20060105
Q Scott, a few days ago, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts had a column where he compared the administration's use of September 11th with Hitler and the Reichstag fire as a blanket cover for extraordinary measures. Now, this is coming from a conservative columnist; this is not Nancy Pelosi. Doesn't this concern you that these kind of reactions have come up especially with all the revelations about the NSA and spying?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060105-2.html
MR. McCLELLAN: I haven't seen his column -- I haven't seen his column. But what -- your characterization I would reject wholeheartedly.
With Hitler it was the Reichstag and with Bush it was 9/11.
Both men needed a national disaster to rally their citizens behind them.
Bush's 9/11 Reichstag Fire
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0913-03.htm
When Hitler was rising to power in 1930s Germany, somebody did him the favor of burning the Reichstag, the German Parliament. It's widely believed the Nazis torched it themselves.
Hitler's cynical minions turned that fire into a horrific wave of terror. They blamed "the communists" and the Jews, the trade unionists and the homosexuals. With the support of a terrified populace, they suspended civil rights and civil liberties, fattened their war machine and rode the fascist tide into a full-blown dictatorship. The rest, as they say, is history.
The neverending White House-sponsored orgy of 9/11 rhetoric, recrimination and retaliation has become a treacherous parallel. Few Americans believe the Bush Administration itself brought down the World Trade Center last year. But the conviction is widespread throughout Europe and the Muslim world, and for good reason.
This unelected regime---Hitler also came to power with a minority of votes---has used the terrible tragedies of September 11 in much the way the Nazis jumped on the Reichstag fire. Bush has failed to capture or try 9/11's alleged perpetrators. But he's used the tragedy to push an extreme rightist agenda aimed at crushing civil liberties, silencing all opposition, fattening a war machine, and arrogating the right to unilaterally attack other countries without tangible provocation.
With this has come an assault on the natural environment, women's rights, gay rights, organized labor, a wide range of international treaties, and the need of the public to know about and prosecute corporate crime and fraudulent stock dealings, which seem to involve at least half the Bush cabinet, including its two ranking members.
Fittingly, just as the nation was mourning those who died in one of the most twisted acts of terrorism imaginable, Bush's brother Jeb made another mockery of the electoral process. In Florida, where the 2000 election was most blatantly stolen, faulty voting machines were again foisted on districts filled with primarily with blacks and Jews. While the nation's eyes were elsewhere, major---perhaps fatal---chaos was injected into the Democratic primary meant to choose Jeb's fall opponent. As the unusable ballots, dysfunctional voting machines and manipulated poll hours again shredded the democratic process, one could hear Republicans smirking from Tallahassee to DC.
Meanwhile John Ashcroft has shredded the American Bill of Rights as Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein could never imagine. Under the cloak of terror, the new Grand Inquisitor has virtually eliminated the first ten amendments to the Constitution---except the second, which guarantees that he and his gun lobby sponsors (and innumerable potential terrorists) can continue to carry guns.
Indeed, while professing staunch hatred of Big Government, so-called Patriotic conservatives have trashed virtually every guarantee of individual freedom on which American greatness has been built. In the name of fighting terror, the right has become the ultimate anti-Constitutional terrorist. Ashcroft has arrogated the power to arrest virtually anyone he deems unfit, "disappear" them without public notice, deny them access to a lawyer, and try them in secret, if at all. Under certain interpretations of military procedure, the Bush Administration clearly believes it has the right to execute people with no Constitutional guarantees.
In other words, this regime is behaving much like so many other third world dictatorships the US has installed throughout the third world. Pinochet. Somoza. The Taliban. Saddam Hussein. The Shah. Noriega. Mobutu. Marcos. Suharto. The Saudis.
Those flocks of US-sponsored thugs and klepto-dictators have finally come home to roost. For most Americans, any such comparison with any US regime seems like hysterical hype. After all, anti-war protestors threw the word "fascist" around in the later 1960s like a common epithet.
But Lyndon Johnson was not a fascist, and Richard Nixon was still forced to function with the Bill of Rights in tact and a Supreme Court that was willing to back it up. Though the US was deep in an actual shooting war, albeit an unjust one, the guarantees of free speech, habeas corpus and a fair and public trial were still in place.
Those guarantees are now gone. Freedoms were also curtailed during the Civil War and World Wars 1 & 2. But the new Bush war has no clear enemy, no clear goal, and most importantly, no clear end. It's a tangible Orwellian reality, a permanent pretext to shred freedom and dissent.
Because these absolute powers are now being used primarily against people of color, most Americans think these new power won't affect them. But as in Germany, it's only a matter of time before everyone and anyone is intimidated, and everyone and anyone is subject to official attack.
This Administration has been happy to fling the "terrorist" label against those environmentalists and other activists who might question its penchant for secrecy or oppose its corporate-dictated policies. History teaches us that it would be an illusion not to expect the worst.
For this Administration is not only unelected, it has a lot to hide. Witness the current media gang rape of Martha Stewart. While she endures public ridicule and official prosecution, the crimes of George Bush at Harken Energy and Dick Cheney at Halliburton were far worse. Stewart was not a director of the company whose stock she might have sold with insider knowledge. Bush and Cheney were at or near the helms of the companies from which they reaped millions while common stockholders were pillaged. As we know from so many third world dictatorships, where there is an addiction to secrecy there is always much to hide.
Meanwhile, Ashcroft has found time to escalate the attack on medicinal marijuana and other substances individual Americans may choose to use other than tobacco and alcohol. Not surprisingly, while reams of new research confirm marijuana's much-needed healing powers, particularly in chemotherapy and AIDS treatments, pot smokers are now being equated with terrorists. While state after state confirms marijuana's 5,000-year history as a medicinal herb, the Administration insists on enforcing penalties for its use that often exceed those for rape and murder. The drug war remains a blanket warrant to put tens of millions of Americans at risk of random, gratuitous arrest.
As a kicker, the right has further shed its historic rhetoric about states rights to override Nevada's 80% opposition to being turned into a radioactive waste dump. One must ultimately ask: is there any power this administration is not willing to take for itself?
The answer seems to be no. This may well be the most dangerous time in all of US history. While the war regimes of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt had their excesses, there still remained an integral commitment to the historic guarantees of freedom and liberty that had made America great.
Permeated with economic failure, personal scandal and an obsession with secrecy, this has become the most oppressive of all US administrations. With a bought media, a compliant Congress and a spineless Democratic Party, it has turned the horror of September 11 into a tawdry excuse to bury the core freedoms that have made America great.
Resurrecting those freedoms will not be easy. But we have no choice.
The Rise Of The Fourth Reich
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/reich.html
Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this", and, "Hitler did that". But the truth is Hitler did very little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WW2 was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.
The German people of the late 1930s imagined themselves to be brave. They saw themselves as the heroic Germans depicted by the Wagnerian Operas, the descendants of the fierce Germanic warriors who had hunted wild boar with nothing but spears and who had defeated three of Rome's mightiest legions in the Tuetenberg Forest.
But in truth, by the 1930s, the German people had become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in both science and society. Their self-image of bravery was both salve and slavery. Germans were required to behave as if they were brave, even when they were not.
It's easy to look back and realize what a jerk Hitler was. But at the time, Hitler looked pretty good to the German people, with the help of the media. He was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938. The German people assumed they were safe from a tyrant. They lived in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government could and more importantly could not do. Their leader was a devoutly religious man, and had even sung with the boy's choir of a monastery in his youth.
The reality was that the German people, as individuals, had lost their courage. The German government preferred it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But the German people didn't wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding individual courage, in the form of a government gone wrong, the German people simply pretended that the situation did not exist. And in that simple self-deception lay the ruin of an entire nation and the coming of the second World War.
When the Reichstag burned down, most Germans simply refused to believe suggestions that the fire had been staged by Hitler himself. They were afraid to. But so trapped were the Germans by their belief in their own bravery that they willed themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that they could nod in agreement with Der Fuhrer while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoided the one situation which most required real courage; to stand up to Hitler's lies and deceptions.
When Hitler requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under German law, but powers Hitler claimed he needed to have to deal with the "terrorists", the German people, having already sold their souls to their self-delusions, agreed. The temporary powers were conferred, and once conferred lasted until Germany itself was destroyed.
When Hitler staged a phony invasion from Poland, the vast majority of the German people, their own self-image dependant on continuing blindness to Hitler's deceptions, did not question why Poland would have done something so stupid, and found themselves in a war.
But Hitler knew he ruled a nation of cowards, and knew he had to spend the money to make the new war something cowards could fight and win. He decorated his troops with regalia to make them proud of themselves, further trapping them in their self-image. Hitler copied the parade regalia of ancient Rome, to remind the Germans of the defeat of the legions at the Tuetenberg Forest. Talismans were added from orthodox religions and the occult to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical strengths and an afterlife if they fell in battle. Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the enemy face to face, Hitler spent vast sums of money on his wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery, the world's first cruise missile and the world's first guided missile, weapons that could be used to kill at a distance, so that those doing the killing need not have to face the reality of what they were doing.
The German people were lured into WW2 not because they were brave, but because they were cowards who wanted to be seen as brave, and found that shooting long range weapons at people they could not see took less courage than standing up to Hitler. Sent into battle by that false image of courage, the Germans were dependent on their wonder-weapons. When the wonder-weapons stopped working, the Germans lost the war.
I remember as a child listening to the stories of WW2 from my grandfather and my uncles who had served in Europe. I wondered how the German people could have been so stupid as to have ever elected Hitler dog catcher, let alone leader of the nation. Such is the clarity of historical hindsight. And with that clarity, I see the exact same mechanism that Hitler used at work here in this nation.
The American people imagine themselves to be brave. They see themselves as the heroic Americans depicted by Western Movies, the descendants of the fierce patriot warriors who had tamed the frontier and defeated the might of the British Empire.
But in truth, by the dawn of the third millennium, the American people have become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in both science and society. Their self-image of bravery is both salve and slavery. Americans are required to behave as if they are brave, even when they are not.
The American people assume they are safe. They live in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government can and more importantly cannot do. Their leader is a devoutly religious man.
The reality is that the American people, as individuals, have lost their courage. The government prefers it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But Americans don't wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding courage, in the form of a government gone wrong, the American people simply pretend that the situation does not exist.
When the World Trade Towers collapsed, most Americans simply refused to believe suggestions that the attacks had been staged by parties working for the US Government itself. Americans were afraid to, even as news reports surfaced proving that the US Government had announced plans for the invasion of Afghanistan early in the year, plans into which the attacks on the World Trade Towers which angered the American people into support of the already-planned war fit entirely too conveniently. But so trapped are Americans by their belief in their own bravery that they will themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that they can nod in agreement with the government while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoid the one situation which most requires real courage; to stand up to the government's lies and deceptions. The vast majority of the American people, their own self-image dependant on continuing blindness to the government's deceptions, never question why Afghanistan would have done something so stupid as to attack the United States, and as a result, Americans find themselves in a war.
Now the US Government has requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under Constitutional law, but powers the government is claiming they need to have to deal with the "terrorists". The American people, having already sold their souls to their self-delusions, are agreeing. The temporary powers recently conferred will be no more temporary in America than they were in Germany.
The US Government knows they rule a nation of cowards. The government has had to spend the money to make the new war something cowards can fight. The government has decorated the troops with regalia to make them proud of themselves, further trapping them in their self-image. Talismans are added from orthodox religions and the occult to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical strengths and an afterlife if they fall in battle.
Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the enemy face to face, the United States government has spent vast sums of money on wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery, cruise missiles, and guided missiles, weapons that kill at a distance, so that those doing the killing need not have to face the reality of what they are doing.
As I mentioned above, Hitler was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938. Stalin was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year for 1939 and 1942. Both of these men, and many others also celibrated by the media, were unimaginable monsters. The lesson from these facts is that it isn't easy to spot a genocidal tyrant when you live with one, especially one whom the press supports and promotes.
Tyrants become obvious only when looking back, after what they have done becomes known. The German people did not stand up to Hitler because their media betrayed them, just as the American media is betraying the American people by willingly, voluntarily, even proudly, abandoning its traditional role as watchdog against government abuse.
It is the very nature of power that it attracts the sort of people who should not have it. The United States, as the world's last superpower, is a prize that attracts men and women willing to do absolutely anything to win that power, and hence are also willing to do absolutely anything with that power once they have it. If one thinks about it long enough, one will realize that all tyrants, past and most especially present, MUST use deception on their population to initiate a war.
No citizen of a modern industrialized nation will send their children off to die in a war to grab another nation's resources and assets, yet resources and assets are what all wars are fought over. The nation that wishes to initiate a war of conquest must create the illusion of an attack or a threat to start a war, and must always give their population of cowards an excuse never to question that carefully crafted illusion.
It is naive, not to mention racist to assume that tyrants appear only in other nations and that somehow America is immune simply because we're Americans. America has escaped the clutches of a dictatorship thus far only through the efforts of those citizens who, unlike the Germans of the 1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point out where the government is lying to the people.
Unless more Americans are willing to have that kind of individual courage, then future generations may well look back on the American people with the same harshness of judgement with which we look back on the 1930s Germans. ¶ 5.1.06
