Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Chris Hedges calls "fascism"

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, said in a written statement about the released files: “This production [of information], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.
The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent. Anyone who defies corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within constitutional rights, is a suspect. These documents are part of the plan to make us fearful, compliant and disempowered. They mark, I suspect, a government attempt to end peaceful mass protests by responding with repression to the grievances of Americans. When the corporate-financed group FreedomWorks bused in goons to disrupt Democratic candidates’ town hall meetings about the federal health care legislation in August 2009, Eric Zuesse of the Business Insider notes, “there was no FBI surveillance of those corporate-organized disruptions of legitimate democratic processes. There also were no subsequent FreedomWorks applications for Freedom of Information Act releases of FBI files regarding such surveillance being used against them—because there was no such FBI campaign against them.”
The combination of intimidation tactics by right-wing fringe groups, which speak in the language of violence and hate, with the state’s massive intrusion into the personal affairs of the citizen is corporate fascism. And we are much farther down that road than many of us care to admit. [emphasis added]
Truthdig
Chris Hedges: New Documents on Activist Surveillance May Be "Just the Tip of the Iceberg"
Chris Hedges | News Analysi
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

4 comments:

marris said...

typo in title: should be Chris Hedges

Tom Hickey said...

Thanks, marris.

paul meli said...

Quickly moving beyond Fascism Lite™

Tom Hickey said...

Yes, some of this at the interface between soft and hard fascism, and for some people it is already hard. This has been the case for a long while outside the US in covert ops and also within the US wrt the "underclass," read non-whites. Now it is moving up to the middle-class.