They're Baaaaaack!

Fascism is a lot like pornography - most folks can't define it, but they know it when they see it.  Or do they?

There are two primary defining aspects of fascism.  One is that State and Corporate interests converge, such that the State becomes the enforcement arm of Corporate hegemony, while Corporations enforce State interests at the level of their employees, meaning the rest of us, though things like loyalty tests and tax compliance.

Each scratches the other's back.  The State enacts protective legislation and relaxes regulations that benefit Corporate interests and enforces these things at the point of a gun under the 'color of law'.  Government agents become little more than private police working at the behest of Corporate oligarchs. 

Meanwhile, Corporations serve the State by enforcing tax laws at the level of your paycheck, forcing you to surrender your rights and privacy in order to obtain and keep a job.  You are forced to swear oaths of loyalty through immigration forms.  You are required to surrender bodily fluids and submit to psychological tests in order to receive economic benefit.  Corporate interests also control mass populations through credit and other economic weapons at the behest of the State.

The other defining aspect of fascism is a legal system that is so burdensome and intrusive that every citizen is breaking some law at every moment of their lives.  Granted, the laws are arbitrarily enforced.  You can break some laws for years without reprisal, but if the State decides one day that you are a threat, then it can easily dig up piles of major and minor infractions that you had little idea existed.

This second aspect of fascism is the most insidious.  Laws in most countries are so byzantine that even the legislators have no idea what is in them.  They are simply rewarded or punished with favors to enact them.  The legislators, for their part, don't care much because they enjoy a certain amount of immunity in their positions.

A hallmark of this aspect of fascism is constant and all-encompassing surveillance.  Everything the citizen says, does and thinks is recorded.  If at any point the citizen becomes a threat, the State can prove multiple infractions of little-known laws that on their face, seem contradictory and even ridiculous.  No one will defend the individual out of fear that the same treatment will be applied to them.

At some point, the average citizen becomes aware of the system that has sprung up around him.  At that time, he must make a choice to remain within the system, thus surrendering his morals and ethics, or step outside of it and live as an outlaw constantly looking over his shoulder.  A few will realize that there is no difference between the two choices, but most will come down on the side of supposed caution and try to remain within the system.

As one surveys the modern United States, one sees all the trappings of fascism.  Corporate interests control the legislative bodies.  The legislators completely ignore the will of the electorate, knowing full well that the masses no longer exercise choices that aren't controlled by the Corporations.  On the other side, the State has erected a legal system so massive and byzantine that no individual is without transgression.  He is complete hemmed in by the law to the point of hopelessness and inaction for fear of reprisal.

Over all of this is a surveillance system that documents every little infraction from birth to death.  If at any time the citizen chooses to fight back, the State can simply bury him in a hail of arbitrary charges for things that no one knew were illegal.  Even if the citizen puts up a good fight, the State can simply manipulate the system to impoverish the individual through extended legal proceedings, ultimately crushing dissent by attrition.  The citizen can find no one to stand up for him because everyone is afraid that the same treatment will befall them if they speak up.

Ultimately, fascism is the most devious form of government ever devised.  Because it uses economic weapons, it affects the most basic needs of the individual.  Because it can outlaw literally anything, the individual is made into a criminal for doing nothing more than living.  He can be jailed for collecting rain water or his children taken away for holding bake sales.  His right to travel can be switched off with a simple note on his government records.

In the end, we all become Josef K in a Kafka-esque nightmare so bizarre and horrifying that the system strikes fear into even those who administer it.  The system takes on a life of its own and will finally begin to eat its own.

At this point, it finally begins to unravel, as everyone realizes that there is no safe harbor in such a system.  But by the time this happens, it has eaten the life out of generations of human beings and thoroughly destroyed innocence and trust.

Fascism takes root through ignorance and thrives in denial.  We give purchase to it when we think, "It can never happen here."  We fertilize it by thinking, "It is NOT happening here."

This evil is so pervasive that one begins to think there is no way to fight.  No true.  In fact, the best weapon against it is so simple as to be incredible.  It's called 'shunning'.

We must shun the system and all its trappings.  We must shun the electoral process.  It is vital that we realize this sham is worthless as a means of change.  It is nothing more than a way to get us to buy into our own destruction.  It gives the system legitimacy, even though it is completely illegitimate.

We must vilify its apparatchiks and turn them into pariahs.  If a known government agent walks into a restaurant and sits down, people should get up and move away.  We should hide our children from police as if they carry an infectious disease.  We should not associate with anyone employed by the system, to the point of breaking friendships over it.

We should avoid the courts at all costs.  We should not pray and plead in the system's holy rooms, but rather find creative ways to settle our differences outside those vile halls.

En masse, we should stop renewing licenses and registrations.  We should extract ourselves as completely as we can from any and all control functions of the State.  We should stop using the mega-banks and only use small, local banks whenever it is unavoidable.  We should stop buying products sold by mega-corporations, and support only local shops and manufacturers.

Most importantly, we should ridicule the system at every turn.  The one thing fascism can not abide is for the citizenry to not take it seriously.  When people stop fearing it, it withers and dies.  It can not stand up to satire and mockery.  This was used to great effect against Joe McCarthey.

Shunning is a very old and very effective tool.  If a sufficient number of people turn to this time-tested method, it will achieve tremendous results in a short amount of time without a single act of violence.

Or, as Orwell warned, we can live with the boot of tyranny stamping on our faces for all time.

Fascism is running rampant throughout the world right now.  We don't recognize it because we are looking for Hitlers and Musolinis, and the Nazi trappings and logos.  But fascism morphs and changes with its surroundings.  It will take on the veil of whatever environment it is in.  It wraps itself in you flag.  It dresses itself as your neighbor.  It shakes hands and kisses babies and looks for all the world like the most harmless thing, until you cross it.

Walking Between The Rain

Note: Before launch today, a special note of thanks to HenryMakow.com, Rense.com and DavidIcke.com for picking up yesterday's column, and welcome to new readers!

I always like it when one of the columns sparks some discussion, and yesterday's seems to have hit a chord.  One of our good and faithful readers summed up a number of email rather succinctly...

Bernie, you have to clarify your rant. You tell people what to do, yet , you left the Country.

 Fair question that deserves an answer.


A good example of why I left the country is the headline: 45 MILLION VIEWERS WATCH TEBOW GAME.  I won't provide a link, because it doesn't deserve any more attention than that, but you can find it on Drudge.


I have no idea who Tebow is, but I kind of gather that her's God's quarterback, from the various headlines I've seen over the past couple of months.  That fully one fifth of the country tuned in to a football game is reason enough to leave, though.  People there have completely FUBAR priorities.


The other reason I left was to save my children.  You see, when the bastards don't like you, and they can't make you go away with threats, then they attack your children, because they are cowards.  They can't deal with well-informed adults.  In other words, they meet every classic definition of bullies.  My children were kidnapped no less than five times in two years and held for ransom, to force me to knuckle under.


That's what happens when you are being effective.


I will consider coming home, but there are conditions.  First, Ron Paul must be elected.  Second, he must survive more than six months as president.  Third, he must do what he is promising, and of all the politicians I've known, he probably would.  And fourth, TnA must be disbanded and most of them thrown in jail.  There's a fifth condition, but I'm not holding my breath.  All the banksters that have bankrupted the world need to be tried and dealt with appropriately.  I'll come home to help with that one.


See, while Americans have been getting their privates yanked and tweaked, I still have my dignity after I board a plane here.  It's even better in China.  You can walk out on the tarmac and jump on a plane and hardly notice any security.  That's the difference between a foreign policy of terror and blood versus one of mutual economic benefit.


Not that I've ever claimed to be an American.  Even when I was 18 and backpacking around the world, I called myself a Texian and always will.  Not like the George W. Bush kind, where daddy drags his inbred Yankee butt to Texas to carpetbag.  I'm talking seventh generation pure.


Anyway, back to the topic at hand.


I don't see a lot to come home for.  Folks are suffering from mass denial, and when they do notice they're broke and homeless, they turn to the evil bastards that put them there and beg for relief.  That kind of mentality just doesn't have much appeal for me.  I'm more of the independent, leave-me-alone type.  


I moved to Indonesia four years ago with one suitcase and $600.  I had never been here before and didn't speak the language.  Done pretty well for myself since then.  My friend helped me with visas and such the first two years and I borrowed $300 from my brother for medical bills when I went blind, but that's about as much help as I've gotten.


It also shows how badly I didn't want to go home again.  I spent 20 years fighting and kicking and screaming to prevent what's happened there.  When the chips were down, not one person would come near me.  They were so afraid that the bastards would turn on them that they preferred to turn their backs.  I spent $250,000 and two and a half years fighting the bastards, and just barely eeked out a victory.


When I was done, I had nothing left.  Every last bit was gone, save for a couple of boxes of documents and some clothes.  No job, no savings, no house, nothing.

I could see that Obama was going to steal the White House, even in December of 2007.  That meant that the whole country was completely whacked and there was no saving it.  I wasn't sticking around to watch.  Too many folks thinking, "My country, right or wrong."


Not that much of it matters, since this year will see the end of many things, and the beginning of many more.  The world we know now will not even resemble this moment come January of next year.  All the folks who are cheerleaders from the wrong side are going to find life intolerable soon enough.


Back in the day, there were a bunch of us 'paper warriors.'  We each specialized in some aspect of the law.  I chose Travel and Transportation.  I was pretty good at it.  I lost count somewhere around getting 150 tickets dismissed for just about everything you can imagine.  For four years, I didn't have registration, inspection or any other the other rigmarole they shove down our throats.


People would shake their heads and ask me how I did it?  I would show them my library of hundreds of books and journals and papers, and tell them it only took a few hundred hours of study.  


There's a price for everything, including freedom.


Trust me, if you got out of America long enough for the conditioning and the fluoride to wear off, you'd be amazed at what the rest of the world sees.  If you're old enough, you may remember how we saw the Soviet Union.  It's a lot like that.  And yes, America has political prisoners and political exiles.  I was one and I am one, and I'm not alone.


So what can you do about it?  Well, I mentioned conquering your fear, the hours of study, the time in jail and the misery of their attacks.  That about sums it up.  But unless you can wake up several hundred of your closest friends, work together on this, and watch them turn on you the minute you start having success, I don't give it much hope.


Remember that out here in the real world, all folks see is the feral gummint.  They don't see the individuals.  Think about how you see other countries through the media.  The animosity and anger that a lot of folks out here harbor towards the feral gummint does not discriminate between it and you.  Going back to the good ol' Soviet Union, you may recall that we didn't see the individual Russians or Kassars or Mongols or Kazaks.  We just saw the evil Poliburo and the Great Satan Premier.


America looks much the same from out here.


All it would have taken 20 years ago would have been to elect good sheriffs in about 40% of the counties west of the Mississippi River.  Every one of them has the power to evict the feds and arrest any that won't go.  There's more power in your local sheriff's pen than in all of Congress, and that's been proven all the way up to the Supreme Court a dozen times.


But the thing is, it's too late for all that.  All of it is the Old Paradigm, and that's coming to a swift and pwerful end.  In the New Paradigm, none of it matters...presidents, congresses, sheriffs, nations, economies.  Everything you have ever known is changing, whether you like it or not.


The best thing you can do is hunker down and watch the real world.  Now is the time to taste the air, smell the dirt, watch the birds, and stare at the sky.  The signs are everywhere.  If you know how to filter the media, the signs are there.  If you know how to read the clouds, the signs are there.  If you are aware, you've nothing to fear.


Unfortunately, most people don't do any of that.  And when they get caught with their pants down, there's going to be hell to pay.  The best thing smart folks can do now is plan to stay out of the way.

There's an old Jewish mystical trick that a friend taught me years ago.  It's called 'walking between the rain drops.'  Now is the time for good folks to learn that trick.  Once you learn it, you realize how simple it is.  The problem is getting to that point.  It works best when you close your eyes, but then you can't see where you're going until you learn the trick.  Catch-22.


It's a very exciting time to be alive, but not for most of the reasons you can think of.  When the change happens, you'll realize that there was little you could do to prepare.  Things are changing at such a fundamental level that guns and MREs aren't going to help.  Believe me, the bad guys will be just as befuddled.  Sit real quiet for a few minutes.  Turn off the TeeVee and put the kids in bed.  Just listen.  Somewhere in the Universe, a switch has been flipped and something completely new is coming our way really fast.


All you have to do is walk between the drops.