Welcome friends to The Johno Show today we are going to discuss the quick rise of Fascism in America. So grow out your Adolf Hitler little mustaches and practice saying Sieg Heil America!!

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

That is what it reads at the base of The Statue of Liberty given to us by France. It’s what this country was founded on and it’s exactly what the terrorists are trying to destroy. Fear has gotten the best of us.

I wish I could stand here and say “I knew it…I knew those Republicans were all fascists.” Unfortunately, stupid is as stupid does and fear crosses all political boundaries in America today as Mayor David Bowers, a Democrat, from Roanoke Virginia invoked the Japanese internment camps set up by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a good idea we should possibly rethink in terms of Syrian Refugees.

Bowers said “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

What America did to Japanese-Americans was not sequester. It was internment. And again we can pause to go back to the dictionary and see where Interment is defined as the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. In fact, Collins English dictionary adds that the term is especially used for the confinement “of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects”. Of course we don’t want to think about the fact Guantanamo fits that description perfectly. Let’s just ignore that little piece of American history taking place as I speak.

On April 18, 1975, less than two weeks before the fall of Saigon, President Ford authorized the entry of 130,000 refugees 125,000 of whom were Vietnamese. Now full disclosure my partner and his family was one of those refugees. So this story holds very tight in my heart.

California Gov. Jerry Brown was so insistent on not having Vietnamese refugees in his state he sent his staff to the airport to try to stop the planes from landing on Californian soil. Now of course Governor Brown is a little older and a little wiser saying California would help accept Syrian refugees.

As shocking as this may seem Brown was in fact reflecting on American sentiment at the time. A gallop poll was conducted in May 1975 that asked, if Americans were opposed to admitting Vietnamese Refugees into the United States 54% said they were opposed 36% were in favor of allowing Vietnamese refugees into the country and 12% were undecided.

A year later, after the events of Kristallnacht, in which more than 15,000 Jews were expelled from Germany and sent to concentration camps, a survey conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion found that more than 60% of Americans were opposed to accepting Jewish refugee children, who were the most in need of asylum.

In fact Laura Delano, cousin to FDR, was quoted as saying “Twenty thousand charming children would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults,” However a year later, America passed legislation to accept Christian refugees from England while leaving Jewish refugees to the mercy of the Nazi regime.

So you see Fascism isn’t on the rise in America. It’s just always been right there under our skin the whole time and all we needed was a little prick reminding us that those people over there are the bad people that we don’t want in this country and sure enough those in power close the doors to the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.