An
Iron Fist In A Velvet Glove
By
Ted Rall
05 January,
2008
Tedrall.com
-NEW
YORK--What would you do if you learned that Bush Administration
officials wanted to round up thousands of Americans and throw them into
concentration camps?
For all we
know, there is no slippery slope. It's entirely possible that extraordinary
rendition, eliminating habeas corpus, and the torture camps at Guantánamo
and elsewhere are exactly what the government says they are--tools for
fighting terrorists, not domestic political opponents. But how likely
is it?
History is
clear: Over and over again, the U.S. government places fascists in powerful
positions. Once in office, they exploit wars and national tragedies
to roll back hard-won freedoms. They're Democrats as well as Republicans.
As has happened
with increasing frequency in recent years, another blockbuster story
revealing the anti-democratic impulse within the top echelon of the
U.S. government has appeared and vanished overnight. According to Cold
War-era files declassified last week, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly
advised President Harry Truman to arrest "all individuals potentially
dangerous" to national security, jail them in military prisons
and try them before kangaroo tribunals that "will not be bound
by the rules of evidence."
"For
a long period of time the FBI has been accumulating the names, identities
and activities of individuals found to be potentially dangerous to the
internal security through investigation," Hoover wrote in a 1950
memo. "These names have been compiled in an index, which index
has been kept up to date."
Capitalizing
on anti-communist hysteria at the start of the Korean War, Hoover asked
Truman to preemptively detain 12,000 people, 97 percent of them American
citizens, in order to "protect the country against treason, espionage
and sabotage."
Hoover was
a lunatic. Truman ought to have fired him on the spot. Instead, in September
1950 Congress took his advice and passed a law authorizing the detention
of "dangerous radicals" if the president declared a national
emergency. Truman signed it. In fact, he declared such an emergency
three months later. No one knows why, but the president never actually
followed through with mass arrests. Hoover's "subversives"--people
suspected of left-wing political sympathies--remained free. He was wrong.
There were no acts of sabotage.
It wasn't
the first time the government went "crazy."
Between 1919
and 1921 the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor of the FBI) carried
out the Palmer Raids, named for Alexander Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney
general. The BOI rounded up 10,000 lefties, anarchists and foreigners
on a list compiled by a young J. Edgar Hoover, then in charge of the
Justice Department's General Intelligence Division. Many were tortured.
Five hundred fifty were deported.
Palmer's
clampdown accomplished nothing. On September 16, 1920, a bomb attributed
to anarchists went off on Wall Street, killing 38 people and wounding
over 400.
Crazy...like
a fox.
During the
1960s and 1970s the CIA--in violation of its charter, which limits the
agency to acting overseas--cooperated with local police departments
across the country to compile a list of 300,000 Americans and organizations
suspected of opposing the Vietnam War.
On April
6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive
No. 52. Reagan targeted 400,000 people for arrest and confinement at
concentration camps in mothballed Army bases. The National Security
Council's "secret government within a government," as Congressional
investigators later described it, planned to cancel the 1984 presidential
election so Reagan could remain in office indefinitely.
"Lt.
Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan
to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such
as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national
opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad," The Miami Herald
reported on July 5, 1987.
People who
hate The People never sleep. In 2006 Congress passed the National Defense
Authorization Act, which overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878,
which prohibited the use of combat troops on the soil of the United
States. For the first time in 128 years, the president can declare martial
law in case of a hurricane, riot or terrorist attack. In May 2007 Bush
attached a National Security Presidential and Homeland Directive to
the National Defense Authorization Act. In case of a "national
emergency"--the president could declare it without consulting anyone--he
could suspend the Constitution and appoint an unelected provisional
government under a "national continuity coordinator."
To an optimist,
America's brushes with fascism seem like comforting evidence that the
system works. Despite it all, even taking into account grotesqueries
such as the concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during World
War II, the First Amendment remains in force. Few Americans feel threatened
by government tyranny. Few worry about getting shot by trigger-happy
soldiers or being detained in concentration camps (unless they're flood
victims in New Orleans).
So why does
a democracy need fascist schemes like Reagan's Rex-84 Alpha Explan (a
FEMA plan to put American protesters against a planned war against Nicaragua
into camps)? Because American democracy is an iron fist in a velvet
glove, a glove that's becoming increasingly transparent.
Threats of
repression are rarely carried out. They don't need to be.
If potential
opponents are afraid, there's little need for concentration camps. The
threat of repression (and actual crackdowns, explained away as exceptional
excesses and brushed off with a token apology) creates a chilling effect
on people who might pick up a rock instead of a sign.
A dog doesn't
have to bite everyone every day to earn a fearsome reputation. Mount
cameras all over the place, and you don't need to have anyone actually
watching on the other side.
In a country
whose legal framework authorizes the government to kidnap, torture and
murder them, opponents of U.S. policy must decide whether getting out
of line--anything from a letter to the editor to direct action--is worth
the risk of getting kidnapped, tortured and murdered.
Ted
Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is
Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic
novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. www.tedrall.com
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.