Propaganda
Hitler would have known the American right
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
8/30/02
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/propaganda.htm Back around 1980, when BBSes - the local ASCII equivalents of Usenet -
first showed up, extremists in the White Power and Nazi movements were
delighted. At last, they had a cheap and - they thought - effective
method of getting their message out to the masses. They were convinced
that only the ignorance of the sheep prevented Hitler's vision from
becoming America's future.
This caused considerable consternation. It was pretty horrific to
contemplate that the computer - the cutting edge of humanity's
technology and ingenuity, and the new incredible frontier in
communication - was being perverted to such ends. More than one person
was struck by the juxtaposition of brilliance and vileness.
Many of us quickly realized the best thing to do about the hate mongers
was to let them put up their own boards and propagate to their heart's
content.
Part of it was simply the fact that in a healthy and stable culture,
hate has limited appeal. It's one thing to say that most people
stereotype and have prejudicial thoughts, but for most, it's an
indulgence, a weakness, and doesn't translate into the active antipathy
needed to become a full-blown hater. And those weak enough to fall into
such a trap are often too weak to act on it.
In a healthy society, the vast majority of people are better than what
the haters have to offer, and the vileness of the haters, more than
anything else, limits them. Most people don't need warnings on their
cigarette packages to know that racial and religious hatred are wrong.
And the obvious dangers of preempting the rights of the haters to
present their views outweighed the minor appeal they had among
disaffected teens.
Only in a sick society are they a real danger. Hitler wouldn't have
been able to seize power had Germany not been broke and broken by the
Treaty of Versailles and the collapse of the mark. A decent
unemployment rate, and Hitler would have been nothing more than a minor
footnote in German history, a nasty crackpot who used to hang around the
beer halls and rant about Jews and communists.
A second reason to not interfere with the rights of the haters to
express themselves was that it put them out in the light of day, were we
could see what they were up to.
In a minor incident the other day, it paid off. Someone managed to get
Target Stores to carry a line of clothing that had the innocent logo,
"88". However, the number appears quite frequently on neo-nazi and
white supremacist websites, where it means "eighth letter of the
alphabet twice", or "HH", which is shorthand for "Heil Hitler". The far
right revels in such silliness, and such website have that, and other
symbols like "14" (short for "Fourteen words", those words being "We
must secure the existence of our people and a future for white
children"), "RAHOWA" (Racial Holy War) and "ZOG" - Zionist Occupied
Government.
Well, I told you it was silly. Neo-Nazis aren't noted for their
brights. Frankly, I'm surprised that any of them can count to 14.
But those websites are public, mostly, and someone noticed the "88" and
realized what it meant. And a minor propaganda coup was thus averted.
It demonstrates another reason to keep the Nazis and their writings in
public view. There's a nest of neo-propaganda out there, most of it
from the Republican and Christian right, that reinvents Hitler for their
own purposes. We've gotten used to use Hitler's own words to disprove
lies told about liberals and seculars and their relation to Adolf
Hitler. The American right has gotten so poisonous that it no longer
seems incongruous to use Hitler as a measuring stick by which we compare
their honesty.
For example, a claim that gained currency during the nineties was that
Hitler was an atheist. A friend sent me a collection of quotes from
Hitler invoking his deity in a variety of ways, and of course, a glance
at any of his speeches will demonstrate that he was as capable of
calling on God to bless his endeavors as any American president.
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Other_Voices/Quotes_from_the_right.htm I've only had to use that list of quotes on Usenet once. Being able to
flourish a line like, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always
remain so" tends to put a quick quietus to assertions that Hitler killed
millions of people because he had no moral guidance from above. I'm
sure the vast majority of Christians would question Hitler's particular
interpretation; nonetheless, he was a Christian in his own mind.
Another fabrication about Hitler that got far more currency was that
Hitler was a socialist. Some right wing bozo wrote a book saying this,
based on nothing more than the fact that the name of Hitler's party was
"The National SOCIALIST Party". Going by this logic, Saddam Hussein is
a Republican because his personal army is called the Republican Guard.
Talk radio picked up this silliness, and as a result, people who don't
know what Hitler's views were or what socialist is will assure you, with
the placidity of those who utterly rely on their sources, that Hitler
was a socialist.
Of course, right wingers think that socialists, communists, leftists
and liberals are all pretty much the same thing, so it only induces a
moderate amount of strain on their brains to conclude that Hitler was a
socialist, a communist, a leftist, and a liberal.
Having access to Hitler's thoughts on such is a help. These excerpts
come from a three hour speech:
"The main plank in the National Socialist programme is to abolish the
liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of
humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the
soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood. A very simple
statement; but it involves a principle that has tremendous
consequences."
[...]
"I mean here that if Europe does not awaken to the danger of the
Bolshevic infection, then I fear that international commerce will not
increase but decrease, despite all the good intentions of individual
statesmen. For this commerce is based not only on the undisturbed and
guaranteed stability of production in one individual nation but also on
the production of all the nations together. One of the first things
which is clear in this matter is that every Bolshevic disturbance must
necessarily lead to a more or less permanent destruction of orderly
production. Therefore my opinion about the future of Europe is, I am
sorry to say, not so optimistic as Mr. Eden's. I am the responsible
leader of the German people and must safeguard its interests in this
world as well as I can. And therefore I am bound to judge things
objectively as I see them."
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/hitler1.htmON NATIONAL SOCIALISM
AND WORLD RELATIONS
SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE GERMAN REICHSTAG ON JANUARY 30TH 1937
