You do know, that America has been fascist for a long time already, right?

I've learned a lot this century, starting with our Reichstag Fire on 9-11-2001.

The degree of infiltration of actual Nazis and their ideas, into US power structures, seems quite a bit deeper than ... https://twitter.com/aronaya/status/1311118047084716032

... my fellow white left-leaners would like to believe. Leads to a lot of mismatched argumentation on the main FB news feed.

Time to fill the gap, will share this thread on my FB page ("Aronaya"). Will add to it over time. The intended audience is friends who are seeking.

World War II was a kind of historical bifurcation. The US mobilized after Pearl Harbor, beat back both the German and Japanese versions of militaristic racist fascism, and patted itself on the back for doing so. Certainly, my parents' generation...

...made great sacrifices, and deserved to feel proud of them.

I grew up in that milieu. TV shows and comic books glorified our great military. Sgt Rock, Combat, Where Eagles Dare, all that stuff.

No one ever told me that the Soviet Union lost 20-30 million of its people, ....

fighting the Nazi onslaught -- or, that Churchill and Roosevelt long delayed opening a second front, although Stalin pleaded with them for at least 2 years to do so, while Russia and surrounding lands were being decimated.

This carnage was convenient for the anti-communist...

West. I think it probably set the stage for the USSR's eventual collapse under relentless pressure from ongoing administrations in Washington.

We all applauded when the Berlin Wall came down. A good thing, we told each other. Well, yes, but...

...hold that thought. Let's go back, where many others have elucidated but still don't get listened to in the mainstream, where the debate is whether America is already "great" or if a strong man is needed to make it "great" again.

Those witnesses don't get heard on the ....

...presidential debate platform. The closer they are, and were, to the state-sanctioned violence throughout US history, the less willing is the mainstream to hear their voices.

Oh, the Blue side pretends a good game, but when it comes down to choosing leaders, ears are plugged.

So Biden bypasses BLM and advocates for MORE police funding. Scared of losing the racist vote.

Ahem, back on topic.

Keywords:

The Great Chain of Being
The Doctrine of Christian Discovery

I identify these concepts as roots of modern fascism.

They have great power, because they're unspoken in US society, at least by the white-dominated mainstream. They've always been unspoken; buried in Supreme Court precedent ever since Johnson v. McIntosh 1823.

I'm going to zoom through this, because I want to focus...

... on post-WWII manifestations of these ideas, so you don't think this is all "ancient history", and also because so many others have written and spoken eloquently on the topic, plus I'm white, descended from early settlers, and am still catching up.

I recommend...

... Steven Newcomb's work (Lenape); he's been digging in to the Doctrine since the 1980s.

Start here: http://originalfreenations.com 

I met him a couple years ago. He was bemused and gratified that I would tell my bus passengers about this topic during their trips with me.

So, for those unfamiliar, the Great Chain of Being was one of Aristotle's intellectual amusements, completely unconnected with physical reality. He posited that there was a hierarchy of power and worthiness, with the Gods at the top, then Man, then Woman, Child, Beasts, Plants,

Rocks. Each next higher level was somehow superior to all the ones below it. Ridiculous; the natural world makes no such value judgments.

Anyhoo, the medieval Church adopted and adapted this perverse notion, and replaced the Gods with the Holy Trinity, followed by angels, then

Man - by which they meant Christian Man. You can find medieval drawings and writings of this online. Don't take my word for it.

This justified all manner of atrocities, including witch-burnings and the Inquisition (about which many Catholics today are still in denial).

In the 15th century, this brutal, mistaken concept folded into three Papal Bulls (decrees) - Romani Pontifex, Dum Diversas, and Inter Cetera (I forget the order they appeared).

These decrees from the Vatican, combined with similar Church of England pronouncements, provided

the legal justification for European colonization. Together, they have become known as the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.

This doctrine denied the humanity of non-Christian peoples, and gave colonizers like Columbus leave to enslave, rape, murder and steal from Indigenous

people wherever they occupied land coveted by the Europeans.

And they did. Vast, worldwide, bloodshed, genocide and land taking ensued.

In this context, the United States came into being. Formed by revolution against Britain, one of their causes was the Crown refusal to

allow the colonists to settle West of the Appalachian Mountains, and to displace the people there that Britain had made an uneasy peace with.

Chattel slavery was going on as well. I don't know what could be more fascist in nature than that, other than the outright mass murder

of Indigenous people occupying coveted lands.

Between land theft and the free work energy extracted from enslaved people, the new United States had a perfect model for imperial expansion, if it were to be brutal enough to take the lands. And so, we did.

Our dominant Christian

society had to work very hard to justify this bloodsoaked brutality. Great edifices of myth-making ensued. Jesus became white. The resistance of the oppressed became seditious violence. American Innocence and Exceptionalism was born. Manifest Destiny was depicted as an angel.

Many of you know all this. I am speaking to the ones who are missing the connection between then and now, by linking this thread to my "Aronaya" FB page.

For most of my fellow white liberal/left folks, this history is understood in the abstract, but they have wishfully bought

into this myth of upward progress, that "arc of justice" nonsense they cherry pick from MLK. This myth mandates that were are better now than we were then.

I will show that, not only is this not true, it is not true in the most bloody ways possible.

To be fair, my white liberal friends were never taught myth-contradictory details in school.

Now, that excuse has worn thin. Incuriousness and credulity for official propaganda entails individual responsibility as well as collective.

But, it's rational, if not righteous, to

be fearful of learning things that undermine a comforting world view.

Such as, Democrats are the last hope to avoid fascism. Because, Putin. Sooo much damage done by this dominant liberal view.

What I have learned of the 20th century and US support for fascism, coming up.

(after a break of unknown duration)