ISBN: 9781933392790 Year Added to Catalog: 2007 Book Format: Paperback Dimensions: 5 3/8in x 8 3/8in Number of Pages: 168 pages Book Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Old ISBN: 1933392797 Release Date: September 15, 2007
The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted November 21, 2007.
If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf's newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.
Wolf began by diving into the early years leading up to fascist regimes, like the ones led by Hitler and Mussolini. And the patterns that she found in those, and others all over the world, made her hair stand on end. In "The End of America," she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. "Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today," she writes.
If we want an open society, she warns, we must pay attention and we must fight to protect democracy.
I met with Wolf to discuss what she learned while researching this book, how the American public has received her warnings, and what we can do to squelch the fascist narratives we are fed in this country each day.
Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955
By Milton Mayer
But Then It Was Too Late
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
It is hard not to be cynical about a book titled as audaciously as Naomi Wolf's The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Throughout the Bush years, "America has gone to the dogs" titles have proliferated to the point they almost warrant their own section at the book store. Whatever their veracity, the cumulative effect of such books has been less to stir citizens to action than to dull them to arguments. In part, this is a result of the natural resistance most of us feel towards anything that sniffs of hyperbole -- something conservative commentators like William Kristol (and, in Australia, Gerard Henderson) have run with, positioning those who complain of stifled dissent as members of a hysterical far Left. In part, it's because the idea of a country as synonymous with liberty as the US shifting away from democracy is so foreign that we can't fully conceive it.
What makes The End of America remarkable is that Wolf manages to overcome these natural cynicisms, painting a picture of the US that is chilling without being overstated. The book is premised on the idea that the US is undergoing a "fascist shift". Few would feel comfortable comparing the behaviour of the Bush Administration, however condemnable, to Hitler's National Socialists -- but Wolf says her use of such terms is not "heated or even rhetorical" but "technical".
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
from BellaOnline.com
With the urgency of Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlets, Naomi Wolf issues a warning to a young patriot that democracy is fragile. That the democracy he expects to inherit is in the process of being altered forever. Wolf identifies the ten steps that must be taken to shut down democracy. She shows how those steps were implemented in dictatorships around the world and where America is in the process of meeting each of those steps. We take our liberty for granted. We think it eternal, unchanging. But our founders would be shocked, they would think us naive. They knew the abuses of the Crown. They knew how easily freedom could be lost.
Of Freedom and Fascism in America
From The Australian
October 5th, 2007
WHO'S afraid of Naomi Wolf? If her latest book keeps rising through the US bestseller lists, then the Bush administration should not just be afraid, but very afraid.
Wolf is calling for American citizens to rise up in a bloggers' revolution to push back what she calls "a fascist shift" in her homeland. She compares the present situation in the US with the early days of Mussolini, Stalin and, if you're still not convinced, Hitler.
Daring to utter the F-word From The Sydney Morning Herald
October 6, 2007
Naomi Wolf doesn't apologise for comparing the Bush Administration with fascism. And she certainly rejects suggestions of paranoia.
There is a convention on the internet called Godwin's Law. It states that, during an online discussion, the first person to draw an analogy with Nazi Germany automatically loses the argument.
It's a rule that exists in academia, journalism and even politics. Comparing your opponent to a Nazi is a sure way not just to lose an argument but to suffer the indignity of having to apologise later. After all, it's hard to justify a comparison to a regime which started World War II and killed 6 million Jews.
So perhaps it's surprising that Naomi Wolf, a feminist icon and the author of The Beauty Myth, has written a book which compares the Bush Administration with Nazi Germany.
Not just in a passing reference, mind you.
Wolf hasn't just ignored the taboo; in fact, she has taken an axe to it, arguing that the situation is so grave it is blinding us to an urgent danger. The entire book is devoted to a comparison between the Bush Administration's response to the threat of Islamic terrorism and the methods the Nazis used to turn Germany into a fascist state.
The End of America: The Police State is Right Here, Right Now
Carolyn Baker's Weblog: Speaking Truth To Power
September 20th, 2007
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness.~Justice William O. Douglas~
In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps" posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list—or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture—a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine's Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book's cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775—as well it should.
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