Snap Fact #359 - GLOVES OFF! - Is President Obama really a Communist/Fascist? Here’s a Good Halloween Scare

8. Corporate Power is Nurtured and Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a Fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

The Republican policy of favoring corporations over citizens has a long historical record, but never more so than now!  Republicans are disposed to funnel billions to huge corporations by providing tax advantages and subsidies. In turn, the recipients support the regime with massive campaign contributions to fund largely misleading advertising to help them gain and retain power.

Dick Cheney, in a secret cabal, let the power industry draw up our national energy policy. The Result created Enron, baby Enrons and deregulation that has led to massive oil spills and dangerous fracking that has destroyed water sources and millions of fertile acres of American farm land.

9. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Union busting and wage suppression has been the hallmark of every Republican platform in the modern era. This one is even bolder than ever before. Some states such as Ohio and Wisconsin have gone ahead with draconian laws against labor. These are only a precursor of what will happen under a Romney administration.

10. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other intellectuals to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

Ending funding to the arts and eliminating affordable college loans and grants are the Republican policies for maintaining a low wage workforce for their factories.  Hello banning books; bye bye Big Bird and NPR.

11. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Communist witch hunts, Nixon’s failed War on Drugs, are only the tip of the Republican attack on individual freedoms. We can thank them for the largest prison population on earth and the obscenity of private prisons for profit that are now absorbing more high paying American factory jobs than China.

12. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Sound familiar? Republican policy is to suppress all blocks of voters who might lean Democratic. This is going on in many states with a Republican governor and legislature. There are even credible reports that Tag Romney’s company has purchased the company responsible for counting the votes in Ohio, Texas, and several other states. These machines can be manipulated with ease.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

If you think the greatest theft on our national treasure was Dick Cheney and his buds at Halliburton, wait till you see what happens when Romney opens the vaults to the Koch brothers, Sheldon Addleson, and people like his drug advisor Mel Sembler.

Can you doubt that our energy policy will be written by the Kochs or maybe you think they are spending hundreds of millions on this election for the hell of it? Romney and the Koch puppets in Congress will deregulate and then it’s acid rain for your kids and golden rain for Koch’s coal and oil profits.  

More and more manufactures will contract for prison labor and Mel Sembler will fill the private prisons with docile pot smokers and non-violent drug offenders. Sembler collects millions from Republican states to support his front organizations, Dare and Partnership for a Drug Free America. Mean Mel became infamous when it was revealed that his phony rehab centers, Straight Inc. collected government funds for kidnapping and torturing children, mostly young girls. Instead of prosecution, Bush I rewarded him with an Ambassadorship.  Today he stands at the side of Mitt Romney.

The whole crew of corporate thieves that got rich from our misery during the last Republican administration is already in place to do it again. Add Romney’s Bain associates and the Mormon business network to the equation, and you have an Old Boy shadow government beyond your wildest fears. This makes the fifty billion or so stolen by Halliburton look like chump change.

I realized there was something wrong when the head of the South Florida Tea Party, speaking on a televised debate, called President Obama a Communist/ Fascist  in the same breath. It was quite a shock that such a high placed official seemingly didn’t know what a Fascist actually is (they are the good folks who brought us WWII); and that a Fascist is the economic opposite of a Communist. Worse, the man had no idea that the Republican policies he was espousing were, for the most part, the same ones Germany used to define Fascism. Our fathers and grandfathers fought and died in WWII to save this country from fascism, and now the Republican Party is practically the very definition of the word.

Halloween is the scariest day of the year. Here are some examples that will spook you from the thought that Mitt Romney could be taking over – so read this and then GO OUT AND VOTE, and bring a friend.

1. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the citizens in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Republican policies gave us Waterboarding, the Bush Patriot Act, Abu Greb, and unlimited detention without trial.

2. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Republican agenda includes providing the military with $2 trillion more than they are asking for and to thoughtlessly spend without regard to modern realities. This Pentagon bound money will be allocated by the defunding of fundamental domestic programs and services.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The country is rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. are vilified and dehumanized.

Republican policy has brought back “Jim Crow” laws and intimidation to suppress the African-American vote. Republican policy regarding Hispanics is degrading and negative. Republican rhetoric has even descended to call the President of the United States a communist and do every low fabrication to make him the “Other”.

4. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution

Republican policy manifests in the need to hold women back by controlling their reproductive systems and limiting their ability for equality in the workplace. This explains the Republican bent to repeal Roe v. Wade and oppose laws such as Lilly Ledbetter, i.e. equal pay for equal work.

5. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are typical of controlled media partnerships where only the party line is reported as real news. Fox News only exists because Republicans changed FCC regulations to allow foreign ownership in exchange for creating a right wing propaganda organ.  At the same time, independent media is marginalized and Republican policy will be to eliminate NET-TV and NPR Radio if they are elected.

6. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Republican’s obsessive harping on the dangers of Iran and Muslim terror is typical of Fascist fear mongering. In truth, fear and conspiracy theories are a centerpiece of the Right Wing’s policy.

7. Religion and Government are intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

The expressed Republican policy to “Return the United States to a Christian Nation” is a watchword of the Republican agenda. The Republican party panders to the ignorance of the Religious Right and the Tea Party.  They perpetrate backward social policies and rationalize the destructive and greedy energy policies of their oil, coal and gas corporate supporters led by the Koch Brothers, son of John Birch Society cofounder.