Naomi Wolf - The End of America

[jts]

Naomi Wolf says every dictatorship is set up by the same 10 steps. They are:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
   
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place
   
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens
   
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
   
5. Harass citizens' groups
   
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
   
7. Target key individuals
   
8. Control the press
   
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors
   
10. Suspend the rule of law^[25]
    

47:47

[Selene]

She is an asshole...funny how she never sees a marxist dictatorship that she doesn't love...

Wolf was involved in Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election bid, brainstorming with the president's team about ways to reach female voters.^[49] During Al Gore's unsuccessful bid for the presidency in the 2000 election, Wolf was hired as a consultant to target female voters, reprising her role in the Clinton campaign. Wolf's ideas and participation in the Gore campaign generated considerable media coverage and criticism.^[50] According to a report by Michael Duffy in Time, Wolf was paid a monthly salary of $15,000 "in exchange for advice on everything from how to win the women's vote to shirt-and-tie combinations." This article was the original source of the widely reported claim that Wolf was responsible for Gore's "three-buttoned, earth-toned look."^[49][51]

In an interview with Melinda Henneberger in The New York Times, Wolf denied ever advising Gore on his wardrobe. Wolf herself claimed she mentioned the term "alpha male" only once in passing and that "[it] was just a truism, something the pundits had been saying for months, that the vice president is in a supportive role and the President is in an initiatory role... I used those terms as shorthand in talking about the difference in their job descriptions".^[52]

[syrakusos]

Selene, if this were from Cato, you would not flinch. You just do not like this Naomi Wolf person. Myself, I watched only a few minutes because she was not speaking to me and I have evolved far beyond JTS's simian understanding... and apparently Naomi Wolf's as well. She looks at a few key examples, to build her theory, all very well known but does not test her theory against other historical data.

First of all, dictator was a constitutional role in Rome and the call for a dictator began with an unresolveable internal crisis precipitated by an external threat. It was a good solution for a strong republic. That is the story of Cincinnatus. Julius Caesar was the last Roman to be declared dictator. ... but you know, Sir Walter Raleigh, was arbitrarily arrested and released. He was not alone in that, but I just point out that arbitrary action by those with political power is never limited to any time or place or form of government.

Athens was the paradigm democracy and the Assembly was often arbitrary, as we all know the story of Socrates. But they had already acted against other philosophers, Anaxagoras and Aspasia. Democracies are not progressive, but conservative. Watch for my video: The 10 Danger Signs of Democracy.

The Greek democracies invented the mercenary army, of course. Its invention went along with democracy and tyranny, i.e. non-hereditary rule, over monarchy) and coinage (over cows) and merchants (over farmers) and philosophy (over religion). Athens brought in a paramilitary non-citizen force of Scythian archers as "police" for the Assembly so that no citizen would have to arrest another. It was a good solution.

Of course, the Swiss Guard was famous in the late middle ages and Renaissance. GBS's delightful "Arms and the Man" ("The Chocolate Soldier") is about a Swiss mercenary fighting in the Balkans in 1885. I could go on at length about Pinkerton's and private security in America -- andy many libertarians would find that an agreeable narrative.

But I grant that as in Uganda, the raising of thug militias is a sign of social chaos, the the Anti-WTO riots, the very "anti-austerity riots" today right now in Spain, and Occupy are examples of that ... and of our coming left wing dictatorship.

I do not suppose that Number 8 refers to the constant barrage against Fox News. "Control of the Press" would include the FCC, of course. I am not sure that in our time here and now this even matters. With bloggers like PJTV and Huffington Post, and the millions of others, there is no shortage of fact and opinion -- and I think it does not matter because the government is so deeply in power that we can argue ourselves silly and never affect them. It will take more than committees of correspondence to carry the next American Revolution.

What really turned me off right away was her example of Disneyland. She said it like everyone would know. I have never been there. It is a class thing. Disneyland and Disney World are for rich people. I work for a living. As much as I could argue for the glory of entertainment as enterprise, the honest fact is that as a republican, I distrust art. The fact is that high art comes from warrior societies. Every time. Merchants sell luxuries, to be sure, but largely those are always utensils of some kind. Personal adornment for personal display is not the same thing as high art for public display. She should add NPR and the NEA to her list.

[Selene]

Selene, if this were from Cato, you would not flinch. You just do not like this Naomi Wolf person. Myself, I watched only a few minutes because

Michael:

Can you tell me my next thoughts?

[syrakusos]

You are holding the three of spades.

Dude, we have spent enough time here together. You just don't like being sussed.

[caroljane]

Time to fold 'em, on this hand Adam!

[Selene]

You are holding the three of spades.

Dude, we have spent enough time here together. You just don't like being sussed.

I actually love when people have me "figured out" [sussed].

Gives me the upper hand every time.

So, you are positing that if Cato issued a directive to like this bitch that I would say yessuh Massa! I be thinkin dah ways yous wants me to. Yessuh!

I'll take another card.

Adam

[william.scherk]

I wondered what the trade-off would be in subjecting myself to forty-seven minutes of Naomi Wolf. Would I learn something? Couldn't I just find her frigging list on Wikipedia (well, yes and no. Sloppy Jerry borrowed his entire list from Wikipedia but forgot to mention or link to the source of his copy/paste. She has even written a book, he also failed to mention. If you do not care to listen you can read here: The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, at Amazon's Look Inside)?

If Michael Marotta is just suggesting that an End Times message coming from a non-Wolf might be more palatable to Adam, I tend to agree.

Wolf is not the source or the validator of the signs. She has borrowed this baseline list, and then instantiates it with her chosen examples. What Wolf does, as many do, is play epistemological whoopee from that point, but I think Identifying and listing markers of a dictatorship is fine. That is likely not where Adam finds himself in disagreement, if not high dudgeon.

So, to the list. What I remark upon is the possibility for whoopee, possibilities not circumsribed by party affiliation or phobia.

First, do we buy the list? I vote yeah, on the whole. We can use it to discern the difference between, say, Canada and the DPRK. We can recognized the signs of full-on (Cuba) and incipient (Venezuela). We can even mark a bounce-back from dictatorship by watching signs of dictatorship in retreat, whether historically in the fall of the Soviet system, or in present day, as in Burma, even in North Africa.

If you are, let's say, a follower of the cough news presented at Infowars, you may have marked out examples of dictature in America and the world. If a hysterical leftist stenographer, you might also have marked the same signs (though not in exact same fashion) and concluded you live under dictatorship.

Doesn't it seem that there are a lot of bells of doom being sounded, in many neighbourhoods?

So maybe you two are both right: an asshole like Wolf can be making an argument for 'living dictatorship' that is mirrored by Objectivish opinion. using 'signs.'

And Adam, isn't it true that you use Leftishness as a filter to your analyses? I mean, what if the Ten Steps To Dictatorship came from another book ... if not from a CATO-whoopeed list?

Naomi Wolf says an American despot can rise in our time, and that we should be aware of The Signs. Isn't this what you have been saying all along yourself, with the despot being The Marxist?

Here are those top ten signs again, this time with me mentally adding in examples. I wonder how am I at mind-reading compared to MEM or Commie Carol.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (Global Capitalism Run Amok)
   
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place (Oh, um, FEMA camps, CIA black ops)
   
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens (Obamacorps, Them)
   
4. Set up an internal surveillance system (Oh, um, hmmm, could they? Not intercept your communications without a warrant, surely?)
   
5. Harass citizens' groups (Ranch Rescue, Sovereign Citizens, Civil Homeland Defense!)
   
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release (National Defense Authorization Act, anyone?)
   
7. Target key individuals (Rush, Glenn, those turned up in NSA warrantless taps)
   
8. Control the press (FCC on down by law, local station on up, by influence and pressure)
   
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors (in essence, the last threshold to cross before ten. Who is bing targetted for the FEMA camps when the hammer comes down?)
   
10. Suspend the rule of law (closer and closer. Just what is habeus corpus versus NDAA, NSA, black ops?)
    

Now, here I sit stupefied by socialism in sunny Vancouver, and I am alarmed. Is this seeming equilibrium here in our life and economy and social cohesion a delusion, horribly false, a mutual folly, a folie à plusieurs? Have I missed the signs and missed the soundings of the bells of doom from down south -- is America, is Canada, is this whole elaborate fantasy about to fall?

Should I not be even more horribly alarmed by the tolling of the bells when Left and Right unite around The Signs of End Times?

Si je me trompe, quels horreurs m'attendraient?

Edited October 1, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

I thought it was Naomi Klein and wasted a whole 15 minutes.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I watched the entire video.

I like her points on how a dictatorship evolves. She's on to something important with that list. I'm going to use it for my own work. I found the partisan focus in her examples to be highly suspect (and of course I will never fail to mention that).

But, dayaamm-naichun! It's so odd seeing a progressive defending the 2nd Amendment like she did in that video.

We disussed Wolf at least once before here on OL: Author Naomi Wolf arrested for obeying the law instead of an unlawful order. Unfortunately a flame war undermines the reader's serene assimilation of information on that thread, but there is some good stuff on it.

George basically summed up how I think about progressives touting freedom in a post there:

The fact that Wolf glosses over the bright line between the social sphere of voluntary behavior and the governmental sphere of coercive laws exhibits the typical progressive mind-set. Progressives see nothing wrong with using force (or the threat of force), so long as the purpose for which coercion is used is one they happen to like. And this, more than anything else, is what makes progressives so despicable and dangerous, however much they may blather on about civil rights.

I Googled "Naomi Wolf" and "Glenn Beck" just to see what would pop up. As I thought, it's a mishmash. Believe it or not, I think that's a good thing. People are groping rather than blindly mouthing party lines. Oh... they still mouth them, all right. But it's troubled mouthing.

So I think there are two good things that come from someone like Wolf doing what she is doing.

The first is that she framed the encroachments of Bush's administration in terms of the intent of the Founding Fathers and what happened in Europe in the 20th century with Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini--and Chile's Pinochet thrown in for good measure. Despite her other views, this is something that needed doing from as many angles as possible, including the progressive angle. Not just the libertarian angle or the John Birch angle.

The second is that she is poisoning her own movement by injecting fundamental ideas of freedom into it. Not that this will make a difference to a stauch progressive, but it will introduce these ideas to a bunch of younger people (and others) who might not otherwise look at them. And from there, it is only a hop and a skip from them thinking the progressives are the true standard-bearers of constitutional liberty to starting to see too much that just doesn't add up. This will happen with those of a more independent thinking streak in their personality. (btw - Those are people I trust and I suspect there are many more than fundamentalist yellers would have you believe.)

But I'm not sure I would buy a used car from this woman. If that were possible and I did, I would take along a big hairy smelly male chauvenist mechanic who farts and picks his nose in public to evaluate it for me just to irritate her. I would probably make sure he's white, too.

Michael

[jts]

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (Global Capitalism Run Amok)

No, not global capitalism run amok. It is terrorism.

Who is terrorism? Not clearly defined. It is some vague thing that people are afraid of and they don't know what it is. It is mostly fiction invented by your government. To the extent that it is real, it is caused mostly by your government. The Patriot Act is terrorism. The TSA is terrorism. Being prosecuted by law for growing a garden on your own property is terrorism.

The purpose of fiction terrorism is to make excuses to take away your freedom. For example TSA has nothing to do with security. TSA is about slave training. The Patriot Act is not for the purpose of protecting you; it is for the purpose of taking away your freedom. Home Security is not about security.

[caroljane]

As if things weren't bad enough jts, I read today that the habitat of great apes such as chimps and bonobos is shrinking alarmingly, I hope your bunker is well stocked when they come swarming in from Africa.