Is America becoming a fascistic nation?

The excerpt below is worth considering as so often history has a way of repeating itself and often we don't educate ourselves to see the similarities between historical and contemporary times.  Bearing this in mind can we as Americans see any relationships between what Hitler accomplished in Germany in the 30s and what we are experiencing today in the USA?  If we see similarities and do nothing or if we don't notice the changes because they happen little by little, I think in many ways this answers the question "How could what happened in Germany happen?"  However, even more importantly do we want to let it happen again, but now in the USA and can we say we didn't know this time?

THE END OF AMERICA [?/!]

 

Hitler's Germany was no anarchic state: He used to law to legitimate virtually everything he did. Hitler often boasted that "We will overthrow Parliament in a legal way through legal means. Democracy will be overthrown with the tools of democracy." "I can say clearly," he announced at a Nuremberg rally in 1934, "that the basis of the National Socialist state is the National Socialist law code." He called Nazi Germany "this state of order, freedom and law:"'

Dictators can rise in a weakened democracy even with a minority of popular support. Hitler never won a majority: In the election in 1932, only 13.1 million Germans voted for the Nazi party. Although National Socialism was the largest single party, the Nazis had fewer seats in government than the combined opposition parties did. At that point they could still have been defeated." Their numbers declined further in the next election.

 

At that critical time, Brownshirts waged a campaign of violence against Nazi Party opponents in the streets. A sense of crisis descended on the country. A coalition of conservatives united to provoke a constitutional crisis in Parliament as well. Lawmakers then engaged in frenzied negotiations to head off civil war. The conservative majority still believed at that point that if Hitler were appointed Reich Chancellor they would be able to control him. They made a deal: Hitler was sworn in as Reich Chancellor entirely legally on January 30, 1933.

 

But Nazis directed events to cascade rapidly after that: They staged torchlight marches while all marches by the Communist opposition were forbidden. When thousands of citizens marched against the new government nonetheless, police arrested their leaders. Twenty opposition newspapers took issue with the new Nazi leadership-but then the papers were banned; local authorities cracked down on free assembly across the country.

Hitler told the Cabinet that an amendment to the Constitution was required, the Enabling Act, which would allow him permanently to circumvent some powers of the Parliament. It was now legal for the state to tap citizens' phones and open their mail."

 

Appalled at the terrorist threat, and not wanting to be seen as unpatriotic, there was little debate: lawmakers of all parties passed the Enabling Act by a wide majority: 441 to 94. The constitution remained, but from then on, Hitler could govern by decree.

Excerpt from: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/End_Of_America.html, pp. 41-42. Naomi Wolf. 04/11/08.