The title of the article is taken from a prize winning fictional essay published in a military journal in its 1992-93 Winter edition, and is used to launch the essay which is filled with an abundance of information about the use of ruling class violent oppression and suspension of civil liberties dating from shortly after the American Revolution to little publicized documents dating and greatly accelerating after 9/11.
The material as presented is used like a bludgeon with which to hit well-indoctrinated people to wake them up to the fact that underneath the nice shiny exterior of civil liberties (which the original US ruling class erected to calm its well-armed citizenry after the Revolution), the ruling class have throughout American history prepared, and sometimes have used, illegal use of force and violence to insure capitalist rule. Hellinger and Judd in their book The Democratic Facade provide a summary (pp. 7-8) of the highlights of violent repression used against workers and political dissidents.
...America's history of violence against worker is on of the bloodiest among Western nations. Between 1880 and 1900, there almost 23,000 strikes in the United States, and even more over the next several decades. Repeatedly federal troops, state militias, and hire thugs were use to break strikes. .... [They then go on to report many details of such incidents.]
The government also targeted political radicals in the labor movement without waiting for strikes. .... In the years before the First World War, vigilante mobs organized by corporations and state politicians attacked IWW member ("Wobblies") all across the country. The level of repression escalated when the United State entered the war. Congress used the war as a pretext for passing the Espionage Act of 1917, which was nominally aimed at spying activities. Relying on this legislation, the government sent more that 900 people to prison in one year or their political views, including the entire leadership of all the socialist organizations in the United States, as well as hundreds of labor union leaders. .... [in WWII] Over 100,000 Japanese American citizens were rounded up and interned in detention camps....
During the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, FBI agents infiltrated civil rights organizations and harassed and intimidated activists. All groups identified as "leftist" were similarly targeted. .... [the same thing applied to anti-war activists in the Vietnam War. National Guard troops killed anti-war protesting students at Kent State and Jackson State.]
Repression and threats of repression remain important guarantors of elite rule and governmental power.Since the Iran-Contra scandal, and more recently the 9/11 event, the fist has grown much larger into something resembling fascism, and its outlines are made more visible via the documents presented in this article. The fact that the fist has been used only sparingly thus far is evidence that capitalist control of all ideological institutions have succeeded so effectively in preventing most threats from their worker-subjects.
