A Voting Guide for Antifascist, Green Voters

A Voting Guide for Antifascist, Green Voters Who Care About the Survival of the Planet

Duty to Warn:

A Patriotic, Altruistic Voting Guide for Americans who are Concerned About the Future of the Planet and the Well-being of Their Children – and Why They Should Vote as Anti-Fascist and as Green as Possible - Starting Now

OR: How Fascist-Leaning are Your Political Candidates?

By Gary G. Kohls, MD

“Fascism is a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.” -- Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile

Most of us Americans have our own methods of evaluating political candidates and their party platforms during our seemingly perpetual campaign seasons that have been increasingly corrupted by the wealthy elites who purchase the allegiance of their chosen candidates. Sooner or later we have to start deciding which candidates are the least influenced by money and the least bad for the future of our increasingly poisoned planet and toxified, malnourished children.

However the candidates and their corporate and billionaire paymasters win their seats, they are the ones that will shamelessly be making life or death decisions for us lowly 99 Percenters over the next 2, 4 or 6 years . These elites, beholden only to the wealthy campaign contributors/bribers, will be deciding the fate of the earth, the fate of our unaware and innocent progeny and the fate of every other living thing that said corporate elites seem to have little or no concern about except as to how they can be exploited for the benefit of the few, who can be thought of as ruthless, absentee landlords.

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Every few weeks, the corporate-controlled media does a telephone survey polling a thousand random phone owners (that is, landline phones, with cell phone owners excluded, a serious flaw that makes the results statistically worthless). The “results” are reported and, over the past election cycle, usually conclude that “most Americans view the country as moving in the wrong direction” - therefore implying that the political party that is currently in power is guilty of the lack of public confidence and therefore deserving of being thrown out of office.

The pollsters never seem to do surveys asking people if American capitalism and our exploitive and extractive economy is working for them. If there were such surveys, I suspect that the ruling elites, the filthy rich types that have bodyguards, chauffeurs and live in gated communities, the Wall Street profiteers, the captains of industry would get much more than a double-digit approval rating. Corporate ratings, despite the billions of dollars spent “green-washing” their images on TV, would be similar to the 9 % approval rating of Congress or the (supposedly disastrous) 46 % job approval rating for Obama. Most of us 99 Percenters would testify, if we were ever asked, that it is the unelected 1 Percenter wealthy elites and their corporations that are leading America in the wrong direction, laughing all the way to the bank.

I dare say that every American that has seen their beloved soldiers killed, maimed, psychologically and spiritually disabled or otherwise wasted in the illegal wars for oil in Afghanistan and Iraq would poll, if asked, against the corporate profiteers on Wall Street and War Street that are spoiling things - with the willing help of the major party politicians and lobbyists that are in their back pockets. Perhaps it is those unelected 1 Percenters that need to be resisted, shunned and thrown out of power.

I doubt that the approval numbers for unelected ruling elites like the Koch Brothers could possibly get out of the single digits - unless those who were being polled were seriously under-informed, mis-informed, unaware, distracted or addicted to something. What would the polling response be for those who are at risk of bankruptcy because of 1) astronomical medical “care” costs, 2) predatory student loans, 3) massive credit card debt, 4) predatory mortgage foreclosures, etc?. How would each and every impoverished person respond if they came to understand that they have been made to fail by America’s pampered, wealth-extracting financial institutions and corporations.

I think most clear-headed persons would agree that American voters need another set of criteria for choosing what political party to support and what candidates to vote for, but equally importantly, what industries, businesses and management teams we support by our spending habits.

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The strategy that I use requires a little bit of effort, some luck and some knowledge of history, especially the history of the politics of extremist, right-wing, corporate-controlled conservatism - otherwise known as fascism (see the original definition of fascism above and the historical conclusions that could be drawn from a study of the history of fascism (since Mussolini invented it in Italy in the 1920s). Professor Lawrence Britt’s important article, titled “Fascism Anyone?” was originally published in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. It can be accessed online at: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=britt_23_2

Here is a list of the 14 Characteristics of Fascism, as compiled by Lawrence Britt, PhD:

1) Powerful Nationalism/Patriotism

2) Human Rights Violations

3) Unification Around Scapegoats

4) Militarism

5) Sexism

6) Press Censorship/Control

7) Strong National Security State

8) “Merger” of Church and State

9) Corporatism

10) Suppression of Trade Unions

11) Anti-Intellectualism

12) Law and Order Obsession

13) Corrupt Crony Capitalism

14) Fraudulent Elections

Most of these characteristics should sound familiar for those who know their American history. Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” reveals many of them. Most of those realities, if not all, are increasingly characteristic of many of the Republican Party’s most conservative politicians that I have known since Nixon and Reagan and also characterize many of the most conservative governors, US congresspersons, state governors and state legislators that are in the news.

But many of national Democratic Party politicians have been tainted by many of the 14 fascist traits (with the possible exception of human rights violations, sexism, church-state relations, labor union suppression and anti-intellectualism. So it could fairly be said that the Democratic Party only meets 9 of the above 14 characteristics of fascism whereas the GOP arguably meets 14 out of 14. And that should give all voters pause.

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A point that needs to be made here is that the Green Party of Minnesota doesn’t meet any of the characteristics of fascism. Furthermore, the 10 key “green” values listed further below is powerfully anti-fascist - and radically pro-democracy.

Figuring out how fascist-leaning your candidates are is important and should make voting decisions somewhat easier considering the fact that most candidates are tainted to some degree, so one must often vote for the least bad candidate.

Not too many clear headed thinkers can deny the fact that America’s two major political parties are heavily bribed, influenced and subsidized by many of the same elite corporate/Wall Street interests, and thus the Democratic Party and the GOP have become essentially unified in many of the most important dilemmas whose outcomes threaten the planet. When it comes to the imperialist, pro-corporate, pro-globalization, global-warming-denial, pro-war agendas of the corporate sponsors of both parties, it can be said that America is governed by a single War Party with two wings. One wing is essentially moderate, centrist/right-wing (the Democratic Party) and the other is more extremist, rabid, radical and far right (the Republican Party).

As noted above, both major political parties exhibit many fascist traits, so finding out how fascist are the candidates can be difficult, only partly because of the confusing existence of the GOP’s Libertarian wing, Tea Party wing, Christian Fundamentalist wing and the quasi-KKK wing and the nearly non-existent left-leaning, democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Each wing must be individually evaluated.

And here is where voters need to recognize the efforts across the nation to obtain major party status for the Minnesota Green Party, which consists mainly, here in Minnesota, of disgruntled progressive Paul Wellstone devotees that are leaving the DFL in disgust over the national Democratic Party’s NeoLiberal, globalist, imperialist, pro-war policies.

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The Green Party of America has established a list of ten key values that would have made Paul Wellstone (with his green bus and green campaign posters) a perfect – and very comfortable - Green Party candidate. But of course he was killed him for his green, anti-war values (see: http://www.wellstonetheykilledhim.com/ for the evidence). It should make every true believer in democracy aspire to the Green Party vision. Below is a summary of that list. A useful expansion of the list can be found at: http://www.gp.org/tenkey.php.:

1. Grassroots Democracy

2. Social Justice and Equal Opportunity

3. Ecological Wisdom

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4. Non-Violence

5. Decentralization

6. Community Based Economics

7. Feminism and Gender Equity

8. Respect for Diversity

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9. Personal and Global Responsibility

10. Future Focus and Sustainability

Truly patriots need to vote for the candidate (and party) with the fewest fascist traits, the most Green Party values and the fewest financial ties to the corrupting corporations that have anti-democracy, pro-war or wealth-extracting agendas.

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Believers in democracy need to understand the democracy-threatening realities of the infamous “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” ruling that the US Supreme Court made in 2010. Citizens United was a pro-corporate, anti-democracy ruling that has never been denounced by any Republican (and by only a few Democrats), but the efforts to reverse the ruling via Move to Amend (https://movetoamend.org/) is a major party plank of the Minnesota Green Party platform. See all the details of that platform at: .http://mngreens.nationbuilder.com/green_party_of_minnesota_platform

The absurd notion that conscienceless, non-human, paper corporations deserve the same human rights as human persons was pushed through as a legal principle by the 5 neo-conservative, corporate lapdogs on the bench, making lawful huge, anonymous campaign contributions to political parties, their candidates and assorted nefarious groups that pay for million-dollar attack ads on TV and radio. This corporate-friendly, democracy-hostile mis-interpretation of the First Amendment guarantees that nobody will be able to find out who benefits and exactly who are the people or corporations that are bribing and corrupting our lawmakers in both federal and state governments.

Progressive, thoughtful voters who remember the damage done to the US Constitution (and the nation) by the Bush/Cheney administration immediately after 9/11/01 (much of the legislation was ready for introduction before that date, suggesting fore-knowledge), should be supporting candidates that oppose racism, economic oppression and militarism (the “triple evils” often mentioned by Martin Luther King), and they should also be aggressively promoting the altruistic roots of American democracy: true liberty for the oppressed, equality, sustainability, peace, justice and reconciliation (with supposed enemies).

Such a truly democratic America would find itself more secure, financially healthier and again respected by and relevant to the rest of the world rather than feared, despised and hated for its obscene, cruel, imperialist agendas that only benefit the corporations and the wealthy elite.

The main problem of course is that America’s two major political parties, especially the Republican Party, seem to have been bought and paid for by the unelected elites and corporate lobbyists that have the big money to finance the perpetual election and re-election campaigns of both parties.

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The worst of these politicians are firmly in the back pockets of the biggest business going and the mother of all deficit-spenders, the US Pentagon and its huge number of weapons manufacturers. (A close second to the weapons industries [aka “merchants of death”] in money, lobbying power and the production of serious planetary pollution is the pharmaceutical industry that also manufactures and markets addictive and earth-poisoning products.)

Every Republican, nearly every Democrat in Congress, and every president since the Vietnam War, has reflexively voted for, endorsed and financed virtually every lethal, exotic, toxic and unaffordable weapons system that the war-profiteers have lobbied for. Those weapons systems are a major cause of America’s impending financial bankruptcy.

How could the problem – and the solution - be any more obvious? Ongoing fiscal crises are predictable when the Pentagon spends about 2-3 billion dollars a day with no visible return on “investment” (except for the ROI of the private oil cartels who refuse to pay their fair share in federal taxes).

It needs to be pointed out here that the Pentagon budget approaches a trillion dollars a year, when one adds in the periodic supplemental war budget appropriations, the interest payments on the DOD-caused debt (paid to wealthy investors) and the enormous and unending costs of treating the millions of permanent service-connected, combat-induced disabilities at the VA. Then add that reality the $4 trillion dollar debt incurred just by Ronald Reagan’s administration (a debt that has never been paid off), as it borrowed (at high interest rates) and spent so lavishly on building America’s nuclear arsenal and Cold War defense operations.

And then there was the 2.3 trillion dollars that disappeared from the Pentagon coffers in 2001, revealed in a Pentagon briefing by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the day before 9/11/01, so that nothing came of it. See the evidence at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Bn_CC_mrg).

But that’s another story, one that reveals that those auditing officials that were investigating that scandalous financial “cooking of the Pentagon books” were in the very section of the Pentagon that was hit by the (non-airliner, probably a cruise missile) flying object the next day. See the evidence at: http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/trillions.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU.

When it comes to understanding why remedying America’s financial, political and ethical problems is not happening (mainly because of the racist, Obama-hating, gridlock masters in the House), we must realize that the vast majority of our major party politicians have been turned into obedient lapdogs of the bloated, too-big-to-fail (and too-big-to-criticize) 800-pound Pentagon gorilla that treats with disdain every progressive, critical-thinking, peace-promoting citizen. It must be said that if the US is ever going to be able to balance its budget, the warmongering politicians and pro-war political parties favored by the military-industrial complex need to be challenged – and then voted out of office.

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For those with some knowledge of world history, especially the history of German fascism, here are some more pointed questions to ask about specific issues when preparing to vote:

1) Do the tactics utilized and people involved remind you of that cunning silver-tongued propagandist Joseph Goebbels (Nazi party sycophant and Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) who had iron-fisted control over all aspects of the media, including the movie and radio communications industries, never allowing opposition issues to be aired? The broadcasting of leftist information was prohibited and vigorously punished by the socialist-hating, leftist-hating and liberal-hating Nazi Party.

2) Are the candidates pro-militarist in their voting records or proclamations, as was true for WWI flying ace, ruthless military hero and Luftwaffe-creator Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second-in-command. (Goering had no compunctions about ruthlessly plundering the natural resources of every conquered, occupied and colonized nation - and their oil resources - the essential ingredient to maintain standing armies, navies and air forces and to conduct modern wars.)

3) Are the candidates or their families on the hidden payrolls of wealthy industrialists, corporations or political action committees whose main interests are “free” markets and acquiring resources through cunning, military coercion, as was the method of many pro-Nazi captains of industry? (Example: Fritz Thyssen was a wealthy industrialist who was an early member and financial supporter of the Nazi Party, as were the Americans Henry Ford, Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker (the latter two were George W. Bush’s wealthy ancestors who were guilty of money-laundering for Hitler and therefore aiding and abetting the enemy during times of war [treason]. Thyssen had made timely “investments” and saved the Nazi party from extinction following the 1929 US stock market crash and resultant world-wide depression.)

4) Are the candidates supported by corporations that benefit from war and military spending such as was the infamous German and pro-Nazi Krupp family and their many steel factories? (The powerful Krupp family was the legendary German weapons manufacturer group that, for centuries prior to Hitler’s reign, had made their fortunes by producing the best and most lethal high-grade steel weaponry that the world had ever known, which they then very profitably sold in the run-up to whatever war was threatening at the time. Krupp Industries, which ruthlessly abused, tortured and used up tens of thousands of slaves during WWII had, over the centuries, had occasionally been caught fomenting conflicts between nations in order to expand market share and sell their superior weapons to all sides.)

5) Do the candidate’s political agendas discriminate against minorities? Will the candidate blindly support wars or the illegal occupation of weaker sovereign nations for economic advantage (as did all of Hitler’s followers)?

6) Has the candidate shown support for the secret police, the use of torture, "preventive detention" policies or pre-emptive military strikes, which were popular with the likes of the odious Heinrich Himmler and the many infamous party functionaries and bureaucrats who made the concentration camps, prisons and transportation systems run smoothly?

7) Is there a history of disregard for human rights or the refusal to effectively deal with justice issues like hunger, starvation, refugees, the abuse of prisoners of war, the maltreatment of minorities, degradation of the environment, the exploitation of workers and the withholding of adequate healthcare? Is there a disregard for displaced and impoverished people, those often labeled as “untermenschen”, ”vermin”, “cockroaches”, “niggers”, “japs, “slants”, “commies”, “towelheads”, etc who, through such stigmatization, become easy targets for all forms of violence - including genocide - which was the strategy of the architects of the holocaust, well-exemplified by right-wing government bureaucrats like Adolf Eichmann?

8) Is the religion of the candidate comfortable with the mass human slaughter that is war and the enormous wastage of precious resources that always happens in times of war? Is the candidate’s god a violent, wrathful, punitive god (which blesses war and makes the slaughter “holy”)? Is the candidate a member of a church such as the racist, nationalist and anti-Semitic “Positive German Christian” church that had usurped the evangelical protestant churches during Hitler’s early years? (Ludwig Muller, an inept Nazi military chaplain was handpicked by Hitler to be the new bishop of that church at the national Lutheran synodical conference in September of 1933.).

Many concerned observers of the current political scene in America have seen alarming trends in the noisy right-wing agitators that have usurped power in the once respectable Republican Party that has lately been gradually purging its moderates. Book banning and book-burnings and the anti-intellectualism that goes along with that mentality should remind us about what happened in Germany after World War I, just as right-wing police state totalitarian rule began in earnest during the 12- year existence of the Third Reich.

It could happen here. The main thing that Friendly American Fascism lacks now is a screeching dictator that has the support of the wealthy, the corporations, the Pentagon and the national security apparatus. American totalitarianism, if the current worrisome trends continue to develop, may be coming about by a slow, rolling, bloodless coup almost invisibly brought on by a whole bunch of smiley-faced, good-looking politicians whose name might be Rick or Scott, whose religion is radical right-wing Christianity and whose spokespersons may be sexy-looking, humorless blonde females. American Friendly fascists won’t look anything like the Nazis we have learned to loathe.

Those of us who are barely, hopelessly clinging to an uncertain middle class or working class existence, are being hypnotized by a diverse group of political and corporate misleaders all over the mainstream media; but those of us in the white middle class haven’t really experienced the current American brand of racism, militarism and economic oppression, that the desperate, impoverished, homeless, jobless, hungry, non-white and discriminated-against have been suffering for generations.

For me, simple suspicion that a candidate (or a Big Business) might be a benefactor of fascist-leaning politics is a good-enough reason to withhold my vote and my purchases from that entity until I know more about their hidden agendas. I judge such suspicious candidates “guilty until proven innocent”. Ruthless entities do not deserve even the benefit of the doubt.

With practice, applying the advice above can help to make one’s voting decisions, as well as one’s daily ethical decisions, easier to make. And America will be a better place as you exercise your voting rights and make your purchasing decisions, keeping in mind your new-found green, anti-fascist values.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who writes about peace, justice, religion, war, politics and mental health issues. He fears that America is on the verge of descending into a corporate-controlled nation whose agendas are already being enforced by a militarized right wing police state (fascism) and that there are preventive measures that must be taken before it is too late. He regards it as his duty to warn others about the root causes of war, violence, poverty, racism and oppression that always precedes fascism. He wishes for, and is motivated to work for a peaceful world for his children and grandchildren and the children and grandchildren of the people who are living on this imperiled planet.

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