Quote: Naomi Wolf about the Fascist Shift in America

“Americans tend to see democracy and fascism as all-or-nothing categories. But it isn’t the case that there is a pure, static, ‘democracy’ in the white squares of a chessboard and a pure, static “fascism” in the black squares. Rather, there is a range of authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and varieties of Fascist state, just as there are stronger and weaker democracies – and waxing and waning democracies. There are many shades of gray on the spectrum from an open to a closed society. (s. 20p)
[…]
Throughout this letter of warning, I will use the term fascist shift. It is a wording that describes a process. Both Italian and German fascisms came to power legally and incrementally in functioning democracies; both used legislation, cultural pressure, and baseless imprisonment and torture to progressively consolidate power. Both directed state terror to subordinate and control the individual […] Both were rabidly antidemocratic, not as a side sentiment but as the basis of their ideologies; and yet both aggressively used the law to pervert and subvert the law.
[…]
When I talk about a ‘fascist shift’ in America, I am talking about an antidemocratic ideology that uses the threat of violence against the individual to subdue the institutions of civil society so that they in turn can be subordinate to the power of the state.”

Naomi Wolf (2007): “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot“, p. 21f.

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