The headlong descent towards fascism seems unstoppable - I mean the descent of democratic societies towards fascism. If the world's greatest tyrant today sits in the White House and we're being fed Himmlerite propaganda in favour of torture over the moving television, then one should also be aware that in Britain...
Freedom is dying.Correction - it's being done to death:
Having helped to devastate Iraq, [Tony Blair] is now killing freedom in his own country.It's even worse than that:
[An] insidious tyranny is being imposed across the world.It's being imposed by the US, of course. More generally:
[A] violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists. The difference used to be distance. Now they are bringing it home.These are the sober and measured words of John Pilger. If he still permits himself the qualification 'little different from', the New Statesman, in which these judgements of his appear, has shaved the difference to a minimum. This is how they sum up the message of Pilger's article:
Fascism is at the door.Jeez, and I was really worried there for a moment. At least the door is made of solid wood. Now, if fascism were at the window... No, it doesn't bear thinking about.
Tyranny, Nazism, fascism. And from where do these dangers come, according to the voices of alarm? Always from the elected governments of democratic, liberal and pluralist societies; and the scale and urgency of the dangers are as terrible as they are notwithstanding the institutional checks against them and the democratic traditions and oppositional resources that exist within the societies they menace. About other types of political movement and regime that are less than hospitable to freedom (and that's putting it gently), about other threats and dangers, the same voices are rather less excitable.