America and Ike picked up some different ideas while fighting the Nazis- Not all were good

This is just my opinion based on facts and different scenarios and situations that happened in post-war America, so please don't jump on me. I just think its interesting to see all the parallels in these two governments.

In some ways, not as extreme or overt, it almost seemed as if America picked up where the Nazis left off in some areas (of course not in crimes against humanity or persecution of the Jewish population).

Firstly, we picked up the Communist Crusade in terms of the Cold War and in the different proxy wars and small conflicts that we fought in, all in the name of defeating Communism.

Secondly, the CIA and the national security establishment has operated then and now in a very police-state, Fascist way in terms of: Domestic spying (The CIA extensively ran secret domestic operations when it was specifically NOT in their purpose) such as mail-opening, wire-tapping, tracking of suspected "subversives," propaganda, psychological warfare and experiments for interrogation techniques, political assassinations both abroad and at home, assassinations in general, coups in other countries--- meddling in other country's affairs, rigging other country's elections and installing and supporting hard-right Nationalist, Fascist regimes to oppose the Communists.

Thirdly, America's economy, especially now is more "corporatism" as Mussolini described it, than ever. Corporatism, state capitalism, monopoly capitalism-- whatever you want to call it, is running rampant in this country, which goes back to the New Deal. The biggest, richest corporations have the politicians in their pockets, all the subsidies, regulations, government intervention, but the property is still private and the businessmen are making profits as was in the major Fascist states. These giant corporations function in the benefit of both themselves and the government, which was a key to fascist economics.

Instead of the overt "Occupied Europe" It seemed like every country that wasn't a major power (and even the major powers had CIA and KGB covert meddling as well) was covertly occupied by either the USA and the Soviet Union in the form of the CIA and KGB, where both powers swayed and directed the governments and countries in the interests of America or Russia. That goes back to the point I made about the CIA.

And as a minor detail, when Ike was elected the country became a lot more right-wing conservative, conformist, controlled, obeying to authority, etc., and the government was pushing nuclear bomb scares and having young kids get under their desks regularly in school drills, and all the negative propaganda directed at Communism and the Russians, even though now we know there wasn't a real threat of that happening and the government knew it too.

Just some points to show how America has drifted towards Fascism in the post-war period.

 

It wasn't fighting the Nazis. We have been progressively going down this track since our beginnings.

1.) There has, since day one, been a struggle as to how much power the Federal Government would have. Each time the states surrendered more power and autonomy to the Federal Government (many times necessarily) authoritarianism has increased. This greatly accelerated post Civil War and received a further boost once we became a real actor on the world stage post Spanish American War.
2.) We have long fought proxy and small wars, the enemy and the location just changes. Most times in the name of trade or in support of American Companies (now corporations). Our ideological war with the Soviets started immediately post-Russian revolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

Fear and distrust of communism has been there since the beginning. One example. Marine Officer Evans Carlson, of 2d Marine Raiders fame, had served a time with the Chinese Communists fighting the Japanese pre-WWII and adopted some of their tactics and rumored some of their philosophy. He was actually investigated for supposed "pro-communist" leanings and his Marine Corps career might have been derailed except for his close relationship with FDR. Carlson had served as the XO of the Marine Detachment at Warm Springs, the "alternate Whitehouse" and became a friend of the President and his son. His fellow officers distrusted him to a degree because of his rumored communist sympathies. David Shoup, Medal of Honor, Tarawa once even made the statement about Carlson, "He may be red, but he's not yellow." So America's and the west in generals anti-communist stance pre-dates the formation of the Nazi party.

American foreign policy and government in general has long been an extension of American business interests. Our first foreign intervention as a new country took place in 1801 under President Thomas Jefferson in order to protect US merchant shipping intrests. The first time the American flag was raised over foreign territory was during the same war in 1805 when US Marine Presley O'Bannon at the head of eight US Marines and a small mercenary army captured the capital at Derna, Tripoli and overthrew the government. We've long meddled in foreign politics. What about the various 19th century and early 20th century interventions in China?
Ever heard of Smedley Butler? He was heavily involved in the "Banana Wars" (1898-1934) among other US interventions and meddling in other nations internal politics. Here is a quote of his; "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

So you see corporate involvement in US international affairs is far from a new thing.

And where did you come up with this? ...and all the negative propaganda directed at Communism and the Russians, even though now we know there wasn't a real threat of that happening and the government knew it too." Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and post-Cold War, access to Russian archives and information from numerous former Soviet, higher ups, has provided information supporting, not discrediting that the "Red Threat" was real and not just a "Red Scare". KGB operations, funding, guidance and instigation within internal US politics, various plots, etc. has now been documented as true in the majority of cases.

"For decades, these contentious questions formed the fault line of American politics. Yet, for all the sound and the fury, the debate over these issues reflected opinion rather than fact, ideology rather than evidence, because the pertinent documents remained classified. With the end of the Cold War, scholars have been able to examine recently declassified documents from American and Communist archives, which reveal that a significant number of those accused of Communist affiliations and espionage were indeed members of an American Communist Party subsidized by Moscow and recruited into its network of agents and sources. More than a few of them penetrated the top echelons of the U.S. government, including high-level positions in the departments of State and Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, White House, Congress and Manhattan (atomic bomb) Project." -Dr. Rorin M. Platt, review of "The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era"

Other declassified documents and access to high level persons from within the former Soviet Union has revealed post-Cold War, that the US and the Soviets managed to stumble right to the brink of nuclear war on an alarming number of occasions and we were at times much closer to destroying one another than the public was ever aware of.

 

When I made that comment about no real threat, I was talking about them detonating a hydrogen bomb on American soil during the time when they had schoolchildren hiding under their desks every day, because of mutual destruction, destroying the planet, and the fact that we were superior in regards to weapons in that time frame. I know they had spies and all sorts of operations to subvert certain government areas.

 

Here is just one of many instances, where we almost went to nuclear war:

"on October 27th, (1962) an American destroyer detected the Soviet submarine B-59. Practice depth charges were dropped near the submarine in order to force it to surface. The captain of the submarine ordered the submarine’s nuclear tipped torpedoes to be readied for firing in retaliation. However, to be allowed to fire, the ship’s captain, political officer and second in command all had to agree on this. Only the second in command, Vasili Arkhipov, was against the launch, but that was enough. He vetoed the launch and managed to persuade the captain to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow, therefore averting nuclear war."

This particular instance was during the era you are referring to when you stated;

There are numerous others.

 

Your right about America well before the Nazis... I read that quote by Butler before, and there is the example of the push into the Western Frontier and Manifest Destiny. We slaughtered, wiped out, killed, and put the Indians on reservations (concentration camps), we took Texas by slaughtering Mexico. The Nazis used those two examples when trying to justify to us their actions. Manifest Destiny was kind of Nazi-like, in a way. The superior feeling and the-- right to do what we want because we are better--mindset.

 

That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, correct?

 

At the time of the Crisis, the heads of state sure didn't want to start a Nuclear Holocaust. JFK was against it and so was Kruschev... He was even crying because he thought something happened during that period that was gonna provoke American to launch attacks.

 

Not many know this, but the 1801 figure is wrong.

the first salute to the American flag was made earlier when the Dutch at St Eustatius answered a salute from the Andrew Doria in 1776.

Sint Eustatius was the most important place for dealing or smuggling with Americans. On 16 November 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, the American navy ship USS Andrew Doria, with theAmerican Declaration of Independence on board, arrived in St. Eustatius. Its captain fired a salute to the Dutch flag on Fort Oranje and Johannes de Graaff decided to answer the salute with eleven gun shots. And so the United States of America were for the first time recognized as a nation by this salute of eleven guns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_de_Graaff

 

So what is your point in all this?

People like to point out America's policy towards the Indians frequently, but the Indian tribes butchered each other with equal enthusiasm long before the pale-faced pony soldiers arrived on the scene. That fact is conveniently forgotten. We were just the biggest of the tribes (of English, French, Spanish, etc) that moved west like the plague. Organization was the key to success in many instances.

Texas was an independent nation when it petitioned for US statehood in 1845. We beat the current day south west (look up the Mexican Cession) out of Mexico fair and square, and gave Mexico $15,000,000 for it's troubles afterwards. Mexican losses were in the neighborhood of 16,000 (yes, a bad neighborhood if you lived there), and US losses were just over 13,000 (not a nice place either). Of course most of these losses were to sickness and disease, not actual combat, but that's the way wars worked back then. That and poor record keeping. So it wasn't really much of a slaughter like you claim. A good ole fashioned thrashing maybe. The US Civil War was more of a slaughter. I've also read in the past that the US feared that Great Britain was going to try to seize the area of the Mexican Cession, so we just beat them to the punch so to speak. A pre-emptive strike if you will. Better US than them regardless.

So. Manifest Destiny was good for the US, and not so good for those who stood in our way. But then again, that's how things have always gone since the caveman wars way back when. Throwing around your claims of similarities of Nazi-like aspirations can be associated with just about any nation's expansions all through history. Sad but true.

Regardless, it sure did work out well for us in the long run, to put it jingoistic-ally of course.

 

Saying as in post 1 that the US were a police-state and that the security services were(are?) using fascist methods is ridiculous,it is also proving that one has no notion about what a police state is,about what fascism was .

 

That's a good way to put it.

 

How is the 1801 figure wrong? We're talking different things:

This was the United States first Foreign Intervention.

This is the first time, 1805, that we raised the flag of the United States over foreign territory. Perhaps I should have phrased it "foreign soil", because technically......

I don't dispute that the first "salute" was as you state, but then again I never addressed the "first salute". Secondly, ships and embassies are considered soverign territory of their owning nations so flying the flag over the them is actually over soverign territory. So, technically, the way I phrased the response, "The first time the American flag was raised over foreign territory.." was ambiguous and should have been "soil". I would imagine that "the first raising over foreign territory", technically was the first time it was raised over a captured enemy vessel, though I have no clue when or which vessel that may have been.

I will file your bit of trivia away for my future use as the first time the American Flag was saluted, and as the first time we were recognized by a foreign power. I was not aware of this incident. The Wikipedia entry is in error however when it states, "the United States of America were for the first time recognized as a nation". We were not the "United States" in 1776 but thirteen seperate colonies.

 

I think you are having translation issues

 

Damnit! Here we go again. Jughead is correct, I do think it is probabaly translation issues. Now, I'll become your signature line again. :headbonk:

 

I'm not saying that the US is a police-state/national security state... I'm saying they picked up and have used tactics and methods used by Fascist states of the 20th century, especially the CIA (Capitalism's Invisible Army). And you cannot deny that since 9/11 and the Patriot Act/Dept. of Homeland Security our civil liberties and privacy are even more under the gun.

 

I find the entire premise full of holes.

I agree that we are veering towards a state with far too much control. However, the biggest leaps have not been under right wing control, but under the left. The Patriot Act (to put a name on the biggest leap in our lifetimes) was a bipartisan vote, but it wasn't until the current left-wing administration that through the NSA it was expanded into spying on all US citizens, and the citizens of friendly nations. It was under this administration that the IRS has become a tool of political control, punishing the opposition while rewarding supporters.

I see no easy solutions here, but I know that blaming one party over another is fruitless.

 

The survival of the nation is demanding that the average citizen will give up some of his privacy .You will have to live with it .

 

I could care less either way, I'm just pointing out similarities and think its interesting... And the CIA's action alone in the 1950s and 1960s under the right-wing conservative Ike and beyond, all the political and non-political assassinations and black operations, operation MK-Ultra, domestic spying programs and black operations, meddling and overthrowing other country's governments, rigging elections, setting up Fascist Nationalist regimes with secret police to suppress and torture the populace i.e. Iran, Guatemala, Chile to name a few.

 

If given a choice between survival of the nation and survival of my basic liberties, I'll choose liberty.

 

I agree, Ben Franklin had it right when he said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."