CHRIS HEDGES: The Machinery of Terror

   

The Machinery of Terror

The Trump administration is consolidating the familiar machinery of terror of all authoritarian states. We must resist now. If we wait, it will be too late.

Chris Hedges

Jan 11, 2026

The Missing Link - by Mr. Fish

I have seen the masked goons who terrorize our streets before. I saw them during the “Dirty War” in Argentina, where 30,000 men, women and children were “disappeared” by the military junta. Victims were held in secret prisons, savagely tortured and murdered. To this day, many families do not know the fate of their loved ones.

Ukraine: The media has the right to inform

 

Ukraine: The media has the right to inform 

The Fascist practice of Censorship of Russian sources has backfired. Readers and viewers are flocking to hear the context of the story

 

Story? More like a tragedy. Members of my family were the victims of Fascism during the Second World War and the scenes of Fascists wearing Swastikas parading through the streets of Ukraine and videos of Fascists wearing Swastikas torturing Russian-speaking kids bring up those images again flashing before our eyes of young Jewish, gypsy, black boys or boys from the families of Communists entering a concentration camp healthy and three months later looking wasted, sullen and defeated. Those of us who have visited concentration camps remember that look which should never show in any child’s eyes anywhere. We see that look among Ukrainian children saying goodbye to Daddy. We see the same images of children in Donbass with the same look. Is one more important than the other? Or more mediatic than the other because someone decided to take sides?

 

These Donbass images are not shown on western media sources, neither is RT or Sputnik broadcasting in the European Union which has adopted a fascist policy of censorship of Russian sources while Facebook and other social media outlets are doing a frantic job of suppressing pages and while Google does a frantic job of cleaning material from the Internet.

 

Fascism is not only skin deep today

 

And the result of this? The Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Melnyk, who has made it clear in public that he supports the Azov Battalion and supported Bandera, a criminal pedophile torturer and murderer who collaborated with the Nazis and whose gangs hacked little children to pieces. Anyone saying that they support Bandera should be locked away in a psychiatric prison and the same goes for the Azov Battalion. An Ambassador saying that means that the worship of Fascists and Fascism is much more than skin deep. How much of a growing problem is this?

 

And if it is a growing problem, we want to know. So what does the European Union do? It censors out Russian sources, while websites and webpages are closed or blocked or become victims of cyber terrorist attacks, journalists are assailed with death threats and material is removed from the Net. This is the latest Fascist fetish: remove videos and photographic evidence then when presented with the fact, the reply is “Prove it!”

 

Is the censorship policy working?

 

Eric Zuesse -- The Victory America Won for Fascism and Nazism After WW II

 The Victory America Won for Fascism and Nazism After WW II

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture, updated here

INTRODUCTION

This article is about the role ideology actually played in World War II, the Cold War, and plays in today’s world. The links here provide access to deeper explorations, regarding each linked issue. Links are provided instead of notes, because all of the sources here are freely available online, and because in the digital era (as we now are) notes are archaic except when a source is not available online. Readers who are interested in the documentation at any point can instantaneously access that in the article’s online version simply by clicking onto the link. Readers who aren’t interested in ideology won’t be interested in understanding that the U.S. is now a certain type of fascist country, as is to be documented and explained in this article, which starts by discussing Hitler’s ideology, because some — but obviously not all — aspects of it became the U.S. Government’s ideology virtually the moment when U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 and was immediately replaced by Harry S. Truman.

THE HISTORY

Hyperinflation, Fascism and War: How the New World Order May Be Defeated Once More by MATTHEW EHRET

 

Hyperinflation, Fascism and War: How the New World Order May Be Defeated Once More

• by MATTEHRET
 
• POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2020

While the world’s attention is absorbed by tectonic shifts unfolding across America as “a perfect storm” of civil war, and military coup threatens to undo both the elections and the very foundations of the republic itself, something very ominous has appeared “off of the radar” of most onlookers. This something is a financial collapse of the trans-Atlantic banks that threatens to unleash chaos upon the world. It is this collapse that underlies the desperate efforts being made by the neo-con drive for total war with Russia, China and other members of the growing Mutlipolar Alliance today.

In recent articles, I have mentioned that the Bank of England-led “solution” to this oncoming financial blowout of the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble is being pushed under the cover of a “Great Global Reset” which is an ugly and desperate effort to use COVID-19 as a cover for the imposition of a new post-covid world order operating system. Since the new “rules” of this new system are very similar to the 1923 Bank of England “solution” to Germany’s economic chaos which eventually required a fascist governance mechanism to impose it onto the masses, I wish to take a deeper look at the causes and effects of Weimar Germany’s completely un-necessary collapse into hyperinflation and chaos during the period of 1919-1923.

In this essay, I will go further to examine how those same architects of hyperfinflation came close to establishing a global bankers’ dictatorship in 1933 and how that early attempt at a New World Order was fortunately derailed through a bold fight which has been written out of popular history books.

We will investigate in depth how a major war broke out within America led by anti-imperial patriots in opposition to the forces of Wall Street and London’s Deep State and we will examine how this clash of paradigms came to a head in 1943-1945.

Eric Zuesse -- Why A Second American Revolution Is Necessary For The Entire World

 Zuesse: Why A Second American Revolution Is Necessary For The Entire World

by Tyler Durden

Sun, 12/01/2019 - 23:30

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

On November 11th, the very disturbing but clearly true “Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia” was posted to the Web. That anonymous author (a German intelligence analyst) documented the evilness of the overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the threat now clearly posed to the world by the US regime — a spreading cancer of expansionist fascism, led from Washington. But, even more than this, he indicated that unless the individuals who are responsible for the advancing fascism are executed, there won’t be any real hope for democracy anywhere in the world.

Either this impunity will stop, or else the spread of the US international dictatorship — not only by CIA coups such as this, but by illegal international invasions such as of Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, and Yemen 2015-, —  will continue and will engulf in misery ultimately the entire world. He makes clear the complicity of US ‘news’-media in the lies that ‘justify’ this coup (and ‘justified’ those invasions). It’s, by now, clearly the way the US regime functions. Of course, none of those media will publish any such truth; they all cover-up constantly for the regime, because they actually are an essential part of it. (All of these invasions and coups are based on nothing but lies, and the media are a necessary part of that.) Censorship in America is thus actually extreme, and constant.

For example: how many US-and-allied media have even reported that fascists took over in Bolivia?

ERIC ZUESSE -- Why a Second American Revolution Is Necessary for the Entire World

La Paz, Bolivia

Why a Second American Revolution Is Necessary for the Entire World

Eric Zuesse

December 1, 2019

© Photo: Flickr / Matthew Straubmuller

On November 11th, the very disturbing but clearly true “Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia” was posted to the Web. That anonymous author (a German intelligence analyst) documented the evilness of the overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the threat now clearly posed to the world by the US regime — a spreading cancer of expansionist fascism, led from Washington. But, even more than this, he indicated that unless the individuals who are responsible for the advancing fascism are executed, there won’t be any real hope for democracy anywhere in the world. Either this impunity will stop, or else the spread of the US international dictatorship — not only by CIA coups such as this, but by illegal international invasions such as of Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, and Yemen 2015-, —  will continue and will engulf in misery ultimately the entire world. He makes clear the complicity of US ‘news’-media in the lies that ‘justify’ this coup (and ‘justified’ those invasions). It’s, by now, clearly the way the US regime functions. Of course, none of those media will publish any such truth; they all cover-up constantly for the regime, because they actually are an essential part of it. (All of these invasions and coups are based on nothing but lies, and the media are a necessary part of that.) Censorship in America is thus actually extreme, and constant.

LARRY ROMANOFF -- The Short Road: Democracy to Fascism

The Short Road: Democracy to Fascism

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, November 30, 2019

Region: USA

Theme: History

Fascism is a political ideology fundamentally authoritarian in character, with a strong nationalism and an essentially belligerent militaristic outlook. Fascism carries primarily a corporate perspective as opposed to a socialist view, directed to satisfying the needs, values and objectives of finance and corporations, organising both the economy and the political system according to this agenda.

A fascist government actively suppresses any objection to its ideology and typically will crush any movement which opposes it. In keeping with their belligerent nature, fascist governments generally view violence and war as stimulants to national spirit and vitality.

Being politically Right-Wing, they maintain their position through firm control or compliance of the media, and most often engage in a vast array of lies and deception. These governments tend to be bigoted, if not racist, invariably require “enemies” to achieve public solidarity, and are often supremacist or at least ‘exceptional’ in their self-assessment. They either believe, or pretend to believe, that they have a license on truth. Large military budgets, the creation and demonisation of fictitious enemies to propagate fear and maintain population control, are all typical characteristics of a fascist regime, as is massive public surveillance.

In 1995 the Italian Scholar Umberto Eco produced a paper titled ‘Eternal Fascism’ (1) in which he examined the characteristics of fascist regimes. In 2003, Laurence W. Britt did an excellent and scholarly work in dissecting and categorising past fascist regimes (2), in which he revealed common threads that linked all of them in “patterns of national behavior and abuse of power”. He wrote that “Even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi, (which is) not a revelation … but useful … to shed needed light on current circumstances.” I am including here a composite of edited extracts from these two papers with additional commentary of my own. Significant statements by these two authors are in quotation marks. This is a list of the characteristics of fascist states, taken from Britt’s original article:

Early Warning Signs of Fascism

• Powerful and continuing nationalism
• Supremacy of the military
• Obsession with national security
• Obsession with crime and punishment
• Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
• Disdain for human rights
• Corporate power is protected while labor power is suppressed
• Controlled mass media
• Rampant cronyism and corruption
• Intertwined religion and government
• Fraudulent elections
• Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
• Rampant Sexism

If we examine the US on these categories, we find an almost perfect match. Certainly the US has the most strident nationalism of all nations today, with the hysteria of patriotism and flag-worship unabated and even increasing, with the delusional theory of American Exceptionalism as virulent as ever.

C.J. HOPKINS -- Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist

Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist

C.J. HOPKINS • NOVEMBER 19, 2019

OK, we need to talk about fascism. Not just any kind of fascism. A particularly insidious kind of fascism. No, not the fascism of the early 20th Century. Not Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. Not Hitler’s NSDAP. Not Francoist fascism or any other kind of organized fascist movement or party. Not even the dreaded Tiki-torch Nazis.

It’s the other kind of fascism we need to talk about. The kind that doesn’t come goose-stepping up the street waving big neo-Nazi flags. The kind we don’t recognize when we’re looking right at it.

It’s like that joke about the fish and the water … we don’t recognize it because we’re swimming in it. We’re surrounded by it. We are inseparable from it. From the moment we are born, we breathe it in.

We are taught it by our parents, who were taught it by their parents. We are taught it again by our teachers in school. It is reinforced on a daily basis at work, in conversations with friends, in our families and our romantic relationships. We imbibe it in books, movies, TV shows, advertisements, pop songs, the nightly news, in our cars, at the mall, the stadium, the opera … everywhere, because it is literally everywhere.

It doesn’t look like fascism to us. Fascism only looks like fascism when you’re standing outside of it, or looking back at it. When you are in it, fascism just looks like “normality,” like “reality,” like “just the way it is.”

We (i.e., Americans, Brits, Europeans, and other citizens of the global capitalist empire) get up in the morning, go to work, shop, pay the interest on our debts, and otherwise obey the laws and conform to the mores of a system of power that has murdered countless millions of people in pursuit of global-hegemonic dominance. It has perpetrated numerous wars of aggression. Its military occupies most of the planet. Its Intelligence agencies (i.e., secret police) operate a worldwide surveillance apparatus that can identify, target, and eliminate anyone, anywhere, often by remote control. Its propaganda network never sleeps, nor is there any real way to escape its constant emotional and ideological conditioning.

The fact that the global capitalist empire does not call itself an empire, and instead calls itself “democracy,” doesn’t make it any less of an empire. The fact that it uses terms like “regime change” instead of “invasion” or “annexation” makes very little difference to its victims. Terms like “security,” “stability,” “intervention,” “regime change,” and so on are not meant for its victims. They are meant for us … to anesthetize us.

The empire is “regime-changing” Bolivia currently. It has “regime-changed” most of Latin America at one time or another since the Second World War. It “regime-changed” Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Indonesia … the list goes on. It very much wants to “regime-change” Iran, which it “regime-changed” back in the 1950s, before the Iranians “regime-changed” it back. It would love to “regime-change” Russia and China, but their ICBMs make that somewhat impractical. Basically, the empire has been “regime-changing” everyone it can since the end of the Cold War. It has run into a little bump in Syria, and in Venezuela, but not to worry, it will get back there and finish up eventually.

Now, let’s be clear about this “regime-change” business. We’re talking about invading other people’s countries, and orchestrating and sponsoring coups, or otherwise overthrowing their governments, and murdering, torturing, and oppressing people. Sending in terrorists, death squads, and such. We have organizations that train guys to do that, i.e., to round people up, take them out to the jungle, or the woods, or wherever, rape the women, and then summarily shoot everyone in the head. We pay for this kind of thing with our taxes, and our investments in the global corporations that our militaries and intelligence agencies serve. We know this is happening. We can google this stuff. We know “where the trains are going,” as it were.