They Thought They were Free-We CANNOT Say We Were Not Forewarned.

[kpete]

We’ve Seen All This Before
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2007-08-15 16:26. Media
By Ernest Partridge, Crisis Papers

"What happened (in Nazi Germany) was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it...

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it... Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted'..."
Milton Mayer'
They Thought They were Free.

...............

When Bush and Cheney fed us a pack of lies to justify the attack on Iraq – the aluminum tubes, the WMDs, the Saddam/al Qaeda alliance, the African uranium -- the mainstream media, including the “newspapers of historical record,” The New York Times and The Washington Post, swallowed them whole. And when Colin Powell presented these lies to the UN Security Counsel, the mainstream media was unanimously gullible.

...................

The last grave threat to our Constitutional order, Nixon and Watergate, was undone by a resourceful, courageous and independent press. No doubt Cheney and the corporate oligarchs behind the Bushevik junta, reflecting upon the Nixon fiasco, must have thought: “The next time we must have the press on our side.” Mission accomplished!

If Bush and Cheney decide to attack Iran, and thus bring about the collapse of the American economy and perhaps the onset of another world war, we can’t say that we were not forewarned. If not by the mainstream media, then by the few remaining voices of sanity in the press, the internet, and the international media.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/25838

[Hydra]

1. I saw this coming

But I studied WWII in depth. Hitler provided a very valuable dark mirror to gaze into to see how people without morals destroy people who don't agree with them.

Most people are still too drunk on the illusion that we are a better nation to accept what they see, and therefore know about the people in charge here.

Let's See what Hermann Goring had to add to the discussion:

* Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

o In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)

We are doing ourselves and everyone who died in WWII a disservice by ignoring the lessons of the past.

[percussivemadness]

8. Whilst I agree with your basic premiss

Hitler didn`t just magically assume power in 1933 and then over a 7 year period "delude" the German people. I see many discussions on DU about Bush = Hitler, but there are a number of factors that are never discussed that greatly contributed to Hitler`s rise to power.

1) In 1919, Hitler was made an "Intelligence Commando" by the German military. This allowed him to build a network of military contacts which ultimately he would need 15 years later.

2)1n 1923, Hitler organized what is known as the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to take over Germany is the way Mussolini had marched on Rome. This failed, and Hitler was sentenced to 5 years imprison (of which he served 9 months).

3) Between 1924 and 1930 Hitler was generally ostracized from German politics. However after the world economic collapse in 1929, he was given an opportunity.

Herein lies the difference between America 2007 and Germany 1930. Germany had suffered immense losses in WW1, and by 1930, unemployment and poverty were rampant in Germany. After Hitler was made Chancellor, he also oversaw one of the largest infrastructure-improvement campaigns in German history, with the construction of dozens of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Hitler's policies emphasized the importance of family life: men were the "breadwinners", while women's priorities were to lie in bringing up children and in household work. This revitalizing of industry and infrastructure came at the expense of the overall standard of living, at least for those not affected by the chronic unemployment of the later Wiemar Republic, since wages were slightly reduced in pre-World-War-II years, despite a 25% increase in the cost of living. Laborers and farmers, the traditional voters of the NSDAP, however, saw an increase in their standard of living.

The difference between 1934 Germany and 2007 America couldn`t be further apart. Americans enjoy a high standard of living, and a relatively peaceful way of life. For Martial Law to be accepted, as many here claim Bush is about to try and enforce, a number of economic and social factors would have to be in place. A market crash, contrary to what many believe, would not suffice, nor do I think it will happen. If the market was totally decimated, you would need a sustained period of poverty and hardship amongst American middle class for a number of years for a "Hitler" to take power. Assuming Bush does declare "martial law", do you think the military are going to stand for it? I don`t.

My belief is, that this heinous plan may be on the agenda for the Reslugs, but not this time around. I feel they will allow a Dem to be elected, and then in 5 years time (2012), after the Dems have been obliterated by a global market collapse, they will walk in and assume power with the overwhelming support of the American people.

This is crucial, Hitler had the support of the German people, Bush doesn`t, as such, in my humble opinion, nothing, not even another 911 type of attack, will at this point in time, persuade 74% of Americans to accept martial law. 5 years time however, if the Dems do screw up (keep Pelosi for example), if poverty is rampant and the middle class on the streets, inflation out of control (this may explain why the Germans are so paranoid about inflation,)then we will all have something to worry about.

Peace

[txaslftist]

9. Of course the people will "stand for it."

What a high opinion you hold of Americans to think that they won't accept some version of martial law. Martial law was imposed in New Orleans during Katrina, including the shooting of people who had done nothing, the breaking into and confiscation of homes, forced relocations and firearms confiscation. Nobody but a few "wackos" like me protested.

It's never the "74%" of people who feel the terror of martial law being imposed, it is always some "dangerous" minority, like Moslems, blacks, terrorist sympathizers, illegal aliens, etc.

We've already gotten rid of habeas corpus, posse comitatus, the right to a jury trial, the right to counsel, the right not to be tortured and the right to speak freely. All of these things were taken away from Jose Padilla, a US citizen, and no judge in his case stopped the government from taking those things. But Jose Padilla is an outsider, a minority, a "dangerous" person, so it's okay to take HIS rights away. It's not like they're taking YOUR rights away, right?

Except that once the government sets a precedent, like they have, of getting away with it with some schmuck like Padilla, which they did, they can do it to you, too. All it takes is some bureaucrat in the Department of Homeland Surveillance to designate you a "helper of terra-ists" and you've lost all of your US citizen rights.

You think that what happened to Padilla doesn't have a chilling effect on the rest of us US citizens and our so-called "rights"? You're living in a fantasy, pal.

We already have martial law in the US. We have more prisons and prisoners than any other nation in the world, both per capita and as a raw number. You just haven't been impacted by it. And as long as you keep your mouth shut (or only open it within approved parameters, as determined by the president), obey "the law" and don't cause problems, you'll never be affected by it. After all, if you are a law-abiding and productive citizen, you're a lot more valuable to the state working and "at liberty" than locked up and costing money.

As for a "Dem" being elected, what difference do you think that's going to make? You think Hillary won't seek to amass power and stifle detractors? Only this time it won't be you feeling the pinch, it'll be some former freeper getting the business end of the boot, so who cares, right?

Just like who cares about some misguided Chicago gangbanger with brown skin and a funny name like Jose Padilla?

We already live under tyranny. Now behave and get back to work.

[Usrename]

11. You sound pretty sure of yourself. Maybe you can answer a question.

One of the advantages that Hitler did not have was the ability to perform rigorous analysis of social networks and from this determine who was a threat and who was an ally. That's just what has been happening with our government over the past few years.

The whole black ops spying on citizens is for just this purpose. The people doing it are experts. All these guys do, all they have ever done all of their lives, is put down insurgencies, or breed insurgencies, and topple governments, or create lawless societies, and create and train death squads. It is what they do, it what they have done my entire life. Most of the criminals that were caught in the Iran/Contra conspiracy are back at work in this administration. It's what they do.

In the modern era, it can all be accomplished by carefully studying social networks. I'd suggest you google "social networks" if you are not familiar with the concepts. If Hitler would have had this technology then he would not have had to leave huge occupying forces behind as he marched across Europe. He could have controlled the local populations much easier by just controlling a very few influential people. But now technology has changed things. A lot.

Assuming that only about one in a thousand people are capable of organizing any local resistance to the implementation of martial law, then I'm left wondering what happens if those folks are all rounded up? In my town that might be thirty people (a town of 30,000). Now, supposing I'm not one of those folks on the list that get rounded up, and I happen to notice, in spite of the national security news blackouts, that these folks were packed off to the camps, who do I write a letter to to complain about it?

What I don't think you understand is that Americans all pretty much support law and order. It's the way we operate, and to think that all of the sudden 75% of the people will overnight choose to engage in criminal conduct, even to save ourselves, is, I think, naive. What you miss in your analysis is that when martial law is in effect, then every action that they take will be LEGAL. It will be UNLAWFUL conduct to resist them. Get it?

So my question to you is, what if martial law is declared and a few hundred thousand individuals are legally rounded up and held incommunicado, who will you complain about it to? What actions will you be able to take? Do you think you will be allowed to organize with other folks to form a resistance? Are you aware that to do so would be illegal and you would be locked up?

Who would you complain to?

That should be a simple question for someone as sure of this as you are.

I'm sure you would want to complain, but who would you send that correspondence to?

[percussivemadness]

12. Fascinating Responses

"Assuming that only about one in a thousand people are capable of organizing any local resistance to the implementation of martial law, then I'm left wondering what happens if those folks are all rounded up? In my town that might be thirty people (a town of 30,000). Now, supposing I'm not one of those folks on the list that get rounded up, and I happen to notice, in spite of the national security news blackouts, that these folks were packed off to the camps, who do I write a letter to to complain about it?"

Where do you get this figure from 1 in 1,000? Is this based on "assumption" or hard statistical analysis?

However, lets take this one step further, In a population of 260,000,000 white americans, that is 260,000 people they would need to "round up", without anyone noticing.

Lets add the 20,000,000 or so illegal immigrants currently in the usa, so lets assume another 200,000 need to be disappeared, we now have 460,000 people they need to round up.

Then we have the black population, who as we have already seen in the 60s, have no problem whatsoever rising up against authority, so, according to 2004 census, that accounts for 12.4% of the US population, or approx 37,500,000. Again, if we take your 1 in 1000 ratio, that is another 375,000 people.

At this point, we are dealing with the following numbers

White Americans who need to be disappeared - 260,000
Black Americans who need to be disappeared - 375,000
Illegal Immigrants who need to be disappeared - 200,000

Total needed to be "disappeared" - 835,000

In 2004, there were an estimated 750,000 gang members, these will also need to be disappeared.

So even using your unproven figures, of 1 in 1000, we are looking at 1,585,000 undesirables that will need to be disappeared, the majority of whom probably count themselves amongst the 105,000,000 gun owners in the USA. Now 140,000 US troops can`t quell an estimated 30,000 insurgents in Iraq, it was estimated by Shinseki that 400,000 US troops would be needed. So, taking Shinseki`s logic, 13.35 troops for every 1 insurgent would be needed, meaning that Bush would need approximately 21,159,750 troops and police officers to make this happen in the USA.

What you in effect are trying to argue, is that a government with a dubious 26% approval rating (which you don`t apply to the military or police force I notice), is going to be able to persuade 298,000,000 Americans to allow them to arrest and "disappear" 1,565,000 of their fellow countrymen.

Then again, what do I know eh? I didn`t disagree with the initial poster, however the bogeyman of Hitler needs to be put in context. Quoting Herman Goering after the Nazis had been defeated, is really not relevant. I often notice about this famed Goering quote, that noone ever says, this was whilst he was in Jail awaiting to be executed for War Crimes.

If their plan was so infallible, why was he in jail awaiting execution?

Perhaps you could answer that one for me.

I`ll leave you with a quote from Gandhi "“Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.”

Tends to put everything into perspective don`t you think?

Peace

[Usrename]

13. That's a wild ramble you took to avoid answering one simple question.

Gang-bangers? Undocumented aliens? Blacks?

I wish you could focus on the question that I asked.

But that's alright. You aren't the only person that cannot answer the question.

But, to answer your question, even after you avoided answering mine: Who says that their plan was ever infallible, or even that the eventual victor could be determined, even as late in the war as when the US entered into the fray? If you think that the only lesson to be learned from Hitler's rise is that good always triumphs over evil, then I guess I understand your post a little better than I did at the first reading.

I think what you are not considering is: we could easily be plunged into a new dark age that could last a very long time.

And, if the scenario that I described were to happen, how would you stop it? Who would you complain about it to? How can you just assume that every gun owner in the country would immediately choose to become a murdering criminal and go on a killing rampage? Out for justice, a bunch of fools running around killing people, like that's supposed to be some kind of solution that will make me quit asking that question:

Who would you complain to about it?

[GeorgeGist]

2. Have no doubt, the 'centrists' ...

will claim they didn't see it coming.

[undergroundpanther]

3. waiting for the fingers pointing and cries of tin foil..

I saw it coming after the supreme court picked bush,and negated the countries votes,breaking the constitution.

[txaslftist]

10. It already came. It's here.

Wake up.

You don't live in a free country anymore.

[seemslikeadream]

4. you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers

[Gabi Hayes]

6. shoes for industry!

sabotage (n.)

1910, from Fr. sabotage, from saboter "to sabotage, bungle," lit. "walk noisily," from sabot "wooden shoe" (13c.), altered (by association with O.Fr. bot "boot") from M.Fr. savate "old shoe," from an unidentified source that also produced similar words in O.Prov., Port., Sp., It., Arabic and Basque.

In Fr., the sense of "deliberately and maliciously destroying property" originally was in ref. to labor disputes, but the oft-repeated story that the modern meaning derives from strikers' supposed tactic of throwing old shoes into machinery is not supported by the etymology. Likely it was not meant as a literal image; the word was used in Fr. in a variety of "bungling" senses, such as "to play a piece of music badly." The verb is first attested 1918 in Eng., from the noun. Saboteur is 1921, a borrowing from Fr.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Wisconsin was fertilized with the fascism-even though many of us shouted warnings for decades

"Escape to Wisconsin-like Nazis, neocons, organized crime and black ops did" (active thread started 7-27-2007)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=186x21683

[kath]

7. There was a great diary on Kos quite a while back, titled "Slouching Toward Kristallnacht"

that included lengthier excerpts from Meyer's book:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/20/12819/467

Well worth a read.

Excerpt (from "They Thought they Were Free"
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

[bbgrunt]

14. if congress would take the lead, people would follow. The

problem is that both parties seem equally corrupted by their allegiance to political gain. We are sinking into the quicksand and are flummoxed because our so called leaders all seem compromised--and are willing to ignore the imperative for impeachment as a way to cleanse our collective senses.

[Doctor_J]

15. Also read The Rise & Fall of 3rd Reich

Hard, but good. The similarities are discouraging. Here's one:

Goebbels used to gather all of the newspaper editors every morning and tell them which stories to stress, which to ignore. Of course Rove has blast faxes.