Public shaming is the road to Fascism

We are told that in America, we are a nation of laws.  But increasingly, we are not.  With the connivance of political figures like Senate Democrat Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg and Assembly Democrat Executive Director Mark Matzen, the corporate media are attempting to create an extra-judicial method of determining everything from whether or not you can hold a job or operate a business to serving in public office.

Under this informal, extra-judicial system, the accusers do not need any proof -- as we recognize that term in our legal process -- to indict, convict, and punish someone.  The accusers, who are generally the media and political figures like Weinberg, simply need to "feel" that someone has done something for reasons that they disapprove of.  It can even be as simple as saying that you are personally "tired" of someone, as was done in a recent Star-Ledger column.  Just being "tired" of someone makes some people believe that they have the right to fire someone from his or her job, or put someone out of business, or overturn the will of the voters.

This is a form of technological vigilantism -- a post-modern lynch mob -- with elements of religion to it.  For "apologize... apologize... apologize," read "repent... repent... repent."  And it was specifically warned against by prescient writers like George Orwell, with the neo-religious fervor whipped up in a shaming exercise very like the two-minutes hate he describes in his great work, 1984:

Think of it.  Political figures like Weinberg and Matzen actually suggested that they could reach into another person's soul to determine evil there, adjudicate on said evil, and then demand that the will of the voters be overturned and said person be stripped of public office.  Mind you, the office-holder in question -- Assemblyman Parker Space -- is one of the most popular elected officials in New Jersey, as determined by the number of votes he receives, and gets more votes than any Republican legislator in the state.  So it does take a particular kind of philosophy, distinctly undemocratic, to suggest such a thing.

Also remember that no laws have been broken.  Unlike Senator Robert Menendez or Assemblyman Neil Cohen or Assemblyman Raj Mukerji or any one of a hundred New Jersey Democrats who actually broke the law but who, nevertheless, the Weinbergs and the Matzens dutifully stood behind, Assemblyman Parker Space did nothing even remotely illegal.  Fashion was breached perhaps -- the fashion held by some elites in a few, well-to-do enclaves -- but no laws were broken.  For the moment, we still have our Bill of Rights and our First Amendment.  But they are working on it.

If the media can use extra-judicial shaming to deny employment, ruin a business, or overturn an election, then they will have successfully undermined the Bill of Rights without recourse to a legal challenge before the United States Supreme Court.  In their minds, that is the beauty of what they are trying to do.  It is a subversion of the law, and the imposition of punitive sanctions, through the use of fashion and media technology.  Through the use of it, America will no longer be a nation of laws, but rather a nation of fashions, manipulated by a corporate media controlled by the likes of Jared Kushner, the Newhouse brothers, and the corporate racists at Gannett News.  Pleasant thought?

The Power of Suggestion

Once upon a time there were two political consultants.  Consultant number one, a lifelong Republican, Reagan Delegate to the Republican National Convention, worked exclusively for Republicans and had worked for Sussex County Republicans since 1993.  This consultant partnered with a direct mail consultant who was so committed to the Sussex County GOP that he provided their candidates with interest-free credit for months and even years.

Consultant number two was in the direct mail business too.  But he worked for Hudson County Democrats, and was himself a registered Democrat who was elected to local office in Sussex County as a Democrat, then switched to Republican, then  switched back to Democrat in 2008 to vote in the Democrat Presidential Primary for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.  After 2008, he switched to Republican again to pursue higher office.

This Democrat consultant was conversant with the methods of Marxist writer Saul Alinsky, whose 1971 book -- "Rules for Radicals" -- provided the exact prescription for attacking his Republican opponent:  "Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It  and Polarize It." 

As the American Thinker noted in an April 24, 2009, article:

That's what Barack Obama taught his ACORN followers in all his Community Agitator classes in Chicago. That slogan defines mob scapegoating, of course. It is an exact prescription for whipping up mobs -- by race, by gender, by ethnicity, by religion. If you want to know how to whip a mob of Pakistani Taliban fascisti to whip a young girl for flirting with a young man in public, this is exactly what you do: Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It, and Polarize It.

And notice that "the target" is no longer a human being. It's an "It." 

In his famous novel, "1984", George Orwell anticipated this Marxist method of scapegoating and called it the "two minutes of hate".  Here it is portrayed in the 1984 movie of the same name, staring John Hurt and Richard Burton.  Note the orgasmic release of the mob as they shout the hate object's name:

Of course this kind of manipulation doesn't work with people who have their heads screwed on straight.  It takes an audience that is psychologically open to dehumanizing someone who they don't personally know.  It also needs a leadership so unsure of itself that it is psychologically open to doubting trusted lieutenants of long-standing, even when those doubts are suggested by dubious sources.  Rod Serling took a stab at describing the power of suggestion on such minds in this episode of the Twilight Zone from the 1960's: