Did the US lose WWII ?

We have known the cure for thousands of years. But the disease is genetic. Every generation or so, the conditions conspire to bring together as ugly cast of characters that includes a tyrant, his sycophants, and the moronic fools who cheer him on. ... But the tendency remains. Tyrannical people seek power. Sycophants suck up to them. The foolish masses cheer it on. Tyranny from Plato to Trump, Fools, Sycophants, and Citizens by Andrew Fiala
The election of Trump is more than a political event; it is an attempt to legitimize a brutal evolution of fascism in America. His rise is not accidental but symptomatic, emerging from the depths of collective fear, dread, and anxiety stoked by a savage form of gangster capitalism —neoliberalism—that thrives on division and despair. This climate, steeped in a culture of hate, misogyny, and racism, has given life to Trump’s authoritarian appeal, drowning out the warning signs of past and present tyranny.
America’s Descent Into Fascism Can Be Stopped Henry Giroux (11/08/2024)

The Most Dangerous Phase of Trump’s Rule (7/10/2020)

How Fascism Came: Chris Hedges (12/23/2024)

FDR famously said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." However it is fear that motivates right wing politics, their religious supporters, and the GOP.

Even before WWII fascists in the US were at home in the Republican party. They have become mainstream, now taking over government. They plotted to take over the Supreme Court, control elections, consolidated media so that a handful of companies control everything you see and hear, rigged the economy to extract wealth for oligarchs, They openly say they would shred the Constitution, which alone should prevent them from taking an oath for high office. Fascism has come home .

Rachel Maddow's book ‘Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,’ an American fight against Fascism', "authoritarianism alive on the far right before and after our troops began fighting in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. (lifted from the books dust jacket.)

Maddow does not mention The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer who writes about a conspiracy to overthrow FDR. Violence is integral to right wing strategy.

America was great when FDR got us out of the depression with the FDIC, New Deal, created the WPA, drafted the four freedoms, soon after came the Second Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. FDR recognized the need for institutions to preserve international order, UN and international economic institutions, the IMF, World Bank were designed for economic stability and to prevent war. The dollar became the world's reserve currency.

WWII defeated Fascism, at least temporarily at great cost, although the virus remained and has metastasized, apparently the political right is ascendant world-wide. The Republican party always had a fascist fringe.

Republicans never liked the FDR vision or the New Deal including the economic stabilizers, the international institutions and, over decades, reversed a lot of it with the assistance of oligarchs, the religious right, unpopular Presidents, and the Supreme Court. They call it socialism now.

Churchill spoke about a United States of Europe. The EU erased national boundaries, allowed people to move freely among European countries, created a common currency, and a federal government. It looks to be threatened by a right-wing resurgence assisted by Russia and Trump's US. Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook helped to accomplish Brexit, which has been devastating to Britain.

After WWII the highest US marginal tax rate was over 90%, Ike famously warned about the military-industrial complex, the Marshall Plan helped reconstruction after war devastation.

After WWII, the US was the last major country standing, helped recovery from the war, but itself became an empire with the largest standing military in the world, engaged in many pointless wars, and didn't take care of the well being of people at home.

what we can afford

Each Republican president brought us closer to fascism. Republicans,wage a culture war to gain power, divide people by race, religion, class so they fight each other, to remove fundamentally important parts of history from education: racism, gender studies, holocaust, genocide, slavery. This generation seems to have forgotten why we fought WWII.

Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War for political gain, and claimed he was above the law.

Reagan delayed hostage negotiations with Iran for his own political gain, accelerated the US descent by enabling propaganda, eliminated the fairness doctrine, granted citizenship to Rupert Murdoch, appointed John Roberts to the Supreme Court, disobeyed Congress' Boland Amendment to wage an ugly war in Central America. With the help of William Barr covered up criminal Iran/Contra scandal.

Republican policy ended the good times. They ended with the election of Reagan who accelerated wealth inequality and the decline of the middle class. made it ok to dismantle unions, since the GOP hates democracy in the workplace as much as they do government. Progressivity was removed from taxes and offsetting cuts made everything more expensive including College tuition, social programs, healthcare and allowed infrastructure to deteriorate. It has been all downhill for the middle class since Reagan. He undid the fairness doctrine and let Rupert Murdoch in to broadcast GOP propaganda.

Republicans steadily reduced high marginal tax rates removing the burden from the wealthy, busted unions, empowered corporations, privatized healthcare, attackeddemocracy, sunk the middle class. Wealth inequality soared. They scorned the ICC, the UN, the WHO, human rights, called climate warnings a hoax, and continued ruinous, pointless, forever wars.

Infrastructure decayed as Republicans cut taxes and imposed austerity, although it would have made sense to maintain it since interest rates were low, Trump promised to fix it, but didn't. Biden did. Instead Republicans passed tax cuts for the wealthy.

The Supreme Court in the tragic Bush v Gore decision not only cast doubt on the legitimacy of elections, but also effectively stopped any mitigation of climate damage.

In the Heller decision SCOTUS overturned long standing precedent to allow robust gun rights which made the US a shooting gallery. Corporate supremacy crippled the power of unions and Citizens United shoved the US toward Fascism.

The effect of weakened unions, corporate empowerment, the flood of money into politics, meant that oligarchs could buy elections to control the political process and so could foreign operatives such as Russia. The middle class shrunk as the very wealthy gamed the system for their own benefit. It was not trickle down, but Niagra up.

Bush was selected by the Supreme Court to be President after the 'Brooks Brother' riot stopped voting in Florida ending the The 2020 election.

After 9/11 government created a vast 'homeland security' bureaucracy, tightened travel restrictions, curtailed civil liberties with the Patriot Act, and created the national security state.

In a blow to the Constitution, Congress abrogated its power to declare war when it passed the AUMF, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and allowed the forever wars. Despite Ike's warning, the military-industrial-congressional complex won. Bush lied to go to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that lasted for decades, cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and achieved nothing.

After 9/11, Bush authorized the forever wars that included Afghanistan, Iraq, and ruinous military operations in many other countries. Mass surveillance, torture, renditions, secret prisons, Guantanamo, were mostly covered up in a new secret court, the FISA court.

Trump made fascism mainstream so that the GOP looks like a cult. Any one who does not support Trump is ejected from the party. The Supreme Court ruled that the President is above the law. The Constitution has been eroded so badly that there are no guard rails. In threatening to annex, Greenland, Panama, or even Canada, the US has become a lawless,rogue State much like Hitler's Germany. Mass deportations will create the underclass subjected to human rights abuse.

In the quest for good government, the 2024 election was democracy vs dictatorship. and democracy, the Constitution, and the republic lost.

Most Americans valued the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, ¨Give me your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free ¨. The US had fairly soft borders. Poor Mexicans or South Americans could work seasonally picking crops or doing jobs Americans did not want. There was no border emergency then, but migration has become a GOP wedge issue that they have no interest in resolving. It motivates their base. However, if the President can declare an emergency at any time, then the Congress no longer has the power of the purse, yet another assault on the Constitution.

Fascist, authoritarian, racist, self-serving billionaires took over an illegitimate government that slowly overturned all of the formerly high values for which the US was admired. US fought many small wars for investors and failed to support popular movements. Terrorist blowback or mass immigration should have surprised no one.

Flaws in the original Constitution enabled Republican Presidents, assisted by election rigging including gerrymandering, voter suppression, foreign meddling, to win without the popular vote. As Republican tax cuts put increasing burden on taxpayers, growing wealth inequality resulted in government that no longer does what people, when polled, want. Democracy slowly withered away.

None of this could be accomplished were it not for media concentration and more intense propaganda. The US electorate doesn´t know a lot of what government is doing because it operates in secret and big dark money enabled by Citizens United funds propaganda, nominates candidates, buys elections, and lobbys Congress.

Trump refused Congress oversight and blocked their requests. He packed the Courts with loyalists, but defied the Courts if they disagree with him. His personal lawyer who headed the DOJ represented his interests, not the countries. Checks and balances are apparently no longer functioning. Republicans can barely keep the government open.

Republicans, over decades, eroded FDR’s high values. They spurn international institutions like the UN, the ICC, and even NATO which are indispensable for existential global threats like climate damage or nuclear proliferation. Under Trump they downsized the State Department, bloated the military, withdrew from international agreements, corrupted the Supreme Court, changed the Presidency to a dictatorship, and formed a new axis of authoritarians.

Billionaire Republicans despise democracy and suppress it in every way possible, deny science, pander to religious right (but only Christians), refuse to acknowledge the necessity for a sustainable environment. This is US government by Republicans.

Republican Justices on the Supreme Court made many anti-democratic decisions. Giving the President immunity could be the death of the republic. Republicans enabled a candidate who intends to be a fascist dictator, and SCOTUS has paved the way to a Wiemar moment. Like Hitler's or Putin's fascism, it wont be great.

Fascism is a late stage of capitalism in which extreme wealth inequality places governing power in the hands of a few, wealth extraction from the many, for the benefit of a few, wealthy individuals. Institutions are beholden to such government, so media is purged to favor propaganda. Elections are rigged to favor minority rule. Racism and religion are exploited using wedge issues like abortion, gender conformity. Political opponents and dissidents are punished. SCOTUS has ruled the President is above the law, Trump is proving it.

Compare the attributes of Nazi Germany to those of present day US: a strong man head of state with a cult-like following, increasingly pandered to by his party, a heavily armed group of supporters, robust military expansion that sacrifices basic needs of the people, huge tax gifts to wealthy supporters from deficit spending and cuts to the vulnerable. even more wealth is extracted from people by privatizing, deregulating, and allowing corporations to be unleashed, flagrant racism, right wing propaganda, human rights abuse, and violent political and racist intimidation become normal.

The dictionary definition of fascism is rule by corporations. Given the universal surveillance that is part of all electronic communications, how is it possible to argue the US is not a Fascist state… and of course it is number one in incarcerations, world's largest military, arms supplier, and nuclear armaments.

GOP leader says opposition are vermin, a a threat from within justifying violence. First day in office he plans to be a dictator, invoke the Insurrection Act, activate the military for sweeping raids, mass deportations, giant camps, replace the civil service with loyalists along with other destructive measures in project 2025.

The US has been addicted to war ever since the revolution, and ultimately lost every one: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Cold War, WWII, the Civil War and even the revolution. Mass shootings are a sign that the wars have come home. The US may have bankrupted itself in pursuit of empire. It looks as though some of those wars were either part or a culture war or for the benefit of investors.

Because Republicans support corporate supremacy, an authoritarian leader, deny the looming threat of climate change, boosted military spending, and are embarked a new nuclear arms race. They are on a path for destruction. They are a religious, suicide cult like Jim Jones, only for the entire planet. Republicans won, brought Fascism home, and lost WWII.

Republicans were conned by right wing media, and had no idea that they voted to destroy the Constitution assisted by the Supreme Court, make elections unnecessary, get retribution on political opponents, destroy democracy, double down on the culture war, strengthen religious indoctrination, remove women's and LGBTQ rights, discard high values, begin mass deportations of the underclass to camps just as the Nazis did, remove economic stabilizers implemented in response to the great depression, destroy the world's reserve currency, the dollar, with crypto, exacerbate wealth inequality by tax cuts for the wealthy, boost corporate supremacy, union busting, shred the social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, etc.), remove regulations, merch, grift and corruption at the highest levels of government, replace the civil service with loyalists rendering institutions and government incompetent, privatize healthcare the Post Office, dismantle the Department of Education, privatize schools, the better to discriminate and indoctrinate, intimidate media and political opposition, withdraw from institutions for international cooperation (NATO,WHO,ICC, Climate Accords, human rights ?, UN) ally with authoritarians, thumb their nose at climate science ("drill baby drill") risking collapse, open public lands for mining, install a fascist dictator all but impossible to remove.

We are headed for dystopia, climate collapse, and extinction. The future is bleak.

Missed Opportunity

Bernie Sanders proposals are remarkably similar to FDR´s: a living wage, health care for all, paid leave, free public Colleges, strong social supports. All good investments without which we are on a path to the bottom and ultimate climate devastation.

Make America great again by voting out Republicans and consider substantial change to the Constitution.

Here is what to expect when Republicans win.

"Tell Trump you didn't learn from Hitler. You can't fight on two fronts. You can't take on radical Islam and China. You will end up in the bunker, like Hitler." Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic in discussion with Steve Bannon.

Conditions are now similar to those before previous World Wars, could be a WW III. The “disintegration” of global capitalism could unleash world war 3, warns top EU economist.

Video

“The End of America”: Feminist Social Critic Naomi Wolf Warns US in Slow Descent into Fascism

Bibliography

Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50 Year Plot to Control American Elections by David Daley

‘Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,’ by Rachel Maddow

It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders

American Nightmare, Facing the Challenge of Fascism, Henry A. Giroux

How Fascism Works, The Politics of Us and Them: Jason Stanley

The Road to Unfreedom, Timothy Snyder

How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America Heather Cox Richardson

The Rise of the Fourth Reich, Jim Marrs

How Democracies Die: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

From Fascism to Populism in History: Federico Finchelstein

Hitler´s American Friends, The Third Reich´s Supporters in the United States: Bradley W. Hart

Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright

The United States of Fear: Tom Englehardt (see TomDispatch.Com)

Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism: Sheldon S. Wolin

The anatomy of fascism: Robert O Paxton

America at War With Itself : Henry A, Giroux

Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945: Federico Finchelstein

Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law: James Q. Whitman

Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance: Michael Beschloss and James MacGregor Burns

Big Business and Hitler: Jacques R. Pauwels

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII: John Cornwell

Nazis in the Attic

Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich: Richard Weikart

Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler: Antony C. Sutton

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It: Lawrence Lessig links). Download this excellent, free book: pdf download.

The Suffocation of Democracy: Christopher R. Browning 10/25/2018

THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY, Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic By Benjamin Carter Hett

Failed States, Noam Chomsky

No Is Not Enough, Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need: Naomi Klein.

On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century: Timothy Snyder

Democracy Betrayed, The Rise of the Surveillance Security State, William W. Keller

Can It Happen Here ? Cass Sunstein collection of essays.

Our Damaged Democracy: Joseph Califano Jr.

The Crisis Of The Middle-Class Constitution, Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic: Ganesh Sitaraman

FIRE AND FURY, Inside the Trump White House: Michael Wolff

Antifa, The Anti-Fascist Handbook: Mark Bray

The Counterrevolution, How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens: Bernard E. Harcourt

Democracy in Chains, The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan For America: Nancy MacLean (2017)

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It, Yascha Mounk

RATF**KED, The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy: David Daley

War on peace : the end of diplomacy and the decline of American influence. Ronan Farrow.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America Chris Hedges.

God And the Fascists, the Vatican alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Pavelic: Karlheinz Deschner

Constantine's Sword (a history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church based on James Carroll's book of the same name. Explores the link between the U.S. military and the Christian right.)

The Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner: Daniel Ellsberg

IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black

Winner Take All Politics: Hacker and Pierson

The Case For Impeachment: Allan J. Lichtman

Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy: Jacob S., Hacker and Paul Pierson

Wages of Rebellion, the Moral Imperative of Revolt: Chris Hedges

Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, James Q. Whitman

Battlefield America: the War on the American People: John W.Whitehead

Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy: Christopher Simpson

Anatomy of Fascism: Robert O. Paxton

Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism: Sheldon S. Wolin

American Swastika: Charles Higham

Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics: Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler

The End of America: Naomi Wolf

Facing Fascism: Jerry Sorlucco

Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power: Gerry Spence

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America Chris Hedges.

Antifa, The Anti-Fascist Handbook: Mark Bray

When Corporations Rule the World: David Korten

It Can Happen Here
In light of the series of laws passed in Congress and precedents set by the Bush administration, people have good reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in America. By Joe Conason / Thomas Dunne Books (2007)

Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush: Joe Conason.

Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State: Steven Heller

It Can't Happen Here: Sinclair Lewis

IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black

The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt

Fascism in Action: A Documented Study and Analysis of Fascism in Europe (Free to Download)

The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer

McCormack–Dickstein Committee

The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men: Eric Lichtblau

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America: Annie Jacobsen

Books on Fascism

Books on Republicans

Books on Trump

See the reading list or Fascism with its bibpography.