Paramilitary thugs free from prosecution are integral to fascist shift

Evidence

When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution … Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station “to restore public order.” — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 421

Categorization

• QUESTION: Klein quotes this as Naomi Wolf’s own framing from 2007 — worth checking the source and Klein’s move of putting the author’s device inside her own argument.