"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 peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
In 1920 the Nazi Party had only about 3,000 members. By 1924 it was up to 24,000, by 1933 850,000, and by World War ll, it was over five million.
That phenomenal increase in the membership of the Nazi Party was based on the tactics set forth by the racist Nazi Hermann Goering in his quote above. It was based on feeding the people lies, the lie that it was the Jews who were behind the economic collapse of Germany, the lie that it was the moral imperative of the German nation to exterminate the Jews, the lie that it was the moral imperative of the German nation to wage aggressive war against other countries for German expansion of territory, because the people who lived in those countries were undeserving of their existence, and the lie that the Nazi Party was the end all and be all, the culmination of all that is right and proper, and that it would lead the nation of Germany to total prosperity and happiness.
That is how a very small, insignificant group of racist, bigoted, right wing ideologues, led by Adolph Hitler, was able to completely pervert a whole country to his hatred of all things not Nazi, and because of that, led that country to it's total destruction.
We are now at the same point that Germany was in in about 1920. From reading reports on the news and the internet web pages, there are less than 100 people who have been given a forum by the news media to spread the same kinds of lies that were told to the people of Germany. To name just a few, they are Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Savage, Coulter, O'Reilly, some other right wing radio talk show hosts and some Republican members of Congress.
These people are practicing what Goering preached. Limbaugh and Beck, without any sense of irony or aware of their hypocrisy, used the Nazi tactic of the Big Lie to label President Obama a Nazi. There is no objective evidence that Obama is a Nazi, the accusation is then necessarily subjective; the idea of Nazism comes from within the accuser. They're projecting onto Obama what they would do were they in his place.
There's a reciprocal projection going on. Obama, mistakenly, is likewise projecting his values of reason, logic, fact and truth onto the Republicans, values that they completely reject. And of course, Obama only gets back unreason, illogic, and the opposite of the facts and the truth. The Republican's contribution to health care reform is yelling and hollering to try to shut it down and defeat it, no matter what it is. This is the one thing that Obama, inexplicably, does not seem to understand. What I would like to see Obama do is to say what he's going to do, and then do it, come hell or high water or Republicans.
The Nazi Party was the ultimate demonstration of right wing ideology. The Republican party is nothing but right wing ideology, and proud of it. The Republican party has degenerated into a cult without a cult leader, but with a revolving group of advocates, who, cult-like, have substituted an ideology for their lack of intellect. The Republican ideology has evolved into a kind of religiosity that is not to be blasphemed against by it's members for fear of offending the faithful. The Republican ideology is unassailable by reason, logic, fact or truth because it is not based on any of these. It's primary tenet is to be against, against anything not Republican.
Listen to Limbaugh's and Beck's tirades. They can talk of nothing but what they are against. They offer nothing constructive.
Paul Krugman said that the Republicans are unappeasible. That's true, but they also don't want to be appeased by giving them half a loaf. They will not even settle for the whole loaf, if it comes from the Democrats. George Bush said it best, "You're either with us or against us."
The above descriptions of the Republicans are observations and generalizations. Here is the specific evidence to back them up.
Fascist America: Are We There Yet?, an article by Sara Robinson at Common Dreams, quotes the historian of fascism, Robert Paxton, on the five stages a democracy goes through on its way to fascism.
First stage: "A rural movement to effect some kind of nationalist renewal, drawing on themes of unity, order and purity." The movement coincides with a crisis in the country which the fascists take advantage of.
Second stage: "Fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties. In every case, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country and came to power by offering themselves as goon squads organized to intimidate their opposition."
Third stage: Organized street thuggery. brown shirt goon squads aimed at disrupting and shutting down the democratic governing process.
We are seeing stage three in process, the intentional shouting down and shutting down of both democratic and Democratic meetings to try to get health care for the people.
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