I smell nazi germany once more

[historian]

Censorship? loss of civil liberties? lawlessness? unwarranted wars? minority persecutions? ignorance? torture? vanishing citizens in the middle of the night? a scared population driven to accept anyone who will promise them anything in the face of unemployment, poverty and despair? Only token opposition to the dictator? money spent on aggression and military while ignoring the people? an appeal to patriotism in the shape of circuses? It smells rotten to me.

[bridgit]

1. i do not like the smell of nazi germany in the morning, too much like burnt hair & rocket fuel...

x(

[Beerboy]

24. Do you have any idea why the Nazi KZ system

would profit by cutting off prisoners hair?
It's a common theme for both male and female prisoners, that all are immediately shorn of their hair upon admittance to camp.
The Nazis used strands of human hair to test the mechanisms of delayed action bombs, but beyond that I don't see the reason for shaving, except maybe to make them all the same, a dehumanized mass?

[bridgit]

34. 'a dehumanized mass', yes, clearly an end; it's an allusion to hygiene as well...

though imo not merely 'a hygienic (less shampooed & hair products laden) dehumanized societal mass' beyond that but a call for world-wide authoritarianism; American commanders were greatly impressed by seeing first-hand the discipline brought to the world battlefield by such forces as the Weirmack

it is the Nazi desire to rend people into a human resource, a human product, that is for me the most disturbing http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E7D71F3DF932A1575AC0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print and the people willing to turn a blind eye to it all in whatever countries they are found including this one

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. You and me and anybody who has read their history

but there is so much denial... it is not even funny

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I got into a brief discussion of the potential AG and waterboarding

and shocked my co-workers when I said "We are the fucking Nazis".

Maybe it was a bit much for them - I'm twice their age, and they were not even sure what waterboarding is...

but doesn't that MAKE the point? To NOT be aware, after all this?

[mnhtnbb]

33. Jay Leno should ask what waterboarding is on his "Jaywalking" segment

I don't doubt that somebody would suggest it's like skateboarding or snowboarding--only on water.

The general population in this country is sadly uninformed and generally not bothered by their ignorance.

It does not bode well for this experiment in democracy.

[LakeSamish706]

4. Ok... I hear you and now we must figure out what we can seriously do...

to stop this nazi germany! We are in very dire times in this country and we must figure a way out of our dilemma without the (wait out the clock) scenerio..... I am so open to ideas as to how to move forward... Please, Please submit a way to get us out of this!

[gateley]

28. Naomi Wolf (who I keep quoting like she was Jesus or something) says

impeachment is what's needed. We have to STOP it.

Before listening to her, I felt we didn't have the time, energy or resources to devote to impeachment now. I thought we needed to focus and act on the situation in Iraq, and that not much could happen in the time Bush has left. I've changed my mind.

As I suggested in another post, watch the video of Naomi Wolf at the UW. It will tell you a lot.

Edit to add video link


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

[rwenos]

5. Reichstag Fire, Anyone?

I heard a wonderful interview the other day on Air America of Naomi Wolf's new book, "The End of America." 10 steps to a fascist government - and how many have taken place in Bush's 6 years?

Here's a link to the Amazon review:
http://www.amazon.com/End-America-Letter-Warning-Patriot/dp/1933392797/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-7453393-8105200?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194065579&sr=1-1

I'm reminded of the story about the frog in slowly-boiling water. It doesn't notice the gradually rising heat and jump out of the hot water, but at a single temperature tipping point it simply dies.

On edit: Ms. Wolf's Ten Steps:

"Invoke an external and internal threat; develop the paramilitary force; create a secret prison system; surveil ordinary citizens; arbitrarily detain and released them; harass citizens' groups; target writers, entertainers, and other key individuals for dissenting; intimidate the press; recast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage"; and eventually subvert the rule of law."

[AndyTiedye]

6. Very Much Like That

[gateley]

22. Watch the video of her presentation at UW - it's posted here on DU. If there's

a time limit and it's disappeared, it's on YouTube. UW is University of Washington or U of W - I forget the actual title.

It's long and worth every minute. I've seen her on several interviews, but the UW presentation is much more meaningful.

[tom_paine]

23. I have the link in my sigline, to anyone who wishes to view it.

[gateley]

38. Thanks - that's a great idea! nt

[Perseid]

7. what is it about these people

that causes them to repeatedly make the same mistakes?

I see loss of life.

Perhaps that is a reason?

[magellan]

8. Lust for power

The desire to gain something for nothing. The people running this country are the enemy we were warned about -- corporate profiteers and war profiteers, madmen and the morally bankrupt. It's always the same story. And that it's here now proves that Americans have made the age-old error of not learning from history.

[Perseid]

9. this is the drag about it

history doesn't matter anymore.

we are being spun headlong into a guillotine.

and no one cares to see.

[magellan]

11. The Germans went through this with Hitler

They came out the other end of that little lapse of good judgement more aware and better for the learning experience. It would be awful if we had to go through the same lesson, but if that's what it takes to wake people up then so be it.

[rwenos]

10. Lust AND Fear

I really believe these fascist-tendency types are SCARED. SCARED of their inner weaknesses, scared of sex, scared of dissent, scared of a relativist Universe. They gotta have an old white dude with a long grey beard IN CONTROL. Otherwise, SHIT GUYS! No one's in control. That thought, the sheer dice-crushing randomness of life -- for some reason, it makes them crazy.

It's a psychological pathology, if you ask me. No, I have no professional credentials in this area.

[magellan]

12. Yeah, you're right

There's a definite authoritarian bent to those in charge and the people who follow them. The problem is the guys in charge don't fear the big dude with the beard and robe...they think they are god (Cheney) or acting on his behalf (Bush**). It all leads to the same thing in the end though. Ruin for all of us.

[rwenos]

13. Old White Dude with Beard

But Cheney, Rove, the godless suits running KBR and Halliburton -- they want that Old White Guy's power. You're dead on the money -- these crazed fucks see THEMSELVES as carrying the Old White Guy's mace.

Megalomania. Crazed fucks, and they have their finger on the trigger until noon on January 20, 2009.

444 days to go, Mate. Tomorrow, 443.

[magellan]

16. Hitler et al didn't walk

Neither should these bastards.

[tom_paine]

25. And that has been bolstered with two decades of research. Link #1 in my sigline.

"The Authoritarians" by Dr. Robert Altemeyer

It sort of ties it all together.

[JTFrog]

35. Sometimes I wonder

why we have the perspective that it's the neocons that are repeating mistakes in history. It would seem to me that they are following a plan already laid out and are adjusting for a better ending (for them of course). Somehow I don't see this episode ending with Jr. putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.

Isn't it we the people who repeat the mistakes. We retreat into our cognitive dissonance and ignore what's really going on around us. It's much easier to shut the doors and windows and think it could never happen to us. Reality becomes too painful and we are resigned to repeat the mistakes we all grew up reading about.

Or maybe I'm just terminally depressed at this point and should rethink those meds. :shrug:

[RaleighNCDUer]

37. Yup. They are who they are, and way too many of us, even here

on DU, are the "good Germans", saying 'they'll overstep themselves', and until then we 'keep our powder dry' and wait for everyone ELSE to wake up.

The "good Germans" did not tacitly support the fascists - many of them opposed them, but did it quietly, respectfully, and complained when Fritz Lang and Marlene Deitrich abandoned the fight to flee to the US, but above all expected that the rule of law would win out in the end. Mostly, they just kept out of the way.

Keeping out of the way does not stop the fascists. But just like in Germany after the Great War, with years of turmoil, rampant inflation, instability and fear, we in the US are getting tired, depressed, ready for easy answers and a 'strong person' who can take control -- both Republicans AND Democrats -- and are ready to make the mistakes the "good Germans" made.

[truth2power]

40. They're not mistakes. eom

[Beerboy]

14. Yup. And I'm sending Agent Mike to your house for posting this!

:P

[pinto]

15. See the point, yet disagree on the scale of your analogy.

We are no where near the domestic abuses of Nazi Germany.

Hyperbole works at times, we all employ it, yet focussing on the *current* specifics seems a better counter, imho.

[Perseid]

17. depends on whether you are looking at 1933

or later

[pinto]

18. I'm an openly gay man, active in civic circles, in a pretty conservative

community. Have sat on some county-wide committees. No problem. Have yet to have the pink triangle stitched on my jacket, or witnessed anything close to 'Krisstalnacht'.

America of 2007, with *all* of our challenges, isn't close to post-Weimar Germany.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. It will not follow the exact same playbook

and that is the mistake many are making

[gateley]

26. Watch the video. Berlin was still a cosmopolitan town. Night clubs - straight

and gay, movies, theater, haute couture shopping, tony restaurants - they didn't realize the changes that were occurring behind the scenes. As far as the citizens were concerned, everything was normal.

It wasn't POST-Weimar Germany - it had begun before Hitler replaced it with the Third Reich. And Krisstainacht occurred long after the changes were underway. It was not a harbinger of things to come, but the next step in the process.

Really. Watch the Naomi Wolf UW video or read her book. You owe it to yourself to at least hear what she has to say.


Edit to add video link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

[JohnyCanuck]

31. America 2007 is Germany 1930

America 2007 is Germany 1930

By Norman D. Livergood

We who live in the post-World War II period possess an immensely valuable symbol, even if we don't understand it or use it effectively: the example of Nazi Germany.

"The German experiment, except to those who are its victims, is particularly interesting, and, like the offer of a strong man to let himself be vivisected, should make a great contribution to political science. For the Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat."

Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society

SNIP

The 2004 election revealed that many American citizens are as intellectually and morally incompetent as the Germans in 1930. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!

SNIP

How could Americans now possibly be living under a creeping dictatorship and not know it? And how could we not only not see a police state condition but actually think we're living in complete freedom?

Because most of us don't WANT to know what's going on. We've lost the ability to think critically about political, economic, and social dangers confronting us.

http://www.hermes-press.com/germany1930.htm

[cali]

27. "focusing on the *current* specifics seems a better counter, imho.

thanks, pinto. that's such a good point. I'm weary of trying to make it, and being told sneeringly that I'm in denial. Of course one can make comparisons to Nazi Germany, but I don't see us following the same trajectory, and I do see that it's possible we can take back our country- even after such disappointments as the Mukasey business.

So, I won't bother with the dire dystopian forecasts- we have enough challenges already, and uncomfortable as it is to be sneered at and told that I'm in denial or a "good german", I'll keep posting. I'll keep writing letters and contacting my reps. I'll keep going to my peace & justice group meetings. It's not as "sexy" as the secular apocalyptism, but it's not denial; and your efforts and mine are no less important than those who believe we're hopelessly in the abyss, or so far on the way, that it's all a fait accomplis.

[upi402]

19. yep. both parties and the 4th estate too!

we are screwn. and still there are dolts here on DU who tout the corporatist betrayers-of-democracy in the former Democratic party.

it really saddens me. and drains hope.



But hey! There's always tomorrow! Maybe I can turm this frown upside down. Yeah. Don't worry be happy!!!

[area51]

21. k&r (n/t)

[gateley]

29. LINK TO NAOMI WOLF VIDEO -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

If you are interested in this subject and haven't seen this, I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Perry Logan]

30. Yea, but they're just too incompetent to bring it off.

[Hubert Flottz]

32. All that's missing now is the Zyclon-B but...

the Bush/Farben recipe for that is still around too I'll bet.

[mmonk]

36. To understand where we are

the books by the two Naomis when taken together will pretty much show at what phase we are and our direction while giving examples of where we might end. The two books of course are "The End of America" and "The Shock Doctrine". They seem the closest read to what is happening.

[Swamp Rat]

39. Arbeit Macht Frei

Dieses ist der Zustand de Amerikabund...



edit: ... ist sehr schlect.

[tom_paine]

42. One of your best works. Heckuva job, Swampie!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Cleita]

41. Don't forget the invasion of Iraq was almost indentical to the

invasion of Poland. It was sold to the German people in the same way and same words that the Bushistas sold the invasion of Iraq to the American public.

[seabeyond]

43. nsa spyng accepted, theft by election accepted, invasions

loss of middle class, money spent only on military