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Published on: 12/4/2007
Last Visited: 12/4/2007
by: Naomi Wolf
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This "fascist shift" in progress urgently requires correction, and Naomi Wolf's clarion call to action, The End of America, is a reasoned plea to the general public.
When fascism develops, it does so with slow interlocking steps, until citizen rights have been so blunted that the finalizing, rapid changes cannot be opposed.All such regimes work to accomplish the same ten preparatory objectives, says Wolf, and each one rates a chapter here, including secret prisons, broad surveillance, and equating dissent with treason.A particular cause for concern is the quiet expansion of private armies, such as North Carolina-based Blackwater USA, which acts with legal immunity and low accountability.
As illustrations, Wolf revisits the trademarked tactics of infamous authoritarian governments: Pinochet's desaparecidos, Mussolini's Blackshirts, prisoner abuse in Stalin's Soviet Union, and China's ongoing information controls.
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A social critic associated with the third wave of feminism, Wolf first made an international splash with her book, The Beauty Myth, about how the media's placement of women on a fashion pedestal actually diminishes them emotionally.Wolf also served as an advisor to Vice President Al Gore prior to the 2004 election.
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Cautious of polarizing, Wolf insists that only the united and nonpartisan action of the citizenry can halt the march toward irreversible dictatorship, for the next president will inherit these current, easily-abused powers of persecution-a danger regardless of party affiliation.