T H E

END
O F

AMERICA

LETTER OF WARNING

TO A

YOUNG PATRIOT

NAOMI WOLF

CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VERMONT
Copyright © 2007 by Naomi Wolf. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.

Developmental Editor: John Barstow

Editorial Director: Shay Totten
Project Manager: Emily Foote
Copy Editor: Nancy Crompton
Fact-checker: Mary Fratini
Book Designer: Peter Holm

Printed in Canada on recycled paper.

First printing, July 2007

10 9 8 7 15 16 17 18

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolf, Naomi.
The end of America : a letter of warning to a young patriot / Naomi Wolf.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-933392-79-0
1. Civil rights—United States. 2. Abuse of administrative power—United
States. 3. National security—United States. 4. United States—Politics
and government—2001– I. Title.

JC599.U5W63 2007
323.4'90973—dc22

2007024640

Chelsea Green Publishing

85 North Main Stree, Suite 120
White River Junction, VT 05001
(802) 295-6300
www.chelseagreen.com
 — 2021 INTRODUCTION —

STEP TEN

I
n 2007, I wrote a book, The End of America: Letter of Warning
to a Young Patriot. In it, I warned, based on my study of closing
democracies in twentieth century history, that America needed
to beware of an all-too-possible slide into totalitarianism.
I warned that would-be tyrants, whether they are on the left or
the right, always use a map to close down democracies, and that
they always take the same ten steps. Whether they “Invoke an
External and Internal Threat” or “Develop a Paramilitary Force”
or “Restrict the Press” or the final step, “Subvert the Rule of Law,”
these steps are always recognizable; and they always work to crush
democracies and establish tyrannies. At that time, the “global
threat” of terrorism was the specter that powers invoked in order to
attack our freedoms.
The book was widely read and discussed, both at the time of
its publication and for the last thirteen years. Periodically over
the last decade, people would ask me when and if we had reached
“Step Ten.”
We—my brave publisher, Chelsea Green, and I—are releasing
the first and last chapters of The End of America now, in 2021, for
free. And I am calling the sequel to this book, which I am now
writing, Step Ten—because as of March of last year, we have
indeed, I am so sad to say, arrived at and begun to inhabit Step Ten
of the ten steps to fascism.
Though in 2007, I did not explicitly foresee that a medical pan-
demic would be the vehicle for moving the entire globe into Step
Ten, I have at various points warned of the dangers of medical
crises as vehicles that tyranny can exploit to justify suppressions of
civil rights. Today, a much-hyped medical crisis has taken on the
role of being used as a pretext to strip us all of core freedoms, that

— xv —
 introduction

fears of terrorism did not, in spite of twenty years of effort, ulti-

mately achieve.
In 2015, I was widely mocked in mainstream news outlets for
warning about the hysteria that accompanied Ebola reporting, and
I cautioned then that infectious diseases could be used as a justifi-
cation for ushering in the suppression of liberties, always under the
guise of emergency measures. In 2020, I showed in my book
Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love how
infectious disease epidemics, such as cholera and typhus, had been
exploited in the nineteenth century by the British state in order to
crush freedoms and invade people’s privacy. I wrote about how the
first anti-vaccination movements arose among British parents in
the Victorian period. That book was initially cancelled, and its
message of warning has been continually assailed.
But that book too was prescient. In early March of 2020, of
course, a global pandemic was announced: COVID-19.
In the immediate wake of the announcement and narrativization
of that pandemic, most of the elements of a locked-in, 360-degree
totalitarianism have been put into place, in most of the countries of
the West, including in what had been robust democracies. It all
happened very quickly and comprehensively.
In the United States we now have:

1. Emergency measures in many states, which suspend due

process of law. This is the hallmark of a police state.
COVID-19 is invoked as the reason for the introduction of
emergency law—but there is no endpoint for lifting these
emergency laws.
2. The closures of schools, which break the social contract
with the next generation.
3. Bills being passed for “vaccine passports,” which bypass the
Fourth Amendment to the constitution by allowing the gov-
ernment and Big Tech companies to intrude on medical pri-
vacy, and to create a comprehensive digital surveillance

— xvi —
 Step Ten

state. (Indeed, the fact that tech stocks rose by 27% each
quarter of the pandemic shows one driver of this war against
the human: Every minute human beings spend in a class-
room, at the pub or restaurant, or in a church or synagogue,
is time that tech companies lose money by being unable to
harvest that data. COVID-19 policies driven by “COVID-
19 Response”—actually, by Big Tech companies—ensure
that humans are not allowed to connect except via digital
platforms. The reason is profit as well as social control).
4. Forced closures of businesses. By intervening directly in the
economy and allowing certain businesses to flourish
(Amazon, Walmart, Target) at the expense of small busi-
nesses, Main Street shops, restaurants, and sole proprietor
businesses in general, the State has merged government and
corporations in a way that is characteristic of Italian fascism
and modern Chinese communism.
5. Restrictions on assembly. Some states such as California are
fining people for seeing their friends in their homes, and
making it unlawful for kids to have playdates with their
friends. Massachusetts restricted gatherings of more than
ten people at a time, forcing synagogues and churches to
stay closed, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling against states
forcing churches to close. Parks and playgrounds and
beaches have been closed off. In countries such as Britain,
people are fined for leaving their homes for more than an
hour’s exercise a day.
6. Forced face coverings. In Massachusetts, people are fined if
they are not wearing masks outdoors—even children as
young as five are forced to do so by law. Again, this mandate
has not been undergirded by peer reviewed studies showing
medical necessity; and there is no endpoint proffered for
these extraordinary violations of personal freedom.
7. Suppression of free speech. Big Tech companies are cen-
soring critics of COVID-19 policy and vaccine policy, as well

— xvii —
 introduction

as censoring views that are on the right hand of the political

spectrum. Incitement, a word that has a long history in the
twentieth century for closing down free speech, has been
weaponized by the left to shut down First Amendment free-
doms of expression. In other forms of censorship and man-
agement of speech and public debate, tycoons such as Bill
Gates have been funding major news outlets, with millions
of dollars directed to “COVID-19 education.” As a result,
dissenting voices are marginalized and shamed, or even
threatened with legal action or job losses.
8. Science being hijacked in the interests of “biofascism.” By
heavily funding scientific commentators such as Dr. Fauci in
the United States, Imperial College and SAGE in the U.K.,
and Dr. Christian Drosten in Germany, a dominant set of
policies and pronouncements about COVID-19 that benefit
a small group of bad actors—notably tech and pharmaceu-
tical interests, acting in concert with governments—have
had secured, credentialled supporters. But when other sci-
entists or institutions seek debate or transparency, they are
threatened with job loss or are reputationally attacked, as in
the case of Dr. Simon Goddeke of the Netherlands, who was
told to keep quiet by his university when he challenge the
flawed COVID-19 PCR test protocols.
9. Data being hijacked to serve the interests of this biofascism.
This manipulation of truth, which I foreshadowed in The
End of America, is typical of the Soviet censors. COVID-19
platforms such as Covid19Tracking and Johns Hopkins
University, funded by technocrats such as Michael
Bloomberg, serve unverifiable COVID-19 data that directly
affect the stock markets. Again, while this un-American
merger of corporate interests and public policy is reminis-
cent of Italian fascism, the twist provided by digital data
presentation and its relationship to the stock market is very
much of the twenty-first century.

— xviii —
 Step Ten

10. Attacks on religious minorities. The orthodox Jewish com-

munity in Brooklyn and Christian churches in California
have been singled out for punishment if they do not follow
COVID-19 rules—a targeting of religion that is character-
istic of communist policies on the left, especially in China.
11. Policies that weaken bonds between human beings and
weaken the family being introduced and policed. This is the
most serious development of all.

The new biofascism, very much driven by Big Tech leaders, is a

war against human beings and the qualities that make us human.
Masks break human beings’ ability to bond face to face and
enjoy human contact, smiles, and jokes. Masks turn down the effec-
tiveness of human “technology,” essentially, by making it hard for
us to “read” each other and to pick up social cues. Forbidding
assembly keeps us from forming human alliances against these
monstrous interests. Forbidding human assembly also prevents
new cultures, new heroes, and new business models from arising.
We are all stuck with the Rolodex and the ideas we had in March
of 2020.
Forcing kids to distance at school and wear masks, ensures a
generation of Americans who don’t know how to form human
alliances, and who don’t trust their own human instincts. Those
are counterrevolutionary training techniques.
Driving all learning onto (already prepared) distance learning
platforms ensures that kids do not know how to behave in human
space, space not mediated by technology.
Many COVID-19 policies seem designed to ensure that
humans will have no “analog” space or “analog” culture left—no
way to feel comfortable simply gathering in a room, touching one
another as friends or allies, or joining together.
Lastly, driving all human interaction onto Zoom (which is a
window for the CCP, as China owns the platform) is not only a way
to harvest all of our tech, business secrets, and IP—it is a way to

— xix —
 introduction

ensure that intimacy and connection in the future will be done

online and that human face-to-face contact will be killed off.
Why is this? Why develop policies that punish, encumber, and
restrict human contact in analog (unsurveilled, unmediated) spaces?
Because human contact is the great revolutionary force when it
comes to human freedom and resistance to this form of compre-
hensive biofascism—the biofascism represented by the New
Normal—the medico-fascist Step Ten.
Now let me recap from the year 2007 and read you my intro to
The End of America, as well as the warning at the close of that book.
Its message has never, sadly, been more timely. This time, the
threats to freedom that were then justified by terrorism, have re-
clothed themselves in the trappings of a medical pandemic.
But this time we do not just face a war on freedom. This time we
face a war on human beings, and on all that makes us human.

— xx —
 — INTRODUCTION —

TEN STEPS
America was opened after the feudal mischief was spent. We
began well. No inquisitions, here, no kings, no nobles…
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Chris:

I
am writing because we have an emergency.
Here are U.S. news headlines from a two-week period in the
late summer of 2006:
July 22: “CIA WORKER SAYS MESSAGE ON TORTURE
GOT HER FIRED.” Christine Axsmith, a computer security
expert working for the CIA, said she had been fired for posting a
message on a blog site on a top-secret computer network. Axsmith
criticized waterboarding: “Waterboarding is torture, and torture is
wrong.” Ms. Axsmith lost her job as well as her top-secret clear-
ance, which she had held since 1993. She fears her career in intel-
ligence is over.1
July 28: “DRAFT BILL WAIVES DUE PROCESS FOR
ENEMY COMBATANTS.” The Bush administration has been
working in secret on a draft bill “detailing procedures [for]
bringing to trial those it captures in the war on terrorism, including
some stark diversions from regular trial procedures. . . . Speedy
trials are not required. . . . Hearsay information is admissible . . . the
[military] lawyer can close the proceedings [and] can also order
‘exclusion of the defendant’ and his civilian counsel.” Those
defined as “enemy combatants” and “persons who have engaged in
unlawful belligerence” can be held in prison until “the cessation of
hostilities,” no matter when that may be or what jail sentence they
may get.2

—1—
 introduction

July 29: “THE COURT UNDER SIEGE.” In June 2006, the

Supreme Court ruled that denying prisoners at Guantánamo judi-
cial safeguards violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law. The
Supreme Court also insisted that a prisoner be allowed to be
present at his own trial. In response, the White House prepared a
bill that “simply revokes that right.” The New York Times editorial
page warned, “It is especially frightening to see the administration
use the debates over the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and
domestic spying to mount a new offensive against the courts.”3
July 31: “A SLIP OF THE PEN.” U.S. lawyers issued a state-
ment expressing alarm at the way the president was overusing
“signing statements.” They argued that this was an exertion of
executive power that undermined the Constitution. Said the head
of the American Bar Association, “The threat to our Republic
posed by presidential signing statements is both imminent and real
unless immediate corrective action is taken.”4
August 2: “BLOGGER JAILED AFTER DEFYING COURT
ORDERS.” A freelance blogger, Josh Wolf, 24, was jailed after he
refused to turn over to investigators a video he had taken of a
protest in San Francisco. Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics
and law at the University of Minnesota, said that, although the
jailing of American journalists was becoming more frequent, Mr.
Wolf was the first American blogger she knew of to be imprisoned
by federal authorities.5
August 2: “GOVERNMENT WINS ACCESS TO RE-
PORTER PHONE RECORDS.” “A federal prosecutor may
inspect the telephone records of two New York Times reporters in
an effort to identify their confidential sources” according to The
New York Times. A dissenting judge speculated that in the future,
reporters would have to meet their sources illicitly, like drug
dealers meeting contacts “in darkened doorways.”6
August 3: “STRONG-ARMING THE VOTE.” In Alabama, a
federal judge took away powers over the election process from a
Democratic official, Secretary of State Worley, and handed them over

—2—
 Ten Steps

to a Republican governor: “[P]arty politics certainly appears to have

been a driving force,” argued the Times. “The Justice Department’s
request to shift Ms. Worley’s powers to Governor Riley is extraordi-
nary.” When Worley sought redress in a court overseen by a federal
judge aligned with the Bush administration, she wasn’t allowed her
chosen lawyer. It was “a one-sided proceeding that felt a lot like a
kangaroo court” cautioned the newspaper. She lost.7
Why am I writing this warning to you right now, in 2007? After
all, we have had a congressional election giving control of the
House and the Senate to Democrats. The new leaders are at work.
Surely, Americans who have been worried about erosions of civil
liberties, and the destruction of our system of checks and balances,
can relax now: See, the system corrects itself. It is tempting to
believe that the basic machinery of democracy still works fine and
that any emergency threatening it has passed—or, worst case, can
be corrected in the upcoming presidential election.
But the dangers are not gone; they are regrouping. In some
ways they are rapidly gaining force. The big picture reveals that ten
classic pressures—pressures that have been used in various times
and places in the past to close down pluralistic societies—were set
in motion by the Bush administration to close down our own open
society. These pressures have never been put in place before in this
way in this nation.
A breather is unearned; we can’t simply relax now. The laws
that drive these pressures are still on the books. The people who
have a vested interest in a less open society may be in a moment of
formal political regrouping; but their funds are just as massive as
before, their strategic thinking unchanged, and their strategy now
is to regroup so that next time their majority will be permanent.8
All of us—Republicans, Democrats, Independents, American
citizens—have little time to repeal the laws and roll back the forces
that can bring about the end of the American system we have inher-
ited from the Founders—a system that has protected our freedom
for over 200 years.

—3—
 introduction

I have written this warning because our country—the democ-

racy our young patriots expect to inherit—is in the process of being
altered forever. History has a great deal to teach us about what is
happening right now—what has happened since 2001 and what
could well unfold after the 2008 election. But fewer and fewer of us
have read much about the history of the mid-twentieth century—or
about the ways the Founders set up our freedoms to save us from
the kinds of tyranny they knew could emerge in the future. High
school students, college students, recent graduates, activists from
all walks of life have a sense that something overwhelming has been
going on. But they have lacked a primer to brief them on these
themes and put the pieces together, so it is hard for them to know
how urgent the situation is, let alone what they need to do.
Americans expect to have freedom around us just as we expect
to have air to breathe, so we have only limited understanding of the
furnaces of repression that the Founders knew intimately. Few of us
spend much time thinking about how the system they put in place
protects our liberties. We spend even less time, considering how
dictators in the past have broken down democracies or quelled
pro-democracy uprisings. We take our American liberty for
granted the way we take our natural resources for granted, seeing
both, rather casually, as being magically self-replenishing. We have
not noticed how vulnerable either resource is until very late in the
game, when systems start to falter. We have been slow to learn that
liberty, like nature, demands a relationship with us for it to con-
tinue to sustain us.
Most of us have only a faint understanding of how societies open
up or close down, become supportive of freedom or ruled by fear,
because this is not the kind of history that we feel, or that our educa-
tional system believes, is important for us to know. Another reason
for our vagueness about how liberty lives or dies is that we have
tended lately to subcontract out the tasks of the patriot: to let the pro-
fessionals—lawyers, scholars, activists, politicians—worry about
understanding the Constitution and protecting our rights. We think

—4—
 Ten Steps

that “they” should manage our rights, the way we hire a professional
to do our taxes; “they” should run the government, create policy,
worry about whether democracy is up and running. We’re busy.
But the Founders did not mean for powerful men and women
far away from the citizens—for people with their own agendas or
for a class of professionals—to perform the patriots’ tasks or to pro-
tect freedom. They meant for us to do it: you, me, the American
who delivers your mail, the one who teaches your kids.
I am one of the citizens who needed to relearn these lessons.
Though I studied civics, our system of government was taught to
me, as it was to you, as a fairly boring explication of a three-part
civil bureaucracy, not as the mechanism of a thrilling, radical, and
totally unprecedented experiment in human self-determination.
My teachers explained that our three-part system was set up with
“checks and balances,” so that no one branch of government could
seize too much power. Not so exciting: this sounded like “checks
and balances” in a bureaucratic turf war. Our teachers failed to
explain to us that the power that the Founders restrained in each
branch of government is not abstract: it is the power to strip you
and me of personal liberty.
So I needed to go back and read, more deeply than I had the
first time around, histories of how patriots gave us our America out
of the crucible of tyrants, as well as histories of how dictators came
to power in the last century. I had to reread the stories of the
making and the unmaking of freedom. The more I read these his-
tories, the more disturbed I became.
I give you the lessons we can learn from them in this pamphlet
form because of the crisis we face.

Like every American, I watched the events of September 11, 2001,

with horror. Then, like many, I watched the reactions of the admin-
istration in power at first with concern, then with anxiety, and then,
occasionally, with shock. I started feeling that there was something
familiar about how events, at times, were unfolding.

—5—
 introduction

Because of the déjà vu I was starting to feel when I read the

newspaper every day, I began to take a second look at how leaders
in the past had cracked down on societies over which they had
gained control; I looked with special attention at what had hap-
pened when a leader brought about a shift from a pluralistic, dem-
ocratic society to a dictatorship.

Historical Echoes

I began to think of these examples as “historical echoes”—not

proof that someone influential in the administration had studied
the details of mid-twentieth-century fascism and totalitarianism,
but certainly suggestive.
What was it about the image of a mob of young men dressed in
identical shirts, shouting at poll workers outside of a voting center
in Florida during the 2000 recount, that looked familiar?9 What
resonated about the reports that Bush supporters in the South
were holdings organized public events to burn CDs by the Dixie
Chicks?10 (CDs are actually quite hard to burn and produce toxic
fumes.) What seemed so familiar about an organized ideological
group shaming an academic for saying something unpopular—and
then pressuring the state government to get the university presi-
dent to fire that professor?11 What was so recognizable about
reports that FBI agents were stopping peace activists at airports?12
Why did the notion of being “greeted as liberators”13 feel so
familiar and phrases such as “hiding in spider-holes”14 sound so
familiar?
These events may seem to have historical echoes because they
actually are mirrored in history.
No one can deny the skill of fascists at forming public opinion.
I can’t prove that anyone in the Bush administration studied
Joseph Goebbels. I am not trying to. All I am doing is noting
echoes.

—6—
 Ten Steps

As you read you may notice other parallels—usually in the

details of events. The Bush administration created a policy post-
9/11 about liquids and air travel. Increased security restrictions led
to airport security guards forcing some passengers to ingest liq-
uids: A Long Island mother, for instance, was forced to drink from
three bottles filled with her own breast milk prior to boarding a
plane at JFK.15 Other adult passengers have been forced to drink
baby formula. In Benito Mussolini’s era, one intimidation tactic
was to force citizens to drink emetics and other liquids.16 German
SS men picked this up: They forced Wilhelm Sollmann, a Social
Democrat leader, for instance, to drink castor oil and urine.17 Of
course baby formula is not an emetic. But a state agent—some
agents are armed—forcing a citizen to ingest a liquid is a new scene
in America.
In 2002 the Bush administration created and named the
“Department of Homeland Security.” White House spokespeople
started to refer to the United States, unprecedentedly, as “the
homeland.”18 American presidents have before now referred to the
United States as “the nation” or “the republic,” and to the nation’s
internal policies as “domestic.”
By 1930 Nazi propagandists referred to Germany not as “the
nation” or “the republic”—which it was—but rather as “the
Heimat ”—“the homeland.” Homeland is a word that memoirist
Ernestine Bradley, who grew up in Nazi Germany, describes as sat-
urated with nationalist power: “Heimat is a German word which
has no satisfactory equivalent in other languages. It denotes the
region where one has been born and remains rooted. . . . Longing
to be in the Heimat causes the incurable disease of Heimweh.”19
Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, introducing Hitler at a Nuremberg
rally, said, “Thanks to your leadership, Germany will be attainable
as the Homeland—Homeland for all Germans in the world.”20 A
Department of Domestic Security is simply a bureaucracy, capable
of mistakes; a department protecting our “homeland” has a dif-
ferent authority.

—7—
 introduction

In 2001 the USA PATRIOT Act let the federal government

compel doctors to give up confidential medical records without a
warrant demonstrating probable cause. Your previously private
interaction with your doctor is now subject to state scrutiny.21 (Nazi
law in the 1930s required German doctors to disclose citizens’ pre-
viously private medical records to the state.)
In 2005 Newsweek reported that Guantánamo prisoners had
seen the Koran being flushed down toilets. Under pressure from
the White House, the magazine ran a correction: It had not inter-
viewed direct witnesses to the practice.22 But human rights organi-
zations did confirm accounts of similar abuses of the Koran.23 (In
1938, the Gestapo forced Jews to scrub out the toilets with their
sacred phylacteries, the tfillin.)24
Amnesty International reports that U.S. interrogators torment
prisoners in Iraq by playing heavy metal at top volume into their
cells night and day.25 (In 1938, the Gestapo tormented imprisoned
Austrian premier Kurt von Schuschnigg by keeping the radio on at
top volume, night and day.)26
An Iraqi human rights group complained that, in 2004, U.S.
forces seized the innocent wives of suspected insurgents and held
the women hostage to pressure their husbands to turn themselves
in.27 (In Joseph Stalin’s Russia, secret police took hostage the inno-
cent wives of dissidents accused of “treason,” to pressure their hus-
bands to turn themselves in.)28
When the United States invaded Iraq, Vice President Dick
Cheney promised that we would be “greeted as liberators.” (When
the German army occupied the Rhineland, Nazi propaganda
asserted that the troops would be welcomed as liberators.)
President Bush argued that the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay
could be treated harshly because they were not covered by the
Geneva Conventions. (Nazis asserted that the troops invading
Russia should treat the enemy especially brutally, because they
were not covered by the Hague Conventions.)29
After 9/11, then–National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

—8—
 Ten Steps

and Vice President Cheney coined a new phrase: America was now
on a “war footing.”30 Superficially, it was a stirring word choice. But
if you thought about it, it was also kind of an odd word choice,
because America was not actually at war. What is a “war footing”?
(Nazi leaders explained, after the Reichstag fire, that Germany,
which was not actually at war, was from then on a permanent
“kriegsfusz”—literally, a “war footing.”)
The Bush White House “embedded” reporters with U.S. mili-
tary units in Iraq. Uncritical coverage of the war expanded consid-
erably. (National Socialist propaganda officials embedded
reporters and camera crews with their own armed forces:
Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was embedded with Nazi troops in
Poland;31 U.S. correspondent William Shirer drove with German
units into occupied France.32)
The Bush administration unloads coffins of dead American sol-
diers from planes at night and has forbidden photographers to take
pictures of the coffins.33 (National Socialists unloaded the coffins of
the German war dead at night.)
The White House announced, beginning in 2002, that there
were terrorist “sleeper cells” scattered throughout the nation. A
“sleeper cell,” press reports explained, was a group of terrorists
that had merged into ordinary American life, waiting, perhaps for
years, for the signal to rise up and cause mayhem.
A wave of reporting asserted that the FBI had located a sleeper
cell in Lodi, California. After an informant had been paid hundreds
of thousands of dollars to spy on Muslims, the FBI detained a
Muslim father, Umer Hayat, and his son, Hamid Hayat.34 The two
men explained that they had confirmed an imaginary sleeper cell to
end a terrifying series of interrogations.35
Another much-publicized sleeper cell identified four Muslim
men in Detroit. Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed that the
men had had advance knowledge of 9/11;36 federal authorities
charged that they were part of a “sleeper cell plotting attacks
against Americans overseas,” as news reports put it.37 The Justice

—9—
 introduction

Department heralded the arrests as one of its biggest hits in the

War on Terror.
The phrase sleeper cell entered deeply into the American
unconscious, even becoming the plot of a 2005 TV movie. But in
2006, Richard Convertino, the prosecutor of the Detroit case, was
indicted on charges of trying to present false evidence at the trial
and concealing other evidence, in his attempt to back up the gov-
ernment’s theory about the men. All charges were dropped against
the men, and the Justice Department quietly repudiated its own
case.38 But you probably didn’t hear about that, and the creepy
sleeper-cell narrative stayed in the atmosphere to trouble your
dreams.
Sleeper cell was a term most Americans had never heard before.
It is a phrase from Stalin’s Russia, where propagandists said that
imaginary cells, consisting of agents of “international capitalism”—
that is, us—had been sent by the U.S. government to infiltrate
Soviet society. These secret agents would pose as good Soviet com-
rades, living quietly among their neighbors but just awaiting the
day when, at a signal, they would all rise up to commit mayhem.39
When the 2006 terrorist plot against U.S.–bound planes was
uncovered in London, an FBI official gave a much-quoted sound
bite: “If this plot had actually occurred, the world would have
stood still.”40 FBI guys don’t usually speak in cadences of dark
poetry. (Of his plans in 1940, Hitler said, “The world will hold its
breath.” 41)
These echoes are worth noticing—but are not ultimately that
important. What is important are the structural echoes you will see:
the way dictators take over democracies or crush prodemocracy
uprisings by invoking emergency decrees to close down civil liber-
ties, creating military tribunals, and criminalizing dissent.
Those echoes are important.

So I read about Mussolini’s Italy in the 1920s; Stalin’s Russia and

Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s; I read about East Germany in the

— 10 —
 Ten Steps

1950s and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and Chile in 1973, as well

as about other Latin American dictatorships; I read about
Communist China in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The countries I looked at were very different, of course, and the
violent dictators had a broad range of ideologies. Stalin imposed
totalitarianism over a communist state, itself built upon the ruins of
a toppled monarchy. Mussolini and Hitler both came to power
legally in the context of fragile parliamentary democracies. East
Germany and Czechoslovakia were communist systems, and China
still is; and General Augusto Pinochet closed down Chile’s young
democracy in a classic Latin American military coup d’état.
Violent dictators across the political spectrum all do the same
key things. Control is control. In spite of this range of ideological
differences, profound similarities in tactics leap off the pages. Each
of these leaders used, and other violent dictators around the globe
continue to borrow, the same moves to close down open societies
or crush dissent.
There are ten steps that are taken in order to close down a
democracy or crush a prodemocratic movement, whether by capi-
talists, communists, or right-wing fascists. These ten steps, together,
are more than the sum of their parts. Once all ten have been put in
place, each magnifies the power of the others and of the whole.
Impossible as it may seem, we are seeing each of these ten steps
taking hold in the United States today.

But America is different! I can hear you saying.

There is no guarantee that America is different if Americans fail
to take up the patriot’s task.
At times in our own history our commitment to freedom has fal-
tered. The Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 made it a crime for
Americans to speak critically—to “bring into contempt or disre-
pute”—of then–President John Adams and other U.S. leaders. But
Thomas Jefferson pardoned those convicted under these laws
when he took office.

— 11 —
 introduction

During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas

corpus, effectively declaring martial law in several states: Close to
38,000 Americans were imprisoned by military authorities during
the war, many for simply expressing their views. But when the war
ended in 1865, the Supreme Court ruled that it had been uncon-
stitutional for military tribunals to try civilians.
In 1918, labor leader Eugene Debs was arrested for giving a
speech about the First Amendment; he got a ten-year jail sen-
tence. Raids swept up hundreds of other activists.42 But after
World War I ended, the hysteria subsided.
During World War II, the Justice Department rounded up
110,000 innocent Japanese Americans and imprisoned them in
camps. When the war was over, these innocent Americans were
released as well.
Anticommunist anxiety led the nation to tolerate the McCarthy
hearings; but the pendulum swung back, and Senator Joe
McCarthy himself was condemned by his colleagues.
I am describing the movement of “the pendulum”—as in the
American cliché, “The pendulum always swings back.” We are so
familiar with, and so reliant upon, the pendulum. That is why you
are so sure that “America is different.” But the pendulum’s working
depends on unrestricted motion. In America, up until now, the
basic checks and balances established by the Founders have func-
tioned so well that the pendulum has always managed to swing
back. Its very success has made us lazy. We trust it too much,
without looking at what a pendulum requires in order to function:
the stable framework that allows movement; space in which to
move; that is, liberty.
The pendulum cannot work now as it has before. There are
now two major differences between these past examples of the pen-
dulum’s motion and the situation we face today.
First, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda and
writer Joe Conason have both noted, previous wars and emergen-
cies have had endpoints. But President Bush has defined the cur-

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 Ten Steps

rent conflict with global terrorism as being open ended. This is a

permanent alteration of the constitutional landscape.
The other difference between these examples and today is that
when prior dark times unfolded in America, we forbade torture, and
the rule of law was intact. Legal torture, as you will see, acting in
concert with the erosion of the rule of law, changes what is possible.
So, because I was looking at something unprecedented in our
nation’s history, I had to read the histories of many forms of state
repression, including the most extreme.
I had to include Nazi Germany in my scrutiny of repressive gov-
ernments. Many people are understandably emotionally over-
whelmed when the term “Nazism” or the name “Hitler” is
introduced into debate. As someone who lost relatives on both
sides of my family in the Holocaust, I know this feeling. I also know
that there is a kind of intellectual etiquette, an unwritten rule, that
Nazism and Hitler should be treated as stand-alone categories.
But I believe this etiquette is actually keeping us from learning
what we have to learn right now. I believe we honor the memory of
the victims of Nazism with our willingness to face the lessons that
history—even the most nightmarish history—can offer us about
how to defend freedom.
In looking at other violent dictatorships, including Germany’s, I
am not comparing the United States in 2007 to Nazi Germany or
Bush to Hitler. The two nations and leaders inhabit different
worlds. There will not be a coup in America like Mussolini’s March
on Rome or a dramatic massacre like Hitler’s Night of the Long
Knives. But certain threads are emerging that have connections to
the past. I am calling your attention to important lessons from his-
tory about how fragile civil liberties are and how quickly freedom
can be lost. I ask you to quiet your understandable aversion long
enough to walk with me through the material I have to show you.

The ten steps to dictatorship are basic.

In September 2006, military leaders staged a coup in Thailand,

— 13 —
 introduction

which had been a noisy democracy. In a matter of days, the coup

leaders ticked through many of the ten steps, as if they had a shop-
ping list. In a sense they did.
They deployed armed guards in residential neighborhoods,
sent lawmakers home, shut down the free press, took over the state-
run television, threatened critics with arrest, put new limits on
travel, restricted protest, and discontinued the parliamentary rule
of law. Thailand was a police state within a matter of days.43
We are seeing each of the basic ten steps being put into place
here in the United States today—more quietly, more gradually, and
sometimes more elegantly; but each is underway.
My sense of alarm comes from the clear lessons from history
that, once certain checks and balances are destroyed, and once cer-
tain institutions have been intimidated, the pressures that can turn
an open society into a closed one turn into direct assaults; at that
point events tend to occur very rapidly, and a point comes at which
there is no easy turning back to the way it used to be.
The fascist shift does not progress like a diagonal line rising
steadily across a chart. Rather, it progresses in a buildup of many
acts assaulting democracy simultaneously, which then form a crit-
ical mass—what writer Malcolm Gladwell would call a “tipping
point.” The pressure from this set of assaults suddenly pushes the
nation into a new and degraded reality. The turning points can be
mapped as vertical lines—the point at which prisoners lost the
right to habeas corpus, for instance, is one—which then plateau
into the nation’s new normal. The nation acclimates; then this
process begins again at that greater level of suppression.
What got to be really scary in my reading was how predictable
events become, once you are familiar with the blueprint. By the
beginning of August 2006, for instance, it seemed like a good bet
that the Bush administration would soon move on from the detainee
bill that it had been secretly preparing to seek Congressional
authorization for creating a prison beyond the rule of law where tor-
ture could take place. This was accomplished by October 2006. In

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 Ten Steps

September 2006, I thought that it was likely that some of the first
prisoners to be tried in Guantánamo by the new military commis-
sion system would be white and English speaking. Indeed, that hap-
pened by April 2007. It also seemed probable that White House
spokespeople would begin to use terms such as treason, espionage,
subversion, and aiding the enemy to describe criticism, press
scrutiny, dissent, and even simple departure from alignment with
White House goals. From the blueprint, I thought it was unsur-
prising when the administration started to criminalize speech in
new ways. This began to happen in earnest by May 2007.
When the U.S. attorney scandal came to light in March 2007
and there was still little information, because I had been reading a
biography of Goebbels I remarked to a friend, “I bet the attorneys
were in swing states.” By the next week, it had been confirmed that
most of them were in fact in swing states. All this supposition was
not rocket science; it was simply that each of these is a classic move
in the playbook of a fascist shift.
Everything changed in America in September 2006, when
Congress passed the Military Commissions Act.44 This law created
a new legal reality that heralds the end of America if we do not take
action. Yet most Americans still do not understand what happened
to them when that law passed.
This law gives the president—any president—the authority to
establish a separate justice system for trying alien unlawful enemy
combatants. It defines both “torture” and “materially support[ing]
hostilities” broadly. The MCA justice system lacks the basic pro-
tections afforded defendants in our domestic system of laws, in our
military justice system, or in the system of laws used to try war
criminals—Nazi leaders got better civil liberty protection than alien
enemy combatants, as did perpetrators of genocide like Slobodan
Milosovic. And persons accused by the president (or his
designees) of being alien unlawful enemy combatants are for-
bidden from invoking the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that repre-
sents the basic protections of justice common to all civilized

— 15 —
 introduction

nations. The United States has signed the Geneva Conventions

and agreed to abide by them, and this repudiation is a radical
departure from our traditions. Under the MCA, the government
can use “coerced” interrogation to obtain evidence. Finally, and
perhaps most damagingly, the MCA denies unlawful alien enemy
combatants the right to challenge the legitimacy of their confine-
ment or treatment. So, while the MCA provides all sorts of rules
that the military is supposed to follow, it will be difficult, if not
impossible, to hold anyone accountable for breaking those rules.
But this is not all. The president and his lawyers now claim the
authority to designate any American citizen he chooses as being an
“enemy combatant”; and to define both “torture” and “material
support” broadly. They claim the authority to give anyone in the
executive branch the power to knock on your door, seize you on
the street, or grab you as you are changing planes at Newark or
Atlanta airports; blindfold you and put earphones on you; take you
to a cell in a navy prison; keep you in complete isolation for months
or even years; delay your trial again and again; and make it hard for
you to communicate with your lawyer. The president claims the
authority to direct agents to threaten you in interrogations and
allow into your trial things you confessed to while you were being
mistreated.
The president claims the authority to do any of those things to
any American citizen now on his say-so alone. Let me repeat this:
The president asserts that he can do this to you even if you have
never committed a crime of any kind; “enemy combatant” is a
status offense. Meaning that if the president says you are one, then
you are.
Human rights groups raised the alarm early on about what this
law might mean to the many innocent foreign detainees who had
been swept up in the machinery of Afghan prisons and sent to
Guantánamo. Some congressional leaders have warned us about
what this law might do to our own soldiers, if they are taken as
POWs. But most ordinary citizens did not understand what

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 Ten Steps

Congress had done—not to anonymous, possibly scary, brown

people on a faraway island, but to them. Most Americans still do
not understand.
Last September, concerned about the legal arguments being put
forward by the Department of Justice, I called a friend who is a pro-
fessor of constitutional law.
“Does the administration assert that the president can define
anyone he wants to as an ‘enemy combatant’? Including U.S. citi-
zens?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“And does it argue that courts must defer to the government’s
assertions that someone should be held as an enemy combatant,
even when it presents no direct evidence?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“So doesn’t that mean they are saying that now any of us for any
reason he decides can be seized off the street and imprisoned in
isolation for months and interrogated?”
“Yes,” he said.
“So why isn’t anyone saying that?”
“Some people are. But a lot of people probably think it would
just sound crazy,” he replied.45

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 — CHAPTER ELEVEN —

SUBVERT the RULE of LAW

I do solemnly swear . . . that I will faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States.
Presidential Oath of Office

I
n March 2007, a scandal erupted in which eight—later, nine—
U.S. attorneys were abruptly fired, perhaps with Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales’s knowledge. Internal Justice
Department e-mails indicated that they had been targeted as being
insufficiently loyal to White House policies.
New Mexico’s U.S. attorney David Iglesias received an intimi-
dating phone call from a Republican official who was upset that
Iglesias hadn’t prosecuted a Democratic voter registration group.
Iglesias thought that there had been insufficient evidence to war-
rant prosecution.
In the congressional uproar that followed, e-mails showed that
while only eight prosecutors had actually been ousted, the e-mails
had discussed the possibility of purging all of the U.S. attorneys.
The e-mails stressed that in this eventuality, the department should
stay resolute in the face of the inevitable blowback.
Congress called for subpoenas of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers.
(As of this writing, Bush is simply invoking executive privilege to
let him ignore the subpoenas.) But commentators were still puz-
zled at first: Why had the administration purged these attorneys,
and why might it have considered purging the entire corps of U.S.
attorneys?
(On April 7, 1933, in one day, recall, when Goebbels purged
the civil service—specially targeting state attorneys and judges—

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 Subvert the Rule of Law

the baseline measure was “loyalty.”1) How would a purge of “dis-

loyal” U.S. attorneys in 2007, more than a year before the next
national election, serve these leaders?
Remember the Alabama case of Secretary of State Worley, in
which her authority to oversee the voter rolls was taken away? The
Justice Department has enormous power over elections. And U.S.
attorneys have the power to decide which voting registration
groups to investigate and potentially prosecute.
Think again about 2008. Now think about human nature.
We assume, with our habits of democracy, that we can simply
“throw the bums out” in the 2008 election.
But do people change direction so dramatically? Is it reasonable—
is it really a matter of common sense—to assume that leaders who are
willing to abuse signing statements, withhold information from
Congress, make secret decisions, lie to the American people, use fake
evidence to justify a preemptive war, torture prisoners, tap people’s
phones, open their mail and e-mail, break into their houses, and now
simply ignore Congress altogether—leaders with, currently, a 29 per-
cent approval rating—will surely say, come 2008, “The decision rests
in the hands of the people. May the votes be fairly counted”?
In trusting that “the pendulum will swing” when it is time for
the votes to be counted, we are like a codependent woman with an
abusive boyfriend; surely next time he will do what is right.
It’s a truism that the definition of madness is to do the same
thing over and over and expect a different outcome. If for eight
years this group has flouted other equally precious rules of the
democratic game, aren’t we rash to assume that this same group
will see a transparent, fair election as sacrosanct? The Founders
asked us to err on the side of vigilance when it came to liberty.
History and current events around the world—Nigeria, Turkey,
Ukraine, the Philippines—show many examples of leaders in weak
or weakening democracies who were able to “coordinate” the civil
bureaucracy with their cronies; they then tamper with the vote and
sully the outcome of elections.

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 chapter eleven

If there had been a purge so that all the U.S. attorneys were
Republicans in 2008, what would happen in an even somewhat
close presidential election?
Would that be America?
We in America are used to a democratic social contract in
which there is agreement about the rules of the game: When
Congress demands an answer, for instance, the president does not
simply refuse to pick up the phone. So we keep being startled
when the steps of the democratic interplay are ignored: “He can’t
do that!” It’s time to notice that that they are playing a different
game altogether.
Look at this president’s use of “signing statements.” The debate
about this has taken place mostly among lawyers rather than
among citizens, and lawyers are not tasked with explaining to ordi-
nary Americans what that neutral, bland term signing statements
actually means. So many of us don’t get what a dramatic threat they
represent.
Bush has used more signing statements than any other presi-
dent. The way Bush is using signing statements essentially rele-
gates Congress to an advisory role. This abuse lets the president
choose what laws he wishes to enforce or not, overruling Congress
and the people. So Americans are living under laws their represen-
tatives never passed. Signing statements put the president above
the law.
So given such moves, why take for granted that this administra-
tion will uphold the rules of a free, fair election? Just because the
steps of democracy have prevailed for more than 200 years does
not guarantee that they will prevail tomorrow.
Fascists coming to power in a weakened democracy simply start
to ignore those assumed agreements. What has happened in the
past is that at a certain point in a weakening democracy, would-be
dictators pretend that everything is as it should be but simply stop
responding to the will of the people and the representatives. While
the nation is trying to grapple with this interim period, then such

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 Subvert the Rule of Law

leaders deploy sudden unexpected changes that assertively upend

Parliamentary protocols and expectations.
At this point, the speed of these moves itself is disorienting: It
takes people some time to figure out what has happened. (In a very
moving scene, Italian legislators were still frantically trying to
engage in standard political negotiations with Mussolini—even as
he simply waited for them to realize that the time for negotiating
was over.) That psychological hangover—that delay in “getting
it”—is a very dangerous time. This is the moment when action is
most necessary, and this is the moment when the window is
closing.
In Italy and Germany, legislators kept believing that they were
still engaged in the negotiated dance of democracy—even as the
militaristic march of dictatorship had already begun.
At a point in both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s takeovers, citizens
witnessed a stunning series of quickly escalating pronuncia-
mentos or faits accomplis. After each leader made his bids for
power beyond what the Italian Parliament and the German
Reichstag allowed him, each abruptly started to claim all kinds of
new rights that were extraparliamentary: the right unilaterally to
go to war, to annex territory, to veto existing laws, or to overrule
the judiciary.
“I am not a dictator,” said Hitler in 1936. “I have only simpli-
fied democracy.”2
At this stage, shock follows shock so quickly that the civil
society institutions start to reel. At this point, in weaker democra-
cies than ours, the police forces and the army are negotiated with.
In any late shift, the final stage is the establishment of government
by emergency decree or actual martial law and the leader’s asser-
tion—usually using the law to defend this assertion—that he is
above the law, or that he is the law: the decider.

This is a classic coup: In Chile, in 1973, during a national strike,

rumors circulated daily that there would be a military coup.

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 chapter eleven

Early in the day on September 11, 1973, the military left

their barracks before dawn and occupied most of the radio
stations. They began broadcasting marches and periodic
bulletins that they were assuming control of the country.
They offered [President] Allende a plane to fly out of the
country and declared a national curfew that would begin at
11:00 a.m. Informed of the military’s demands, Allende
first told all the workers to go into the streets and defend
the government, but he later changed his mind and asked
them to remain alert at their factories. Allende refused to
surrender, so at noon the air force bombed the national
palace. Allende died. . . . The military began arresting a
number of prominent government leaders while others
sought refuge in foreign embassies.3

Some opposition members tried to resist but found they could

not overcome the power of the military. The game was quickly over.
Pinochet even had a commission rewrite the Constitution; the
logic of the rewrite is echoed in the U.S. Fiscal Year 2007 Defense
Authorization Bill: The military could intervene on behalf of the
state whenever there was a threat to the state.
Historically, the shift to martial law, or to government by emer-
gency decree, generally takes place during a crisis. A crisis allows a
would-be dictator even in a democracy to use emergency powers to
restore “public order.” This kind of thing won’t happen in America.
But we now have a legal infrastructure in place that could sup-
port a “paper coup”—a more civilized, more marketable version of
a real crackdown.
At the end of September 2006, with little outside debate,
Congress passed the Fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization
Bill—a bill that, according to journalist Major Danby, represents “a
sizeable step toward weakening states’ authority over their
[National] Guard units.” He continues: “The provision make[s] it
easier for the President to declare martial law, stripping state gover-

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 Subvert the Rule of Law

nors of part of their authority over state National Guard units in

domestic emergencies.”
This guts the Posse Comitatus Act, the provision that the states
control their own National Guard units. When the president invokes
section 333, he may expand his power to declare martial law and take
charge of the National Guard troops without the permission of a gov-
ernor when “public order” has been lost; he can send these troops
out into our streets at his direction—overriding local law enforce-
ment authorities—during a national disaster epidemic, serious
public health emergency, terrorist attack, or “other condition.” He
can direct these troops to disperse citizens—that is, us—and direct
them to stay in their homes. The president must submit a report to
Congress within 24 hours—after the fact, nonetheless.
According to this new provision, the president on his or her
say-so alone can send troops from Tennessee to quell what he or
she calls a threat to civil order—say, a peace march—in Oregon,
over the objections of governors of both states.4 The president can
send what has become his or her army, not the people’s, into our
nation’s streets and not just this president, but any president in the
future may do this.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy warned, though few paid much
attention, that the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill would serve to
encourage a president to declare martial law.5
A New York Times editorial marked the shift—even as
Americans were focused on Britney Spears’s meltdown and the
question of which airline serves the worst food: “A disturbing recent
phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of
American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. . . .
Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military
troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a
disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition.’”6
We scarcely remember how terrified the Founders were of a
standing army with the power to override the leadership of the
states. The Revolutionaries knew how quickly a standing army can

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 chapter eleven

become bloody janissaries subduing local citizens. The

Revolutionaries were certain that an American president, if he was
not checked, might raise a standing army of Americans and unleash
it against American citizens. This was not a far-fetched notion to
them at all. They cherished their state militias as belonging to the
people and responsive to the people, precisely because of this fear
of a centralized American power taking up arms against them.
“If, by some turn of events, the federal government did manage
to encroach on, assault, the powers of the states or vice versa, and
threaten the union, the people could defeat it because the power of
a republic rests in its citizens,” the Federalists reassured worried
fellow-citizens.7 The Framers believed that this kind of military
aggression was not possible so long as the Constitution functioned:
They could not foresee the fiscal year 2007 Defense Authorization
Bill. Nor could they have foreseen the development of private
armies such as Blackwater. But their passionate debates, and the
Second Amendment to the Constitution that they eventually rati-
fied, make it clear that the Founders were desperate to protect the
new nation from just what has happened while we were distracted,
while we were shopping online, while we were in a Ambien-heavy
sleep on the couch.

In the last phase of a fascist shift, all of the pressures that we have
spelled out here tighten around ordinary citizens, working together
in a kind of full-circle torsion: At this point, these pressures ensure
that there is no democratic movement left. The pendulum comes
to a standstill.
Of course, you will take up the Founders’ banner so that can
never happen.

I will say again that the United States is not vulnerable to the vio-
lent, total closing down of the system that followed Mussolini’s
March on Rome or Hitler’s roundup of political prisoners. Our
press, military, and judiciary are too independent for a scenario like

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 Subvert the Rule of Law

that.
But there are erosions possible in all of our institutions, that
could close down our experiment in democracy in ways that would
look very American and familiar, but still leave us less than free.
Say, for instance, God forbid, that in a year and a half there is
another terrorist attack. Say we have a President Rudolph Giuliani—
or even a President Hillary Clinton. If the crisis is severe enough, the
executive can and perhaps should declare a state of emergency.
But without checks and balances, history shows that any leader,
of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after
the crisis has subsided. In the absence of traditional checks and
balances, President Hillary Clinton endangers us no less than
President Giuliani. Any executive will be tempted to enforce his or
her will through edict rather than submitting to the arduous
process of negotiation and compromise. The Founders knew, as I
wrote at the start of this primer, that excessive power was certain to
corrupt equally. This danger is not about partisanship; it is about
power.
Our representatives, judiciary, and press do their work today in
a context in which we are “at war” in what a White House acronym
calls GWOT—Global War on Terror: a war without end, on a bat-
tlefield described as the globe. So a hollowness has been
expanding under the foundation of all these still-free institutions
and the foundation can yield with certain kinds of pressure.
Knowing what you know now about how easy it is to close
down an open society, I have to ask you to consider a series of
“what-ifs.” It is only if we face the what-ifs that we can act to make
them impossible.
What if, because of a reported “threat to public order,” the
National Guard, now reporting directly to the president, were
backed up with Blackwater personnel?
What if, close to the election, a Democratic voters’ mobilization
group were infiltrated, so that Democratic voters’ names and
addresses were all over the Internet? What if, as a result, you didn’t

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 chapter eleven

believe your vote would be secret? What if some of the members of

voters’ groups were prosecuted for minor crimes or for immigra-
tion violations by more compliant U.S. attorneys than the nine who
were purged? Those events would feel like plausible setbacks in
what would still seem like home: The events would feel like an
American drama, not like a beer hall putsch. But what if those
kinds of events became more and more the norm?
Would that be the end of America?
What if a Washington Post reporter covering a story reported a
classified list of detainee rights activists that had been leaked to him
by a concerned civil servant? What if that reporter were charged
under the 1917 Espionage Act, convicted, and sent to prison for a
decade? How would it affect you to read about it the next morning?
You would read about it. If history is a guide, newspapers
would continue to publish. But they would suddenly become very
polite.
Would that be the end of America?

Think of the Palmer raids.

Now imagine the Palmer raids under today’s legal conditions:
Imagine that an equivalent of Eugene Debs—say, the head of
Amnesty International—is arrested for giving a speech against tor-
ture; he is sent to a navy brig where he waits in isolation for three
years to see a lawyer.
Would that be the end?
This is the United States Constitution: “The privilege of the
Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in
Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Now listen to this exchange:

arlen specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The

Constitution says you can’t take [habeas corpus] away
except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn’t that
mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there is an

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 Subvert the Rule of Law

invasion or rebellion?
alberto gonzales: I meant by that comment, the Constitution
doesn’t say, “every individual in the United States or every
citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It
doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus
shall not be suspended. . . .8

Whatever scenario led Gonzales and his colleagues to think that

one through—will that be the end?

Global America

I have written this book first as an American speaking to

Americans. But the scenario that is unfolding has immense impli-
cations internationally.
If the United States continues on this dark road further, then
truly, as James Baldwin once said, “There is no safety.”9 America’s
aspirations have long been global; and at our best we have offered
our example as a benchmark for democracy throughout the world.
But if the United States does stay this course, what “city on a hill”
can shed light internationally as powerfully as we, at our best, have
done?
The United States has stood for the rule of law in the past: We
set a standard for other leaders and set a point of aspiration for
other citizens. If we lose that, what force on Earth will stem any
barbarism that any despot wishes to impose on his people?
The bureaucrats of the European Union? The fragmented
voices of the United Nations?
Egyptian security forces just rounded up some of its citizens:
They threw opposition leaders and a blogger in jail. When chal-
lenged, the Egyptians invoked the example of the USA PATRIOT
Act.
If Fascist Germany—a medium-sized modern European state—

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 chapter eleven

could destabilize the globe in a matter of a few years, and it took a

world war to overcome the threat, what force on Earth might
restrain an America that may have abandoned the rule of law—an
America with its vastly greater population, wealth, and land mass;
its far more sophisticated technology; its weapons systems; its
already fully established global network of black-site secret
prisons, and its imperial reach?
If a democratic America, with working checks and balances,
often exempts itself from international agreements when its
strategic interests don’t coincide with international goals, would a
United States led by a dictatorial regime be likely to subdue in itself
any level of aggression internationally or restrain itself from any
plunder of resources that it seeks, simply because it was upsetting
the rest of the world?

If we keep going down this road, the “end of America” could come,
for each of us, in a different way, at a different moment. Each of us
might experience a different event that would force us to look back
and think: “That is how it was before—and this is the way it is
now”; when each of us alone realizes we must yield a little further
our memories of a certain grace and fineness and courage that was
alive in the world for a bit longer than 230 years.
Or else we can stop going down this road: We can stand our
ground, and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the
Founders asked us to carry.

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 NOTES

INTRODUCTION 13. Transcript for September 14, NBC

1. Mark Mazzetti, “C.I.A. Worker Says News, Meet the Press, Sunday,
Message on Torture Got Her Fired,” September 7, 2003. Available at:
New York Times, July 22, 2006, A11. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30802
2. R. Jeffrey Smith, “On Prosecuting 44/.
Detainees: Draft Bill Waives Due 14. “‘We Got Him,’ and Then a Call by
Process for Enemy Combatants,” American and Iraqi Officials for
Washington Post, July 28, 2006, A23. Reconciliation.” Excerpts from a news
3. “The Court Under Siege,” Editorial, conference, as recorded by Federal
New York Times, July 29, 2006, A12. Document Clearing House, Inc., New
4. Walter Dellinger, Editorial, “A Slip of York Times, December 15, 2003.
the Pen,” New York Times, July 31, Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/
2006, A17. 2003/12/15/politics/.
5. Jesse Mckinley, “Blogger Jailed After 15. “JFK Airport Security Forces Woman
Defying Court Orders,” New York to Drink Own Breast Milk,” USA
Times, August 2, 2006, A15. Today/Associated Press, August 12,
6. Adam Liptak, “Government Wins 2002. Available at: http://www.usa
Access to Reporter Phone Records,” today.com/travel/news/2002/2002-08-
New York Times, August 2, 2006, A12. 09-jfk-security.htm.
7. “Strong-Arming the Vote.” Editorial, 16. Max Gallo, Mussolini’s Italy: Twenty
New York Times, August 3, 2006, A20. Years of the Fascist Era, trans. Charles
8. Howard Fineman, “Rove Unleashed,” Lam Markmann. (New York:
Newsweek, December 6, 2004. Macmillan, 1973), 117.
Available at: http://www.msnbc.msn. 17. Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the
com/id/6597631/site/newsweek/. Third Reich (New York: The Penguin
9. Dana Canedy, and Dexter Filkins. Press, 2004), 341.
“Counting the Vote: Miami-Dade 18. James Bovard, “Moral High Ground
County: A Wild Day in Miami, With Not Won on Battlefield,” USA Today,
an End to Recounting, and Democrats’ October 8, 2002. Available at: http://
Going to Court,” New York Times, www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/edi-
November 23, 2000, A31. torials/2002-10-08-oplede_x.htm.
10. Nigel Williamson, “Free the Dixie 19. Ernestine Bradley, The Way Home: A
Three,” The Guardian, August 22, German Childhood, an American Life
2003. Available at: http://arts.guardian. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005), 80.
co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,12102,102 20. Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens
6475,00.html. (Triumph of the Will), Documentary,
11. Kirk Johnson, “Colorado U. Synapse Films, 1935.
Chancellor Advises Firing Author of 21. Reid J. Epstein, “University Warns
Sept. 11 Essay,” New York Times, June Students of Patriot Act Disclosures:
27, 2006, A11. Government Can Get Medical
12. “ACLU Uncovers FBI Surveillance of Records,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
Maine Peace Activists,” ACLU Press December 17, 2004. Available at:
Release, October 25, 2006. Available http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.a
at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spy- spx?id=285173; see also “Reform the
files/27180prs20061025.html. Patriot Act,” ACLU. Available at:

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 notes

http://action.aclu.org/reformthepatriot 31. Steven Bach, Leni: The Life and Work

act/215.html; Richard J. Evans, The of Leni Riefenstahl (New York: Alfred
Coming of the Third Reich, 144–45. A. Knopf, 2007), 187.
22. Howard Kurtz, “Newsweek 32. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 324–344.
Apologizes: Inaccurate Report on 33. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford,
Koran Led to Riots,” Washington Post, Thorne Anderson, Rita Leistner,
May 16, 2005, A1. Philip Jones Griffiths, and Phillip
23. Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray. Robertson, Unembedded: Four
Guantánamo: What the World Should Independent Photojournalists on
Know (White River Junction, VT: the War in Iraq (White River
Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004), 60. Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green
24. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Publishing, 2005), ii.
Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 34. Randal C. Archibold and Jeff Kearns,
1934–1941 (New York: Black Dog & “Prosecution Sees Setback at Terror
Leventhal Publishers, 1941), 89. Trail in California,” New York Times,
25. “Sesame Street Breaks Iraqi POWs: April 10, 2006, A20.
Heavy Metal Music and Popular 35. “California Father in Terror Case
American Children’s Songs Are Being Released,” USA Today, August 26,
Used by US Interrogators to Break the 2006. Available at: http://www.
Will of Their Captives in Iraq,” BBC usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-
News, May 20, 2003. Available at: 25-calif-terror_x.htm.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_ 36. Philip Shenon and Don Van Natta Jr.,
east/3042907.stm. “A Nation Challenged: The
26. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 89. Investigation; U.S. Says 3 Detainees
27. “How U.S. Used Iraqi Wives for May Be Tied to Hijackings,” New York
‘Leverage’: Suspected Insurgents’ Times, November 1, 2001, A1.
Spouses Jailed to Force Husbands to 37. Archibold and Kearns, ibid.
Surrender,” Associated Press, January 38. Eric Lichtblau, “Ex-Prosecutor in
27, 2006. Available at: <http://www. Terror Inquiry Is Indicted,” New York
msnbc.msn.com/id/11061831/. Times, March 30, 2006, A18.
28. Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: 39. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 341,
The Origins and Consequences of 354.
Stalinism, trans. Colleen Taylor (New 40. Jennifer Quinn, “British Foil Plan to
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 269. Wreak Terror and Kill Thousands Over
29. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in the Atlantic,” Associated Press, printed
Tyranny (New York: Harper Perennial, in The Seattle Times, August 10, 2006.
1962, 1971), 267, 374. Available at: http://seattletimes.nw
30. Vice President’s Remarks at the source.com/html/nationworld/20031
Pentagon Observance of September 88108_londonplot10.html.
11th. Office of the Vice President, 41. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in
September 11, 2006. Available at: Tyranny (New York: HarperCollins,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea 1962, 1991), 266–67, 374.
ses/2006/09/20060911.html; see also 42. Myra MacPherson, All Governments
Dr. Condoleezza Rice’s Opening Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel
Remarks to Commission on Terrorist Journalist I. F. Stone (New York:
Attacks, Office of the Press Secretary, Scribner, 2006), 56.
April 8, 2004. Available at: 43. Thomas Fuller, “Thai Junta Imposes
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ Curbs on News Media,” International
releases/2004/04/20040408.html. Herald Tribune/New York Times,

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 notes

September, 22, 2006, A13; “Wider 4. Major Danby, “Bush Guts Posse
Ban on Political Activities.” Associated Comitatus, Grabs National Guard.”
Press/New York Times, September 25, News From Underground, Wednesday,
2005, A3; “Thai Junta Revokes October 18, 2006.
Ousted Prime Minister’s Diplomatic 5. Patrick Leahy, “Remarks of Sen.
Passport,” New York Times, January Patrick Leahy, National Defense
11, 2006, A13. Authorization Act For Fiscal Year
44. “President Bush Signs Military 2007, Conference Report,
Commissions Act of 2006,” Office of Congressional Record,” September 29,
the Press Secretary, October 16, 2006. 2006. Available at: http://leahy.
Available at: http://www.whitehouse. senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.
gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061017- html.
1.html. 6. “Making Martial Law Easier,”
45. Author interview, October 10, 2006. Editorial, New York Times, February
19, 2007, A14
CHAPTER ELEVEN 7. Levy, Origin of the Bill of Rights, 193.
1. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in 8. Available at: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/
Power (New York: The Penguin Press, monitor/2007/01/gonzales-surveil
2005), 14–15. lance-authorization.php See also:
2. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/19/
A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–1941 gonzales-habeas/.
(New York: Modern Library, 1998), 9. Fred L. Stanley and Louis H. Pratt,
157. eds., Conversations with James
3. John L. Rector, The History of Chile Baldwin (Jackson: University Press of
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Mississippi, 1989), 78.
2003), 182.

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