We Are, Many Times Here, Admonished NOT To Compare Today's Plight With 1930's Germany...

[WillyT]

Listen to a warning from someone who was there.

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x635958

:shrug:

[CreekDog]

1. I was just in Munich on a tour about the Third Reich's beginnings there

the people on the tour (I was the only American) mentioned that the American Tea Party seemed to have a lot of similarities.

[BOG PERSON]

4. the nazis were a tad more youthful + fashionable and explicitly expansionist

while the tea party is older/retired, they look like this: and they're basically isolationist

[MADem]

9. They don't look like that guy!

He's slim, fit, and his clothing matches. He's not sweating from the exertion of walking twenty or thirty feet.

He's also not carting a weapon.


Those teapartiers are overweight, unfit and they wear some of the most horrific get-ups on the planet. How many items of clothing (and please, no G. Gordon's speedo, my eyes!) can those morons find with some representation of a flag emblazoned upon them?


They're not all retired--a lot of them just took disability when they got a chance, and--without any irony whatsoever-- spend all their days railing about those lazy "others" who suck off the national teat.

[Philosopher King]

2. Look...behind that tree...could it really be...

Adolf and the National Socialists...?

[Kingofalldems]

6. Oh I get it... Socialist = Nazis

[socialist_n_TN]

12. Pretty obvious isn't it?

:)

[Philosopher King]

78. The full title of Adolf Hitler's party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.

National Socialist German Workers' Party - Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus) was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany.<1><2><3><4> It is a unique variety of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism.<5>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

[B Calm]

161. Why National Socialism (NAZISM) is NOT Socialism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7aA7SpRWwI

[Philosopher King]

202. Socialism is available in many flavors...

Nazism and fascism are but two.

[Kingofalldems]

203. Fascism is Socialism?

You mean like Pinochet, a follower of Milton Friedman?

[hifiguy]

205. You are only revealing your vast ignorance of the beginnings

of Nazism and of Nazism's ideology. The first people imprisoned under the Emergency Laws that were enacted after the Reichstag Fire were Social Democrats, trade unionists, socialists and communists. Fascism has nothing in common with socialism. Fascism, to quote its founder, Benito Mussolini, is more properly described as corporatism because it fuses the power of corporations and the giovernment.

Is that you, Rushbo?

[Kingofalldems]

206. That is certainly what Rush claims, isn't it?

And posted right here on DU. A rewrite of history.

[Philosopher King]

209. Actually, like ol' Rushbo, you appear to be running an outdated 2-bit (left-right) Operating System.

But alas, it is difficult to change the ways of those who are used to operating inside the box.

The terms left and right are arbitrary. They can mean anything or nothing, and often do. Hitler and the National Socialists are often cited as an example of the extreme right, while Josef Stalin and the Communists are often put forward as an example of extreme left.

But that is so nonsensical and one-dimensional that it is actually worse than an indeterminate--worse because it creates artificial division, confusion, and group-think.

Under Bush, the so-called left opposed the the bailouts, the wars, the PA, etc.; but under Obama, the so-called right, now opposes these things. We are being played my friend--all of us.

Personally, I don't see a whole lot of difference between them.

[WildNovember]

166. And your point? It was named so in order to compete with the Socialists & Communists

who were drawing more Germans into their orbit. To peel off supporters of the left. It doesn't mean that the Nazis were socialists.

[vcc]

197. not only lured them, but Hitler infiltrated and USED the workers' party...

...to enable his rise to power and have a ready-made base with big numbers and anger at the economic situation. He insinuated himself into it and rose up through its ranks to become a leader. He then combined this ready-made base with the reactionary nationalist types of the time who were also angry with the status quo but more because they thought of the Weimar republic as too liberal, modern and yes, too ethnically mixed. So he found a common bond of populist anger which grew his numbers a few times over, but which was basically inconsistent with itself and a fundamentally dishonest platform. He later discarded and murdered the communists and others of similar mind, after they'd served his purposes, and kept the folks who were basically attack dogs who could spread hate around so much that it became "normalized". All this is why we need to be very careful the same pattern doesn't happen again, with someone using circumstances and groups in similarly perverted ways.

[Philosopher King]

201. Yes, the socialists (Nazis) had to compete with the communists (Marxists)...

but both groups were anti-liberal and anti-Capitalist.

We are socialists. We are enemies of today's capitalistic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions. - Adolph Hitler

The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood. - Adolph Hitler

The worker in a capitalist state - that is his greatest misfortune - no longer a human being, no longer a creator, no longer a shaper of things. He has become a machine. - Joseph Goebbels

As socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see, in the Hebrews, the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation?s goods. - Joseph Goebbels

Public Interest before Private Interest.

25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central autority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.

The Party leadership promises to take an uncompromising stand, at the cost of their own lives if need be, on the enforcement of the above points. - From the Nazi Party Platform, Munich, February 24, 1920.

[Kingofalldems]

204. Good try.

So the upshot of your post seems to be that Liberal Democrats who endorse policies that are Socialistic are very close to being Nazis.

[Kingofalldems]

207. Fox News in agreement with everything you posted!

[Philosopher King]

211. I don't know--you tell me.

:hi:

[Kingofalldems]

79. RW meme for many years. Hitler was the opposite of a socialist of course.

But the truth won't stop them from lying.

[reggie the dog]

81. hitler described himself as a national socialists

the left wing was communist, the right wing of germany was national socialist

[Kingofalldems]

92. Hitler redefined the word socialist -he used the word for his own purposes

It's like saying the Democratic Republic of North Korea.

[BOG PERSON]

98. not really - nazi germany really was social-democratic

nazi germany achieved full employment by 1936 through deficit spending and maintained a robust welfare state. that's why germany supported them until the bitter end.

[reggie the dog]

101. but they were the right wing party too

the left wing was the communists, THE REAL LEFT WING

[Fantastic Anarchist]

105. You're saying Nazi Germany was "social-democratic?"

I wish people would think before they speak.

"Full employment" and "welfare state" doesn't equate to social democracy, by the way.

[BOG PERSON]

111. yes

full employment and a welfare state, but above all the preservation of capitalist social relations, is what people normally think of, when they think of european social democracy.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

113. Well, then that's a very ridiculous assertion.

To have a social-democracy and a totalitarian state at the same time? I think you're just making shit up to sound cool.

[BOG PERSON]

116. i'm flattered that you think i sound cool

but i'm honestly just sharing what i know, and being friendly. :)

[Fantastic Anarchist]

119. Fair enough.

I was a bit harsh. But you're still wrong.

;)

:hi:

[reggie the dog]

124. social democracy and fascism at once

social "democracy" for aryan, nazi supporting germans but for no one else.........

[nadinbrzezinski]

167. Hmm that is why the first targets of the state

were the union leaders, newspapers and social democrats... yup, it flows since the official name of the party included that word. WOW

:sarcasm:

[WildNovember]

171. Hitler didn't have a welfare state except in his payments to women to have more children

for the war machine. In fact the old German welfare state was torn apart under the Nazis.

[JDPriestly]

137. NAZI Germany supported a huge defense industry -- private

contractors, you might call them.

What you are saying supports a yes to the question as to whether our society with our bail-outs for banks and all the money Congress spends on purchases of pretty useless, obsolete military equipment to keep the jobs from disappearing as well as our wars that make a lot of money for the 1% is evolving into something like NAZI Germany.

Right-wing, left-wing, makes no difference. Our huge military-industrial complex means that our government and our biggest industries might easily be viewed as merged into one huge institution that is destroying what is left of individualism and democracy.

GE and the Obama administration. Are they one and the same in the end? And where does that leave the truly small businessman who repairs and sells, say bicycles or gardening supplies and plants?

[BOG PERSON]

143. n/m

NEVERMIND

[nadinbrzezinski]

165. Where is a wall?

Not a one expert in the field would go there, well except the one or two who are revisionists... I will leave it at that, since they are the one and the same that deny the Holocaust every occurred.

:banghead:

[BOG PERSON]

177. expert in what field? economic history?

i'm pretty sure they would, and they have, and they managed to do this without simultaneously denying the holocaust.

[nadinbrzezinski]

189. Actually NONE who is actually a respected historian in the Field

REGARDLESS of specialty, has argued this.

As I said, the ONLY ones who do that have also gone into denial

[WildNovember]

168. social-democratic? I don't think so, as there was no democracy.

German "full employment" came when the Germans started building up their war machine, and at the expense of the Weimar welfare state, and with the extermination of the 'unfit' and politically active. Also the depression of wages and forced labor. Nothing socialist or democratic about it, anymore than 100% employment in a slave labor system is socialist or democratic.

[muriel_volestrangler]

179. well said (nt)

[BOG PERSON]

182. ordinary germans were not enslaved - conditions worsened for them as the war went on

rather, it was internal enemies, people in occupied territories, POWs - all those people were subjected to slave labor. presumably they were not counted in the employment statistics either.

[WildNovember]

188. Depends on what you mean by "ordinary Germans". You mean German citizens?

Some among them WERE exterminated, enslaved, and forced into labor. I don't know what you're talking about when you say "ordinary Germans". You mean Germans who weren't political, mentally challenged, handicapped, of the wrong religion or ethnicity, criminals or "criminals," welfare recipients, etc? Oh, OK.


Before the Nazi seizure of power, many German law enforcement, social work, and welfare professionals as well as many ordinary German citizens believed that compulsory labor was a productive way to integrate social “outsiders” into the local labor force... These so-called outsiders included persons receiving welfare benefits, juveniles and others engaged in petty crime, persons unable for whatever reason to hold down a job, and persons who engaged in socially unacceptable behavior, such as excessive consumption of alcohol or promiscuous sexual activity.

Nazi ideology also identified hard manual labor as a preferred means not only of punishing intellectual opponents, but also of "educating" Germans to be "racially conscious" and to support the racial goals of National Socialism. From the establishment of the first concentration camps and detention facilities in the winter of 1933, forced labor -- often pointless and humiliating, and imposed without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest -- formed a core part of the concentration camp regimen. By labeling those incarcerated in the concentration camps as criminals, subversives, and asocials who would be “educated” in the camps to proper labor and social discipline, the Nazi leadership could draw upon acquiescence and even support among the German people for the concentration camps.

After 1938, the Nazis increasingly exploited the forced labor of "enemies of the state," so-called asocials, and so-called criminal elements for economic gain and to meet desperate labor shortages. In 1938, the German Criminal Police conducted two major roundups of so-called asocials and so-called criminals to increase the number of forced laborers available in the camps. Initial plans to house large numbers of Soviet prisoners of war and, later, Jewish forced laborers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin/Majdanek in the winter of 1941-1942 also aimed at creating a captive labor force for the grandiose construction plans of the SS.

In addition to the SS, the German civilian authorities also required inexpensive labor for more immediate construction, urban renewal, and transportation projects. By the end of 1938, German municipal authorities deployed German and Austrian Jews, most of whom had been deprived of independent employment opportunities by antisemitic legislation, at forced labor at a variety of municipal projects.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007326

[BOG PERSON]

193. no, i don't mean german citizens

i mean ordinary germans. as in average.

:eyes:

[WildNovember]

194. Oh, only non-average Germans were killed, imprisoned and forced to work, therefore Germany was

a welfare state & social democracy. OK, glad I got it straight.

The Nazis DESTROYED the welfare state that had ALREADY EXISTED under Bismark/Weimar.

[WildNovember]

181. A "robust" welfare state? What are you smoking? People who needed "welfare" were killed

or forced into work. One of Hitler's missions was to DESTROY the Weimar welfare state.

[BOG PERSON]

185. the nazis short term goal was to establish a racist welfare state

and their longterm goal to prepare for a future confrontation with the americans by taking out the soviet union, plundering their resources, enslaving/genociding the slavic peoples, repopulating the area w/ german settlers and creating some kind of homestead utopia similar to what we americans have/had.

[WildNovember]

187. Please tell me about the actual institutions of this alleged "welfare state" rather than the

Nazis' intentions, which are not relevant.

[BOG PERSON]

190. werent you the one that brought up hitler's motivations?

anyway, i found this wikipedia article you can read if you want. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People's_Welfare

[WildNovember]

195. An organization which excluded from its "benefit" Jews, tramps (homeless),

homosexuals, prostitutes, the "hereditarily ill", the "work-shy" or "asocial", and non-Aryans. Also absorbed and/or destroyed pre-existent programmes, including state & Christian programmes, and attacked them for the supposedly "liberal" way they doled out benefits (just as is being done today on the right).

The Nazis CUT unemployment benefits in the face of rising unemployment & drafted recipients into so-called "voluntary" labor, the "Reich Labor Service (est 1933)". Rent supplements were cut, medical payments were cut, pensions were cut, care for the aged was cut, and "voluntarism" was promoted as a way to channel more money into rearmament. Not to mention the actual murder, imprisonment, and forced labor of the political, the unfit, the non-aryan, etc, all of which began well before the war.

http://books.google.com/books?id=iG4ud0PxeDMC&pg=PA489&dq=%22National+Socialist+People%27s+Welfare%22&hl=en&ei=cJHJTpi3LKOMigLZxe28Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22National%20Socialist%20People%27s%20Welfare%22&f=false

Also some of the "welfare" distributed by the National Socialist People's Welfare actually were confisticated from Jews and other "undesirables":

http://books.google.com/books?id=AAx-Gfo163EC&pg=PA175&dq=%22National+Socialist+People%27s+Welfare%22&hl=en&ei=hZPJTuLQHOKViQKWw8W_Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22National%20Socialist%20People%27s%20Welfare%22&f=false

Not to mention that NSV was involved in surveillance of its "beneficiaries."


And no, I said Hitler's MISSION was to destroy the Bismarkian/Weimar welfare state, not his "motivation". His "mission" in support of his capitalist backers, not his "motivation" for his racialism.

[JDPriestly]

135. It was corporate fascism.

A major example of the corporate fascism of Hitler was the close relationship between the Krupp industries and Hitler's regime:

As the eldest son of Bertha Krupp, Alfried was destined by family tradition to become the sole heir of the Krupp concern. An amateur photographer and Olympic sailor, he was an early supporter of Nazism among German industrialists, joining the SS in 1931, and never disavowing his allegiance to Hitler.

His father’s health declined starting in 1939, and after a stroke in 1941, Alfried took over full control of the firm, continuing its role as main arms supplier to Germany at war. In 1943, Hitler decreed the Lex Krupp, authorizing the transfer of all Bertha’s shares to Alfried, giving him the name “Krupp” and dispossessing his siblings.

During the war, Krupp was allowed to take over many industries in occupied nations, including Arthur Krupp steel works in Berndorf, Austria, the Alsacian Corporation for Mechanical Construction (Elsaessische Maschinenfabrik AG, or ELMAG), Robert Rothschild's tractor factory in France, Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia, and Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG (Deschimag) in Bremen. This activity became the basis for the charge of “plunder” at the war crimes trial of Krupp executives after the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp

Hitler stated that he would not nationalize the big industrial interests. He was, therefore, not a Communist. He kept people either employed or on some minimal income and he called his movement, Socialist. He was, in some sense of the word, elected.

The main thing you can learn from the NAZIs is that very totalitarian regimes can mimic democracy and capitalism very well.

Some Americans feel that our system is moving toward the mere mimicry of democracy and capitalism.

That is what the movies, Capitalism, A Love Story and Inside Job are partly about. They ask the question "Are we truly a capitalist society? Are we truly a democratic society? Or are we just a dictatorship by an oligarcy, a sort of aristocracy by another name?"

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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

[Fantastic Anarchist]

102. Are you trying to equate the NSDAP with actual socialists?

[reggie the dog]

104. economically they were left of today's democrats

but their most bitter rivals came from their left,from the communist party and from the anarchist unionists

[Fantastic Anarchist]

109. Yes, they had a lot of policies that were to the left of today's Democrats ...

... which isn't that hard to do. But that was more a cynical ploy to gain more support (and that was way early on). NAZI political ideology was really psychotic, literally and figuratively; but the whole movement did become a tool for the industrialists through Adolf Hitler and his party.

Anyone who superficially tries to claim that "National Socialist" and actual socialists are the same, as the poster tried to do, is an absolute moron.

[reggie the dog]

110. it has always been clear in my mind that socialst and

white national socialist were no where near the same, hell the USSR the united soviet SOCIALIST republic lost tens of millions of people fighting against the white national socialists

[Fantastic Anarchist]

114. Indeed ...

I was just trying to clarify what Philosopher King was saying.

[reggie the dog]

117. hopefully they read our conversation

and understand where we are coming from

[Fantastic Anarchist]

120. Yes, I do too.

That's why I love debate forums.

[WildNovember]

180. A left economy doesn't kick women & jews out of jobs, exterminate the "unfit,"

ban unions & depress wages with the threat of internment to back it up. Neither does a left economy protect private business cartels and their profits. Nor is a left economy based on militarization, as was the period of full employment under the Nazis.

[chrisa]

198. The last few who replied seemed to have forgotten that Hitler called his party

"National Socialists." Nazism means "National Socialism."

On the other hand, the name was not accurate. As vague as the term "Socialism" is, the Nazis were not even close to socialist. In fact, they were the exact opposite (probably being closer to a very extreme form of government-forced social and economic Darwinism. Nazism also pushed strict extremist Conservatism (e.g. All women should stay in the kitchen, Homosexuality is evil, etc.), but pretty unrelated to American Conservatism (the Nazis hated religion and Capitalism).

[Scuba]

3. Why not? The parallels are inescapable. n/t

[sabrina 1]

5. Yes, and I believe she also said, or was it someone else

that what is happening now has the potential to be worse because it is Global. Germany was limited to its own army, we now have a Global organization which appears to be using the same tactics, the same robo-cops also, all over the world wherever the people rise up against the Economic Terrorists.

[BOG PERSON]

7. but the robocops are at the service of globalized liberal capitalism

the nazis, and fascists in general, were anti-liberal, romantic, nationalists.

[sabrina 1]

14. Greed and corruption and authoritarianism, regardless of

whatever 'ism' is used to achieve what they want, makes them all the same in the end, imho, as history has demonstrated. Neo-liberalism, is not Liberalism btw.

There is no way those who brought down the world's economies could be described as 'liberal'. They are Capitalists who believe in no rules for them, rules for everyone else. They are villains, and villains like everyone else, come in all shades, but they are still villains, regardless.

And they cannot fix the problems they created so they are getting desperate. While the people of the world were unaware, at least they did not have to worry about that, but they apparently were prepared in case they ever woke up. Too bad for them, now the People have gone Global, a little late, but hopefully not too late.

[nadinbrzezinski]

170. Neo-Liberal, yes that matters

and democracy... in name only.

[Riley18]

8. There are too many similarities to ignore. They marginalize "other" people,

and one of the first thing their governors did was try to destroy unions. Hitler did the same things.

[msongs]

10. maybe some people on du think the jews should have got permits & paid for their own security like

everyone else

[PATRICK]

11. Thugs and elites through the centuries, pick an era,

find the type, appreciate the experience. What makes Nazis comforting is that: they are universally condemned and symbols of the whole spew, and they lost decisively. Monsters, losers, exposed. Yet I think we can see human behavior throughout civilization in the assymetrical contest between human vice and virtue. We have enough horrors and body counts and ravaged lands to brand certain things, certain people and understand how those brands get tossed back at the "weak" who shall inherit the earth- after the strong get done destroying it out of spite. It seems centers of power and wealth are always in danger of attracting the worst and corrupting everything which leaves the majority struggling, at best and blindly, not to get divided and conquered in the same evil.

Yes the current examples of lawless thuggery and abuse of power are losers and monstrous, which is what makes the term Nazi so double bladed they must quibble about the details or whinily shout back "No you are!"

[backscatter712]

15. Yep. We still have the people going HURR!!! GODWIN!!!

But the fact is that we've gone so far down that path that Germany took in the late 1920's and early 1930's that if we go much further, it would be only a matter of time before we have our own totalitarian regime from hell and America perpetuates its own holocaust.

Now, with the Occupy movement, is perhaps our last and best chance to stop this.

[tritsofme]

16. You sound ridiculous.

I hope it was sarcasm. Hard to tell on the internets.

[backscatter712]

24. No, I was serious.

The people saying "HOW DARE YOU COMPARE US TO NAZI GERMANY!!!" have completely failed to grasp the concept of totalitarianism coming to a nation-state gradually. Are you so naive to think that Germany jumped all the way from Weimar Republic with low-level thuggery in the streets to the 1940's Auschwitz era with millions dying in the showers and ovens? Don't answer that...

Even in the late 30's, the death toll from Nazi Germany was still in the thousands, not the millions.

Every time I hear people crying Godwin, they make the error of assuming I'm comparing the current U.S. to Nazi Germany in the 40's when Hitler's regime was mature, waging wars that the world hadn't seen before, and were murdering people in the ovens by the millions.

Right now, I'd say we're about the same place in history as Weimar Germany, circa 1930 or so. If we don't turn things around, our current President Hindenberg is going to be swept aside, and we'll have our own Enabling Act...

[nadinbrzezinski]

70. Mid 1930s

the Enabling Act WAS the USPA... in fact the parallels in language chilled me when I read it.

[reggie the dog]

84. what is USPA??

[nadinbrzezinski]

87. United States Patriot Act.

[reggie the dog]

103. i did a google search and got us polo association

duhh patriot act. i just never saw it written as USPA

[ellisonz]

17. It's not.

Wake me up when the United States has plotted the extermination of entire races of people and world domination for a thousand years. Hitler ended German democracy - we elected a politician of a different party with a different set of beliefs in 2008. Would Hitler have allowed a Democratic vote like that? If you want to make a comparison - one to Victorian England is far more apt. Your statement would make Charlie Chaplin roll in his grave.

:shrug:

[WillyT]

19. So... Did You Even Bother To Go To The Link Provided ???

I kind of doubt it, so I'll make it easy for ya.

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x635958

:shrug:

[ellisonz]

21. I watched her interview two days ago.

Dorli Rainey was born in 1927 in Austria. That means that she was 11 when Germany took over Austria, 12 when it invaded Poland, and 18 when the war ended. I don't think you can really claim she has a monopoly on the subject.

Why would you construe a teenagers impressions to be more accurate than all of the academics who would probably disagree?

[WillyT]

29. Oh Jesus Christ... I Gotta Give Up On People Like You... Everything Is A Fucking Lab Experiment...

The thing about the Social Sciences... that separates them from Science... is that they involve actual human beings.

That's why they've been referred to as "Soft Sciences". They don't quite fit the normal tests of scientific theory. And as far as academia concerning Germany in the 1920's, 1930's,and 1940's...

Depends on who's writing it.

Are you sure YOU aren't "befuddled" ??? And just how old are you, BTW ???

:wtf:

:banghead:

[ellisonz]

32. I'm not the only one disagreeing with you on this topic.

I am 25. I hold a Bachelor of Arts in History from one of the most respected liberal arts colleges in the country. My topic of specialty is American foreign policy in the Pacific before the First World War.

My Grandparents are Holocaust Survivors - I am intimately acquainted with both the personal experience of the Holocaust and the history of the Second World War and historiography thereof. Who are you to level personal attacks? What are your credentials?

The question of whether history is a social science is heavily debated. I believe it belongs much more to the humanities than the social sciences.

[WillyT]

33. Well... As Much As I Respect Your Field Of Endeavor, And Your Personal Talents And Ambitions...

Most SERIOUS Historians rely on letters written, papers published, and yes... word of mouth accounts when available, to get a sense of the true "picture" of the time period they pontificate on.

Perfect example... Ken Burns 'Civil War'

And remember... the winners of war usually get to write the History books afterwards... that does not make them correct. If the South had won the Civil War, or the Nazis had won World War II...

History at THAT TIME would have been totally re-written to serve their purposes. And, of course, all History would have been significantly different from that time on.

:shrug:

But go get 'em youngie... you are about to experience History... up close and personal.

:hi:

[ellisonz]

41. One can use "sourcing" to make a great many arguments, however it must be stated that...

“The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.”

“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”

“If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: ''How do you want the world to be in fifty years?'' and ''What do you want your life to be like five years from now?'' the answers are quite often preceded by ''Provided there is still a world'' and ''Provided I am still alive.'' To the often-heard question, Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.”

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

Hannah Arendt

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. Methods in History

you really need to take at least a Masters Level class on that...

It will instruct you on silly shit like PRIMARY SOURCES including, when available, first person accounts.

As to predicting the future... none is doing that, but did your teachers EVER mention Toynbee?

[reggie the dog]

85. i learned what primary sources were as an undergrad in history

but i went to UIC (no, not U of C UIC) so its not one of the most prostidous liberal arts colleges.

i prefer the first person accounts and oral histories. i stopped with my master's because i cant deal with all of the ass kissing (as opposed to actual learning) one must do to get a phd then to become a tenured professor

knowing that, i dont really trust most history books, even most of what i read at the university, because most getting published or tenure make arguments that dont rock the boat too much

howard zinn's kind of history books interest me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

88. Why I know the history of labor

I will have to publish on my own.

:-).

Though in the current environment it could be ground breaking.

[nadinbrzezinski]

53. I'll raise my masters in History

and my dad survived the holocaust. Not only that, he also said, before he died. that the US was reminding him of Germany more and more.

Then there is a friend of ours who was a guest of Doctor Menguele, who said the same.

As to experts, where exactly do you want to start?

Oh yes of my instructors, one of those EXPERTS, with a PhD and everything and publications, would point to you just how much we are starting to look like a closing state. Just because you do not see Jackboots in the streets. oh wait, we are seeing them now... does not mean we are not going there.

Oh and missing people in the dead of night... yup we crossed that marker in oh after 911.

There are days I want to do this

:banghead:

[ellisonz]

60. Our police force are not jackboots.

Often corrupted and occasionally excessive in force. Where you see jackboots, I see Bobbies and Redcoats. I cited my personal experience in response to the claim that I was "befuddled."

I will make up my own mind. But I think it's fair to say that the overwhelming opinion of academia is that we are in no way approaching what life was like in either the Weimar Republic or the Third Reich.

There is plenty of room for disagreement.

You have no need to "convert me to the cause."

I think maybe I will have to start a poll on this very questions so we can see what DU at large thinks on this question of whether or not life in America "resembles" that of the Third Reich.

[nadinbrzezinski]

62. I am not converting you

but what you are seeing in the streets is actually pretty advanced into a form of police state. We can still turn it... but the night grows ever closer.

By the time you wake up, it will be too late anyway.

[ellisonz]

63. Enjoy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=2348171

[nadinbrzezinski]

66. Alas Goodwin's law is no longer applicable

not when we have pretty good evidence that the society IS indeed closing.

Somebody really taught you American Exceptionalism... and you still believe it. For somebody who READ history....

By the way I take that NEVER AGAIN quite seriously thank you very much, but to avoid it you need to be aware.

[Bragi]

80. I agree

I just finished readng Ian Kershaw's one-volume Hitler bio, and I couldn't agree more. I don't need a "majority of historians" to confirm for me the striking parallels between the social and political conditions that gave rise to Hitler, and what is happening now in the U.S. Indeed, Goodwin's law needs to be repealed.

[reggie the dog]

91. i will listen to historians with masters degrees

but the level you have to sell out to get a phd makes me mistrust most tenured phd holding uni professors, it turns out that my favorite profs in history often didnt have tenure...

i have a friend getting a phd in urban planning and i put a link to a story explaining that many people trained in phsysics dont support the 911 commission and he freaked out and said "i am doing my phd, you cant put stuff like that on my wall, i still need to get published"

self censorship because "they" expect it....

[reggie the dog]

90. overwhelming opinion of academia is bullshit for the most part

to be tenured or even get approved for a phd topic you have to please the political leanings of your university. most phd level (in history at least) are biased to favor the status quo (hell even right wing). if you are too "radical" left speaking you will not get your phd going, no tenure and wont be published. if you dont like the likud party and critize their actions you are labled anti semetic. so the overwealming opinion of academia in the usa is that palestine shouldnt be a state.

this can be applied to issue after issue

take too much of a working class lens in your account of history and you dont get tenure, dont get published.

[WillyT]

140. Well... I Probably Shouldn't Have Accused You Of Being Befuddled, But...

I was so furious at post #18 that I couldn't see straight.

And... you did say something about the lady being a teenager at the time of her experience. So look...

I was born in 1955, the year Einstein died and Rock & Roll was born, I like to say. :D

And during my younger years, I witnessed a lot of history (mainly on TV).

I remember vividly:

Watching a funky B&W animation on TV the night John Glenn orbited the Earth in 1962, I was 6.

Coming home for lunch in the 3rd Grade in 1963 and finding my mom bawling on the couch because JFK had just been shot. Watched TV news come of age over the next four days watching the reports from Dallas and Washington D.C. Watched Oswald get murdered by Jack Ruby on national TV. I had just turned 8.

Watched the Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show a few months later in February 1964, I was still 8.

In April of 1968 we were informed that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed. Many of our cities, and many of our schools (including mine) rioted. I was 12.

In June of 1968 I rode my bicycle to the airport to see RFK land in Sacramento, got about a foot from shaking his had before his car sped away. He would be shot and killed a couple days later in Los Angeles after winning the CA Democratic Primary. Still 12.

A couple of months later we watched a total meltdown and police riot in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Still 12.

A few more months later witnessed the election of one Richard Milhous Nixon. Almost 13.

During the next few years of Jr. High and High School we watched our friend's older brothers get sent to, or returned from, Vietnam in various... "conditions". 13 through 17 years old.

Also during that time, we watched the entire Watergate scandal unfold before our eyes through newspaper accounts, televised hearings, and culminating with the resignation of one Richard Milhous Nixon. And all this and much much more happened in my life BEFORE I turned 18.

:shrug:

Point is... many people forget a lot of the minutia of day to day life, yet most who were present and paying attention at crucial points in History tend to remember them for the rest of their lives.

Peace out...

:hi:

[JDPriestly]

141. How many years did you live in Germany or Austria yourself, ellisonz.

Before I lived there, I had the impression that the German people had to be foolish or stupid or corrupt or hateful. I had seen all those traits in some of the most racist Southerners when I lived there.

But when I met German people, people who after I had known them a while, demonstrated or admitted that they had supported Hitler way back when, I learned that they were idealists, that they had believed in the value of the German culture and way of life. They were misled by the flattery of the NAZIs, by the sense of uniqueness that the NAZIs believed they had.

And underneath the entire NAZI system was the incredible corruption that can only exist in a society blinded by its absolute belief in its own purity, goodness and special destiny.

We are better because we are German.

The modern Germans do not have that naive trust in their own specialness, their own superiority. But some of the Germans I met who had been most vulnerable to German propaganda nostalgically expressed what they had felt, that naive conviction, during the NAZI era.

I once encountered a man (a leader in the culture of the town where I then lived) who preached to me, literally preached, the theories of the NAZIs about culture and religion all the way between Vienna and the town where we both lived.

I was shaking from fright when I got off the train. The fervor of this man, the absolute faith, the complete lack of questioning of of skepticism, were to me the marks of the NAZI fanatic.

That is why I am always encouraged when, on DU, people remind us to question our assumptions and beliefs. Questioning assumptions and beliefs, including the assumption that our country is not at all like NAZI Germany, is essential if we are to remain objective and protect our rights and our Constitution.

[ellisonz]

150. I don't have to have lived everywhere to have studied it...

...and have an informed opinion.

You just illustrated the strength of national identity and culture. I think we can both agree we do not want to see anything approaching what happened in Nazi Germany occur in the United States during the 21st century.

You should consider what other Europeans think of Nazi Germany...

[JDPriestly]

152. If you want to claim expertise on NAZI Germany, you should live and study

in Germany. Do you read and understand German? Do you watch German movies?

What books have you read on the subject?

What are your sources?

[ellisonz]

156. Who died and made you FBI director?

I'm sorry. I have to go visit my girlfriend now. Good day to you. :-)

[nadinbrzezinski]

162. Actually what JDPriestley suggested to you

is EXACTLY what my Instructor at college did, when researching the Holocaust. In fact, is is what he still does.. and his German is heavily accented by English by the way.

He did silly shit like go to those same silly small towns and interview the old people and go through the archives. That is what EXPERTS do.

When the living sources die, all you have left are the documents. You are aware of historicism? I think not. And you are getting insulted that some of us who know a little better tell you this.

By the way you claim to have specialized in a field of history in a Bachelors. I will call BS on that. A Senior Project or whatever is called in your campus... is not specialization by any stretch. You either do modern, medieval or ancient history in a bachelors, After that it is pretty much a general education with some details added in.

You want to specialize? At the very least do a masters.

[ellisonz]

169. Oh I plan too...

Right now, finances and the job market are an issue.

Many historians have gotten lost in the archives too. Why do you keep assuming I'm not aware of these dynamics?

I'm not insulted. I also don't need to claim to "know it better." I'm claiming to have an informed opinion that is at ends with yours. You don't like this and are attempting to berate me into acquiescence.

There is no valid historical comparison between the United States of today and Nazi Germany. They are fundamentally apples and oranges.

I'm off to see The Way w/Martin Sheen. :hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

172. Maybe they will mention Toynbee in your advanced degrees

Oh well...

Good luck... with that.

[JDPriestly]

192. You should at least know a little about German culture and the language

before you talk about what happened in the Third Reich.

I do not claim to be an expert, but I have talked to people (in German) who lived through the period and have close family members who lived at that time. I have also lived in Germany and Austria and done a fair amount of reading about European history of the time.

Examples of repressive governments appear throughout history. Our Constitution is supposed to protect us from repression. The excessive force used in response to the OWS movement is typical of the beginning of a reaction against democratic expression by a regressive government.

The fear on the part of the government is excessive.

The OWSers are not dangerous. They may be annoying, but they are not dangerous to anyone. Even if there are health and fire hazards, those dangers are posed to the OWSers, not to the society or people around them.

A calm response to the OWS movement would be appropriate, but the violence used against them is not.

The OWS movement consists of people who are not heard in our society. We including the mayors of the cities in which they are demonstrating and the banks and companies against whom they are marching, should be listening to what they are saying --- all of it.

If the mayors, the government, the businesses have a rational response to the questions and issues that the OWS is raising, it would be good for those mayors, government and businesses to say their piece, to enter into respectful dialogue.

Why is it that the banks were bailed out and the rest of America was not?

Where are the jobs for kids finishing college? With what money are they supposed to repay their loans if they can't get decent jobs?

Why have so many jobs been outsourced?

Why do we import so much junk from overseas?

When will we return to a rational economy in which people can earn their living and contribute to their society through some means other than living in tents and beating drums? People do not live in tents and beat drums in public parks for a living. They do those things to show that they are unable to get the opportunities to do other things to earn a living.

[truedelphi]

210. My father who was born in 1910, he fought WWII

In Europe, and he would sometimes say wistfully, "That was when my country sent me off to kill my cousins."

On his mother's side, his family were Von Muellers, so the towns where he fought during the Battle of the Bulge could well have contained his cousins. A recent book devoted only to that particular military campaign often mentions "Muellers" or "Von Muellers" - some supporting Americans and allies, some supporting the Germans.

My father once ws absolutely flabbergasted when as an eight year old, I mentioned that the nuns at school had spent the day explaining how he and and all the other American soldiers had bravely fought the evil Nazis.

"Evil Nazis? These were people who had the misfortune to live in a nation that was overtaken by thugs. And those thugs created a tremendous propaganda machine, and used that machinery to take the nation to war. Remember that the Germans were fighting since 1937 - and yes, they were brutal and horrid in their actions, but war destroys a person's humanity. There are times you feel like taking out an entire town because your best friend is killed. If the war had kept us Americans involved longer, we might well have been guilty of the same atrocities that the Germans were."

He concluded his remarks with: "And God help us if it ever happens here."

[reggie the dog]

86. you have a freind tortured by the angel of death himself?

interview that person, please and put the mp3 or video up on the net.

[nadinbrzezinski]

89. Oh she works with survivors

And all that.

[reggie the dog]

106. i would love to see or hear an interview with her describing

what it was like back then, it would be highly valued for teaching history. if ever you interview her before she passes on of old age i would love to hear the mp3

[nadinbrzezinski]

164. I'll have to ask her

she is well know in the field of psychology. Her name is Edith Eger.

We met on a professional basis and truly became lifelong friends

[JDPriestly]

38. I agree and know at least one academic who agrees.

I lived in Germany and Austria and have read a fair amount about the Third Reich.

Americans think it was only about the Holocaust. No, it was about the repression of free speech, of dissident thought. It was about controlling the culture and using psyops.

It was about government control of media and religion so as to spread its propaganda and lies.

We still have a wisp of a free press, but just a trace of what we once had. Religion is free for the moment, but who knows for how long?

Our government lies and lies and lies.

So, in some very significant ways our society resembles that of NAZI Germany, and the similarities are increasing.

[WillyT]

39. Thank You For That !!!

:hi:

[ellisonz]

42. There is a very drastic difference between totalitarianism and democracy...

The Third Reich was fundamentally about Hitler and his vision of society - it was totalitarianism predicated on genocide not for political sake - but for personal ambition - and that is why it was so horrific and so disgusting. Even in George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's wettest of wet dreams they did not want totalitarianism.

We have democracy yet. The very fact that we are able to have this discussion reveals that such a resemblance is in a very real way nostalgic. We do not live in a totalitarian society. It's about the fundamentals.:shrug:

[JDPriestly]

45. Our society is not yet fully totalitarian, and we can turn things around

I believe. But we are well on our way toward a totalitarian society -- fascism run by corporations rather than individuals.

[ellisonz]

51. That's much more imperialism than totalitarianism.

I wouldn't deny that we engage in imperialism. I vehemently deny though that we are on our way to totalitarianism.

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. Read on inverted totaliatiarism

Democracy Inc is a good start.

[OnyxCollie]

dupe.

[OnyxCollie]

76. Is that the Gramscian Inversion?

The “Gramscian Inversion” sets Marxism on its head. The state becomes the educator, a hegemonic force which constructs the views, ideals, and beliefs of the society it governs. “The State is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules.”

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers, p. 244 as cited in Bergesen, A. (1993). The rise of semiotic Marxism. Sociological Perspectives, 36(1), p. 4

[nadinbrzezinski]

82. No, it was explained in democracy inc

A lot of the tools of the state, of power, are mostly not used. Fascinating read, democracy inc.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

118. Gramsci's inversion can be used for any totalitarian society ...

... as long as you can make the masses believe their society is good. It's sort of like Manufacturing Consent.

[reggie the dog]

95. the war on drugs is totalitarianism, hell fascism

the govt gets private business to fire or not hire people who disobey drug laws,

the drug laws themselves are fascist. telling adults what state their mind is to be in.

you do realize that in the usa people are jailed, have their kids stolen, and their property confiscated for growing 5 or 6 flowers in their back yard.

that is totaltarian in an of itself.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

130. Nomenclature 101.

Totalitarianism is characterized by state-owned industry. Authoritarianism is characterized by privately-owned industry. We have incipient authoritarianism in the US, bought and paid for by privately-owned trans-national corporations!

[OnyxCollie]

75. Brezinzski suggests totalitarian societies ebb and flow.

Noting that totalitarianism in the past has seemed largely irrational, it argues that the rationalistic routines
of the indispensable managers of the industrial society will necessarily transmit themselves to the
totalitarian leadership and gradually effect a fundamental transformation of the system itself. This
transmission will be aided by the fact that the totalitarian movement has become highly bureaucratized
and therefore shares in many of the operational patterns associated with running the industrial machine.
Furthermore, it is argued, the totalitarian movement itself has become increasingly staffed by the
managerial-bureaucratic elements to whom party membership means no more than an important club
association necessary to satisfy career ambitions.

Totalitarianism, in the extreme form of this argument, is thus to disappear imperceptibly and
unintentionally. As stability, predictability and overall rationality set in, fear, terror, and arbitrariness will
fade. Mass enthusiasm and passionate unanimity will give way to disagreements on matters of expertise,
and hence also on policy.

Brzezinski, Z. (1956). Totalitarianism and rationality. The American Political Science Review, 50(3), 751-763.

C. Wright Mills supports this:

C. Wright Mills (1956, as cited in Joseph, 1982) proposed a three-level pluralistic theory
of power: at the top was the executive branch of government, along with corporations and the
defense industry; the middle level was composed of interest groups where the pluralistic model
of competition actually occurred; and the bottom level held the general public. Seeking to
differentiate his theory from Marxism, which stated that the economic sector held all the power,
Mills saw power as being equal among the three groups in the top level (Mills, 1956, as cited in
Joseph, 1982). “Mills maintained that political, military, and economic elites all exercised a
considerable degree of autonomy, that they were often in conflict, and that they acted in concert
only on certain occasions” (Mills, 1956, as cited in Joseph, 1982, p. 250).

Joseph, L. (1982). Corporate political power & liberal democratic theory. Polity, 15(2), 246-267.

And just so we understand what we're talking about, here is is Brzezinski's definition of totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism is a system where technologically advanced instruments of political power are wielded without
restraint by centralized leadership of an elite movement, for the purpose of effecting a total social revolution,
including the conditioning of man, on the basis of certain arbitrary ideological assumptions proclaimed by the
leadership, in an atmosphere of coerced unanimity of the entire population.

This is what occurred after 9/11, and what led us to attack and invade an oil-rich country which had not attacked us and had no ability to attack us.

Brzezinski says restraints on political power will fall when a totalitarian government takes over:

These restraints can be broadly listed in three categories: 1) the
direct restraints, expressed through pacta conventa such as the English Magna Carta or the Polish Nihil
novi .... , the Bill of Rights, constitutional guarantees, a rule of law, or even the broad consensus of
tradition which rules out certain types of conduct, such as the use of violence;
2) the indirect restraints which stem from the pluralistic character of all large-scale societies, and which
necessitate adjustment and compromise as the basis for political power, e.g., the churches, the economic
interests, professional, cultural or regional pressure groups, which all impede the exercise of unrestrained
power; and 3) the natural restraints, such as national character and tradition, climatic and geographical
considerations, kinship structure and particularly the primary social unit, the family. These also act to
restrain the scope of political power.

For those who dismiss totalitarianism because they expect to see jack boots and swastikas, well, why the fuck would that happen? Do those things have any relation to the US? Would I expect the President to give a speech in German? Hell no. Nor would I expect Jews to be burned in ovens. Race is not the main motivating factor. It's OIL.

[nadinbrzezinski]

57. Oh my god Germans were able to have

THESE same exact discussions all the way to 1943

Now if you were Jewish, that's another story.

In fact, life in the core of the Reich remained pretty "normal" until the middle of the war.

[ellisonz]

65. I think the Gestapo might have something to say about that...

...yes, you could have such discussions late in the night in your home with your immediate family. But certainly not in public. If you can present proof to the contrary have at it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

68. There is plenty of that

in them expert books. Some of them even consulted primary sources.

The Gestapo was not the way of social control actually, It was more in things like party access and yes things like access to the bakery.

But hey... I guess you think social control is only achieved by fear. No, it is not. That is the last tool

Have a good day...

Oh and here a piece of trivia for ya. All those gray uniforms the Wehrmacht wore in Hollywood movies, they were not just gray. And the tanks actually had some pretty sophisticated cammy. But it is cheaper to produce hollywood movies that way.

For a PRIMARY SOURCE on the means of control... "They thought they were Free."

It is not the best, but hey... it is readily available on the net. So it should suffice for the moment, If you are really curious there are studies done of SMALL towns and how control was done... way too specialized for the web though.

Of course there are more than a few articles on this in Sociology journals, poli sci ones and of course the old girl, The American Historical Review.

[deaniac21]

208. Many of the German Camo uni's from WWII

http://www.epicmilitaria.com/section.php/97/1/ww2-german-camouflage-uniforms/c8fccb833632bd8ddee2904ad9e07daf

[reggie the dog]

94. the nazis, in 1932, did not call for genocide

they called for violence against jews, unionists, etc. but they didnt want to exterminate a group yet.

watch the film "the white rose" about student activists back then.

[ellisonz]

133. Whats the difference?

It's like saying the gun-toting Tea Partiers aren't planning assassination, they're just making threats and carrying automatic weapons in the street.

I'm know about "White Rose" and it's really just the realizations of teenagers. ;-)

[reggie the dog]

147. yep, teens who scared the nazis

have you ever explored the argument that hitler and the nazi party organization were intentionally vague about what the final solution was, at first to test the waters to see how far they could go and later to shield themselves from repsonsibility if they ever lost the war.

the idea was hitler would go on about the "final solution" which evolved from beating, to robbing, to enslaving to exterminating.

i agree that the tea partiers are plotting assissinations, (giffords), so i think that some nazis were thining "genocide" from the get go, but that was not the official party line nor the line held by many followers

as years went on hitler would continue being vague and those around him, to get browine points, would all try to be more brutal than the next person to "please hitler" who often didnt ask them directly to do such callous acts.

one of the theories i heard on this are that hitler understood that he could get people to be more sadistic if he was vague because they would go farther than they would had he asked directly if they were fighting to get on his a list by being "the best nazi"

at the same time if the people didnt like these acts hitler could blame others and survive the next election (while elections still mattered)

as time went on and elections no longer mattered hitler still got people to do really horrible things often without asking directly, just using nuance and hoping that "good nazis" would come through for him.

[ellisonz]

154. The Nazis were scared by lots of things.

Have you ever read about the Nazis and the occult?

They knew - and if they didn't know - they ought to have known. This is the difference between Germany and say France or England. It's a top-down society and has been for more than a millennium. There's never been a knock down drag-out civil war among Germans.

[reggie the dog]

158. what i read about the nazis and the occult

is how the occult was a common thread with top nazis and people like the bush family

skull and bones has occult rituials from what i read,

is there more i should know about this?

the kids in the white rose probably knew, they just couldnt bear to go along with the nazis.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

128. Nazi Germany was definitely NOT totalitarianism.

It was a highly authoritarian state with a wedding of corporate and state goals. That is fascist *authoritarianism.* An example of *totalitarianism* would be the USSR. The big differences between the US and Nazi Germany are: 1) the USA has a tradition of liberal democracy; and 2) the militarization of Germany led to economic recovery, which was dependent on ever-greater military conquest. However, the US democratic tradition has been greatly eroded by strong fascist tendencies in the US in the 21st century in the wake of 9/11 and the militarization path of the US has led to tremendous weakening of the American economy.

[ellisonz]

134. Hah...

...Hitler was constitutionally term-limited :sarcasm:

I think the key difference here is how Hitler is viewed. Some think he was just another German politician. I and many others think he was an epitome of evil.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

148. The difference between totalitarianism and

authoritarianism is a distinction with a difference. We are increasingly becoming an authoritarian state wherein trans-national corporations rule by governmental proxies. The Third Reich was a different variety of authoritarianism, where the national government was not controlled by corporations, but rather used them for an ideology of militaristic expansion. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian government which did not permit corporations to exist.

[ellisonz]

153. The Soviet Union was a corporation.

Complete with subsidiaries and branding. :)

[Admiral Loinpresser]

157. I will take the smiley face as an admission of your mistake

on terminology. So do we finally agree that the USSR was a totalitarian state and the Third Reich was authoritarian?

[ellisonz]

163. Both/and

The two are not exclusive terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism

[nadinbrzezinski]

173. OH MY GOD...

OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD... you really have no frackling clue what you are talking about... NO serious.

[nadinbrzezinski]

50. You really do not want to go that route

Since I hate to point this... there is a history of genocide in the US... and the reservations were a model the Germans used.

So can I wake you up now?

[ellisonz]

54. The Nazis planned a "Final Solution."

I'm not denying that we committed great atrocity against the "Native Americans." But that's basically 100 years in the past. That's like saying the English are on the verge of totalitarianism because of what they did to the Scots and the Irish.

I'm very much awake - to the fact that history does not take irreversible paths and never repeats itself.

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. Arnold Toynbee woud have a nice discussion

and YES we did plan as close as a genocide as we could given the technology of the age, And with some tribes we succeeded.

History has CYCLES. They don't teach that no more in universities I see. Do they teach historicism at least... (I doubt in a Bachelors level)

[ellisonz]

67. William Appleman Williams on a stick.

History has contours - not cycles.

[nadinbrzezinski]

69. Echoes, Long Dureee

what other names do you want me to use?

[reggie the dog]

115. did you just argue "contours" or "cycles"

you are agruing about 2 words, 2 metaphores, used to convey the same message.


come on, you are arguing poli sci with other people with degrees in history and instead of having the fun of getting into details and nuance with us you argue over contours or cycles? man let's just try to out argue each other with facts, reasoning and logic and accept that in a free world people can disagree amiably

[ellisonz]

136. We're arguing about the nature of historical development.

She's positing a sort of repetition that is not distinct but in fact rather base. I'm arguing that at every term such movements took on a distinct and peculiar character that was unique unto itself and not alike in any substantive form. It's hermeneutics.

You'll notice I disagree amicably and have no need to berate the person I'm debating with in order to make my point. She's being tempestuous.

[reggie the dog]

144. i was taught the cycles thing too

and we acknowledged that each movement had their own character but that some aspects are similar, so by the time you studied the vocab had evolved. dont think that most of us historians believed that history actually repeated itself, we just notice patterns and similarities.

[nadinbrzezinski]

176. No I am not berating you

if you feel such my apologies,

Now my issue is with the poor education you got... serious.

Toynbee and the Longee Duree used by the Annales school is ESSENTIAL in hermeneutics of history. They have slight differences. So is historicism... and for the US New History. That is where contours is coming from.

Maybe I was lucky but one of my instructors in my Bachelors at a STATE college no less, introduced me to them... in fact it was not even the STATE college but the LOCAL community college She was a rebel. She was also NOT trained in the US. And she suggested a bunch of books to read OFF the college list...

I got deeper into all of this during my Masters... and especially during my Graduate Course in Methods and Research, as well as interpretation.

I used Historicism as a chief method of analysis when writing my thesis. In fact, I am revisiting both Derrida and Foucault at the moment, since I will be using THEM for that history of labor. And trust me, Foucault is EASIER to read in Spanish. It is closer to French linguistically, therefore easier to get a good translation... thoguh the History of Madness, a new translation... is actually pretty decent.

But really, there is NOT a single view of history or interpretation of history and the idea of objectivity in history is like objectivity in Journalism... ideals that really do not exist, Just watch the evening news.

[reggie the dog]

108. final solution was vague

as in "i will fix everything with this FINAL SOLUTION"

what is it???

1932 close jew shops and take their goods

1933 beat jews openly with no fear

1941 use jews as slave labor, work brings freedom

1943 kill off all the jews


over time the definition of the final solution changed.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

129. 100 years in the past???

How about the genocide and death squad policy of the US government in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan?!?! Native peoples were hunted like dogs and rubbed out in Central America using US tax dollars to fund RW regimes, torture, rape and genocide.

[ellisonz]

138. It's a different subject...

...with radically different dynamics. I'm not denying that history but it's not the same claim. The same could be said regarding many other episodes in history.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

146. Native freedom fighters have been fighting terrorism since 1492

and continue to this day. Wounded Knee II was in 1974. The FBI's surrogate war against traditional Lakota people from 1973-75 resulted in about 200 "unsolved" murders. There are numerous examples of native resistance against American imperialism up to the present day. If you think that all that ended 100 years ago you are simply uninformed.

[ellisonz]

155. I think it stopped being full-scale government co-ordinated policy.

You're entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to mine - neither of us is uninformed. I don't accuse you of being such. I disagree with your interpretation.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

159. When the buffalo was all but eradicated

(circa 1880)the US achieved a strategic victory over free resistance. Native people by then had mostly been put on reservations. But both violent and nonviolent resistance to American imperialism has never stopped. And violent repression has never stopped either. It just became more convenient to do it by proxy more often. But Wounded Knee II in 1974 was an armed resistance. And the 200 murders at Pine Ridge were real. If your opinion doesn't encompass those facts you are uninformed. The idea that violence sponsored by the US government against native people ended 100 years ago just doesn't wash. The battle goes on. Obama is on the wrong side and native freedom fighters are on the right side.

[nadinbrzezinski]

174. I'll go to my actual field of study and

suggest that wounded knee and native american resistance is an inconvenient fact that is mostly ignored in US COLLEGES. At the same time we teach about the horrors of, for example the Caste War in Yucatan, the longest native resistance in the 19th century. And I mean continuos,

I learned of that in the US... not Mexico, where it was (until very recently) an inconvenient fact. Now they even had special issues on it. But mostly the Maya are now subjects of the state... and the Zapataistas started publishing that inconvenient history on their own.

(My fields of specialization were as follows, Mexican History Age of Independence, with minors in US History and European 20th century history, which ironically includes the subject at hand)

[Admiral Loinpresser]

178. And the American Indian Movement became

a major target of COINTELPRO in the '70s. When the USA removed the means for native peoples to feed themselves and be free, they did not eliminate resistance, merely the terms of engagement. Thank you for adding informed opinion to the discussion!

[nadinbrzezinski]

186. Precisely

and wounded knee was the high point of all that.

These days they are getting even, as it were, and I expect a crackdown on Indian gaming soon. It is giving the tribes (at least some tribes) a way to feed themselves and assert their independence.

Oh and you welcome.

[reggie the dog]

83. the USA tried to exterminate all the native americans

for over 100 years, we also elected a politician from one of the two anti worker pro corporate parties who had a very similar set of beliefs as W.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

112. You think it happened overnight?

That's not what anyone is saying, by the way.

Oh, and Hitler's party was elected, by the way.

Every heard of the "frogs on slow boil" phrase?

[ellisonz]

132. I think once it happened, it happened.

And there was no going back until Nazi German society had been pulverized.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

160. Then you miss the point entirely.

It happened, but it took years of conditioning.

The same conditioning we're experiencing now.

[chrisa]

199. It also didn't help the shape Germany was in after WWI.

The financial and physical destruction of their country, and the humiliation of defeat. We're also talking about a society that was extremely racist / antisemitic at the time.

If not Hitler, who else? Probably would have been someone just as bad.

[Nye Bevan]

18. [Watery eyes and itchy skin] != [Deportations to concentration camps and mass murder]

The people "who were there" who think today's USA is analogous to Nazi Germany are simply old and befuddled.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

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

[999998th word]

22. Yes, the hyperbole is annoying, really.

Now I will take a shower, and get a job-it's been fun:sarcasm:

[Cleita]

25. We have concentration camps. Today they are called

privatized prisons and immigration deportation facilities. We have committed mass murder in other countries in the last decade with endless wars. The invasion of Iraq was no different than the invasion of Poland. Read up on what happened in both instances and the similarities jump out and are undeniable.

[RZM]

44. Utter horseshit

The Germans systematically murdered Poland's Jewish population as well as the gentile Polish elite. That has not happened in Iraq. Period.

That doesn't mean the Iraq occupation is a good thing. But to compare the two is absolutely absurd and insulting to the victims of the Nazis.

[Angry Dragon]

46. how many civilians have died in Iraq??

[RZM]

52. Quite a few

Many have been killed by their fellow Iraqis, who went wild after central authority was removed by the US invasion.

Like I said, that's not a good thing. But it's a far cry from what the Germans did in Poland. The Germans annexed part of Poland to the Reich and dumped Poles and Jews from that area in the the 'Generalgouvernment' area (some Catholic Poles were kept on as slaves). If you believe that what happened in Iraq is in any way analogous to the horrid crimes the Germans committed there, you are incredibly misinformed.

The German occupation of Poland was racial war, pure and simple, and cost roughly 17 percent of Poland's population. It was ground zero for the Holocaust (roughly 3/5 of victims perished in the death camps . . . over 80 percent of Polish Jews were killed) and millions more gentile Poles perished as well. 200,000 + Poles perished during the Warsaw Uprising alone. Again, if you think you can compare that to Iraq, you are very wrong.

And that's not even counting the Soviet conduct in eastern Poland. Under the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Germans and Soviets split Poland between them. While the Germans were busy killing and deporting Poles, the Soviets were doing the same thing in their portion of the country (albeit on a lesser scale). Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Polish citizens were shot by the Soviets and several hundred thousand were deported to the GULag system from 1939-1941.

[Angry Dragon]

61. I have heard numbers between 600,000 and 1 million

and I guess I would consider by the US invading and destabilizing the country
that perhaps we could add the Iraqis killing Iraqis as well.

[RZM]

64. That's where those numbers come from

Let's say for the sake of argument it's 1 million (personally I think that's a bit high, but whatever). Many of those have been killed by fellow Iraqis and it's still 1/6 of what Poland lost (Iraq and Poland's populations are comparable). And the vast majority of Poland's victims were killed by the Germans, not fellow Poles. And the occupation of Poland lasted roughly 2/3 as long as the Iraq occupation.

The comparison just doesn't work at all. You can say that the Iraq invasion was bad without bringing the Nazis into it. They were on a whole different level.

[ellisonz]

72. Here's a good analysis:

Total deaths 2003-2010

More than 150,000 people have been recorded killed in the Iraq war to date.
80% of those killed were civilians.

The Iraq War Logs record deaths of all types, including combatant deaths that fall outside the scope of IBC’s civilian deaths database. This means that they can also contribute to a broader accounting of the total number of persons killed in the war, civilian and combatant alike. Such a figure can be derived by combining the IBC database, the new logs (2004-2009), and other official information available on combatant deaths in 2003, 2010 and the two months missing from the logs (May 2004 and March 2009).

Combining these sources, the detailed calculation below provides a figure of total Iraqi deaths, both civilian and combatant, of 150,726. Adding figures on Coalition military deaths, which now stand at 4,744, brings the number up to 155,470. That is, given our analysis of the new logs, as combined with other previously reported deaths, we are now able to say that more than 150,000 people have been recorded killed in the Iraq war since 2003, of which around 80% were civilian.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/warlogs/

[reggie the dog]

99. they didnt murder the jews until later on

they rounded them up yes, but mass killings came later, and remember the usa had interment camps for japaneses immigrants during wwii

[RZM]

131. Yes I know this

And don't even think about comparing the Japanese internment to the Holocaust. It's completely ridiculous to do so.

[reggie the dog]

125. W said he was fighting a crusade in iraq

a crusade is when christians go to the holy land and kill off the infidels. exterminate them,

w was our commander in chief, he declared the war a crusade, he, like me, has a masters in history so he knows damn well what a crusade is.

he is a satanist in reality so he would say crusade to get props from other satanists that run our world.

[RZM]

139. I think you're mistaken about that statement

I believe this is what you are referring to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br_70Kbdpow

Bush actually said this only 5 days after 9/11. He was talking about the nascent 'War on Terror,' not Iraq.

I think it's much more likely that this was a classic 'Bushism,' rather than an attempt to frame the WOT in religious terms. After all, the man is known for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, especially when speaking extemporaneously. My sense is that he was using the word according to its modern, secular definition and he didn't immediately realize the deeper irony of using it in that context. No doubt he was strongly advised by his team to never do that in the future. As far as I know, he never used the word in public like that again.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'satanists,' but again I think the opposite scenario is closer to the truth. Remember that at the time the US was working its contacts in Muslim countries for cooperation against al-Qaida. It made more sense to use language that appealed to Muslims rather than language that was inflammatory, which helps explain his subsequent comments that 'the US is not at war with Islam' and that 'Islam is a religion of peace.'

He doesn't have an MA in history either. He has a bachelors in history and an MBA.

[reggie the dog]

142. I mean that W, his dad, Kerry

all other skull and bones members participate in satanist rituals in a part of their "fraternity" at yale

i got mixed up, he did the same undergrad as me then an mba, you are right

and i confused the war on terror with the war on iraq,

[JDPriestly]

40. Most Germans were not deported. Most of them did not think much about

it or say much as their neighbors were arrested in the night and deported.

The big national effort was for war and fighting that mysterious enemy in Russia, in England, wherever. The people were asked to sacrifice and sacrifice -- for security, for the war effort -- for Greater Germany.

The interesting thing is the way that German intelligence and Allied intelligence became obsessed (rightfully so, it can easily be argued) with the Communist threat and relied on a few of the former NAZIs for assistance in figuring out what was going on in Eastern Europe.

The infection of NAZI paranoia and of Russian and Eastern European repression has gradually seeped into our government.

Here is one of the interesting cross-over figures from the NAZI government to the post-WWII W. German intelligence apparatus.

Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union (known as the Gehlen Organization), and eventually became head of the West German intelligence apparatus. He served as the first President of the Federal Intelligence Service until 1968. Gehlen is considered one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters.

. . . .

Under the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler, he was on the General Staff during 1935-1936. In 1939, Gehlen was promoted to Major.<1> At the time of the 1939 German attack on Poland he was a staff officer of an infantry division.<1> In 1940, Gehlen became liaison officer to Army Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch. He was later transferred to the staff of Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder.

In July 1941, Gehlen was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, sent to the Eastern Front and assigned to the German General Staff, section Fremde Heere Ost, FHO or Foreign Armies East as a senior intelligence officer.<2>

In the watershed year of 1942, according to Gehlen's memoir,<3> he was approached by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and General Adolf Heusinger to participate in an assassination attempt on German dictator Adolf Hitler. His role was to be minor. When the plot culminated in the failed bomb plot of 20 July 1944, Gehlen's role was covered up and he escaped Hitler's brutal retaliation against the conspirators. Throughout his years at FHO, Gehlen allowed determined anti-Nazis to hold conspiratorial discussions inside his section and he was present at Berchtesgaden in the final days before 20 July when details of the assassination attempt were discussed.<4>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen

Gehlen is one of those ambiguous Germans. Our government learned a lot from him, maybe not all of it so compatible with our Constitution.

[reggie the dog]

97. ??? concentration camps got going in late 30's early 40s and the

exterminations late 42 early 43

there were no exterminations of jews or unionists in 1937 for example. perhaps individual assisinations but nothing like in 43

[Cleita]

23. Yep, but the truth of the comparisons cannot be ignored

no matter how much those who are repeating history want to shush everyone up. Anyone who really looked at what happened whether they were there or not can't make it into something else or change the words and the language to make it seem different. The reality and truth are there in 3D.

[WillyT]

26. Thank You For That !!!

It blows my mind to have some junior leaguer dismiss the living history as "old and befuddled".

God I love this place, but we have some major myopic idiots here.

:banghead:

Anyways... thank you once again.

:pals:

:hi:

[Cleita]

28. You are welcome.

Since Bush was selected President, I made it a point to study the history of the Nazi regime and how they came to power as well as that of Soviet Russia. Totalitarian oligarchies seem to start the same way and hang on to power the same way, mostly through lies, propaganda and twisting laws to make illegal what doesn't suit the power brokers and making legal what was once considered criminal.

[999998th word]

30. Fascism- the new 'F' word.

People are afraid to just say it, but thats what it is.

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. Democracy Inc

you need to read that book to update this.

[lib2DaBone]

27. Gen David Patreus WILL BE the Republican nominee for POTUS

The current field of GOP hucksters is falling faster than pepper sray at Zucatti.....

Patreus is the PERFECT blend of Military and CIA.

He will be trotted out at the last minute to adoring Teabags/Neocons.... and our slide into 1930's Fascism will be complete.

[cherokeeprogressive]

31. Hyper Bowl...

How can you compare the world that existed in the 30s with this one, in any way shape or form?

You can call prisons concentration camps if it suits your narrative, but it wouldn't be accurate.

Today a word travels around the world at nearly the speed of light. Then, it took an eyewitness, a pen, and paper.

Today a person in London can see what's going on in Portland, Oakland, or Zucotti park LIVE. Then, it would have taken a month, and would have consisted of the written word only.

Then, people were herded onto trains and taken to concentration camps where a large number were herded into barracks and the remainder were taken to de-lousing buildings where they were killed with Zyclon-B.

I don't think that's possible today, do you?

[woo me with science]

34. And while we are more capable of watching them,

they are now capable of watching all of us, too. Have you noticed the systems that have been put into place in the past couple of decades? The militarization of police forces? The passage of the Patriot Act and the destruction of civil rights to the point that we have the ACLU screaming alarms? The growth of the surveillance state and the construction of vast databases on American citizens? Have you noticed how often recent major legislation has been developed in secret, closed-door sessions and passed on an "emergency" basis, before the American people even get to see what is in it? ...and that what is developed for passage bears no resemblance to what polls consistently show Americans really want? Have you noticed that corporate, governmental, and international organizations are now coordinating violent responses to Americans peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights across the United States?

Many things are possible. Fascism often grows its first roots through propaganda and consent of the people, as we saw after 9/11. It is during this period of early growth that the structures are put into place to manage those who finally figure out what is happening to them.

[MedleyMisty]

35. We aren't saying it's full on 1944 Germany

As was said earlier in the thread, Germany did not jump immediately from the Weimar Republic to 1944 and having killed millions in the camps and everything. People didn't go to sleep one night in a democracy and wake up the next morning in full on fascism at its worst.

The winter I was 9, I read every book our local library had on the Holocaust. I did a research paper on WWII in 6th grade and a big project on it in 8th grade, and throughout my life I have kept reading about Nazi Germany.

When it came here, I immediately recognized it.

Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to push through legislation that suspended civil liberties. Does that sound familiar at all?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

The Nazis put out propaganda films about how the Jews were rats. Ever listened to Rush Limbaugh or read a book by Ann Coulter or watched Fox News? You'll see the same dehumanizing language, the same talk of violence against political opponents.

How are Iraq and Afghanistan different from Hitler invading Poland?

Yes, we have the internet. And if we can keep it (Congress will soon vote on a law that would heavily censor the internet) it just might save us, but the fact that we have the internet does not mean that we are not a totalitarian fascist police state.

[ellisonz]

48. Hitler had the Reichstag burned down.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1310995/Historians-find-proof-that-Nazis-burnt-Reichstag.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,528050,00.html
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm

William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich details how at Nuremberg, General Franz Halder stated in an affidavit that Hermann Göring had joked about setting the fire:

On the occasion of a lunch on the Führer's birthday in 1943, the people around the Führer turned the conversation to the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears how Göring broke into the conversation and shouted: 'The only one who really knows about the Reichstag building is I, for I set fire to it.' And saying this he slapped his thigh.<21>

Under cross-examination at Nuremberg, Göring was read Halder's affidavit and denied he had any involvement in the fire, characterizing Halder's statement as "utter nonsense". Göring stated:

I had no reason or motive for setting fire to the Reichstag. From the artistic point of view I did not at all regret that the assembly chamber was burned; I hoped to build a better one. But I did regret very much that I was forced to find a new meeting place for the Reichstag and, not being able to find one, I had to give up my Kroll Opera House … for that purpose. The opera seemed to me much more important than the Reichstag.<22>:433

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_reichstag_fire#Dispute_about_van_der_Lubbe.27s_role_in_the_Reichstag_fire

Do we really want to debate the accepted version of events versus LIHOP and MIHOP?

[reggie the dog]

122. "we are fighting a crusade" W said that about iraq

but no, there was no racism or religious discrimination involved... we are not the nazis......?????§§§!!!!!

[WillyT]

37. And... All It Takes Is THIS... Becoming he New Normal...

The easier it become to gas them... the easier it become to gas them...





You see how that works ???

:evilfrown:

[ellisonz]

74. You see how this worked?

Then they went for the goods...



And then they won...



:evilgrin:

[reggie the dog]

100. genocide is still possible

look at what radio of a thousand hills accomplished in Rwanda they came out on radio and said "the moment has come to rid our country of roaches" and they got their genocide,HUTU POWER had its day.

you think that rush couldnt get the same results in the usa?

[snooper2]

212. No..he couldn't

And it's fucking absurd to think so

[Downwinder]

36. Is it all right to compare it with America in 1932?

[ellisonz]

56. No. This is Verboten!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yydlX7c8HbY

:spank:

[Admiral Loinpresser]

175. Yes it is.

Their unemployment was probably even higher than ours. Perhaps they were still suffering from hyper-inflation. We elected a socialist and he began a radical reform program which began a four year period of economic recovery. They elected a fascist who was very good for the economy in the short term, but ultimately they invaded Poland.

Today we don't have a strong leader to adopt the necessary economic reforms. Hence, we have begun a populist rebellion against the status quo.

[RZM]

43. Germany in the 1930s had a Democratic tradition that was less than two decades old

Ours is centuries old. It's not perfect, but it's pretty ridiculous to compare the two. And the Depression ravaged Germany far more than the current economic crisis has ravaged the US. It simply doesn't work. There's almost no chance of a usurper like Hitler suspending Democracy and civil liberties here. If that does happen, I'll eat my hat. But if it continues to not happen, I hope that those making these comparisons will eat theirs as well.

[ellisonz]

49. +1

[socialist_n_TN]

93. If it happens you might "eat your hat", but unfortunately

the rest of us "dissidents" will probably be eating bullets. And not rubber ones.

As a few others in this thread has stated, fascism didn't spring fully formed from Zeus' headache. It grew slowly, but steadily, through the 20s/30s/and 40s. Until it ULTIMATELY resulted in the death camps. I'd prefer to fight it BEFORE it gets to that point.

[reggie the dog]

126. how many decades since the usa had no legal segregation???

not even 5 so far, a democratic tradition in which blacks couldnt vote, women couldnt vote, blacks were slaves, in which andrew the great indian killer jackson was elected president after he was a general and told the supreme court, who had decided in favor of the cherokee nation that their lands were their lands and not part of the state of georgia, to go gets its own army (read about the trail of tears to read about what he did)


come one..... the usa has a democratic tradition ok but for whom?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

151. To which civil liberties do you refer?

While, I agree with your premise that the police state in Nazi Germany was much worse than that of the US in 2011, we have already seen a significant erosion of civil liberties, wouldn't you agree?

[JVS]

47. The difference is that the Nazis had concentration camps because they didn't want their brutality...

out in the open.

They wouldn't have stood for the spectacle of Germans being brutalized by other Germans in public. That went against their sense of order.

[eridani]

71. There really are parallels, but there are very important differences as well

The most significant, IMO, was that Germany was an imperial wannabe, but the US is an actual world-spanning military empire. The Nazis played on resentment of WW I reparations and the total stripping of such imperial posessions as Germany had before they lost.

[Fire Walk With Me]

77. What is occuring is world-wide, not just in the US.

Economic collapse is planned by the super-rich, who would not be very effected by it, who could then grab unprecedented power and resources. Disaster Capitalism. Can't happen? Then why are Greece and Italy's new PMs advisors for Goldman Sachs?

"Monti is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs<13> and The Coca-Cola Company.<14>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Monti

Know the names, follow the money.

[reggie the dog]

127. i was just talking about this with my friends

a construction worker, and an retiree, as well as a winery employee several teachers and not one of us can understand how italy and greece, in the same week, have been taken over by bank advisors, from no political party, in some kind of bullshit national unity governments.

what in the fuck is going on?

we all see it as the end of democracy

voting doesnt matter they just put bankers in now

what did sarkozy and merkel tell the greek PM? did they say they would kill him, or his wife and kids????

no referendum for the greek people, i quit and now the banks are going to fuck you

something happened

and how in the hell did berlusconi get pushed out of his fief????

these banks really are powerful


2 new leaders that no one voted for.....

really i do hope they have a full on general strike in greece and italy soon

[Octafish]

96. NAZI ties to JFK assassination

Mae Brussell bravely addressed the issue:

The Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination

The subject is something most historians fear address:

A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission

Thank you for a great post and thread, WillyT!

[BiggJawn]

107. "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrappd in the Flag and carrying a Cross."

Attributed to Sinclair Lewis.

Does it remind you of anyone currently "in the news"?

[Zorra]

121. All the republicans/teabaggers need is the right leader, and

they're good to go.

I bet they all would love to try on those sexy black armored uniforms the cops have, keys and cuffs dangling, phallic pistols, mace, pepper spray, and billy clubs erect and on display (oooh, feel the POWER!)...the freedom to beat up on anti-Wall St. protesters...it's a veritable RW extremist's wet dream.

Only thing holding them back is all this PC liberal Constitution stuff that they are trying to abolish through the decisions of their 5 SCOTUS fascist judges.

[reggie the dog]

123. lets get a list going of parallel programs/tactics

1. hitler youth vs DARE both teach kids to rat out parents/others for having political ideas that the state does not like or for engaging in subversive activities (such as smoking a joint or feeding jews)

2. both use propaganda (fox, rush, et al) for us, more direct nazi party propaganda in the past but this is the strategy of the neo fascists

3. wars against people of other "races"

4. reichstag fire and 911 leading both to loss of civil liberties

anyone want to help with the list?

[Nye Bevan]

145. DARE is equivalent to the Hitler Youth?

Funniest post I have seen today!

[reggie the dog]

149. both programs tell kids to spy

both said to turn in parents for subversive activity, in nazi germany that could be hiding jews, feeding jews, speaking against the nazis, being part of a union, having communist sympathies, in the usa that can be smoking cannabis, growing cannabis, selling it, having, doing or producing any other drug

both programs involve having armed police officers (ss goons in germany) teach kids that if they dont denounce such parents they too will go to jail and both programs said turning in parents was for their own good.

both programs indoctrinate kids with the idea that one culture is superior to the other (aryans to jews, alcohol people to cannabis people)

[OmahaBlueDog]

184. So turning in people to the police for drug possession is the same as sending them to Treblinka?

False equivalency, I say.

[reggie the dog]

196. sure it is ,

in both cases the turned in people have hurt no one, in both cases the turned in people lose custody of their kids, and in both cases people likely go to prison.

[OmahaBlueDog]

183. There are a lot of key differences

Germany had had been forced into a humiliating settlement at Versailles after fighting a war that utterly wrecked the economy and decimated a generation of men. Our economy is in bad shape, but nothing like the hyperinflation in Weimar is going on here.

Germany's government had been completely changed after WWI. No such change has taken place here.

Both nations were saddled with debt, but the US still has vastly superior productive capacity compared to Weimar of the 20s and 30s.

The economy is bad, and we are blaming Mexican immigrants and Muslims. We've been there and done this.

Congress is corrupt and gridlocked. We've been there and done this.

The government is in hock up to its eyeballs. Again, we've been there -- and the next 15 years will be rough. That said, if the budget could be balanced through a combination of intelligent spending cuts, sensible revenue increases, and a war on government waste, the debt/revenue ratio would likely be a non-issue within 10 years.

[treestar]

191. Unrec

No one in this country can claim to have suffered anything near what happened in Germany.

You can compare it, but it's so much lighter it can hardly be described.

[Major Hogwash]

200. And now you know why we have been admonished so many times!!

Look at all of the ridiculous replies you got in just this 1 thread!!!

Man, sometimes it just isn't worth discussing this shit here.
But, at least now the rest of us know who to ignore!!

:rofl: