drunkle: Fair enough. Rather than pen some overlong response citing chapter and verse, I will confine myself to just hitting the high notes.
In her new book, Wolf uses two extremely preposterous examples as America’s new “fascist drift” and supposed totalitarian repression of “free speaking” individuals. These are Lynne Stewart, who was convicted of aiding and abetting the work of Sheikh Rahman (a convicted terrorist of some note and dedicated anti-American), as well as Adam Gadahn, the self-professed American “voice” of al Qaeda. According to Wolf, the US government’s case against both of these individuals was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to silence dissent and “free speakers”. She completely ignores the facts of both cases, as well as failing to note that both individuals were convicted by properly empaneled juries under the watchful eye of both journalists and academics, who would have been the first to cry out if anything untoward were to take place.
She also compares certain safety measures in place at various airports as being in line with security measures practiced by Mussolini’s secret police. These include random checks of baggage and verification that items are what they are represented to be. According to her, Mussolini’s police used similar methods as a means of repression and keeping the populace in line. She attempts to conflate the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) with Mussolini’s secret police, as well as drawing parallels between the use of the word “heimat” (homeland) by the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s, and America’s creation of a Department of “Homeland” Security. Apparently, our use of the word Homeland and the Nazi use of the word Homeland is not a coincidence. Rather it points to our drift into fascism. I guess it is good we didn’t name it the Department of Fatherland Security.
Her scholarship is sloppy in the sense that she inaptly draws her conclusions between present day US and Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Simply saying that modern America is “like” fascist Italy or Nazi Germany does not constitute a completed argument. Nor does her hysteria when it comes to implying that somehow the government will come after her personally once it gets wind of her book.
There are quite a few other examples as well. Her book “The Beauty Myth” was shredded by a large number of reviewers (who were largely non-partisan on the issue of feminism), and again largely for the same reasons.
