I read Naomi Wolf's book before leaving on vacation, and marked many pages. It's a book worthy of jotting down a few thoughts on the blog. Wolf is an avowed progressive, but
one that conservatives can admire for her candor. Anyone can appreciate the warnings put forth in this book. Her premise:
There are ten steps that are taken in order to close down a democracy or crush a prodemocratic movement, whether by capitalists, communists, or right-wing fascists. These ten steps, together, are more than the sum of their parts. Once all ten have been put in place, each magnifies the power of the others and of the whole. Impossible as it may seem, we are seeing each of these ten steps taking hold in the United States today [2007]. (page 11)
What are the 10 steps?
- Invoke an external and internal threat
- Establish secret prisons
- Develop a paramilitary force
- Surveil ordinary citizens
- Infiltrate citizens' groups
- Arbitrarily detain and release citizens
- Target key individuals
- Restrict the press
- Cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason"
- Subvert the rule of law
She terms what she sees happening in America as a "fascist shift." By retracing the steps that took Germany, Italy, Russia, and other countries down the road to totalitarianism, she shows how simply and quickly it can happen. She notes just how tenuous our grip on liberty is:
We tend to think of American democracy as being somehow eternal, ever-renewable, and capable of withstanding all assaults. But the Founders would have thought we were dangerously naive, not to mention lazy, in thinking of democracy this way. This view -- which we see as patriotic -- is the very opposite of the view that they held. They would not have considered our attitude patriotic -- or even American: The Founders thought, in contrast, that it was tyranny that was eternal, ever-renewable, and capable of withstanding all assaults, whereas democracy was difficult, personally exacting, and vanishingly fragile. The Founders did not see Americans as being special in any way: They saw America -- that is, the process of liberty -- as special. (page 25)
. . . The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were set forth not as a flag flying merrily but as a bulwark: a set of barriers against what the Founders and their fellow countrymen and women saw as people's natural tendency to oppress others if their power is unchecked. (page 26)
. . . The authors of The Federalist Papers [Hamilton, Madison, Jay] . . . saw all people as corruptible and so set up the system to keep anyone from having unconfined power. It was a truism to the Revolutionary generation that if the fragile mechanism became unbalanced, American leaders too -- of course -- would revert to brutality. We are so removed from the tyranny that the nation's first patriots experienced personally that we have not only forgotten this crucial insight, forgotten to consider how obvious it was to the fathers and mothers of our country. (pp 28-29)
Of course, if we had not abandoned the doctrine of total depravity everyone would know this. Ironically, it's doubful Ms. Wolf would cater to that belief. Or maybe it's more ironic that a progressive would have to be the one to reteach us an appreciatin for this doctrine.
At times I felt the author failed to establish her point because perhaps she was rushing it to print. It takes the form of a letter to a young friend upon his taking the citizenship oath, and is fairly brief. This helps make it readable without getting bogged down in too much proof, but I felt she probably was taking some of her proofs from memory and sort of "piling on." A few times she alludes to something that goes unexplained. It would have also helped her case if she'd dug a little deeper in order to cite some conservative voices in support of her premise. I am confident they are there.
Frequently, she makes a statement about what was going on in America at the time the book was written -- 2007 -- that, given what has happened since then, strengthens her case or (at times) may weaken a point. For instance, on page 36, she says, "Free citizens will not give up freedom for very many reasons, but it is human nature to be willing to trade freedom for security." Then she goes on, "But we are not wracked by rioting in the streets or a major depression here in America today." What a difference a few years make! We've had a major financial meltdown and a protest movement known as Occupy has grown. Wonder what she would say now?
On page 109 she notes the various student uprisings around the world that have led to democratic reforms, but should she pin her hopes on American students? Academia in this country is so one-dimensional, so non-diverse in its thinking, that it's hard to believe universities could be considered bastions of freedom.
On page 116 she offers an example of media manipulation, supposedly by the Bush administration or conservatives in Congress, but what did she think of NPR's firing of Juan Williams?
A few pages later she worries about the "current of lies" in the information stream and the average person's difficulty sorting through all the messages. Does she have the same qualms now, in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and Wikileaks? I wonder what she wrote about the Arab spring. In fact, on page 151 she despairs of the treatment of activists in Egypt, but look what happened in Tahrir Square this past year!
Nevertheless, her warnings have resonance. One page 23 she recounts how people living under the threat of a fascist shift "adapt to fear through complicity. . . . [W]hen a minority of citizens is terrorized and persecuted, a majority live out fairly normal lives by stifling dissent within themselves and going along quietly with the state's acts of violent repression. . . .
[F]ascist regimes can be 'quite popular' for the people who are not being terrorized."
We should be concerned about point number six. It is a serious matter. From her current post as a writer for the UK's
Guardian,
Wolf reported on the striking down of a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – "which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial." US district judge Katherine Forrest declared "facially unconstitutional" language that the Bush administration initiated and the Obama administration perpetuated.
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