[news] History Repeats

[Gordon Flett]

From: Elam <alef at g0lem.net>

Dissenters have always been considered a fringe group. Afterall, why
wouldn't EVERYONE support America's wars? Because there are dissenters
who see through the lies. During the early part of the last century when
America was at war we had the Alien and the Sedition Acts which gave the
government the legal justification to deport aliens without due process
and the American police state could imprison anyone who criticized the
government. It is as if we have stepped back in time; the George Bush
administration is once again imprisoning people without due process and
keeping them there indefinitely. George Bush has abrogated habias corpus
and denies political prisoners access to legal representation and
refuses to bring them to trial. We haven't seen this onslaught on civil,
legal rights since the 30s and 40s. 

"When the United States entered World War I, there were two very
powerful social groups in the country opposed to war that had the
support of millions of Americans. One was the Socialist Party. Socialist
newspapers were being read by maybe 2 million people in the country, and
Socialists were being elected to city councils, legislatures, and even
to the U.S. Congress. The second was the Industrial Workers of the
World, the IWW." [Howard Zinn - "Terrorism and War" (2002)] 

"The IWW and the Socialist Party were very powerful social forces in the
United States that the government felt they had to suppress to
successfully prepare for and carry on a war. The government undertook
strenuous efforts to do this. When the United States went into war,
Congress passed the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act." [Zinn] 

"The Espionage Act had very little to do with espionage. Instead it made
it a crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison, to say or print
anything that would `willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment
service of the United States.' That was the language of the statute,
which meant that if you spoke against the war, you were obviously
discouraging recruitment to the armed forces of the United States and
could be prosecuted." [Zinn] 

"The Sedition Act, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act, made it
even a little more drastic. In fact, two-thousand people were prosecuted
under those acts and about a thousand went to prison. One of the people
sent to jail for opposing World War I was the greatest socialist
activist and speaker Eugene Debs. The magazine THE MASSES was put out of
business, and an immense propaganda effort was undertaken to encourage
Americans to look for subversives and traitors in their midst." [Zinn] 

The same kind of mass hysteria is at play again. People have very short
memories. There are very few people alive today who lived through this
horrible and oppressive period in American history so they can't be
expected to remember these things but unfortunately the lack of
knowledge about our history is also terrible and few who should know
have any awareness of how civil liberties were under assault by pro war
forces just as they are today.

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