Disclaimer: I do not believe the U.S. has yet become a fascist dictatorship. What, then, i

Disclaimer: I do not believe the U.S. has yet become a fascist dictatorship. What, then, is the historical context of Chief Daryl Gates' call for the elimination of all casual users of drugs on the basis of national treason? He has recently suggested that all such citizens be shot. Gates was subsequently said by President Bush to be a model police chief. The number of one-time or more users of illegal drugs has been placed at 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 people. Clearly, Chief Gates is unaware of the social environment in which he has made his remark. The NSDAP attempted such a program in 1941, once the government had established that it was illegal to be a Jew, and eventually found it to be unworkable. With the dedication of considerable manpower and time, the Einsatzgruppen supported by the Order Police and army units were able to liquidate only around 100,000 Jews per month. Simple math shows that, if we adopt a median value of 50,000,000 users for the purpose of this calculation, it would take a similar organizational effort approximately 500 months or 41.66 years to bury the existing problem. Several difficulties arose from simply shooting and burying the victims. Raul Hilberg tells a story in his book _The Destruction of the European Jews_ of the time in mid-August, 1941, when Himmler viewed the murder of 100 victims in Minsk. After the shooting, the following conversation occurred between Himmler and Obergruppenfuhrer von dem Bach-Zelewski: ``Reichsfuhrer, those were only a hundred. What do you mean by that? Look at the eyes of the men in this Kommando, how deeply shaken they are! These men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we training here? Either neurotics or savages!'' If Chief Gates had any awareness of history he would realize the impracticality of his plan. The Germans realized that the mobile killing operations were too inefficient and Himmler settled on the well known "killing center" operations in which the victims were transported to fixed centers and gassed. In these operations, the rate of killing was only limited by the number of centers. Hilberg's statistics show that the centers were able to kill in excess of 100,000 per month per center. To obtain this number I have lumped the minor centers together as one. The pace of the killing was limited by the number of corpses that could be disposed of in a day. Hilberg places the theoretical capacity of the four Birkenau crematoria at 4,400+ per day, however the practical limit was always somewhat less. Burial of the corpses proved impractical. Before the crematoria were built the bodies were buried in mass graves. ``A survivor reports that in the summer of 1942 the corpses swelled, and a 'black, evil-smelling mass oozed out and polluted the groundwater in the vicinity.' By October the decomposing bodies, covered with maggots, had to be disinterred for burning in pits.'' How close are we in America to the realization of Gates' dream? Hilberg notes three organic steps to such a process. ``A destruction process has an inherent pattern. There is only one way in which a scattered group can effectively be destroyed. Three steps are organic in the operation: Definition | Concentration (or seizure) | Annihilation There are additional steps in a modern destructive undertaking. These measures are required not for the annihilation of the victim but for the preservation of the economy... Definition | Dismissals of employees and expropriation of business firms | Concentration | Exploitation of labor and starvation measures | Annihilation | Confiscation of personal effects'' The first item has already been accomplished by the development of drug tests. The U.S. government can already identify a drug user with far better accuracy than the NSDAP could ever identify a Jew. The second item is already well under way. Many employers, particularly those with government contracts, are using drug tests to identify and dismiss the 'traitorous criminals'. Congress has already provided for the expropriation of businesses and belongings. The third and fourth items have been, at least in part, proposed by the Gingrich bill. The bill, which failed in Congress last year, provided for the concentration and exploitation of drug users in tent camps as well as other enabling measures. It should be mentioned that, with our burgeoning prison population consisting of a large percentage of drug 'traitors', the process of concentration is already well begun. The fifth item has been proposed by President Bush's model police chief Daryl Gates (although as shown above with insufficient historical knowledge). As for the sixth item you may refer to the remarks on the second item. Note the recent expropriation of three fraternity houses on the campus of the University of Virginia. It is now well established law that such items as automobiles and houses may be confiscated. Little effort will be required to seize personal belongings, particularly when the victim has little further use for them. It is interesting to note the similarity in the rationalizations used by the Germans to suppress the Jews to those used by the U.S. government to suppress casual drug use. Hitler felt the Jews must be disposed of since they could never become integrated in his new order. They were defined as criminal and parasitic. Much the same declarations are made by the Americans with regard to casual drug users. Gates has called them traitors for presumably damaging the economy or whatever as Hitler called the Jews traitors for presumably helping to lose World War I. How close are we to Daryl Gates' dream? I would place the U.S. legal structure at about half the way there. People like LAPD Chief Daryl Gates are already there and waiting. NOTE: All quotations are taken from _The Destruction of the European Jews_ by Raul Hilberg, 1985, Holmes & Meier, NY., ISBN 0-8419-0910-5