The Frankfurter School

Naomi Wolf, the bestselling author of The Beauty Myth, has written a new book called The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Although I have not always always admired everything she has written over the years, in this book Wolf has made a very strong and powerful case about the state of our republic.

The book is a study of the conditions which create fascist societies and the processes by which democracies and open societies close down and become repressive regimes. She has examined the historical conditions in Italy at the birth of the fascist movement, in Nazi Germany, and repressive regimes in Indonesia, Nicaragua, Chile, Paraguay, and Guatemala, and she has identified commonalities in all of these places and found that many of the same things occurred each time on the journey from open to closed society. She has synthesized this process into a list of ten steps and then carefully lays out evidence that the United States has already undertaken some portion of all ten of these steps.

1. Invoke an External and Internal Threat
2. Establish Secret Prisons
3. Develop a Paramilitary Force
4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens
5. Infiltrate Citizens’ Groups
6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens
7. Target Key Individuals
8. Restrict the Press
9. Cast Criticism as “Espionage” and Dissent as “Treason”
10. Subvert the Rule of Law

Wolf links specific language and imagery used by the Bush regime to other oppressive regimes in history and makes a very strong case that explains seemingly unrelated and illogical ideas as part of one grand narrative of repression. She identifies ways we can fight this and calls upon true patriots to speak loudly in opposition to this pattern and prevent it from happening here.

It’s a compelling, frightening, and quick read.

The End of America (Chelsea Green Publishing) [Click for more information, and to purchase]