You think it can’t happen here? It already has, baby! California elected a governor whose father, an Austrian policeman, was (at best) a Nazi sympathizer – and who has himself expressed admiration for the Nazi cause. Now comes this:
Last month, a group of anti-war activists, including the parents of American soldiers killed in Iraq, held a small Mother’s Day rally at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial near the California Capitol to call for the return of all National Guard troops by Labor Day.
Three days before the rally, as a courtesy to the military, an aide in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s press office alerted the Guard to the event, according to e-mails obtained by the Mercury News.
The information was passed up the chain of command directly to [Maj. Gen. Thomas] Eres and other top Guard officials including Col. Jeff Davis, who oversees O’Neill’s operation.
That would be Col. Robert J. O’Neill, a veteran intelligence officer who is director of a new California National Guard survelliance unit called – get this! – the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program.
Guard officials said the new unit would not collect information on American citizens, but, as it turns out, it already has:
“Sir,” Guard chief of staff Col. John Moorman wrote in the e-mail to Eres that was copied to Davis and other top commanders. “Information you wanted on Sunday’s demonstration at the Capitol.”
In response, Davis indicated that Guard intelligence officers were tracking the rally.
“Thanks,” Davis wrote. “Forwarding same to our Intell. folks who continue to monitor.”
That rainy Sunday, the protest organized by Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and CodePink drew about three dozen supporters.
Guard spokesman[Lt. Col. Stan] Zezotarski said the monitoring did not involve anything more than keeping tabs on the protest through the media and that no one went to observe the demonstration…
“It’s nothing subversive,” Zezotarski said. “Because who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up? After all, we live in the age of terrorism, so who knows?”
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.
It may seem farfetched to suggest that Arnold Schwarzenegger has fascist tendencies. For one thing, it gives him credit for being a much deeper thinker/strategizer than he shown himself to be over the years.
A better (or real) politician would go out of his way to avoid drawing attention to his crypto-fascist background by sending his military surveillance unit to monitor grannies at a war protest. Why does he care who goes to war protests? This is another ham-fisted, tin-eared action by Das Guber – but it’s a development with a dark undercurrent that ought to give even his most ardent Republican supporters pause.
