Well, enough with all this dreadful global political business. I believe I’m suffering from information overload. Too much distressing news and not enough clean air and sunshine.
Today is quiet. The sun is out, and the temperature is in the low 60′s as we approach the spring equinox. Many people are on spring break this week, so the telephones are quiet, and there’s not so much busyness. Which suits me just fine.
When I was young, I would have probably said “This is boring. God, let’s go do something!,” but not these days. Approaching fifty years of age, I find great pleasure in quiet days, days when there’s little more to do than read a good book or take the dogs for a walk. In fact, I long for days like this. Days when I can sit in the garden and watch butterflies and bees and drift off to sleep in the sunshine. They’re the best days, no question.
Then again, today is not just any day. Today is my wedding anniversary, the 26th, to be exact. Allison and I were married at the First Methodist Church in downtown Memphis, a venerable old institution and building. My grandparents were members, as were my mother and my father. I was raised in that church, as well, and have many fond memories of my time there. The building we were married in was completed in 1893, but tragically burned in 2006. No one would have ever believed my marriage would outlast First Church, but it did.
And I suppose the main reason it survived was the fact I married a Saint. A woman with the patience of Job. A wonderful wife and mother, she’s been a faithful and loyal companion, and were it not for her, I dare say I may not have lived as long as I have. Let’s just say she cured me of some bad habits and tamed my Irish temper. At least enough to keep me out of jail and amongst the living.
Today, I have everything. A quiet, sunny warm day, a wonderful wife, three spectacular children and three dogs that believe I’m the King. But as I say that, my mind drifts back to the poor people of Japan and in other places around the world dealing with so much suffering. Much suffering is caused by man, of course, which means it’s completely unnecessary and a terrible pity.
I honestly don’t know what’s to become of the world. Everything seems to be precariously balanced, as if on a seesaw. But I have to think that if more humans would embrace the simple pleasures of life, it would help them to better control their lust for money and power. To recognize the simple yet profound magnificence of a songbird or of young plants coming forth in spring, or to realize just how lucky we are to have shelter, heat, clean water and good food. Many people don’t have those things and would give anything to have what we take for granted.
Seems to me everyone could live comfortably if we’d all commit to living more simply. A full life has little to do with net worth and clutter. A full life, at least to me, is the simple life, one without so much clutter and time wasted building “portfolios.”
Posted: March 16th, 2011
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“Yet hundreds of liberals were sentenced to long prison terms on charges of treason…the treason laws were ruthlessly applied to the supporters of the Republic; those on the Right who tried to overthrow it, got off either free or with the lightest sentences. Event the assassins, if there were of the Right and their victims democrats, were leniently treated by the courts or, as often happened, helped to escape from the custody of the courts by Army officers and right-wing extremists.”-The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The American Far Right Looks To History For Its Strategy
Seems we’ve seen this before. The meteoric rise of the far right, lead by extremists and a new party, to a position of national dominance during a period of national decline.
People in America, or anywhere for that matter, don’t like comparisons to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. It’s said that as soon as you “play the Nazi” card, you lose credibility. It’s a bogus comparison. Ridiculous, even. But you don’t need the Gestapo, Totenkopfverbände and death camps to find yourself living a totalitarian state where death is the end result. Just continuing the growth mania, the war to support it and privatization is enough to create a nightmarish world in an of itself.
Sometimes these comparisons are flawed. Certainly any comparison of Obama to Hitler is laughable. Particularly comparisons by right winger Pam Geller, who has gone so far as to compare the American Library League to Nazi’s. Gotta watch out for those book hoarders and librarians, especially the ones with their hair up in a bun. They’re a goose stepping menace, threatening people with rulers and overdue fines.
But hey, for a real chuckle, check out this Tea Party candidate in his Waffen SS dress up costume.
This all seems laughable, but comparing the far right in this country to the far right in 1930′s Germany is no laughing matter. And Geller is right about one thing. Her “one line bio” reads, “Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. ”
The power elite in the United States has a long history of taking plays from the Nazi playbook. Copying Nazi tactics and cozying up to Nazi’s is nothing new, from propaganda to surveillance practices. We imported some of their best intelligence officers and scientists. Standard Oil and the Rockefeller family made a mint from selling to the Nazi’s in pre-war Nazi Germany. The U.S. power elite perfected propaganda, however, by more carefully disguising it with carefully chosen diction and organization. We worked it to perfection in building a case for post Second World War militarism and expansion, particularly in Iraq. And now we’re using it in the rise of “disaster capitalism,” which includes union busting and all sorts of nastiness. Just tell the people the sky is falling, and you can justify whatever you want. It’s the old Goering principle at work:
Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
In exploring the similarities between Nazism in 1930′s Germany and far right wing movements in the United States, it’s important to first understand that Hitler’s goals were never purely political. There were political issues that bothered Hitler, Versailles, suppression of the Communists and Lebensraum, but Nazism was first and foremost about ideology, Aryan supremacy, and removing so-called degenerate elements from German society, from people to art. Hitler’s primary focus, at the most basic level, was on beautification of German society (and beyond) through violence. Purifying the Fatherland of what he deemed parasitic threats. Politics was always just a tool, a way to gain power to enforce and expand their ideology. In many respects, the far right in America is the same way. The fight is not over the size of government. That’s a smoke screen. The fight is over privatization and profit. Secondary to the profit deity are lesser ideological concerns, such as the national language, homosexuals, Christianity, etc. Their racism is carefully cloaked by concerns over “immigration” and terror.
I see several parallels between the far right of Germany and the far right of America in
-the gradual ascent to power through existing institutions
-the use of rallies and tools of intimidation
-creating fear through the demonization of people or groups
-fervent, often maniacal nationalism
-the glorification of national history
-alignment with the military
-disdain for and controling the arts
-attacking organized labor
-loss of civil liberties
-distain for academia
-mysticism
-the deification of an ideology
-the goal of crushing opposition by any means necessary
Listening to the lank diction of the far right wing in America sounds precisely the same as it did in the 1930′s. Where as liberals promote diversity and acceptance of all people, the far right concentrates on attacking and eliminating ideas and groups of people that are “threats to our nation.” They thrive on creating fear and uncertainty in times when the economic challenges seem too much to overcome. But make no mistake. The Tea Party is not a political movement anymore than the NSDAP was a political movement. It’s completely and totally about crushing opposing ideas and turning America into a nation dominated by Christian conservatism and free market economics.
Both are ideological movements based on flawed, dangerous philosophies, and in my estimation, handing over power to the far right in America, although less pernicious than Nazism, can lead us to a truly ugly place characterized by even higher rates of incarceration (the U.S. already leads the world in incarceration), social inequity, poverty, decline and death.
Laying the Foundation
The far right in America, like the far right in 1930′s Germany loves a rally. To show force in the streets. And one of the first things I noticed at Tea Party rallies were all the guns. And these displays weren’t about “gun rights,” either. It was about intimidation. Every time I saw Tea Party thugs wearing guns at their political rallies I couldn’t help but think of Hitler’s Brown Shirts. And now, at their national convention in Memphis, they’re encouraging people to bring guns by advertising on their site that “REMEMBER, TENNESSEE IS A RIGHT TO CARRY STATE SO CHECK OUT YOUR RECIPROCITY RIGHTS!”
Consider the demonization of Muslims, Mexicans, liberals, gays and the poor. This campaign is eerily similar to the propaganda campaigns in 1930′s Germany against the Jews, the Poles and every other group (communists, socialists, the French) blamed for the “downfall of Germany.” They’re even in lock step with Hitler on socialists, portraying them as threats to our nation, although I’ve yet to meet a true socialist anywhere in America. Who, other than an idiot, could possibly think we have a socialist in the White House? The election of Obama is the new right’s Versailles.
The rise to power and the way the far right is gaining power is very similar to 1930′s Germany. In Germany, we saw the gradual increase in power of an extreme, obscure group in the major governing body, and the rise to power was within the framework of the constitution. The far right in America has been clever enough to realize that to control the country, you must control its most powerful institutions. The Supreme Court and Congress, have allies within the military and major industry. Hitler realized the same thing, carefully courting major industrialists and military support. He was always very careful to keep from alienating the Wehrmacht. Hitler went from 12 seats in the Reichstag in 1928 to 107 in 1930. By 1932, they had over 200 seats, eventually dropping back down to under 200 seats before Hitler gained complete power and outlawed all other political parties. Even Hitler’s final coup d’état was legal. In the same way, we see the far right gaining more and more ground, which also includes another Nazi tactic, placing “their people” in key positions in all levels of government, often with extraordinary powers to carry out the will of the party.
And they are perhaps winning the ideological battle, by duping masses of people with popular programs like cutting taxes and “protecting freedom.” But as was the case in Nazi Germany, they’re gaining power through false pretenses, and at some point, all these people that have been supporting them are going to wake up and say “Oh, fuck. What have we done?” This will happen when the average working people that supported them, offering their support for BS like abortion, gods and guns, will find themselves without a job, no insurance and no unemployment benefits. They’ll realize, and painfully so, that they ultimately supported a party that brought about their own demise.
The ascension of both groups occurred during periods of economic decline (although Germany’s was certainly much more serious), and both groups falsely charged competing interests for the decline in socio-economic affairs.
Like America today, Germany was heavily leveraged, propped up by foreign investment and loans from other countries, and it’s this over-blown financial crisis and the “union problem” that the far right is using to push its agenda, which is primarily about privatization. It’s about turning America into a corporate state.
One difference in America is there is no single person rising to absolute power. There are several lunatics jockeying for position in America’s far right, but all with the same ideological goals. As in Germany, you have a handful of ideologues, babbling nonsense and distorting history, although some, like Palin, are completely ignorant of history. Others, like Glenn Beck, are little more than mentally ill, delusional, paranoid, sociopaths that see a socialist boogeyman under every bed. It’s as if they’re hypnotized by their own lies. Yet, they are clever enough to cloak everything in good old Americanism so they don’t arouse too much suspicion about their ultimate motives. The lack of a single, unifying leader could be their achilles heal, however, because for the movement to gain absolute power they desire, they’ll at some point need a a clear leader. One with an indomitable will, a good bit of luck and the ability to know how to immediately pounce on an opponents weaknesses. They could, however, continue their rise via a collective, via a more decentralized power structure. It’s brought them this far. Who’s to say it won’t hand them power in the White House, in addition to Congress and the Supreme Court.
Differences and Similarities
America is in a very different place than 1930′s Germany. Although we are suffering from high unemployment and various fiscal crisis’, America remains the world’s unchallenged leader, an empire. On the other hand, Germany was at rock bottom in the early 1930′s. Still suffering from the humiliation of World War I and extremely high unemployment (1 in 3 were jobless), Germany used fear and scapegoating as an object of blame. In America, the propaganda and fear tactics are designed to illustrate a foe that will destroy our empire.
Another major difference is the object of worship and idolatry. In Germany, it was the Aryan ideal. In America, it’s profit, although secondary to that are ill-founded obsessions on finer points of ideology. Heterosexual marriage, Christianity, the English language, etc. From there flow the points of demonization, from gay rights to the Mexican-Muslim menace. Hitler wanted an Aryan super race. The far right wants a nation of Christian, English speaking, capitalists that place profit over everything. And whether they’ll admit it or not, if the whole nation was white, they’d be happier. Even the great emancipator, Lincoln, supported notions of removing blacks from the United States. Don’t think for a moment these people don’t harbor ideas of an all-white, Christian America, and they’re fueled by people like Brigitte Gabriel, not just Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Gabriel’s message is clear, and she’s attracting crowds: “America has been infiltrated at all levels by radicals who wish to harm America.”
As someone that’s spent nearly my whole life in the Southern Bible belt, I can assure you they do. I can’t recount all the times I’ve heard people say they wouldn’t give a damn if “we killed all the Muslims. Kill them before they kill us.” It’s a somewhat muted call for genocide, and before you think that’s going overboard, remember, we’ve already carried out genocidal policies against a people, right here on this continent. Many people, inside and outside of the government, called for the extermination of all American Indians.
One of the first steps in this process is to dehumanize the target group. David Livingston Smith just came out with a new book titled Less Than Human, where he argues how dehumanization is necessary for genocide, slavery and slaughter to take hold. He argues that it’s a mindset that decommissions our moral inhibitions about mistreating fellow human beings. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard both Muslims and gays, but particularly the former, referred to as “animals.” Of course, all humans are animals, but when used in that manner, the intent is to indicate that the target person or group is somehow less than human. I’m no fan of religion in general, including Islam. I believe all religion is totalitarian in nature, but just because someone has been duped into a god trance doesn’t make them inhuman.
Recently, Rolling Stone magazine published a story about a “kill team” within the U.S. military. It’s horrifying, but a good example of how the dehumanization process eventually plays out. We have U.S. soldiers acting like a modern day Totenkopfverbände unit, purposefully hunting and murdering citizens in Afghanistan, including a a fifteen year old farm boy that was unarmed. They set him up, murdered him in cold blood and posed next to his body like he was a hunting trophy. The soldiers described the people of Afghanistan as “savages,” much the same way U.S. soldiers and citizens described American Indians.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”H.L. Mencken
The demonization of homosexuals is particularly interesting. It’s well known how the far right feels about gays. Looking back, the Nazi’s enacted laws (section 175a of the German Criminal Code) against homosexuality (equating it with racial purity) as early as 1935. Yet, the party leaders turned a blind eye to it in the high ranks (the executions of Röhm and Heines were strictly political to appease the Army), where several high ranking Nazi’s were known homosexual or bisexual, including Goering. In America, it seems we have no shortage of Republicans and conservative pastors publicly fighting against gay marriage while enjoying more than a few gay trists themselves.
But it’s certainly not just in the Bible Belt. The hate has spread all across the nation, and it’s undeniable.
Like Hitler, our national elites purify through violence. Iraq and Afghanistan are obvious recent examples, but let’s not forget the dozens of countries where we’ve used proxy forces and agents in support of dictators that do our bidding. Militarized police use violence and intimidation to subjugate and silence individuals and groups seen as threats to hierarchy and power, although this tactic is used by both the far right and the so-called liberal establishment lead by Obama.
And there’s the fervent nationalism. The far right in America is obsessed with flag waving and jingoism, paying homage to and hoisting up our past “glories,” while talking about “reclaiming America” in the same way Hitler talked about saving Fatherland.
Hitler attacked modern art, labeling it degenerate and drawing comparisons between abstractionism and physical deformity and mental illness. He staged shows comparing degenerate art to classical art that, in his mind, illustrated the ideal state of man, particularly during the Antiquity. How many people on the far right are patrons of modern art? Not many. Many on the right seem to prefer the idealistic art (if one can call it art) produced by artists like Thomas Kinkade, portraying idyllic depictions of American life, often with religious icons or symbols of nationalism within the context. Churches in quaint villages, Jesus the shepherd, soldiers returning from nobel wars (spreading democracy), and white family life. There are no depictions of how life really is in America. None.
The far right is now pushing to eliminate PBS and NPR and the National Endowment for the Arts, because in their view, those institutions are “liberal” and damaging to America. Even the battle against unions, raging in Wisconsin and across the land, has been seen before. In 1933, Hitler did the same thing, in an early move designed to help consolidate power, and in his march to power, Hitler was of course had few reservations about using violence to achieve his goals. Apparently, neither do some American conservatives.
And, just as Hitler did, they’re attacking academia. The far right as long held that colleges and universities were bastions of liberal thought and professors seeking to recruit their children to Marxism. But now, they’ve taken it a step further and are launching attacks against anyone that dare oppose them. Attacks meant to drive them underground and into a state of quiescent compliance. The Nazi’s did the same thing. They whitewashed university curriculum and got rid of any and all academics that dared say anything contrary to the dominant ideology.
And now in Wisconsin and around the country, the far right is making a bold move to destroy organized labor, just as Hitler did in 1933. The Republican junta in the Wisconsin legislature illegally passed their union killing bill with a sleight of hand reminiscent of Goering’s maneuver with Papen when Papen attempted to legally pass a dissolution bill. It was the beginning of the Nazi consolidation of power in the Reich, and in America, it’s a critical step toward privatization of the public sector.
How much clearer can the picture get?
“Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country]… I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past … (few) years.”
- Adolf Hitler
Well, it didn’t work out that way, did it? All the crosses were replaced by swords and Mein Kampf replaced the Bible. But the Nazi’s did have the same sorts of connections to mysticism as fundamentalist Christians. Tea Party members claim to be rightly guided by the Almighty to some great calling and focus on the rapture, just as Hitler fixated on the calling of his “Master Race.” There’s no concern about resources, because Jesus will take care of it. It’s our new Manifest Destiny to Christianize and democratize (Translation: open markets) the entire world.
Hitler also considered the mentally ill and the infirm degenerates. His T4 program targeted the mentally ill, people with Down Syndrome and people with physical deformities. They were gassed in an effort to eliminate their “defective genes” from German society. In the same way, you can see the far right’s war on healthcare playing out in a somewhat similar fashion. The disdain for the sick and the needy is no different. These people are basically kicked aside and given the old “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” speech. But without national healthcare, decent healthcare may one day only be available to the wealthy, because costs are literally spiraling out of control. Who can afford cancer treatment today without health insurance? who can afford a heart bypass? Simultaneously, the overall trends in unemployment are terrifying and most people obtain insurance via their employers. If you lose your insurance, you may not be able to qualify for a new plan at an affordable rate. Who can’t see the writing on the wall on this issue? The sick and the less fortunate will be left to die in the same way the infirm were cast to the side in Germany.
T4 was administered by physicians, who made the final decision on who died and who lived. Now, in America, we hear the state is once again calling on physicians to play a key role in determining the fate of undesirables. Arizona is attempting to pass a new law where doctors are required to check the immigration status of all patients. Hospitals would be required to check the status of all patients. Your papers pliss!
And who can deny the demonization of the poor in America? If you spend only a cursory amount of time listening to the propaganda of the far right, you’ll find the poor and less fortunate are labeled “parasites” and free-loaders living off welfare.
The Final Denouement
In the end, what handed Germany to the Nazi’s wasn’t a majority of support for Hitler. He clearly didn’t have it, and he realized he couldn’t attain power without some slights of hand and the manipulation of a senile, aging Hindenburg. What handed the keys over to the Nazi’s was a lack of unification of the populace to stand up to the Nazi’s. Nearly 60% didn’t support Hitler, but they were fragmented by too many parties that wouldn’t unify to stop him. Many could see exactly what was happening, yet no one or no group moved decisively to stop it.
Except in America, I fear not enough people are seeing what lies ahead. Too many others that recognize it aren’t doing enough to stand in its path. They believe it’s simply democracy playing itself out and that the majority will justly carry the day.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It’s not likely to lead to death camps, however. I doubt there will be mass round ups of dissidents, the poor, Mexicans or Muslims for camps. If you think that can’t happen in America, well, you’re probably right. Authoritarian overkill like that of the Nazis is both needlessly expensive and generates potent resentment. The tendency will be to generate an anti-authoritarian backlash. In America, you won’t be gassed in a bus or in a chamber, you’ll simply be allowed to die cold, hungry and sick under a viaduct or convicted of a “crime.” We’ve improved the program to make it appear the plights of the victims were created by their own poor choices.
And we have all these private prisons to fill. It’s big business. If you convict political dissidents, Mexicans, Muslims and other undesirables (degenerates) it becomes a profit making scheme. It’s better to keep them alive but incarcerated. In such a system, the lesser people (as Alan Simpson called them) become little more than commodities, like cattle, except they’re herded into prisons or low wage jobs. Others are simply ostracized and kicked to curb, left to die under a viaduct somewhere in filth.
Even the Nazi’s started to learn this lesson. Toward the end of the war, certain factions within the SS actually attempted to stop the exterminations, viewing Jews as valuable sources of labor for the war machine. On the other hand, we do have a history of attempting to eliminate troublesome peoples. William Tecumseh Sherman, the commander of the U.S. Army after the Civil War, responding to the issue of Comanche slave trading stated that it would be “better the Indian race be obliterated” than submit to ransom demands. And that’s just one example of hundreds where U.S. officials, state representatives and business leaders called for extermination of the Indians. It’s a well known fact we murdered them by the thousands once we decided the country wasn’t big enough for indigenous populations and state-sponsored free market capitalists.
Yet, here we find ourselves, allowing it to happen. As a nation, we’re just marching along, waving the flag, singing patriotic songs, ignoring the rise in hate groups believing and repeating the lie arbeit macht frei.
Posted: March 10th, 2011
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