"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
— Benito Mussolini
1883-1945
Fascist dictator of Italy
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
— Thomas Jefferson
1812
"Can it be believed that the democracy which overthrew the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?"
— Alexis de Tocqueville
1805-1859
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
— Benjamin Disraeli
Prime Minister of England
1844
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
— Abraham Lincoln
1865
"An honest politician is one who, when he's bought, stays bought."
— Simon Cameron
19th Century Pennsylvania Republican political boss
"Nowhere do 'politicians' form a more separate, powerful section of the nation than in North America. There, each of the two great parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions.
"It is well known that the Americans have been striving for thirty years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in spite of all they can do they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be.
"Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt end — and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it."
— Frederick Engels
c. 1871
speaking of Democrats and Republicans
"A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world — no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
— Woodrow Wilson
U.S. President during Capitalist World War I
"American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt."
— Upton Sinclair
famous American writer
in a letter to John Reed
October 22, 1918
"The business of America is business"
— President Calvin Coolidge
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
U.S. President during capitalist-caused World War II
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt
on the threat to democracy by corporate power
"We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
— Louis Brandeis
Supreme Court Justice from 1916-1939
"In many respects, we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena.
"In our society, corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that assumed to have been enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times."
— Robert W. McChesney
author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy
and
Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy
"Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to."
— Mumia Abu-Jamal
political prisoner in America
"A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government."
— Kenneth Boulding
University of Michigan
quoted in
The Hidden Persuaders
"If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire — 'Here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, 'Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe."
— Janice Fine
Dollars and Sense magazine
"The corporations of America today effectively oversee the Congress, and the regulatory agencies and indeed the presidency itself."
— E.L. Doctorow
"The U.S. President has been largely refashioned as a high-level trade representative for the transnationals."
The Nation
"Corporations have taken over the government and turned it against its own people."
— Ralph Nader
consumer advocate
presidential candidate
"There is no war on crime. There is no war on drugs, no war on terrorism. There is only the ongoing effort by the federal government to collect as much information on as many people as possible."
— Jim Redden
author of
Snitch Culture: How Citizens Are Turned Into the Eyes and Ears of the State
"Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own."
— William Greider
journalist and author
"... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of 'investor friendly' regimes.
"The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF/World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights."
— Edward S. Herman
economist, U.S. media and foreign policy critic
author of
The Real Terror Network
"[T]here seems to be nothing to prevent the transnational corporations taking possession of the planet and subjecting humanity to the dictatorship of capital.... In order to crush any thought of organized resistance to the supporters of the new world order, tremendous police and military forces are being used to establish a doctrine of repression...."
— Christian la Brie
Le Monde Diplomatique
Paris
"Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects."
— Leo Tolstoy
1893
"Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.
"This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature.
"It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other."
— John Locke
The ideological progenitor of the American Revolution
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience..."
— John Locke
1690
2nd Treatise on Government
Chapter 19
paragraph 222
"It is only when the factory workers refuse to make the stuff [poisonous herbicides], it is only when the loggers refuse to cut ancient trees, that we can ever hope for real and lasting change.
"This system cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond the capacity of any people's resistance movement. The only way I can even imagine stopping it is through massive non-cooperation."
— Judi Bari
forest defender
Humboldt county, CA
"The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan."
— Lewis Lapham
journalist
"The IMF represents the cruelty, cynicism, and crime with suits, computers and a lot of elegance. The IMF is a huge criminal, as any gangster, but one who dresses elegantly and who makes great decisions, who kills without staining its hands. With just one decision it makes, the IMF, in order to approve a loan, can decree death for millions of human beings or condemn them to an undignified life for a long time.
"If we are talking about the International Monetary Fund, we should define it in few words and it is this: A gangster, clinical in committing its crimes."
— Subcomandante Marcos
in an interview with Zack de la Rocha
"We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate."
— Lydia Maria Child
"Laws are like spider webs. If some poor weak creature comes up against them — it is caught. But the bigger one can break through and get away."
— Solon
Greek philosopher
c. 630—555 B.C.
"Poor people have access to the courts in the same sense that the Christians had access to the lions."
— Judge Earl Johnson, Jr.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
— John Kenneth Galbraith
famous economist and author
"Society's dominant discourse shapes not only its politics but the way people think about their personal lives and choices. Just as John F. Kennedy helped legitimize a discourse of idealism that gave impetus to the social movements of the 1960s, so Ronald Reagan managed to legitimize a discourse of selfishness and insensitivity that has had profound social consequences ... Shifting society's discourse — from one of selfishness and cynicism to one of idealism and caring — is the first and most important political goal ... in the next several decades."
— Michael Lerner
philosopher, psychologist, author
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist — McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15"
— Thomas Friedman
Ugly American
columnist for the New York Times
"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization."
— John O'Hara
"We lack a Nuremberg to judge the economic order imposed upon us, where every three years more men, women and children die of hunger and preventable diseases than died in the Second World War."
— Fidel Castro
Cuban revolutionary leader
survivor of numerous CIA assassination attempts
"Socialism is not dead, it is not yet born."
— Muammar Al Qadhafi
Libyan revolutionary leader
survivor of numerous CIA assassination attempts
"A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains."
— Karl Marx
"The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation!"
— Woodrow Wilson
1856-1924
28th President of the United States
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it."
— Abraham Lincoln
First Inaugural Address
March 4, 1861
Revealing Quotes 1: American State Terrorism
Revealing Quotes 3: Mass-Media Deception
See also:
Our Hidden History: Corporations in America
Corporate Watch
http://www.corpwatch.org/
"Corporate Watch provides news, analysis, research tools and action resources to respond to corporate activity around the globe. We also talk with people who are directly affected by corporate abuses as well as with others fighting for corporate accountability, human rights, social and environmental justice. As part of the independent media, Corporate Watch is free of corporate sponsorship."
Bibliography
Corporate Predators:
The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the Attack on Democracy
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Democracy for the Few
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
by Gore Vidal
Against Empire
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti
Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney
Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don't Want You to See
by David McGowan
The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman
War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick
Dying For Growth:
Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor
Edited by Jim Yong Kim, Joyce V. Millen, Alec Irwin and John Gershman
Eyes of the Heart:
Seeking a path for the poor in the age of globalization
by Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Globalize This!
The Battle Against the World Trade Organization and Corporate Rule
edited by Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach; multiple authors
Market Elections:
How "Democracy" Serves the Rich
by Vince Copeland
Saving Private Power:
The Hidden History of "The Good War"
by Michael Zezima
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"If you want free speech you can go down to a street corner and shout."— Jim Olson
owner of Humboldt Internet
September 26, 2001
On September 14, 2001, three days after the WTC attack, the owner of the humboldt1.com ISP summarily deleted the original American Terrorism website. When informed that he was suppressing online free speech, he offered the helpful advice above.
http://www.humboldt1.com/016910/Amerikan_Terrorism.html
Launched: May, 2000 — Torpedoed: September 14, 2001 R.I.P.
Here are the remaining mirror sites: