I just finished reading The War on Freedom by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and was deeply impressed by a quote in the book from Jim Garrison, who was played by Kevin Costner in the profoundly impactful Oliver Stone movie JFK. I thought it’s worth quoting word by word:
“What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly eroding into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it’s based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the State. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and the Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.
In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you cannot spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You cannot look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzs; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We’re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn’t the test. The test is: What happens to the individuals who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here the process is more subtle, but the end results are the same. I’ve learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in…I’ve always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government’s basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I’ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said: “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism”. I’m afraid, based on my own long experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.”
