They Hanged Julius Streicher Didn’t They?

Editor’s Note – I would like to take an opportunity to recommend a piece from a friend of mine, William Cormier who has written today on the complicity of the mouthpieces in the fascist propaganda machine in the crimes that they so eagerly encourage. Such an essay is especially important to bring awareness to with the $40 million a year ‘populist’ spokesman for the anti-American virulent Republican party form of dead-ender fascism that is the last bastion of scoundrels trying to save their think tank paymasters, the malefactors of great wealth who have subsidized their careers and purchased the media from which they belch their hate and bile. Now with the paymasters of the extremist right in The Homeland doing their damn level best to incite violence, revolution and a crusade against the hated libruls, brown-skinned devils, commies, gays and every other scapegoat that could be invoked at the snakepit of sin and stupidity that was this week’s CPAC bund conference it is imperative that we ask the forbidden question.

How complicit are the establishment hatemongers in the crimes that they have done so much to endorse and in many cases encourage? In my personal opinion, and I have brought this up recently in my own writings – the propagandists and the whores in the media should no longer be able to cower behind the defense of free-speech as a shield as they and the oligarchy that employs their sordid services use the First Amendment as a shield from behind which they can use their money as ‘free speech’ while seeking to destroy the rights of everybody else.

So without further adieu, I present the following with the request that it be taken into account just how complicit that the purveyors of hatred are in the crimes of those that they encourage to commit.

Denial is no excuse, not any longer, not when the stakes are this high. The smell from those smokestacks downwind from Auschwitz wasn’t from freshly baked apple pie.

Nuremberg Trials Provide Legal Precedent For Prosecuting Purveyors Of Hate

By William Cormier

During the Nuremberg Trials after World War II when Julius Streicher was convicted and subsequently hung for “Jew Baiting” we were provided with the legal precedent for prosecuting those that incite others to violence. I have been contemplating this essay for quite some time, but today I read a revealing article on Op-Ed News that provides direct proof that purveyors of hate can and are directly responsible for the deaths of innocent Americans! Those who agitate and constantly spew their hate and prejudice in print and on America’s airwaves constantly hide behind “Freedom of Speech.” However, it is already an established rule of law that if you yell “fire” in a crowded theater, Free Speech can and will not protect those who abuse this right which results in the harm of innocent civilians. Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia which details the trial of Julius Streicher, and please remember the circumstances of his conviction as you read the remainder of this essay:

Trial and execution

Julius Streicher was not a member of the military and did not take part in planning the Holocaust, or the invasion of other nations. Yet his pivotal role in inciting the extermination of Jews was significant enough, in the prosecutors’ judgment, to include him in the indictment of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal – which sat, ironically, in Nuremberg, where Streicher had once been an unchallenged authority.

During the trial, Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test was administered. Julius Streicher scored 106, the lowest among the Nazi leaders tested.

During his trial, Streicher displayed for the last time the flair for courtroom theatrics that had made him famous in the 1920s. He answered questions from his own defense attorney with diatribes against Jews, the Allies, and the court itself, and was frequently silenced by the court officers. Streicher was largely shunned by all of the other Nuremberg defendants, who thought him a vulgar, despicable man (Göering’s hostility toward him was well-established). He also peppered his testimony with references to passages of Jewish texts he had so often carefully selected and inserted (invariably out of context) into the pages of Der Stürmer.

Streicher was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and sentenced to death on October 1, 1946.[13] The judgment against him read, in part:

“…For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as ‘Jew-Baiter Number One.’ In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution… Streicher’s incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity.”

Streicher was hanged in the early hours of October 16, 1946, along with the nine other condemned defendants from the first Nuremberg trial (Göering, Streicher’s nemesis, committed suicide only hours earlier). Streicher’s was the most melodramatic of the hangings carried out that night. At the bottom of the scaffold he cried out “Heil Hitler!” When he mounted the platform, he delivered his last sneering reference to Jewish scripture, snapping “Purim-Fest 1946!” The Jewish holiday Purim celebrates the escape by the Jews from extermination at the hands of Haman, an ancient Persian government official. At the end of the Purim story, Haman is hanged.[14] [15] Streicher’s final declaration before the hood went over his head was, “The Bolsheviks will hang you one day!” MORE

Below is an excerpt from an excellent article authored by Rady Ananda. Please note the similarities, and in this instance, we can directly correlate the murder of innocent Americans based on the publication authored by Bernie Goldberg:

O’Reilly’s Hate Factor: ‘Venom Boys’ Blamed for Shooting Spree

The right wing hate machine fails to recognize its own hypocrisy. Even worse, its hate speech has been directly linked to a mass shooting.

Bernie Goldberg’s list of fans includes Jim David Adkisson, the nutjob who last year shot up a liberal church during a children’s musical. The killing was “symbolic” because he really wants to kill everyone mentioned in Goldberg’s Screwing up America book. I can’t imagine writing something that would inspire murder, but the right wing hatemongers do it all the time. Knoxville News Sentinel published the full manifesto, excerpted below:

“Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals…. This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book.”

Sara Robinson provided this analysis, noting that “police searched Adkisson’s apartment and found it filled with books and newsletters penned by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing hate talkers.”

She goes on to say: “Nicely done, Messrs. Hannity, Goldberg, Limbaugh, Savage and O’Reilly — and all your lesser brethren who keep the hate speech spewing 24/7/365 across every field and into every shop in the country. There is no more debate to be had, no more doubt about it: What you did in the name of ‘entertainment,’ and for the sake of the almighty ratings, raised and animated a monster like Jim Adkisson, gave him a list of targets … and was directly responsible for the deaths of two brave and decent people. Adkisson was clearly angry and crazy — but his ‘manifesto’ draws the clearest, brightest line possible between the media he consumed and his actions that terrible Sunday morning.” MUCH MORE

Furthermore, we must not forget the case of Matthew Shepard and other gays that have been beaten and murdered, often incited by America’s chief “hate purveyors, and sadly, that includes some of our most radical Evangelicals:”

10 Years After His Death, Matthew Shepard’s Mother Fights On

Ten years ago this month, University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. He died only a few days later from his injuries on October 12, 1998. His attackers, Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney are now serving consecutive life sentences. But although Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, says justice was served against her son’s killers, she still continues to fight on to protect the gay sons and daughters of other parents across the nation.

Matthew Shepard, son of Judy Shepard and Dennis Shepard, was a political science major at the University of Wyoming in October of 1998. On the night of October 6, Shepard accepted a ride from Russell Arthur Henderson and Aardon James McKinney, whom he had met in a local bar. McKinney and Henderson drove Shepard to a remote area, where he was beaten, tortured, robbed and finally tied to a fence and left to die. A passing cyclist discovered Shepard still tied to the fence 18 hours later. On October 12, Shepard was pronounced dead, never having awakened from a coma.

During the trial against McKinney and Henderson, both defendants attempted to claim a “gay panic” defense, claiming they had acted under “temporary insanity” in killing Shepard. They alleged that Shepard had made sexual advances toward them and they had reacted by killing him. However, their stories were inconsistent and the men’s girlfriends testified under oath that Henderson and McKinney had previously plotted to rob a ‘gay man.’ The prosecutor in the case claimed that McKinney and Henderson had pretended to be gay in order to lure Shepard into their car to be robbed. MORE

How many gays have been murdered or severely beaten because of the constant hate being espoused by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and rabid right-wing Evangelicals? We have laws against “hate crimes” and I am asserting that those who constantly “gay-bait” their respective audiences are complicit in the subsequent crimes that occur directly because of their public venting of their hatred and loathing of the Gay Community. I wrote an Op-Ed which was extremely popular titled: “Evidence Supports Reverend Wright’s Claim That AIDS Was Created By The Government.” I wrote this article for informational purposes, and then received comments that Justanothercoverup was a “Gay Site” and that I was also gay. I’m heterosexual, but to be honest, I really don’t care what people think – and if I were gay, I’d say so.

One thing is certain; I’m an American and believe in equal protection under the law, and that includes everyone, Black, Brown, Gay, Lesbian, you name it! People have a right to choose their own lifestyles, and regardless of whatever the purveyors of hate may say – if you support the rule of Law and our Constitution, then all people, no matter what their lifestyle is, as long as it’s legal, have the right to worship as they choose, and someone’s sex life is no one’s business except for that individual. In the same breath, we don’t have to approve of another individual’s lifestyle; however, when that disapproval becomes public and incites violence against any segment of our population, I believe that it’s an actionable crime against humanity.

One of the most shocking instances of fear-mongering and inciting people to violence was a segment on Fox News by Glenn Beck. Read it yourself and you be the judge; do we need this type of propaganda that incites people to violence? We do not need a civil war or a “revolution” to bring forth change – and in my opinion, Fox News is advocating revolution in America which will supply the Neo-conservatives with the violent actions they seem to advocate that will usher in martial law in the United States:

FOX News Suggests America is Doomed, Civil War May Be Justified

by News Hound Ellen Brodsky

Those “we like America” folks at FOX News sure have a funny way of showing their esteem sometimes. Take, for example, Glenn Beck’s February 20, 2009 show in which he did his darnedest to scare viewers into thinking that the country is on the road to Apocalypse. In a paranoid fantasy spun out over several segments, Beck and a series of guests set forth a number of dire “worst-case scenarios” for the United States in 2014. During each segment, Beck gave viewers the disclaimer that the apocalyptic visions he and his guests presented were not predictions of what would happen but merely what could happen. And yet Beck and his guests spoke as though the doomsday scenarios, including civil war, were a likelihood, if not a fait accompli.

In “Worst-Case Scenario” No. 1, Beck and his experts imagined the impact of a complete financial meltdown. In this scenario, as Beck described it, all the banks were nationalized, the Dow was at 2800, unemployment at 12%, the commericial real estate market collapsed, the USA’s credit rating was downgraded and government and unions control most businesses.

Again, the guests bumped up “maybe” to “likely.” Former CIA officer Bob Baer described the “probability” scenarios as “prolonged depression,” and warned of trouble with Iran. According to Baer, the Gulf countries would suffer and Iran therefore would “move into the Gulf and take it. We have a hostile regime in control of our resources. That is not that far away (my emphasis).” A MUST READ ARTICLE!

Fox News is the propaganda arm of the GOP, and now that we know Republicans that have crossed the line to vote in favor of President Obama’s stimulus package are being punished by their own party, it is obvious that the Republicans in Congress are attempting to sabotage the Obama administration and are acting like a gang of criminals rather than responsible members of Congress. It is vital for the American public to remember that it was the Republican Congress that allowed the Bush administration to rob America blind – and now that their “Criminal in Chief” is out of office, they are stating that the stimulus was irresponsible; at best they are hypocrites – at worst, they are co-conspirators in helping to destroy the economy of the United States and allowed their corporate banking cronies to indulge themselves in the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the United States:

GOP punishing members who cross party lines

by Rachel Oswald

Determined to enforce the party line, the GOP has taken new steps to punish those members who have crossed the aisle in recent weeks to vote in support of the federal stimulus package and to send the message to any party moderates – turncoats will not be tolerated.

In a Monday interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said he was open to primary challenges to the three Republican senators who voted in favor of the federal stimulus package –Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania and the two senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Spector is up for re-election in 2010.

“My retribution is the retribution of the voters in their state. They’re going to have to go through a primary in their state,” Steele said, adding that the RNC would follow the lead of the state parties in choosing which Republicans to back with campaign money. “When the state party says we’re going to endorse a candidate, the RNC is behind them. When the state party says we have a problem with them, so does the RNC.” <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2008

/GOP_punishing_members_who_cross_party_0224.html”>MUCH MORE

There is a difference between free speech and inciting people to violence. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Riley are prime examples of those who constantly agitate and promote hate in print and on our national airwaves. There are also several rabid “Evangelicals” who also promote hate and actually promote war in the Middle-East to bring forth the second coming of Christ so they can be “raptured” while the rest of us are “Left Behind.” Their religious beliefs are OK with me; however, some of these Evangelicals promote the violent takeover of the United States if they cannot achieve it through politics – and in my book, that’s treason! LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, or an Independent; if you promote violence and hate and attempt to incite violence in these United States, in my opinion, you’re committing an actionable crime, and hiding under “Free Speech” should not be allowed! I vividly remember several statements made by Ann Coulter, and the article below lays-out another legal strategy and cites laws that are already on our books to prosecute those who promote violence; I am only posting a brief part of the article, however, it is excellent, and demonstrates why we need to stop the hate purveyors in our country before they can incite more violence and as Fox News seems to advocate, a civil war:

The True THREAT Of Ann Coulter And Her Ilk

by thepen

Judging intent in a criminal case often turns on a pattern of behavior. And here the record is not friendly to Ms. Coulter’s stance. She has a HISTORY of such statements, having previously cracked these other “jokes”, targeted at those she disagrees with politically:

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee.”

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

“We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals.”

The last quote is especially significant in the climate of fear which has deliberately been inflamed by the Cheney administration and the vast right wing echo chamber that the corporate media has become. We are constantly bullied with name-calling of the most offensive sort, for the sin of having a differing political opinions. And people like Coulter well know that their physical threats are a form of intimidation. ANOTHER MUST READ ARTICLE

I don’t want to sound like a broken-record. However, I cannot emphasize enough that violence is counter-productive to America in general, and falling into that trap is a guarantee of the Obama administration being forced to declare Martial Law. That act alone will guarantee that Americans will never again enjoy their personal freedom or liberties as guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

-William Cormier

http://justanothercoverup.com/

I am nothing more than a patriotic American that is doing whatever I can to further the cause of democracy, the rule of law, and am absolutely outraged on how the Bush administration is defying our Congress, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights! (more…)

Playing The Nazi Card

“See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

– George W. Bush

“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”

– Adolph Hitler

In an incredible escalation of rhetoric for even the desperate neocon fascist Bushreich the invocation of the shameless accusation that Barack Obama and Democrats are akin to Nazi appeasers in front of the drooling assembly of Likudnik war freaks gathered together in The Knesset to festively celebrate the 60th anniversary of Zionist oppression was a thing of ugliness and awe. The Bush-Cheney-Neocon Axis of Evil have now taken Jew baiting to the apex of audacity and in signature fashion for this bund of criminals who have used 9/11 as an opportunity for their evil little coup d’etat to hijack America in order to implement a domestic police state and wage the war of civilizations against those evil Muslims. Yet another of those timely Osama bin Laden tapes just happened to follow in the wake of Bush’s sulfuric vapor trail and he even had his old gray beard back this time.

Now that the dreaded Nazi card is out and flying around I find it entirely appropriate to set the record straight over many misconceptions that may be held about the version of revisionist history that the administration and their army of seasoned propagandists are out there selling and that which is more accurate. I have to give a good deal of credit to bloggers this time as well as to certain progressive radio hosts who had in the past been reluctant to drag the Nazi skeletons out of the Bush family closet. Even the overly cautious Buzzflash who for the second in their second amazing headline of the week (the first was a piece on the lie of Flight 93 and the shoot down order that exposed the great Todd Beamer “Let’s Roll” myth as the malodorous bucket of festering pigshit that it always has been) linked to a Huffington Post piece by the great Larisa Alexandrova entitled All The President’s Nazis (Real and Imagined) in the form as an open letter to Le Enfant Terrible which was absolutely scathing in a well deserved and long overdue calling out on the filthy fucking double dealing Hitler worshipping swine Bush family. This is particular part is dead on and a shot directly across the bow of Bush’s Bismark armada:

Dear Mr. Bush,

Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable.

Then seguing into…

Your family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather’s role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you Grandpa Bush — that is to say, your grandfather — wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, “exporting democracy.” Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to America.

In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.

And in beautifully closing the piece Larisa went for the throat…

Yes, you are an anti-Semite

Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:

“You know what I’m gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don’t you Herman?” a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: “I’m telling ’em they’re all going to hell.”

Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!

What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.

I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.

Now THAT was an impressive fucking blast and long overdue. Bush has really outdid himself this time but we have all known for years just what sort of a fucked up subhuman walking, talking poster boy for abortion but this is truly fucking outrageous even by Bush’s standards. The man is a stinking, gut sucking vulture with the morals of a dirt-hugging Texas rattlesnake and a soul so dark and fetid that Hell wouldn’t take him because even Satan has some standards unlike the scumbags who run the Republican party.

But I digress…

Anyhow, let’s start with the Nazi thing itself because Emperor Bush of all people should be intimately familiar with this because it was his granddaddy, Prescott Bush who personally profited from his work and association with the Union Banking Corporation which was a conduit for businesses that financed the rise of the murderous regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party. So egregious was their assistance and complicity in building the murderous war machine of the Third Reich that UBC was shut down and had their assets seized by the government under the Trading With the Enemies Act . No wonder that the Bush family and the extremist right-wing fascists who control the Republican one-party government has so much hatred towards President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A government that the Bushes have been major players in and have had at least one member in control or in a position to influence the Oval Office and U.S. policy for nineteen (at least officially) of the last twenty seven years of the period of the decline of the American Empire of stupidity, sin and shit.

This is fascinating stuff that unfortunately due to the nature of our pathetic national media is little known and normally would earn one the stigma of being affixed with the dreaded ‘tin foil hat’ but it is all out there for those seeking to know the truth about the true history of this most despicable and treacherous of American families that are the Bushes. Grandpa Bush and his company served as agents for Fritz Thyssen the German industrialist known as “Hitler’s Angel” who was indispensable in providing the financial backing and carried clout that would create what was then the strongest military machine in the world as well as the most bellicose. While the Bush-Nazi links received no attention domestically in our neutered, corporatist media here is an article from the London Guardian “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power” and here is a link to another excellent piece by investigative journalist John Buchanan that is entitled Bush Nazi Link Confirmed that was published in the New Hampshire Gazette. The Nazi skeleton is but one of a great number in the Bush family closets and potentially the most damning of all, especially in the face of the strident language used by the current Bush regime in seeking to marginalize dissenters and tar them as ideological sympathizers with those who were appeasers and facilitators of the most vile despotic regime of the last century. Incidentally there is a lot more regarding dealings with the Nazis by both the Bush family and their cronies as well as American corporations and the intelligence community that granted amnesty to former war criminals to use them as assets in Eastern Europe as well as Central and South America. But that is a bigger can of worms than I intend to open in this post so it will have to wait for another time.

And now that the Nazi card has been played in a most ostentatious manner by the Bushists maybe it is finally time to begin to bring up that which is most obvious in that it is the current leadership of this country that has far more in common with the Nazis than most would be able to accept. See if any of this sounds familiar: The nation’s leader seized extraordinary powers after a ‘terrorist’ attack; a leader who holds a cult-like sway over a large percentage of the population and was not elected by a majority when he came to power; leader belonged to a secret society (Thule / Skull and Bones); a special act was passed enabling the leader to subvert the constitution during a prolonged state of emergency; a vaguely defined enemy; surveillance and searches without warrants; the use of religion as justification (Gott Mit Uns) and the propagation of a belief that God had chosen the leader and the people for a special purpose; control of the press; ever present propaganda; the use of the term “Homeland” (Heimat) to describe the country; us versus them (“with us or against us”) mentality; the persecution of homosexuals and other minorities deemed inferior; organized crackdowns on liberals and intellectuals; the changing of the definitions of science and history to suit the agenda of the regime; the consolidation of power through corporate alliances; construction of detention facilities for vague ‘new programs’; centralized security apparatus; labeling of critics and dissenters as traitors and using ethnic divisiveness to identify enemies of the state.

All that is missing now are the organized pogroms but with the shrill voices of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage and the rest of their ilk those could be coming very, very soon. Especially if the polls continue to show a loss of Republican iron-fisted, authoritarian rule once and for all along with the renunciation of the quisling accomodationist DLC because the one thing that the Bush administration and their neocon allies absolutely cannot risk under any circumstances is that all of their hard work in constructing a more subtle sequel to Prescott Bush’s buddy Hitler’s 1000 year reich will have been for naught and more than a few of those pigfuckers may just end up doing the air dance at some future version of the Nuremburg Trials.

The ultimate horror would be another terrorist attack in the run up to the elections which would allow for Bush and Cheney to implement every provision of the NSPD 51 that would effectively end America as we know it for the rest of our already shot and increasingly miserable lives. Alarmist? I hardly think so given the loathsome actions of this administration and the Republican establishment whose actions have been, well…Naziesque since September 11, 2001. As the wise man George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and has there ever been a country whose lack of knowledge of the past and the millions who wear their willful ignorance as if it were a badge of honor quite like America in 2006? Here is a very brief history lesson.

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, his Nazi party was a minority in the legislative body not possessing the two thirds vote that it would take to activate the ‘enabling act’ which would allow for the leader to pass laws in a time of war or national emergency without the approval of parliament. Hitler wanted to assume total control in order to declare war on the terrorists and the enemies within who were seeking to destroy the German way of life.On February 27, 1933 the building in which the German parliament met was set ablaze under s mysterious circumstances and a man who was a known Communist was found naked and cowering behind the building, taken into custody and eventually executed after a trumped up trial in which the Nazi demagogues railed against the ‘terrorist’ threat. The party and their leader then used rhetoric, fear and propaganda in order to convince the majority of the populace that they were the only ones capable of shielding them from harm; there was only one catch, they had to forfeit their rights and place their trust the party in order to be safe. This event is commonly known as the Reichstag Fire.

Immediately thereafter, Hitler, Goebbels,Goering and the rest of the extreme right-wing Nazi party used fear mongering to declare a state of emergency which led to the activation of the enabling act that gave Hitler dictatorial powers by allowing the leader to reign unequivocally without the vital check of the oversight of the legislature in the Reichstag…including the powers to conduct secret surveillance against Germans under the guise of protecting them from the ‘terrorists’ Once the normal democratic processes had been subverted opponents were quickly silenced (either out of fear, execution or having their tickets stamped to the one of the many concentration camps springing up throughout the land) and the legislature and courts were rendered irrelevant to the whims of the leader and the Kool Aid drinking sycophants who were held enthralled by the cult of personality while the remainder of the population was terrorized into compliance and capitulation by the leader’s unchecked powers and his willingness to use police state tactics to eradicate all opposition.And the rest as they say is history.

And I will close with an extended passage from Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free which should send a chill up the spines of sane Americans:

“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after1933,between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

What happened here 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 he people could 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.”

This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”

You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was “expected to” participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.”

“Those,” I said, “are the words of my friend the baker. “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.” “Your friend the baker was right,” said my colleague. “The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your “little men”, your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about – we were decent people – and kept us so busy with continuous changes and “crises” and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the “national enemies”, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?”

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it – please try to believe me – unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted,” that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these “little measures” that no “patriotic German” could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

The neo Nazi, Bush administration, their backs to the wall chose to play the Nazi card and now that it is out it is fair game and Americans should take the time to diligently research just how much that those scoundrels and black hearted bastards truly have in common with Hitler’s goons. Quite a fucking bit and it’s time to stop fucking around with Godwin’s Law and start calling a fucking spade a fucking spade for once in our goddamned lives.

By Ed Encho