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And there I was thinking THEY were the fascists. Silly me. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :| --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/indifferent.gif ALT=":|"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><!--EZCODE HR START--><hr /><!--EZCODE HR END--><br>The new GOP buzzword: Fascism<br>POSTED: 9:29 a.m. EDT, August 30, 2006<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/30/gop.fascism.ap/index.html">www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS...index.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq.<br><br>Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.<br><br>Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against "Islamic fascism," saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries. It's a phrase Santorum has been using for months.<br><br>And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and anti-terrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism." (Full story)<br><br>White House aides and outside Republican strategists said the new description is an attempt to more clearly identify the ideology that motivates many organized terrorist groups, representing a shift in emphasis from the general to the specific.<br><br>"I think it's an appropriate definition of the war that we're in," said GOP pollster Ed Goeas. "I think it's effective in that it definitively defines the enemy in a way that we can't because they're not in uniforms."<br>The right term?<br><br>But Muslim groups have cried foul. Bush's use of the phrase "contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community," complained Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.<br><br>Conservative commentators have long talked about "Islamo-fascism," and Bush's phrase was a slightly toned-down variation on that theme.<br><br>Dennis Ross, a Mideast adviser to both the first Bush and Clinton administrations and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he would have chosen different words.<br><br>"The `war on terror' has always been a misnomer, because terrorism is an instrument, it's not an ideology. So I would always have preferred it to be called the `war with radical Islam,' not with Islam but with `radical Islam,"' Ross said.<br><br>Why even mention the religion? "Because that's who they are," Ross said. "Fascism had a certain definition. Whether they meet this or not, one thing is clear: They're radical. They represent a completely radical and intolerant interpretation of Islam."<br><br>While "fascism" once referred to the rigid nationalistic one-party dictatorship first instituted in Italy, it has "been used very loosely in all kinds of ways for a long time," said Wayne Fields, a specialist in presidential rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis.<br><br>"Typically, the Bush administration finds its vocabulary someplace in the middle ground of popular culture. It seems to me that they're trying to find something that resonates, without any effort to really define what they mean," Fields said.<br>Memories of World War II<br><br>Pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said the "fascist" label may evoke comparisons to World War II and remind Americans of the lack of personal freedoms in fundamentalist countries. "But this could only affect public opinion on the margins," he said.<br><br>"Having called these people `evildoers,' fascism is just a new wrinkle," he said.<br><br>The tactic recalled the first President Bush's 1990 likening of Iraq's Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler.<br><br>"I caught hell on this comparison of Saddam to Hitler, with critics accusing me of personalizing the crisis, but I still feel it was an appropriate one," the elder Bush later wrote in a memoir.<br><br>It was one of the few times the younger Bush has followed his father's path on Iraq.<br><br>Charles Black, a longtime GOP consultant with close ties to both the first Bush administration and the current White House, said branding Islamic extremists as fascists is apt.<br><br>"It helps dramatize what we're up against. They are not just some ragtag terrorists. They are people with a plan to take over the world and eliminate everybody except them," Black said.<br><br>Stephen J. Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University, suggested White House strategists "probably had a focus group and they found the word `fascist.'<br><br>"Most people are against fascists of whatever form. By definition, fascists are bad. If you're going to demonize, you might as well use the toughest words you can," Wayne said.<br><br>After all, the hard-line Iranian newspaper Jomhuri Eskami did just that in an editorial last week blasting Bush's "Islamic fascism" phrase. It called Bush a "21st century Hitler" and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a "21st century Mussolini." <p></p><i></i>

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.<br><br>Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against "Islamic fascism," saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries. It's a phrase Santorum has been using for months.<br><br>And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and anti-terrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>This is a tactic taken right out of Goebbels' handbook. You say it before your opponent does and you get to frame this issue how you want. For a long time now liberals have been afraid of using this 'f' word. They either didn't want to be labled as kooky conspiracy nuts or didn't want to offend anyone or lower the debate. Didn't pay off did it? The GOP noise machine went there anyway.<br><br>Pulling your punches doesn't work with sociopaths, it only encourages them. <p></p><i></i>

My tactic has always been to do anything, short of chewing my arm off, to get away from unhinged people. That's ok for me, but this is the world we're talking about. We have to deal with them - and that's deal as in despatch. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=erosoplier>erosoplier</A> at: 8/30/06 12:37 pm<br></i>

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>-George Orwell, <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm">"Politics and the English Language"</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

...emerges from the Trotskyite/sectarian leftist background of many neocons, where calling one's opponents various permutations of "fascist" was a common way to discredit them. <p></p><i></i>

The really eerie thing about this is that it tells us once and for all: <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>they actually know what they are.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>

the pot calling the kettle black. <p>___________________________________________<br>"BUSHCO aren't incompetent...they are COMPLICIT." -Me<br><br>"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." - Ian Fleming<br><br>"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell</p><i></i>

Iran is not this generation's growing nazi germany as they would have us believe:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009588.php">www.talkingpointsmemo.com...009588.php</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>can't cut and paste from this site but it basically shows you how sane iran...kind of is. <p>___________________________________________<br>"BUSHCO aren't incompetent...they are COMPLICIT." -Me<br><br>"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." - Ian Fleming<br><br>"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell</p><i></i>

from <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6045931,00.html" target="top">Rumsfeld Lashes Out at Bush's Critics</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->...<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces ``a new type of fascism'' and <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>likened critics of the Bush administration's war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis in the 1930s</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>``I recount this history because <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->,'' he said. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>``Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America - not the enemy - is the real source of the world's troubles?'' <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br>fascism (n) - (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. <p></p><i></i>

Dear, Mr. Rumsfeld.. can the sovereignty of this nation be maintained when we have leaders like you demonizing large swathes of the country and declaring them fascist sympathizers? <br><br>how much longer before you start rounding up select elements of this society and remove them so that their 'destructive views' cannot damage more? <br><br>what precisely is the damage being done by these americans who operate from such 'destructive viewpoints'?<br><br>you say we as a nation face 'similar challenges'...what are these challenges? does it involve the common citizenry practicing critical thought? <br><br>correct me if i'm wrong but i do believe it is a constitutional right to question our government's actions and as part of that right we can remove the current occupiers of our government when it is obvious they don't have our best interests at heart. no?<br><br>to me you don't have my nations best interests when you start declaring large segments of the country as fascist sympathizing. <br><br>uh oh. <p></p><i></i>