Eric Beck on Monday, August 30, 2010 12:10 PM wrote: Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] US workers in 2010 as compared to German workers in the 1930s
2010/8/29 Mark Wain <wtkh at comcast.net>:
> >What kinds of lessons can we draw from the comparisons?
>The comparisons make good for good wonkery, but the lessons you can
draw from it would be completely spurious. Unless you think history is
merely the repetition of the same.
>Two huge differences: One, today in the US, no one party or governing
apparatus has made itself coterminous with the state; the existence of
the tea parties indicates that Nazism is at bay, not at the door.
Second, the Nazis' economic and military buildup was done in isolation
and in many ways through thievery and corruption. The US today, on the
other hand, draws investment by consent and agreement, not violent
expropriation or trickery. While Nazi Germany developed largely as an
exception the world capitalist economy, the US today stands at the
center of it.
To which Mark Wain replies:
Your assessment about the current political situation in the U.S. seems to be obsolete. It might apply , with some hesitation, before Ronald Reagan wielded power but, iny case, certainly it does not, now.
I like to cite a few comments on two recent New York Times articles, from which one can easily understand that ordinary folks in this country are more politically sensitive than Marxists in general,who have woefully lost contact with reality:
1. The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party By FRANK RICH The Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch have self-interested agendas that go well beyond the interests of those who carry their banners.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html
7.Elizabeth Fuller Peterborough, NH August 29th, 2010
Can it be that if Murdoch did speak from his heart we would find he is truly Machiavellian, with a Hitlerian vision of a world full of supermen like him? If he really is a megalomaniac motivated to create a super race, then he ought to be exposed. —————————————————————————————— 22.St Paul Minnesota August 29th, 2010 I have to think of tumultuous Weimar. —————————————————————————————— 32.Sandy Lewis Lewis Family Farm, Essex, New York August 29th, 2010
When the nation goes out of control, lurching to what is thought 'left' -
Opposing elements - thought right - accentuate their message and emerge fascist. —————————————————————————————— 37.Bud Hazelkorn Berkeley, CA August 29th, 2010
"Pity the Rich" has been the Republican cry since Reagan, whose insouciant charm was the match that set fire to the American Dream. Since then, the middle and working classes have broken up, Americans have lost all respect for education, science and one another, and the future -- for the first time in our history -- is bleak. Even with all that, scuffling Americans somehow accept that taxing the rich is unfair to the poor buggers, even if it means we're living hand-to-mouth with no work to be found. And if we have to die on the street for lack of a doctor, well we deserve it. If the 20th Century saw the rise of democracies, social justice and internationalist goodwill, the 21st is shaping up as its mirror image, one big Pottersville. Hopefully, out of such adversity, the memory of why such things are essential to life will still burn.
Recommend Recommended by 129 Readers ———————————————————————————————— 41.Jonathan Ariel Tel Aviv Israel August 29th, 2010
Murdoch, the Koch brothers and the other ideological heirs of the Robber Barons the opportunity to stage a resurgence to promote and implement a radically reactionary quasi fascist agenda ———————————————————————————————— 56.Elizabeth Renant Santa Fe, NM August 29th, 2010
This system has used me for its own ends, regardless of who I cast a vote for. Burdon was right: I'm expendable. The only weapon I have left is total refusal. ———————————————————————————————— 63.Chris Takasaki City, Japan August 29th, 2010
The zaibatsu families that controlled pre-war and wartime modern Japan brought death and destruction to millions in World War II. One of the first things the US occupation of Japan did was to dismantle these combines and redistribute wealth and land more evenly to ensure that Japan would never again become a fascistic threat to Asia and the world. It is time to do so in our own country before it is too late.... ———————————————————————————————— 64.Sandy Lewis Lewis Family Farm, Essex, New York August 29th, 2010 Frank, it's money as much as anything. A thirst unquenchable. Greed and power.
The fascist stuff comes to either party. ———————————————————————————————— 89.SAJP USA August 29th, 2010
Before Leo Strauss, these obscenely wealthy, deranged parasites were just acolytes of Mussolini -- Strauss merely mouthed the key words necessary to bring neo-con fascism into the 21st century, otherwise nothing has really changed -- inconceivably wealthy master manipulators who use Anna Freud's methods to their utmost contemptible limits.
With their detailed history plainly obvious, why we refuse to openly call men like the Kochs and Murdochs 'fascists' is hard to understand -- they are the absolute definition of the term.
Let's take the gloves off and call it what it is -- a continuous, multi-generational attempt at a government coup by unambiguously anti-constitutional fascists. ———————————————————————————————— 106.johndtuttle CA August 29th, 2010
Those who think that Fascism, that unholy alliance between Dictatorship and Capitalism does not underlie Tea Party and Republican Rhetoric recently have not been paying attention.
The Demonization of powerless others, the unemployed, the sick, Muslims and undocumented workers has now come full circle with the twisted display at the Lincoln Memorial we saw today with the "Restore Honor" rally. Elevation of the military and righteous Christians above the "Enemies of the Constitution" and "Socialists" that are somehow oppressing the Party Faithful were eerily reminiscent of the attacks that Jews and other undesirable persons endured in Germany in the 1930's. The propagandists wanted to create a situation where Germany was "forced to defend her Honor" after the unfair Treaty of Versailles which dovetails nicely with Tea Party anti-U.N. rants and supposed attempts to usurp autonomy of the USA.
And we are surprised to find the same Reactionary forces are funding it all, just as the Industrialists in Germany did so many dark years ago. What more noble cause for America would be profit for your War Industries Koch and Koch and Murdoch?
Be afraid America, be very afraid at what these people will do to gain power, and what they would do if granted it by our inattention. —————————————————————————————————— 111.Greg Austin, TX, USA August 29th, 2010
The past is prologue.
Crucifixions. Crusades. Witch trials. Kristallnacht. Red Scare. Lynchings.
All of them perpetrated by the fervent toadies of powerful men eager to preserve the status quo from which they derived their wealth and power. —————————————————————————————————— 115.Rick Mc Callister Dover DE August 29th, 2010
I feel as if I'm living in the last days of the German Weimar Republic, when corporate giants spent like drunken sailors to get their Tea Party into power. On July 4, 2009, I took my family to Independence Mall in Philly to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. The Mall was completely covered with thousands of Tea Partiers, all well dressed in expensive clothing and bling, arriving in SUV-limos. As we walked through the crowd, they glowered at my wife, who is Afro-Hispanic and my son, who is a handsome little guy, they glared at them in horror as if they carried some kind of plague in their dark skin. They waved racist signs in their faces. My wife told me that she has never been so scared in her life. The Tea Partiers are as crazy as rabid dogs. God save America and the world from fascists of that ilk. America stands for liberty and justice for all, not just for rich members of the Herrenvolk. ———————————————————————————————— 117.kobuk Alaska August 29th, 2010
As a life-long student of history, one question has haunted me. How could the democratic German nation of the 1930s, so educated, have allowed itself to be high-jacked by fascism? FDR in that time warned that there was a strong stream of nascent fascism in the US that could surface in the right circumstances. I fear that is what we are seeing now. That such demogogues as Palin, Limbaugh, Beck et al, paid for by the Koch brothers can dominate the news while millions are in danger of death in Pakistan, the Congo, Sudan, and throughout the so-called Third World while there are individuals who live in fabulous luxury leaves me with little hope for this world. ———————————————————————————————— 123.scientella california August 29th, 2010
This reminds me of the Third Reich. While we all preach to the choir here at the NYTimes the Guns, Oil and Propaganda party are out scaring the disenfranchised middle americans and whipping them up in a fever pitch of "values" so that they will vote them in.
What is essential here is not to mince words. Yes that piece in the New Yorker was a start. Obama is playing golf and mincing words so no help from him. So its up to us. We must go at it full on. Not just in the New York Times but all over the blogosphere. On Fox. Everywhere. Say it like it is. These guys are the lackeys of a particularly amoral bunch of billionaires whose express goal is power for the sake of power.
Show picture of Becks rally. Compare with Nuremberg. Its not about religion. Pick a scapegoat any will do. Muslims in this case. Jews in the case of the Third Reich. Then preach hatred and lies. Get voted into power. Then run rampant. More wars. More contracts for mercenaries. More money to rich bankers in this case, industrialists in the case of the Third Reich.
It is truly terrifying. We must stop wasting our time here and get out there. —————————————————————————————————— 2. It’s Witch-Hunt Season
By PAUL KRUGMAN In a repeat from the 1990s, the Republicans appear bent on ugliness and paralysis. http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30krugman.html?sort=newest&offset=10
34.Michael Florida August 30th, 2010
Well, Paul, the first big confrontation is going to come later this year, when Obama and the Democrats attempt to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class but not the wealthy. Unless the wealthy are included, the Republican Senate will filibuster with their 41 votes, all the tax cuts will expire, everyone, including people of modest means, will see a tax increase and the Republicans will bellow throughout 2011 that Obama created the biggest tax increase in world history. All the better to defeat him with in 2012. In order to appease the Republicans all the tax cuts will be made permanent, exacerbating the deficit which the Republicans will bellow about throughout 2011, never mentioning that they were responsible but getting the public to believe that Obama was through endless lies on Fox and the monolithic radio talk shows.
Through controlling the media the corporate masters of the Republican party have the American people brainwashed. If you go by the input on internet newspaper and media forums across the country (in practically every venue except the NYT) you must come to the conclusion that most of the American people have thoroughly, passionately, religiously internalised the conservative gospel as preached by Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Palin, Bachmann and the other apostles spewing forth on the media 24/7. Either that or the wealth behind the scenes has bought and paid for an enormous number of plants constantly feeding talking points into these sites.
Most everything they have to say is demonstrably false: about the economy, Social Security, education, human sexuality, climatology, fossil fuel reserves, evolution, effects of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer, effects of CO2 emissions on global warming, and a whole raft of other phenomena that can and have been studied empirically, about which libraries full of data exist, data that has been collected over the generations and in every country on the planet operating under every conceivable political system. Their mind-boggling stupendous errors in thinking and presentation (aka, lies) are rarely or only weakly countered in the so-called main-stream media and press, again owned by moguls and tycoons with a vested interest to manipulate the truth.
It is the nature of the Republican party in the service of great wealth and only great wealth to eschew reason, logic, empirical observation and the scientific method in favor of preconceived notions that fit all the biases and prejudices of the feeble-minded voting public. They co-opt religion and herd instincts like patriotism and racism to promote their self-serving economic policies, sometimes quite surreptitiously but other times quite openly to a clueless, uneducated, willfully ignorant electorate.
America must have something seriously and systemically wrong with itself to have allowed things to come to the point where a charlatan like Glen Beck purportedly appropriates the ideals of Martin Luther King Jr and speaks of restoring this country's "honor." That man wouldn't recognise honor if it bit him on the behind. His use of the word is a fraud and a shame. And Limbaugh, who has been practicing his hatred much longer, is even worse.
We are on the precipice of paying an unimaginable price for forsaking the principles of the Enlightenment upon which our country was founded in favor of blatantly transparent propaganda that serves only the interests of a small vested elite who have most of what resources exist on this planet and will not be happy until they have it all. As a commenter asked yesterday in response to Frank Rich's column: what then?
Recommend Recommended by 128 Readers —————————————————————————————————— 43.maria pittsburgh August 30th, 2010
I am a Portuguese studying in the US, and while I am able to grasp the unique culture of meritocracy and individual responsability that makes the US a great country, I have been consistently in schock due to all the misinformation I see on the news.
In one of the most technological driven country in the world, where having internet is almost a right, Beck and Limbaugh thrive. The religious affiliation and place of birth of the President are still considered to be a matter of faith. I just watched FOX (sheer curiosity) and a CATO expert (CATO being heavily funded by the Koch brothers, as the New Yorker reveals) was quoted as questioning climate change. How, I ask, is this possible?
I think the major factor is that the US (and the world) is in the middle of a world wide economic crisis that has knocked on almost all doors. Crisis always foster social discontentment. But it is not only soaring unemployment, or decreasing material wealth that is feeding this wave of irrationality. The most important factor is a feeling of social unfairness, coupled with a deep sense of not being in control of destiny. Many people did everything right: they worked, they saved, they were moral and just, and yet they were fired, or saw their retirement fund dwindle down to an amount with which retirement could not be funded. At the same time, million dollar bonuses were handed out to bankers at the epicenter of this economic catastrophe. In the lack of better comfort, charismatic pseudo-leaders that offer a rationale for suffering and a solution for overcoming emerge. That's why Beck's rally was packed. It's a regretable shame that concrete and rational solutions are not (or seem not to be) conveyed in the same manor.
The other source fueling this rage is the fear of isms like fascism. I did not understand this well till last Summer, when I looked for internships for graduate students in economics. I browsed through inumerous so called economics think tanks, and a significant portion said that its mission was something along the lines of protecting freedom, and the free market. Like they are one and the same. Like scientists already know what is "best" before they do research. I suspected there was a clear campaign to mingle these two terms till they become indistinguishable, and till people react emotionally to progressive policies (the New Yorker proved I was not paranoid). Oh, I never applied.
The combination of unpowerleness with fear is explosive. However, it will reach a limit. The Koch brothers may be on a mission because their father taught them so, but other millionaires understand that they need infrastructures to make business.
What can the civil society do in the meantime? Publish, read, miscontruct myths, and expose the misinformation network. Construct an alternative narrative that offers comfort without falling on the pitfall of ignorance.
Wait for better times.
Recommend Recommended by 597 Readers ———————————————————————————————— 100.Carl Ian Schwartz Paterson, New Jersey, USA August 30th, 20101
If the current incarnation of the GOP, its billionaire backers, and the Tea Partiers return to power, this nation will sink to the lows of Germany 1937--exclusionary politics with an ever-changing group of victims to be sacrificed for the corporate good. ('If we privatize Medicare, it will solve all of our problems," is an example of this.)
Just as institutionalized anti-Semitism, xenophobia (against Slavs), and elimination of "mental defectives" and Gypsies didn't solve anything for the Germans--and the Final Solution could be seen to have taken away manpower, transport, and materiel from Germany's war effort (admitted even by Albert Speer), these assaults on Americans of all stripes and our Constitution will recast us as a failing--and failed--state.
The choice is simple: a "christian revival" urged by an unlettered, self-important commentator and opportunistic, aging woman, backed by corporate money--or a return to our Constitutional promise of a better life for more and more people. —————————————————————————————— 413.Patrice Ayme High Mountains Somewhere August 30th, 2010
German politicians played it safe too, in the 1920s and 1930s. As the extreme right became ever more hysterical and threatening, they gave in, and made its bed, ever more. Schacht, for example, was the head of the central bank, and then the major financial authority, with connections to JP Morgan, the top USA banker, all the way from 1905. Schacht came to push for the Nazis theses, one after the other.
Obama, by adopting much of what was Bush's program (rescuing those who caused the financial catastrophe, expanding the Middle East wars), Obama, by refusing to allow the prosecution of wrong doers in the Bush's administration, Obama, by engaging in a noisy, but ineffective stimulus, has accommodated the right. Now the extreme right feels more justified than ever in its crazy themes and plutocratic principles.
But this is all too subtle and historical for Obama and company to understand, so they will keep surrendering to the very ideals they pretend to combat. Those who don't know history are sure it will not happen again. http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/ ———————————————————————————————— 407.Kirk Tofte Des Moines, IA August 30th, 2010
Obama isn't playing it safe. He's engaged in appeasement. It's working about as well for him and the Democrats as it did for Neville Chamberlain and the British prior to Hitler's invasion of Poland. The Clintons always fought their opposition. Obama has tried to be too many things to too many people but he's never, ever been a fighter. If Martin Luther King, Jr. had been Obama (and, thank goodness, he wasn't) African-Americans would still not be able to vote in the South. ———————————————————————————————— 379.scientella california August 30th, 2010
This is like Germany before the second world war. Instead of demonizing Jews they are demonizing Muslims. The Beck rally was like Nuremberg. They hate intellectuals. The parallels go on and on. (but your screeners never post this comment as they think its dangerous if I mention the war! note I didnt name the national socialist party leader or automatically it the screeners wont post) ———————————————————————————————— 364.Peter Kenosha, WI August 30th, 2010
Rush Limbaugh is Hermann Goering's pompous bloated body with Josef Goebbels big loud mouth pasted on it.
I weep for America. ———————————————————————————————— 361.piotrorl offPiortland, OR August 30th, 2010
Perhaps only a fiscal crisis on the order of a Zimbabwe or a North Korea could bring the real fascism to the fore. Good article, Doctor! ———————————————————————————————— 347.HSCT/Germany August 30th, 2010
The demagoguery and rhetoric of the right wing extremists like Beck, Limbaugh and Palin is used by the main stream GOP to pick up some cheap votes with complete disregard what damage it does to the country. There is absolutely no intention or willingness to contribute solutions by the GOP. The times are gone when McCain spoke up against this hatred. The complete disregard of facts and the actual attempt to re-write history reminds me of Nazi-Germany. At this time of history I feel a sad relief that my children have dual citizenships and the chance to leave this country at any time to pursue opportunities elsewhere should they wish to do so. ———————————————————————————————— 344.Talleyrand Basel, Switzerland August 30th, 2010
Mr Krugman,
The constant references to Hitler and the Nazis by the Tea Partiers and their minions in the GOP is a very good indication as to how the extreme right in the US is operating. No, they do not have jackbooted, disenfranchised men doing the work for them, as the NSDAP had in the early Thirties. Rather, they have fairly affluent white drama queens who apparently have enough time and money on their hands to show up at rallies in DC. ———————————————————————————————— 336.Fred the Yank London August 30th, 2010
We know how the story ends - when respectable and sensible conservatives make cause with the wackos and the xenophobes. Just ask anyone who has studied the rise of Naziism in Germany. ————————————————————————————————