By: Omowale Luthuli-Allen
You decide, is America an exceptional nation?
I have just finished reading and digesting Madeline Albright’s magnum opus book, FASCISM- A warning. Madame Albright was the Secretary of State during the reign of the comeback kid, ex POTUS Bill Clinton. She was a Fulbright Scholar who fled Czechoslovakia before a Soviet takeover with her family. She arrived in America with her father and family seeking liberty from an authoritarian black hearted oppressive regime that denied individual freedoms. She was only 6 years old then.
The turning point was when her father’s friend and government official was thrown from a window and the hopes of Czechoslovakian people were smashed by a dictatorial steamroller. Their family fled for the last and best hope, America. In the wake of the Nazi and Soviet styled wreckage, she learned that three of her Jewish grandparents were slaughtered in the Holocaust. Her parents hid this travesty from her and raised the family as Roman Catholics.
Ms. Albright explains – What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do what is necessary-including the use of force and trampling on the rights of others-to achieve victory and command obedience.
Fascism can be owned by the left, right and center. Fascism can be owned by Communists and Socialists, Democrats or Republicans, Atheist, or religious thumping evangelists. It is a deranged clique of altered reality decision makers on steroids and opioids that disrespect decency and the rule of law. The late Gil Scott Heron described this mindset as a God complex.
Europe had been rolled by two world wars and was headed into the Cold War. America was the shining beacon light on a hill with an emblem that said “come and give me your teeming masses, I am a refuge for the downtrodden and disinherited.” I think that she was qualified to warn Americans that our institutions with its democratic norms might not hold after the recent assaults through rule by the incompetent and unfit.
Madeline Albright understands that the bully pulpit of the US President can set into motion a chain of events that will irreparably damage this nation and its potential.
Mexicans have been characterized as rapists, thieves and criminals while helping to build the decaying infrastructure of America and harvesting the fruits, vegetables and producing the milk, eggs and cheese. Gratitude is shown by imprisoning children who are separated from their parents in cages along the border.
Eleven million people perished after a madman named Hitler pursued racial purity along with his ally, Benito Mussolini. Hitler Mussolini found opportunity in crisis when they convinced the aggrieved that the crisis was caused by a minority group-the Jews. The final solution was to annihilate 6 million Jews, Catholics, Gypsies-Roma, labor leaders, disabled and homosexuals through organized state violence. Skillfully they convinced the populace to become deplorables and to take out their wrath on the defenseless populations. Hitler admired Americans for having murdered millions of red men. When their depravity was fully exposed, Hitler and his mistress committed suicide and sped to the gates of HELL. Mussolini and his mistress were hung by Italian patriots from the nearest lamp post.
The American story starts with the genocide of the native Americans and the enslavement of black people. Historians often referred to this twin extermination and enslavement as America’s original sin. So now the wraps have come off and the hidden history is in plain sight. Yet, America is conceived of as an idea, noble and lofty, but unrealized.
Rightfully so, because the so-called patriots fought a war to determine if this nation would exist half slave or half free. The last measure of devotion was given by 675,000 Americans to prove that this nation would exist as a nation that epitomized the principle of charity to all and Malice toward none. This was truly the beginning of an exceptional nation although the moral bar was too high.
On Fareed Zakaria’s CNN Global GPS, an Asian woman stated that a white woman shouted to her, “we do not want you in our country, you Chinese bitch!” Asian people are under the gun, whether they are Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese or Cambodian. Only because all Asians are viewed as Chinese by the ignorant and the deplorables.
Although there is not a shred of evidence, a narrative is being written by the feebleminded that the Coronavirus started in a Chinese lab and is a bioweapon. All the reputable scientists that are not driven by political ideology are pushing back and sticking to the evidence that this virus started with bats via a wet (animal) market. The formula to scapegoat a people is to tell a lie, repeat it often enough and the feeble minded will believe the lie.
Chinese and Asians are becoming the new victims of hate crimes as a fading POTUS struggles for reelection at any cost. All of 1600 Pennsylvania had an epic collapse in responding to the PANDEMIC. This failure is explained in my op-ed piece, “THAT USED TO BE US.” A SANKOFA moment for Asians is to remember the Asian Exclusion Act of 1882.
President Coolidge signed the Act with the support of the KU Klux Klan and the American Federation of Labor AFL. Their ostensible reason for sponsoring and supporting the act was to stop the Yellow Peril.
Malcolm X spoke about the slogan of not having a Chinaman’s chance to succeed. Whereas the supporters of the act claimed that it was necessary because of the Yellow Peril, which was based on a fake science called Eugenics in a continuing attempt to create a master race in America. This gaslighting peril surfaced with the argument that Asians posed a severe economic threat to white businessmen through cheap labor.
Madame Albright exposes that so much damage is being done to our institutions that it will take decades to recover. I am asking all people of good will not to demonize Asians or Chinese. Again, there is no Chinese virus. Don’t drink the Kool Aid. Again, ignore the noise and focus on the signal. Do not give legs to creeping fascism.
