![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI like Dave Neiwert (Orcninus) and his long commentary on fascism is as scary as it is easy to read.
But this http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_05_16_dneiwert_archive.html#108529693168032263 is scarier than that, because it details how 1: the origins of fascism may be American, and 2: shows that we may be heading there, and sooner; and more readily, than we think.
An extract from his illustration:
"Nevins is an English teacher at Rio Rancho High School in New Mexico, which is the largest high school in the state and a model of state-of-the-art education. He also taught a poetry class, and encouraged students in pursuing "poetry slams" that gave them full freedom of expression. But because students used the forum to attack Bush and the Iraq invasion, he was not only fired, he was held a virtual prisoner by an apparently vindictive principal. The students' poetry club was also terminated."
He goes on:
"As Bill Hill recently explained in the Daytona Beach News-Herald:
The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.
In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.
A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.
The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job."
If we aren't careful, it can happen here.
But this http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_05_16_dneiwert_archive.html#108529693168032263 is scarier than that, because it details how 1: the origins of fascism may be American, and 2: shows that we may be heading there, and sooner; and more readily, than we think.
An extract from his illustration:
"Nevins is an English teacher at Rio Rancho High School in New Mexico, which is the largest high school in the state and a model of state-of-the-art education. He also taught a poetry class, and encouraged students in pursuing "poetry slams" that gave them full freedom of expression. But because students used the forum to attack Bush and the Iraq invasion, he was not only fired, he was held a virtual prisoner by an apparently vindictive principal. The students' poetry club was also terminated."
He goes on:
"As Bill Hill recently explained in the Daytona Beach News-Herald:
The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.
In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.
A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.
The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job."
If we aren't careful, it can happen here.
