History’s lessons serve no purpose when they are ignored. Moreover, when theses lessons go unheeded, the cycle of disaster is invariably repeated with commensurately greater consequences.

The U.S. Empire’s perpetual corporate / military wars and occupations, while enriching a relatively tiny avaricious elite, are bankrupting and utterly decimating the masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow peoples of this nation and planet.

Though the parallels are not exact, the deteriorating economic and political conditions being endured by the masses of everyday people in the United States, of increasing joblessness, home foreclosures, economic stagnation, political violence, racism, and a burgeoning prison population, with an effectively gutted U.S. Constitution are eerily reminiscent of the period from 1919 to 1933, in Germany, known as the Weimar Republic. Peeking just around the political corner in this year of 2010, in the United States, are the extreme right wingers who are adroitly utilizing the aforementioned economic and political condition and fears of everyday people, as a means to grasp political power.

Contributing to this above-described reality is the repeated de facto acquiescence by Barack Obama to the political demands and wishes of the extreme right wing. This acquiescence is empowering and serving to usher in the extreme right wing which has nothing to offer but increased authoritarianism and manipulated fear. Additionally, a significant portion of the Left and so-called progressives also bear huge responsibility in facilitating the rise of the extreme right wing due to their failure to seriously challenge Barack Obama and his regime, and their unwillingness to insist that Obama fight for uncompromisingly progressive policies---particularly with respect to ending ongoing U.S. wars abroad, the bailing out of the Wall Street corporate elite, extending and widening the unconstitutional ‘Patriot Act’ and Extraordinary Rendition, failing to provide single payer universal health care, and not significantly addressing rising unemployment, home foreclosures, and homelessness, ecological ruin etc. The masses of people are increasingly feeling pain and demonstrating an often directionless frustration and anger; which the extreme right wing is cynically counting on, thanks to the inaction of much of the Left and progressives. No more apologies and no more collaboration!

Instead of forthrightly holding the Obama/Biden/Rahm Emanuel regime accountable for its actions and inactions in the aforementioned areas, there remain many Obama apologists and collaborators---who are, by their intellectual and political dishonesty, facilitating the rise of the extreme right wing in this nation. Indeed, this is also applicable to much of the Black intelligentsia in this nation, who have made themselves historically and politically null and void due to their intellectual and political dishonesty and intransigence pertaining to their refusal to hold Barack Obama and his political cohorts accountable.

With the daily complicity of the corporate-stream media, the people of this nation continue to receive lies and misleading rhetoric from the Obama regime, who for example, now claims an “end” to the U.S. war in Iraq, when in fact there are 50, 000 U.S. troops there (not counting thousands of mercenaries—misleadingly referred to as “contractors”), those troops are still very much under assault and dying, and bombings and other attacks by insurgents are continuing and in some instances increasing. Like his predecessor George W. Bush, who ridiculously declared those years ago, “Mission accomplished!” in Iraq; so it is now that the clever and more articulate Barack Obama is absurdly and insultingly declaring that the war in Iraq, has in essence “ended.” Lies, lies, and more lies.

Meanwhile, the U.S. war in Afghanistan intensifies and rages on, as it does in flooded Pakistan, where deadly U.S. drone-missile attacks continue taking their deadly toll upon civilians, and in so doing, spawn ever more so-called “terrorists.” All of this is being carried out on the orders of the U.S. Commander In Chief “Mr. Hope and Change” Barack Obama.

There are but two ways to end wars. One is not to engage in them in the first place; and the other is to pull up stakes and get out totally and completely if one is in fact already engaged in them. These wars not only spawn and enhance “terrorism;” they kill thousands upon thousands of people, and cost everyday Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow people literally trillions of dollars that should be going into this nation’s economy and infrastructure, instead of into the coffers of the corporate / military elite.

In order to address the rise of extreme right wing authoritarianism [i.e. 21st century fascism] in this nation, we must uncompromisingly organize outside of the confines and treachery of the Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves. This also means unflinchingly holding Barack Obama and his regime accountable for its many lies and enormous misdeeds.

We must learn from the lessons of the Weimar Republic. We must learn from the lessons of history while there is still time. Let us be creative, and avoid falling prey to the past.

Make no mistake about it. We are in perilous times and it is time to stop facilitating our own demise. Educate, agitate, organize.

The very existence of both Mother Earth and humanity itself is at stake! Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as TheMacNeil/LehrerNewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Clickhere to contact Mr. Pinkney.

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