-of-factly remarks, 'Given the power of corporate lobbyists, government control often equates to de facto corporate control anyway.' It's gettin' downright creepy out there...I think we need a new coalition organization - civil libertarians, liberals and principled conservatives...real patriots who believe in the Constitution...Rep. Dick Armey has already announced he will do consulting work with the ACLU on privacy issues (good on him). Rep. Ron Paul and columnist Bill Safire are stout on these matters, as are other unlikely suspects such as Bob Barr."

Granny D writes: "What we are seeing now from the far right is not conservatism at all. It is fascism: the imposition of a national and worldwide police state to enforce a narrow world view that enriches and empowers the few at the expense of the many, and that gives no respect or honor to other cultures, ways of living, or opinions. To call that conservatism is a crime against the memory of America's great and true conservatives, who might think that government ought to be less involved in life than we old liberals would concur with, but who nevertheless stood for the core American values that today's right-wing leaders undermine at every opportunity....If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are these: the politically awake and the hypnotized -- hypnotized by television and other mass media, whose overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging medallions of packaged candidates and oft-told lies."

Remember.org details some of Fascism's identifying characteristics: Nationalism and super-patriotism with a sense of historic mission; Aggressive militarism even to the extent of glorifying war as good for the national or individual spirit; Use of violence or threats of violence to impose views on others; Authoritarian reliance on a leader or elite not constitutionally responsible to an electorate; Cult of personality around a charismatic leader; Reaction against the values of Modernism, usually with emotional attacks against...liberalism; Dehumanization and scapegoating of the enemy...as an inferior or subhuman force, perhaps involved in a conspiracy that justifies eradicating them; The self image of being a superior form of social organization beyond socialism, capitalism and democracy; Abandonment of any consistent ideology in a drive for state power.