Germany 1933; Columbia Senate Elections 1998; Parallels to U.S. 2004-6

[Time for change]

For someone like me, who believes that an understanding of the past is the key to learning how to deal with the present, I found it very interesting to come across descriptions from two books within a three day period that reminded me so much of what we are facing today:


Germany 1933

This passage comes from “They Thought They Were Free – The Germans 1933-45”, by Milton Mayer. The book was suggested to me by justabob, in response to my January post, “Yes, it CAN Happen Here – The Impending Death of American Democracy”. A colleague of the author’s is explaining the rise of Hitler to him:

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 the 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.

That reminds me so much of Bush Co’s gradual assumption of dictatorial powers.


Columbia national elections 1998

This passage involves the 1998 Columbian national elections. It is from Ingrid Betancourt’s “Until Death Do Us Part – My struggle to Reclaim Columbia”. Betancourt, who reminds me of Paul Wellstone or John Conyers as much as anyone who comes to mind right now, was running for Senator as a third party candidate, for the Oxygen Party, which she had just recently founded. A victory for her or her party in that election posed a great threat to the status quo powers of the country.

After viewing the initial returns, which appeared to show a clear and very surprising victory for her, and experiencing momentary elation, she goes on:

Something tells me that these men who’ve tried to assassinate me won’t let me win so easily…. A terrible fear eclipses my first moments of happiness. They control everything, they control most of the people who are counting the votes, and they’re going to steal this victory from us, I’m sure of it….

My intention is to follow the returns city by city…. We sit down in front of a terminal. It’s six in the evening, and almost half an hour goes by without a single problem. Then, the returns from Cali suddenly stop coming in. While everywhere else the figures keep rising, the ones from Cali don’t budge….

I say, “let’s go up to see the Registiador”....

Betancourt: What’s happening? Cali is no longer transmitting results.…. I want to know why….

Registrar: They’ve had a power outage, no reason for concern….

I call our people on the scene. They’ve closed the Registraduria, and they’re not letting anyone in…. There’s no outage, the lights are working perfectly….

This time I explode: “Listen here, there’s neither wind nor a power outage in Cali. It’s obviously a ploy to conceal fraud. I’m warning you, I was leading in that region before the interruption, and if my votes decline after the returns start coming in again, I’m going to inform the reporters.”….

When the results start coming in again twenty minutes later, the trend has completely reversed. I had about fifteen thousand votes in the Cali area when the reporting was interrupted, but for the rest of the night, I don’t get a single additional vote. Of course the votes for the other candidates continually increase.

Betancourt goes on to win a resounding victory and become a first term Senator. A month later she is told by employees who work in the Registrar’s office that about 42 thousand votes were stolen from her on Election Day. She notes that if she had not gone up to the Registrar’s office that day she might have lost the election.


That episode reminds me so much of the Warren County, Ohio, “lockdown”, on Election Day 2004, when Warren County election officials used the excuse of a fake terrorist alert (later disclaimed by the FBI) to go off and count the votes in secret. Before that occurred, there was great optimism in the Kerry/Edwards camp. Things went rapidly downhill afterwards.

What if the Kerry/Edwards team was as suspicious as Ingrid Betancourt was, and what if they took similar steps to prevent election fraud? I wonder how different things might be today.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. Why are you not including the US "elections" of 2000?....

...you do understand what happened that year, don't you?

[Time for change]

10. Sure I understand that

Here's an article I wrote about it recently, on how the Miami Herald tried to make it look like a legitimate election:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=472684

But I felt that the 2004 US Presidential election provides a better analogy to the 1998 Colombian election which I describe in my OP. In particular, the Warren County "lockdown" (referenced in my OP) was a very mysterious and suspicious occurrence which many people, including myself, feel may have been used as an excuse to steal a large number of votes. No other believable reason has ever been provided for it. The Board of Elections said that it was done because of a terrorist threat -- which seems ridiculous on its face, and furthermore, the FBI has denied that such a threat existed. That sounds very similar to me to the incident related in the OP, where a fake power failure provided an excuse for the election workers to do some things in secret, and this was followed by a very strange sudden change in the vote trends. Furthermore, Betancourt's immediate suspicion as to what was going on, and her subsequent action, provides what seems like a stark contrast to how the Warren County lockdown was handled in this country.

I just thought that there might be a lesson to learn here. What explains the very different responses (and subsequent different results)? Was the Kerry Edwards campaign not watching things carefully enough because they felt that massive election fraud does not occur in this country? I don't know. But I think that we need to understand these things better.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RagingInMiami]

5. Thank you

My mom is Colombian as well as my aunts, uncles and cousins, who all live in Bogota.

[Time for change]

7. I can assure you that I meant no disrespect by spelling Colombia wrong

I'm used to having spell check catch errors like that, and spellcheck didn't work for this.

Also, it didn't help me that there are numerous internet articles where it is spelled Columbia.

[Minnesota Libra]

9. Before calling people idiots you might want to.......

.....write an article and spell out Columbia as well as Colombia and see what happens when you hit spell check.

Edited to make point: I just hit spell check and it DID NOT find any words to correct.

no disrespect meant ok??

[Time for change]

15. And also

Several internet articles also spell it as Columbia, such as:
http://www.educweb.org/Ingrid/Eng/Ingrid.htm

I wonder why that is? Is it bedcause that is an acceptable spelling, or is it because there are many people who spell it wrong?

Anyhow, thanks for your comment. I don't like to be called an idiot.

[Minnesota Libra]

17. The use of the word came from.......

.....post # 2 where the word "idiot" was first used and to which I was replying.:shrug: So I can understand no one liking to be called an "idiot" but on the other hand you might want to refrain from using a word that you wouldn't want used against you. :think:

[Time for change]

18. I didn't use that word

I was just thanking you :)

[arcos]

3. Do you mean Colombia? nt

[Time for change]

12. Yes, Colombia n/t

[Neil Lisst]

4. I agree with the Germany 1928-1933 comparison

I've felt that for a year, mentioning it only when someone says something about the Bush/Nazi comparison.

Yes, what we have been going through is similar in some respects to the 1928-1933 German experience.

[Time for change]

13. Actually, I was thinking of 1933-1945, though I suppose that one

could count it from earlier than that.

Since Hitler took power in 1933, that is when the slide to dictatorship and Facism took full force. Though it is also true that the conditions that allowed him to come to power in the first place were in development prior to that.

[Neil Lisst]

16. it was the 1928-1933 period in which the brownshirts emerged

as a force to intimidate and consolidate power for the Nazis, much as Bush is using the military and various organs of government to spy on, monitor, and intimidate political opponents and scapegoats.

[Time for change]

19. That is true

But when Hitler first was elected to the Chancellorship in 1933 his powers were only a small fraction of what they later became. He accumulated more and more power over time, just as Bush Co is doing, and by the time WW II started there was little opposition left, as it would have been considered unpatriotic to challenge the leader during war time (as Bush Co now tries to make anyone who criticizes them seem unpatriotic).

[Neil Lisst]

30. I agree that one can pick almost any time up to 1938 for comparison

A lot of people are rightly concerned about comparisons to Nazism, but most of those concerns see Nazism as the end product, whereas many of us see Nazism as evolving dramatically over a 25 year period.

The comparisons between Nazism prior to 1938, and Bushism at present are sound, while certainly not entirely analogous.

Bush has taken us to our darkest point since the blacklisting days of the McCarthy Era.

[Time for change]

35. Exactly - they lost their freedom a little bit at a time

and by the time they noticed enough to care, it was too late. That's what I'm afraid is happening to us.

[mom cat]

6. Thanks for the analogies.

[Time for change]

21. You're welcome -- I was hoping that the analogy with the Warren County

"lockdown" would provide some useful information on how these kinds of things could be handled better. I have had the feeling for a long time (especially since the 2004 election) that people in this country, including our elected representatives, just don't take the possibility of election fraud seriously enough.

[mom cat]

33. Or, maybe they do understand but are too accustomed to the perks,

the power and the staatus to give a damn.

[Time for change]

36. That's a really scary thought

I know that a lot of people believe that, but I really don't want to.

[mom cat]

37. I dont want to either, but the less they fight, the more I doubt their

sincerity.

[Peace Patriot]

8. There is much to be said for the early 1930s which paved the way to...

Hitler's rise as a parallel and a lesson regarding the Bush junta, but there are also very significant differences, most of them in our favor as a progressive and democratic people. For one thing, the U.S. is a much bigger country than Germany, just as to geography, and much, much more culturally diverse--a very hard country to rule over without the consent of the people. For another, Germany was on its knees economically--much worse off than we are now (stories of people having to take wheelbarrows full of money to the bakery for a loaf of bread). Hitler took a ruined country and built it up into a mighty industrial war machine. The Bushites are not doing that. They seem to be a wrecking crew instead--they are building NOTHING--and are major looters, which may be their primary purpose, robbery. And for a third, where are the Hitler Youth Groups? Sure, there are some rightwing 'christian' groups that are damned scary, but they have always been with us. Really, their rise is almost entirely an illusion of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Where are the goose-stepping, brain-washed, uniformed Hitler Youth? We hear from those types sometimes on the radio, anonymously (and in the blogosphere), but they almost never show themselves. How many are they, really? And if the country is so rightwing, so gungho to kill Arabs, and so pro-Bush, why aren't they all marching down the streets of America, in a proud display of Bushism? I think it very telling that they are not. And I think it means that almost nobody would support them, and that Bush worship is a small phenomenon--he has to struggle to get 40% of population to give him mere approval (not worship) in Bush-friendly opinion polls (and I think that has always been the case, "election" numbers to the contrary notwithstanding).

Germany's democracy in the early 1930s was much newer than ours is. We have a strong, long-standing democratic tradition, and also--if you are familiar with the issue polls over the last several years--an overwhelming progressive majority on all issues.

I don't think the Bush junta has convinced anyone of anything. It is a coup, not a conversion. Germany was both--Hitler seizing the mechanisms of power from a shattered liberal government, and whipping the Germans into a frenzy of support with fiery speeches on German nationalism and German destiny, and with some of the worshipful support (and only some of it) faked, out of fear of his power and fear of his thugs.

Bush? Uh-uh. He has neither Hitler's intelligence nor his talents--and his junta inspires loathing, not worship.

What's happening in the U.S. right now is both more complicated, and, also, in one way, very simple. The simple part is Diebold and ES&S, the two Bushite corporations that took over our election system in the 2001-2004 period, using "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems, with virtually no audit/recount controls, funded (and designed) by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (the so-called "Help America Vote Act"). Bush & Co. would be out on their ears, if it were not for secret, Bushite-controlled vote tabulation.

So, no matter how many people we got out to vote in 2004 (the biggest turnout in history), and no matter how well we matched the Bush/Cheney money machine with small contributions (dollar for dollar), and no matter how many new people who registered as Democrats (a 60/40 blowout success for the Democrats), none of it mattered. The machines were clearly rigged. That's WHY Tom Delay & brethren set up the private corporate takeover of our election system, between 2001-2004, and insisted on no paper trail.

It's a no-brainer that you have to have, a) open source code (if you're going to tabulate votes electronically), and b) a paper trail and other audit controls. We don't have them. Ergo, 2004 was not an election. It was a coup.

The result is a situation in which virtually no one approves Bush, or even likes Bush, except a minority of fanatics, and most people don't know how he can be president. They have been deliberately deprived of information about the non-transparent election system, and, in fact, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies were complicit in the 2nd stolen election. They shut down the network reporting system on election night 2004 and FALSIFIED their exit polls (which Kerry won) to FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret vote tabulation (Bush won)--thus depriving the American people of major evidence of election fraud, and squelching protests and calls for investigation. (--not so in the Ukraine, where people got to see the two separate and conflicting figures, exit polls vs. official results, and knew something was very wrong).

The majority of Americans are mystified and demoralized--and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED. They CAN'T change leaders, and they don't know why. They have lost their sovereignty as a people, with loss of the mechanism by which we exercise that sovereignty, our right to vote.

The matter is complicated in these senses: We started losing our sovereignty some time ago, with corporate campaign contributions and corporate control of legislation--increasing corruption in government. This greatly diluted our vote. The rich can buy million dollar minutes on TV to push their agenda. The poor cannot be heard. And one of the consequences of a very corrupt government is the deregulation of the media, so that five fatcat, war profiteering CEOs control all news, opinion and imagery in the country, and fill our public airwaves with rightwing tripe, further enforcing the feelings of disempowerment of the progressive majority.

Hitler swayed minds. Bush has not. Bush is merely the beneficiary of the corporate rightwing loop of "talking points"--from Rove's desk to the lapdog press to the people, who wonder what planet the rightwing is living on, but who cannot deny that Bush is in power, so they think, "Well, some people must believe this crap." But it's not "some people." It's Rove. It's self-feeding propaganda. (My favorite image for this is Rove writing the press releases about how/why Bush won the 2004 election way back in 2001, when the HAVA electronic voting scam bill was passed by the anthraxed Congress. I don't know if he did. But I'll bet he did. It was those gay couples--oh, and their "secret" get out the vote campaign in the churches.)

Hitler had big rallies with millions of people chanting "sieg heil!" Bush/Cheney could barely get the old geezers off the buses they had to use, to cart people into their extremely dull events--and even there they had to be careful to keep anti-Bush people out (highly vetted audiences). They don't dare put Bush in front of a REAL crowd of Americans.

Bush took over a prosperous country--not one that was turning to him out of desperate economic need. And he is turning the country INTO a basket case, that may well see a Hitlerian figure rise to power in the not-distant future. Bush bankrupted us. He and his fellow criminals--and the rich oligarchy that permitted him to remain in power (including, alas, all too many Democratic Party leaders)--are looting this country blind. I frankly think they're going to put a pro-war, pro-corporate Democrat in the White House in 2008 (Hillary) for the Democrats to take all the blame, when the shit hits the fan, on Bush's financial and foreign policy disasters. And THAT is when the Germany 1930s model may be most pertinent--as the center/left fractures over who is going to pay for the Bush junta's thievery and other horrors, and is unable to govern. There may be other issues, too--like a military Draft (I expect the war Dems to implement one). And we could be looking at things like food riots and big veterans' protests and marches of old grannies in wheelchairs whose Social Security funds have been looted. If Hillary has made a deal (and I strongly suspect that she has), I hope she realizes what the rightwing fascists have in mind. And I hope she supports election reform. It's going to be a lot harder to restore our right to vote without a national bill.

-----------------------

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

[mod mom]

11. Thank you, PP, your posts are always so well thought out. HCPB now!

[Time for change]

14. I agree with most of what you say here, Peace Patriot

Certainly there are many differences between our situation and that of Germany's in 1933.

And I feel that you are right to emphasize that Bush came to power by a coup. Certainly Gore received more votes than Bush in the US, and in Florida in 2000. And in 2004 there were so many "irregularities" in the Presidential election as to merit very little confidence in its results, and a great deal of evidence IMO to say that Kerry was the real winner. And it is also right to emphasize that Bush is an incompetant who has needed to be propped up every step of the way with tons of money and the corporate media, in order for him to even come as close as he did in 2004 (however close that was) to receiving the majority of honest votes.

Yet I think that it is an exaggeration to say that virtually no one approves of Bush. He does, after all, even at his low point, still have the approval of 36% of the voting population of the US. I note that, not to emphasize his good points (since I can't think of any), but to indicate how deluded a sizable minority of this country is. That's a very important point IMO because if his approval rating was below 20%, for example, I believe that politics would take its course, and he would be impeached and removed from office. So we have this sizable minority who supports him today, and those are the people who are keeping him in office.

And how much different is this than the situation with Hitler? True, Hitler actually won an election in order to initially come to power. But he received only about 30% of the vote in doing so, which is less than Bush's current approval ratings. And his assumption of dictatorial powers seems very similar to me to the way in which Bush is assuming dictatorial powers (notwithstanding all the enthusiasm for Hitler in a sizable minority of the population). He simply declares by fiat that the laws of the land don't apply to him, going a little bit further over time, and before long he's the official dictator of Germany. That doesn't sound terribly different to me than Bush's declaration that he has the right, as "Commander in Chief", to conduct warrantless spying on American citizens. He has not even given us a plausible reason for doing this, other than to enhance his internal powers.

But the parallel made in the OP that is so important IMO is not merely the fact that Bush does these things -- but that he gets away with them because too many people accept it. 36% actually approve of him, for Christ sake! But another sizable minority in addition to that are simply to apathetic to care very much about Bush's assumption of dictorial powers, his comtempt for international law, the lack of transparent elections, etc. That is what is so dangerous about this situation. The American people have become way to complacent. Yes, our democracy is much older than Germany's was in 1933, or even now. But we have forgotten that the continuation of democracy requires eternal vigilance, as Thomas Jefferson said. And we are in the process of paying the price for forgetting that.

[Time for change]

20. Here's another one I just read today

From the same book, "They Thought They Were Free", an ex-Nazi explaining to the author why he joined the Nazi Party in 1938:

I would not be honest with you if I told you that I was always an anti-Nazi... It is so easy these days to say 'anti-Nazi' and believe it...

I fooled myself. I had to. Everybody has to.... I still ought to have seen it.... But I didn't want to see it, because I would then have had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent....

I believe that this is the same problem that most Americans face today.

[file83]

29. I've always wondered, ever since I was a little kid...

..."what would I have done if I were a German in 1930's Germany?"

Well, I'm starting to find out. I am NOT going along with the program. I will dissent until they drag me off to the gas chambers (or whatever modern version of extermination modern technology provides these neo-fascists).

[Time for change]

31. Unfortunately, I think that

many of may be finding out before too long.

[understandinglife]

22. Vote # 5. Thank you, once again.

Be The Bu$h Opposition - 24/7

[Time for change]

26. Thank you ul - I called

Senators Sarbanes' and Mikulski's staff to ask them to support Feingold's resolution - asked what their current thinking was, and was told that they're taking it under consideration.

[understandinglife]

34. Thank you!! Good to know they are considering it.

Be The Bu$h Opposition - 24/7

[RazzleDazzle]

23. Everyone, everyone needs to read "They thought they were free"

it's utterly compelling, frightening, instructive. MUST READ material. Do it. And if you've read it already once before, read it again.

[Time for change]

27. Absolutely!

I'm still reading it, and I keep on finding new stuff that is relevant to our present situation.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Pat South, Warren County, Ohio Election Commissioner:

http://www.patsouth.com/page0006.htm

"Events Co-ordinator for Warren County Re-elect Bush Campaign 2004"

...And THEN some.

[Time for change]

28. She's a very busy woman

I wonder what she was doing on Election Day, and what she knows about the Warren County lockdown. She was one of the main peddlers of the fake terrorism alert.

[Warren DeMontague]

32. That's what I got from the article, for sure.

Sounds like she was instrumental to the whole deal. Feh.

[Wilms]

25. K&R n/t

[Time for change]

38. One more thought on central tabulator mediated election fraud

There is a great deal of concern about the voting machines themselves registering our votes correctly, and that's very important.

But even if our votes are initially registered correctly there is still the possibility of the central tabulation going wrong and causing a stolen election. In order to prevent that we must document the pre-tabulator vote count in every precinct in every competative state. Then we can tell, if the pre-tabulator counts don't match the post-tabulator (official) count that something is very wrong, and we'll then know where the problem is. That is something that wasn't done very well in 04. That is also the kind of fraud described in this OP, and very possibly the kind of fraud that was made possible by the fake terror alert in Warren County Ohio in 2004.

[TankLV]

39. What is most interesting is that NOT ONE person who lived thru

Germany then and was a victum of that horrible regime, DISAGREES with the proposition that the USA today is too much like Germany then - and they are worried, very worried.

I have yet to meet a one or hear of one who doesn't feel that way.

And, unfortunately, they are a fast dwindling number.

[Time for change]

40. Yes, that is very interesting indeed - I wasn't aware of that at all

That certainoly lends a lot of credence to the idea IMO that we are in the process of taking a path similar to that of the Nazis.