Bananamerica in ten easy steps

Naomi Wolf has an article in today’s Guardian entitled Fascist America, in 10 easy steps, which lists ten things governments generally do when turning a country from a democracy to a dictatorship. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a comparison between Bush’s America and fascism (see this animation with fourteen characteristics of a fascist state which, it is argued, the USA under Bush clearly displays), but although Wolf refers to other types of dictatorship, including military and communist ones, using the term “fascist” prominantly misses the point. There have been plenty of countries, particularly in the third world, which have slipped into dictatorship by steps similar to those Wolf outlines - there are several countries in the Middle East right now which have fake democracies with freedoms curtailed by “states of emergency” which have lasted decades. Screaming fascism leads people to retreat to a misguided sense of security; what the USA - and, to a lesser extent, other western countries - show signs of relapsing into is the state of a miserable third-world banana republic. (More: Lenin’s Tomb.)

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