United States presidential contender Ron Paul has warned that his country is slipping into a twenty-first century fascist system with a broke government ruled by big business. RT asked some experts whether they agree.

­Speaking to supporters in Kansas City, the Republican candidate said Americans' individual liberties were being stripped away.

And, as Houston-based author Anis Shivani says, Paul is “the only candidate on the Republican side who is talking about the loss of civil liberties, pending illegal wars, making the connection between imperialism and the loss of rights at home.”

It now looks like Ron Paul could win the Maine caucus, and Shivani believes he could have more support with the American public but it seems that the media won’t allow it to happen:

“I think he does have hardcore support – maybe it could be 15 to 20 per cent of people on the conservative side. His support could be wider, but the media will never treat a candidate like him with seriousness, they will just dismiss him as a fringe candidate because of, for example, his very firm stance on Iran, he is saying ‘Let’s not get into another war on Iran, we just can’t afford it, and every time we do this, it makes governance at home more difficult.’ So the media will say he is just not interested in national security and dismiss him.”

­Jeff Steinberg, a national security expert from Executive Intelligence Review Magazine, told RT that while Congressman Paul is right to say the US is slipping to fascism, the reality is something more dangerous.

He states that since his first day in office, President Barack Obama was completely under the control of Wall Street and the City of London. Obama has gone beyond all the excesses of the Bush administration in “asserting a policy of unitary executive presidential dictatorship,” Steinberg claims.

The security expert hopes that Paul will be part of a bipartisan group that would finally draw the line and say that Obama has committed impeachable crimes – including going to war against Libya without Congressional permission, killing US citizens overseas without any due process, and many others. “These are among the most serious crimes that have ever been committed by any president, perhaps even surpassing the crimes that lead to Richard Nixon’s resignation.”

­Libertarian campaigner Wes Benedict also warns against “corporate fascism,” where big business and big government work together at the expense of freedom. “It’s not what I would call true capitalism or a real free market,” he says.

The government’s big bailouts to the banks and automobile companies did not help the “little guy” as they were supposed to, instead benefiting the well-connected rich and powerful, Benedict told RT.

He believes that putting more power in the government's hands only makes things worse. “What we need to do is take power away from the government and make a system where we understand that if we give the government power, that’s a recipe for destruction."