My wife found this the other day on one of the boards she frequents. I thought it was worth posting as points to ponder.
For instance, you might be a fascist if…
1.
You are obsessed with national power and pride, and believe your
country doesn’t have to follow the rules and shouldn’t ever apologize
for doing things that are wrong. You think your nation can do whatever
it wants.
2. You believe in the rule of the few, election
rigging, political decisions being made by a select group of officials
behind closed doors, embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of
political power, arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties, and little
tolerance for meaningful opposition.
3. You believe in
survival of the fittest, an every man for himself mentality that causes
you to believe that poor people and sick people are weak and must be
punished. You think rich people are strong because they are wealthy and
that they should rule us. You also believe your race is superior to
all others.
4. You use the media as a political
propaganda machine to target a specific audience and to push your
agenda on others. You make sure the media demonizes your opponents and
takes your side on nearly every issue. You use your propaganda machine
to play on the fears of others.
5. You are obsessed with
security, and war. You feed this obsession by spending trillions of
dollars building up a large military force and are willing to sacrifice
domestic programs your people count on to keep your military huge. You
start unnecessary and costly wars and you are paranoid of other
nations.
6. You are driven to indoctrinate others into
your way of thinking. So much so, that you try to re-write history,
change the way school children are taught and you brainwash the
ignorant. You use your propaganda machine as a tool to achieve this.
7.
You fear and demonize intelligent people who have a higher education
because they are the ones who can thwart your effort to brainwash
people. You then attempt to prevent others from achieving a higher
education because you want the people as ignorant as possible so you can
convince them that your way is the right way.
8. You
have a deep hatred and fear of communists and you instill your
followers with hatred and fear of others by accusing your political
opponents of being communists. This gives you an easy scapegoat to blame
when things go wrong. Any person or policy you don’t like is branded
as communism.
9. You disrespect women and think their
place is in the home. You believe women are weak and cannot do things
that men do. You believe that sexual harassment or assault is no big
deal and that the only thing women are good for is cooking meals and
having babies.
10. You strongly align yourself with
corporations and you support corporate money and influence in
government. You despise government regulations that keep corporations
honest because you believe everything should be controlled by the free
market and that corporations should be allowed to do whatever they
please.
11. You are obsessed with Christianity. You seek
to declare a Christian State and to impose religious laws on all the
people across the country and the world. You believe other religions
are inferior and that those who practice them should either be
converted or destroyed.
12. You believe your race is
superior and seek to disenfranchise or humiliate other races. You
believe in legalized discrimination and fantasize about a return to
times when the races were separate or when those of color were
enslaved. You use code words in an attempt to hide your racism and you
make laws that weaken the influence of those of color. Immigration and
voting laws in particular.
13. You absolutely despise
unions. To you and those like you, labor unions represent the
empowerment of workers. Since you believe corporations can do whatever
they want, you see organized labor as a threat because they fight for
higher wages, health care, safety regulations, less hours, vacations,
sick days, and holidays off. This obviously threatens the amount of
money corporations can give to you and your cause so you brand unions
as proponents of socialism and make laws that severely weaken them so
that corporations can have a cheap, mindless labor force.
14.
You are obsessed with crime and a major supporter of punishing those
who commit crimes. So much so, that you don’t care about the concept of
‘innocent until proven guilty.’ You are proud of executing people and
aren’t bothered if an innocent person is killed. You seek to make
harsher laws, especially laws that target specific groups of people such
as immigrants, women, and people of color. You also oppose Miranda
rights and using humane interrogation tactics and you seek to undermine
the independent judiciary.
15. You believe every
election should go your way and to reach that goal, you push voting
laws that disenfranchise those who traditionally vote for opponents
such as people of color, the elderly, college students, and the poor.
You even stoop to fixing elections in some cases and complain when your
opponents challenge the vote counts.
16. You believe in
rewarding your friends with positions when you gain power and you
reward those who support you with government contracts and money,
especially corporations. You also do your best to aid your supporters
in any way you can, such as repealing undesirable pieces of legislation
and regulations. You often have something to gain financially from
this.
17. You create scapegoats to blame when problems
arise. Whether it’s communists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, the
poor, or non-Christians, one thing is for certain. You and your
propaganda tool will blame each and every one of those groups for bad
things that happen even if you were the cause of the problems in the
first place.
18. You take advantage of a national
disaster such as an economic collapse or an attack to demonize your
opponents and push your agenda. You use these events to strike fear
into the population in an attempt to scare people into voting for you
and your cause. It’s all about fear and scare tactics.
I'll add to this my own little pet peeve:
I don't have a problem with patriots. I admire REAL patriots. What I have a problem with are people who call themselves "patriots". It's like calling yourself a hero or telling the world you're a saint. Some things are better left for other people to say about you. There are some things which, when you say them about yourself, smack of hubris and arrogance.
