The Government Shutdown

Ghosts of Goebbels

Are We Doomed to Repeat This Bit of History?

April 6, 2011

            In my youth, I escaped Misery (Missouri) to San Francisco to complete my college education.  I had to work my way through college, so I held many jobs.  In one of those I met Jenny Gerechter who told me how she and her sister were the sole survivors of her family from the horrors of Germany during the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.  In another of my jobs, I had a student that I tutored in high school geometry.  One night after a tutoring session, her parents served cherry pie and coffee and we got acquainted.  I learned that they were Germans who came here after World War II.  (I later learned from a C-Span phone contact with the Editor of Der Stern (http://www.stern.de/), that many of the Nazi’s came to the United States for asylum).  This chap was simply one of the “dog-faces” in Hitler’s Army.  I was alarmed because they were living in a new housing  addition in Daley City, while I had to get special help from a fair housing organization to rent an apartment in San Francisco.  At that time, Negro and Jewish renters had great difficulty renting in a heavily discriminatory housing market.  In my frustration, I asked how they felt, as former enemies of this country, to have such privileges that our black and Jewish citizens did not have.  They proclaimed through tears that the simply “didn’t know” what was going on there in Germany.  I told them I could not believe that, and never tutored that student again.  More than fifty years later, I understand, seeing what the citizens of this country are doing, that they probably didn’t want to know what was going on.

            Thanks to the internet, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels), provides a free compendium on Dr. Joseph Goebbels, a man most responsible for the rise of Adolf Hitler, and his ability to press war upon the world.  Upon reading the article, I became aware that perhaps many in this country have followed every step that Goebbels took in bringing about the rise and reign of Hitler.  Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, Glen Beck, Michele Bauchman; all come rushing to mind.  It took Goebbels more than ten years to achieve what became the demise of German Democracy and the rise of Naziism.  Some of our citizens have been busy bringing about our current condition for more that 30 years.

It has been said that Democracies decline toward Fascism, and you have to wonder, with the rise of corporate power, the attack on Organized Labor, the somnolence of the citizens of this country who have to struggle with more than one job to feed their families, if we’re not headed again for that kind of future.

            The conditions of the economy and the society are eerily similar, while today’s tools for propaganda are things that Goebbels probably never thought possible.  He created monumental devastation with the tools he had then (radio, movies, opera, symphonies, books, newspapers, etc.)  We have all these today (on steroids! ); plus the internet. We also have practitioners who are unwilling or unable to accept or deal with facts or truths. 

The voting public has disturbingly shown that Harry Truman was wrong.  Harry (whom I saw speak at a train station in Missouri in 1948) was convinced that no matter their level of education, the citizens of this country would, in the end, vote their pocketbook.  George W. Bush proved him wrong.  Perhaps it was because a master propagandist, Karl Rove worked for him.  Goebbels believed that there was no good propaganda or bad propaganda; only propaganda that gained the desired result.  HELLO!!! 

Joseph Goebbels had a Ph.D., and knew full well what filth he purveyed.  Unlike Goebbels, most of the storm troopers and other followers of Hitler were less educated and motivated mostly by racial and class hatred.  Like Goebbels, their views of race came from their Catholic, Christian up-bringing.

            In our society today, the turn in this direction can be traced back to Ronald Reagan, who was probably a closet sympathizer of the Nazis.  His visit to Bitburg’s Nazi Cemetary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitburg) and his visit and speech in support for the racist murders of civil rights workers in Mississippi (http://hungryblues.net/2007/01/30/reagan-recording-found/) are cases in point.  Reagan used an earlier race-baiting propagandist, Lee Atwater, to gain his Presidency of the United States.  It appears that race opened the door and greed strode in.  If the citizens of this country don’t awaken from their deadly slumber, this ugly history might repeat itself.

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