On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union halls and labor leaders were arrested. Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was abolished. This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by the fascist regime which systematically wiped out all opposition groups, starting with unions, liberals, socialists, and communists using Himmler’s state police.
Fast forward to America today, particularly Wisconsin. Governor Walker and the Republican/Tea Party members of the state legislature are attempting to pass a bill that would not only severely punish public unions (with exception for the police, fire, and state trooper unions that supported his campaign), but it would effectively end 50 years to the right of these workers to collectively bargain.
Collective bargaining is a process of voluntary negotiations between employers and trade unions aimed at reaching agreements which regulate working conditions. Collective agreements usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. -wiki
First of all, assaulting the rights of workers to collectively bargain has absolutely nothing to do with any immediate budgetary issues. It does however have everything to do with ending one of the basic rights of labor to organize. Please read the rest....
Now tell me folks, what has President Obama done in the past 2 years that looks anything like a dictatorship? Those who have turned their backs on Obama and criticize his every move better wake up to what the Rightwing wants to do to America. If you think I'm off base talking about Hitler and the Republicans in the same sentence then you better get yourselves educated on unions and Wisconsin.
I GOOGLED fascist republicans and found this...Hub pages
Are Republicans Fascist?
RogerGriffin, arguably the most prominent fascist historian, has a solutionwhich succeeds where everyone else has failed, defining the concept ofa fascist minimum of "paligenetic ultra-nationalist populism".Paligenetic means rebirth: Griffin is talking about a far-right partywhich exudes iconography suggesting the nation arise like a phoenixfrom the ashes.
Althoughthe definition is not widely known outside of the historical community,it is the only definition which can sum up fascism in less than acouple of paragraphs, much less three words, and has gained widespreadacceptance amongst scholars.
Ithought for some time that this would eliminate the possibility of theRepublican party being fascist. Its visual iconography is not remotelypaligenetic. Mostly, you think of Republicans, and you think of oldrich guys in suits. Throughout its history it has been a party of thecentre right, not remotely fascist in nature.
But,this ignores the significant and growing influence on the party of influential groups such as evangelical churches, the Tea Party. The individual, like George Bush, who describeshimself as born-again, is literally expressing his belief inpaligenesis. Not of nationhood, though the nationalism of theRepublican party is not in doubt, but of his soul. This suggests thepossibility of a peculiarly American form of fascism, and onepotentially more virulent than the ones we know of from the thirtiesand forties, as it has a spiritual, cult-like component. Only thefollowers of Codreanu in Romania, whose beliefs made Hitler seemmild-mannered, developed a form of fascism that perverse.
Additionally,the neo-con influence on the party provides additional definingcharacteristics of fascism. It has turned a moderate, isolationistpatriotic party into an aggressive interventionist ultra-nationalistone, ready to invade other nations on purely territorial grounds.
Whenassessing the influence of these outside groupings, you have toconsider how fascism would most likely emerge in America, if in fact,emerge it did. It wouldn't be possible for a radical third party toemerge and win office, the constitution has many specific provisionswhich make that almost impossible. In the most probable scenario,radical groupings would infect the body of a major political party,probably (though not necessarily) the Republicans, establish an elitewith major influence over the president out of all proportion withtheir popularity. This is what has happened.
Whenit comes to historical parallels,it becomes much simpler to makecomparisons. It is not difficult to see the similarities between theReichstag fire that brought Hitler to power in Germany, through the subsequent Enabling Act, and 9/11 and thePatriot Act. Both were convenient if probably genuine acts of terrorismby menacing powers which led to authoritarian pieces of legislationsuperficially designed to eliminate an external threat which reducedcivil freedoms at home. In fact, the Nazi's had much morejustification-revolution had already occurred in Russia, and the RedArmy stood ready to attack at any moment. The threat posed by Bin Ladenis inconsequential by comparison.
Itis not difficult to see comparisons between the rise to power of themodern Republican party and the Nazis, both in quasi-legal coup d'etatswhere a minority of the electorate returned each respectiveorganization.
Itis not difficult to see how the skillful use of propaganda has beenused to pacify each people with selective truth-telling, paranoidnightmare, and appeals to shallow jingoism.
Itis not difficult to see the comparisons between the Keynesianmilitarism of German Nazism and the big state spending of theRepublicans on the US military machine.
Noris it difficult to see how a succession of atrocities were hidden,uncovered and then papered over with a shallow veneer ofjustification, then subsequently ignored by an indifferent people.Fortunately, the scale of atrocities committed by the US and the Nazi'sare not of the same order. But it was not till long after WWII that thehorrors of the gas chambers were widely known. It is a good idea to bevigilant against the possibility.
Onthe most simple level, the Republicans are now seen by almost everyoneoutside the organization as the party of torture, the party ofoffensive military action, the party that opposes civil rights, eventhe party of concentration camps. These are not American values. Theseare not the practices of civilized, democratic peoples anywhere in theworld. They are things we associate with authoritarianism, and, byimplication, fascism.
