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kayell Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 11:09 AM
Original message
Is US like Germany of the '30s?
http://radiofreeusa.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3136

ANDREW GREELEY
Chicago Sun Times
BERLIN -- I can understand, my German friend said, why Germans voted for Hitler in 1933 -- though he did not receive a majority of the vote. The Weimar Republic was weak and incompetent. The Great Depression had ruined the nation's war-devastated economy. People were bitter because they thought their leaders had betrayed them in the war. They wanted revenge for the humiliation of Versailles. Hitler promised strong leadership and a new beginning. But why did they continue to support that group of crazy drug addicts, thugs, killers and madmen?

The historical question remains. I leave aside the question of the guilt of the whole German people (a judgment beyond my competence because I am not God) and ask what explanations might account for what happened. Hitler turned the German economy around in short order. He was crazy, of course, a demagogic mystic sensitive to aspirations of the German spirit. He appealed skillfully to the dark side of the German heritage. Anti-Semitism was strong in Germany, as it was in most European countries, but not violent until Hitler manipulated it. He stirred up the memories of historic German military accomplishments and identified himself with Frederick the Great -- thus placating the Prussian ethos of the German army. He promised glory to a nation still smarting from the disaster of 1918. Germany was emerging from the ashes, strong and triumphant once again. He also took control of the police apparatus. The military might have been able to dump him till 1937. After that he was firmly in power. The path lay open to holocaust.

Can this model be useful to understand how contemporary America is engaged in a criminally unjust war that has turned much of the world against it, a war in which torture and murder have become routine? Has the combination of the World Trade Center attack and a president who believes his instructions come from God unleashed the dark side of the American heritage?

What is this dark side? I would suggest that it is the mix of Calvinist religious righteousness and "my-country-right-or-wrong" patriotism that dominated our treatment of blacks and American Indians for most of the country's history. It revealed itself in the American history of imperialism in Mexico and after the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. The "manifest destiny" of America was to do whatever it wanted to do, because it was strong and virtuous and chosen by God.

more
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RUMMYisFROSTED Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 11:19 AM
Response to Original message
1. Does this answer the question?
He <Bush> is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism. They have in common a demagogic appeal to the worst side of a country's heritage in a crisis. Bush is doubtless sincere in his vision of what is best for America. So too was Hitler. The crew around the president -- Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, the "neo-cons" like Paul Wolfowitz -- are not as crazy perhaps as Himmler and Goering and Goebbels. Yet like them, they are practitioners of the Big Lie -- weapons of mass destruction, Iraq democracy, only a few "bad apples."
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Paradise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 11:41 AM
Response to Original message
2. Thanks! Very interesting read. nt
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John_Shadows_1 Donating Member (289 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 11:50 AM
Response to Original message
3. Parallels to national socialism...
... it seems to me that the crucial structural feature of Nazism as a political ideology was the right of the Fuhrer to appropriate the labor of citizens for what he defined as 'national interests'. So he could, say , draft men to go and try to seize the caucasan oil fields in the Soviet Union. Now we have a government where decision-making has been streamlined so that one or a few make the decisions and set the goals - and with the "stop-loss" program of extending soldiers tours of duty and the coming draft, to seize Iraq (where there are oil fields, BTW), we've taken the crucial leap.
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kayell Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:43 PM
Response to Reply #3
8. I would also include the proposed "critical skills" draft registration
in your list.
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LittleApple81 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:06 PM
Response to Original message
4. When BuschCo starting rattling sabers for "The March on Iraq" the German
press saw similarities(I think it was the SUDDEUTCHE ZEITUNG) published BushCo's statements and the Nazi regime's statements when preparing to attack their neighbors side by side...ALMOST IDENTICAL!
But of course we Americans were not privileged enough to see this...
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Cleita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:18 PM
Response to Original message
5. Kind of but one thing will save us, our diversity.
Germany of the thirties was a fairly homogenous and smaller population like we have in Middle America. It was fairly easy to inspire an "us against them" mentality in the population. The Nazis scapegoated the Jews and other minorities blaming them for the hard times Germans were going through then. The Germans allowed their biases, which had been nurtured by Christian thought against the Jews as Christ killers, to sway them.

BushCo has not been able to instill a sheep mentality entirely in our population because to scapegoat any single group alienates several others. So far all they can do is engender hate against Arabs and Muslims and many of us aren't even buying that. I hope this will help us to save our nation from the fate of Nazi Germany.
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Eloriel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:32 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. I think your theory would have more validity
if The People had more power, and the administration far less. The Padilla Supreme Court case and two others will be extremely important for curbing a little of that power, but not enough. We had the specter this week of Ashcroft brazenly refusing to cooperate with a Congressional committee for no reason at all other than that he didn't want to. The Dems on the committee made noises about Contempt of Congress, but nothing will come of it -- which means that he and the whole administration will be further emboldened to flaunt law, custom, Congress, The People, etc., etc.



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Cleita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 02:44 PM
Response to Reply #6
15. Don't you think their whole modus operandi is to be above the
law? Right from the anointment of Bush by the Supreme Court through the suspension of the Geneva convention, and now down to this. If we don't start pulling these people into court and charging them with treason and contempt of the law, you can be sure, even if Kerry wins in a landslide, they will just say the election isn't valid during the war on terrorism and refuse to budge. What then? Do we just roll over, like the Reich-stag did and stop convening Congress like the Reich-stag stopped meeting? I am somewhat fearful that this could happen.
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neebob Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:46 PM
Response to Reply #5
9. I think you're right
or at least I hope so. But then you have to wonder why most of the people who share opposition to the Badministration are being so quiet and how bad it will have to get before they start screaming and finally stop it, and then what that will take. I wonder how many are just quietly hoping and trusting the vote and how many are in denial.
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Cleita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. Unfortunately, it has to get personal.
In our case it's going there with the liberal bashing, but until the conservatives wake up that they too are vulnerable, we will be pushing a boulder uphill.
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Eloriel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 12:39 PM
Response to Original message
7. I was actually a little disappointed by Greeley's column
He didn't go nearly far enough. Perhaps this realization is just dawning on him and he hasn't done any research or other reading. Here are a few links I've accumulated (and I urge people to read them, or at least bookmark them for future reading):

March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

The NASCAR Nazi
Bush is creating an un-American America
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/38/lost-washburn.php

It's time for another Bush/Nazis thread (Aug. 03)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=199853#199877

Nazification of America Phase 3
http://www.hermes-press.com/nazification_step3.htm

The Reichstag Fire and 9/11; Pretexts for Dictatorship and the Fourth Reich
Includes: Parallels between the Third Reich and the Bush Regime; 9/11 and the Reichstag Fire; What was the Reichstag Fire; Nazis in America; Poland 1939, Iraq 2003
http://www.oilempire.us/reichstag-fire.html


Bush's 9/11 Reichstag Fire by Harvey Wasserman http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0913-03.htm


20 Comparisons by Barrie Zwicker
http://www.deceptiondollar.com/news/BloorRemarks911-03.htm
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JohnOneillsMemory Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 01:29 PM
Response to Reply #7
11. Strong link pool, thanks E. How Reagan made liberals the Jews of today:
The psycho-linguistic mechanics of fascism are everywhere like a bad smell at a witch burning.

Ok, I disturbed myself. I'm going back to waking up and smelling coffee. Here's my archived take on how we are suffering that old scourge of the 1930s:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Unfortunately, Americans have been subjected to scientifically applied propaganda by an alliance of corporate-dominated government agencies and corporate-dominated media outlets, especially TV, to successfully hijack control of the biggest arsenal on the planet, the US government.

Religion is the deepest imbedded cultural system that promotes rejecting logic for irrational emotion. Television is a close second for filling the collective American mind with manipulative fearmongering. Combined, they are a 24/7 Nuremberg rally of adrenalin and endorphins, a daily drip of red-white-and-blue indoctri-Nation-alism.

This isn't just leftist rhetoric. It is real science developed by behavioral scientists, neurologists, sociologists, linguists, and historians.

And the diagnosis for the conservative American mind is an ‘Authoritarian Personality’ which researchers have declared a precursor to a pathological behavior called FASCISM.

After WWII, psychologists turned their studies to figuring out what personality traits led to large populations accepting the inhumane fascism of Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler. What they discovered was something they termed 'The Authoritarian Personality' which, in a nutshell, is fearful and prone to seeking security through pack identity (virulent nationalism), attacking other identity groups (like Jews, blacks, Gypsies, gays, Muslims, etc.), and revering cruel dictators (the strong father as Fuhrer) who promise to kill the boogeymen in their minds.

All that ugly behavior results from intentionally exaggerating people's fears in order to inflame a primal reactive part of the brain called the amygdala that is vigilant against survival threats.

Millions of years ago, the amygdala was the most important part of our brain that kept us from getting eaten by other animals. We have since evolved more sophisticated brain systems that allows us to be social and rationally discern who wants to harm us and who just wants to have the next dance. The amygdala responds quickly without using the rational left-brain thought process that people such as 'liberal elitists' might use to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting the things they are told by authority figures on TV. Since vision has been the most important tool for identifying friend from foe, television has been a brainwasher's dream tool for instilling propaganda into the American psyche.

A web of cultural lies is taught to American children in school and then reinforced every day in movies and on TV for the rest of their lives to ensure their obedience and complicity in economic eugenics and war crimes.

Americans are raised to erroneously believe that they:
1) live in a democracy where their government represents them.
2) compete in free markets.
3) share equal opportunity for all.
4) see their government spreading democracy and protecting the innocent around the world.
5) inherited the status of Best in Show Among Humans in 1776, 1945, 1991 and 2003 by winning the Revolutionary War, WWII, and both Iraq Wars I and II. (Korea is forgotten and Vietnam is used for blaming liberals and non-compliant journalists.)

This is a well-defined historical narrative that describes America as the strongest and most virtuous moral force in the world ever. So surely the President of these United States must embody all that is good about our country. And reporters better be nice to him.

I call this Superman Cowboy Jesus-syndrome.

Ronald Reagan fit this movie-role-as-national-identity perfectly for many Americans who didn't realize that he was a senile figurehead for a cabal of murderers who successfully portrayed the poor as lazy thieves and secretly armed terrorists against foreign governments in the name of Christian compassion and democracy.

Here is how Americans have been led down the path to a Master Race group-think that accepts as both inevitable and just that domestic policy should be eugenics and foreign policy, imperialism:

Ever since the US lost the Vietnam War, the social atmosphere here has been very similar to post-WWI Germany. The hyper-nationalist German people were told in the summer of 1918 that they were winning World War I. But in the fall, they were suddenly informed that they had lost. They were stunned and angry as the victorious Allies raped them economically and their orderly society imploded into chaos. They looked around to find who among them had betrayed them and robbed them of their much-deserved victory over their inferiors. They demonized, assaulted, and killed Jews, labor unionists, socialists, Gypsies, and homosexuals.

The same scapegoating atmosphere bloomed in the US after Nixon was disgraced and the Vietnam War was revealed to be a quagmire of atrocities which had also ruined the economy. The Republicans have cleverly exploited this petulant atmosphere of entitlement denied to bring us to where we are today, mired in a culture war against liberals, feminists, blacks, homosexuals, and dangerous Middle Eastern foreigners, pretty much the same targets as the Nazis.

Ever wonder why 'liberal' became a swear word? Now you know. It is the American power structure’s synonym for ‘Jew.’

In fact, there is a name for this late 20th century fascist movement brought into the early 21st century:
Dominionism.

Dominionism is an alliance between Christian fundamentalists, Cold Warrior Fascists, and the Military Industrial Oil Complex, just like the rise of the German Nazis who, by remarkable coincidence, were also financed and supplied in their day by many US corporations, including George W. Bush's financier grandfather, Prescott Bush.

The rule of law as embodied in the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution is their common enemy. 'Might makes right' is their brutal value system that used to be called 'the divine right of kings.'

A coup against president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was organized by some of the largest US corporations in 1934 to prevent his New Deal from tempering capitalism and warding off mass poverty and starvation. The coup was prevented at the last minute by General Smedley Butler who played along with the plot when he was asked to help until he blew the whistle on the corporate enemies of the US Constitution. The Senate held a brief and embarassing investigation into their own financial backers and then quietly buried the matter.

The same General Smedley Butler wrote an essay a few years later titled 'War is a Racket' chronicling his realization that his career in the US military had been as a soldier for war-profiteering corporations and not for the sentimental rhetoric of July 4th picnics. General Dwight Eisenhower would later make the same warnings against what he termed the Military-Industrial Complex.

After years of ever more influence and control of the US government, the drug, oil, and weapons industries finally succeeded in the coup of 2000 with the court appointment of the general election's loser, George W. Bush. African American voters were disenfranchised in massive numbers to perpetuate and reinforce their political lynching.

It all rather makes sense, doesn't it? Military and financial powers work hand in hand to reinforce and protect each other by keeping people starving and fighting each other over worthless things like flags and uniforms. Meanwhile, the powerful swell up like ticks on the blood of the people they fool into doing the fighting and reward them with not much more than parades, ribbons, plaques, and brass bands.

The key to understanding politics is that Power protects Power and gives not a whit for ethics or ideology. Hence the pathological amorality of corporations. And nation states behave like the corporations that own them, not as the sum total of the words to lushly orchestrated national anthems.

Power has a vested interest in keeping people divided, fearful, and ignorant using all those -isms we've become wary of-racism, sexism, etc. The most dangerous and least recognized as such is nationalism.

Some Americans see through this and have evolved past nationalism and racism but lately it seems that a majority have not. And there is an alliance of media corporateers and fascist politicians who are determined to prevent Americans from finding out how this scam works. If you have figured out anything about life in America, consider sharing it with your fellow Americans so we can all evolve a little faster.
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proud patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 01:35 PM
Response to Original message
12. IMHO
We have Germany in the 30s to remember , so we
have an advantage now in the fight against fascist
scum.
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Eloriel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 02:29 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. Unfortunately, they didn't leave us a viable game plan for
getting out of it, did they? It took external intervention, which I fear we might eventually need -- IF we're not able to stem the tide pretty quick like. And I'm not sure just voting for Kerry will do it, not with the voting machines, not with this group's penchant for illegal and extra-Constitutional means, secrecy, etc. I don't know that they will let go of power -- then what?

:kick:
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Kellanved Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 02:36 PM
Response to Original message
14. The same question was asked in this thread (inclusive article)
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Eloriel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jun-12-04 11:39 PM
Response to Original message
16. another article worth reading
The Bush Plan for America: The Rise of an American National Security State
By Jennifer Van Bergen, 14 December 2003 http://www.ftaaimc.org/en/2003/12/3232.shtml

My dictionary defines fascism as “a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.” Americans may not realize it yet, but the United States under Bush is already more than three-quarters of the way down the road to fascism.<1>

This is no conspiracy theory, no leftist complaint, no bleeding-heart sentiment. The facts are all there, but Americans do not yet see this ominous truth. There are many reasons for this blindness, but one that is usually not considered is that the evidence is scattered and merged with the general barrage of daily occurrences. We are both over-stimulated with random news and under-exposed to thoughtful content. But the evidence is there and it is growing rapidly and alarmingly. It can be found (albeit surely not exclusively) in a bird’s-eye view of numerous disparate but grand components: the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, the detentions at Guantanamo, the invasion of Iraq, the withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, the endorsement and promotion of the FTAA, the two prosecutions of Greenpeace and Lynne Stewart, the erosion and eradication of environmental protections, and a general policy of secrecy. Included within this array are the doctrine of preventive war, avoidance and violation of international laws, the policies of indefinite detentions of suspect aliens and so-called “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Behind all these is one large, looming idea: global domination.

-- more --
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