By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / August 30, 2010
I cannot tolerate watching Fox News; however, the end results are apparent as the mainstream media continue to disseminate and replicate this drivel included in secondary coverage.
I am especially apprehensive that history is once again repeating in view of the Beck “rally” Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial which reminds one of a like affair in Nuremberg on September 4, 1932 and the scheduled book burning in Florida on September 7 is akin to one in Berlin on May 10, 1933.
I will quote Hitler, by way of Louis Untermeyer’s Makers of The Modern World, published in 1955:
The masses prefer the ruler to the suppliant… They feel little shame in being terrorized intellectually and are scarcely conscious of the fact that their freedom as human beings is abused… The art of leadership consists of consolidating the attention of the people against a single advisory and taking care that nothing will split this attention… The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category. Tell big lies, he insisted. Do not qualify or concede a point, no matter how wrong you may be. Do not hesitate or stop for reservations. ‘The masses are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional natures than consciously, and thus fall victims to the big lie rather than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies but would be ashamed to resort to large -scale falsehoods’. Vehemence persuades the masses–the louder the statement the more plausible it seems and the passion convinces them. ‘The masses always respond to compelling force….Since they have only a poor acquaintance with abstract ideas their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings,where the roots of their positive as welll as their negative attitudes are implanted. — Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf.
I lived through this era and subscribe to the concept that ‘history repeats’. I watch the current demagoguery and the uninformed public absorbing the total misinformation that is currently abroad. I watch the hate mongering, the demeaning of the entire culture arising in the Middle East. I watch the American people’s passive acceptance of militarism and unending war.I recall that the Third Reich was completely absorbed with vilifying and executing homosexuals and prosecuting physicians who did abortions and applauded racial purity. I see Fox News a much more thorough carrier of propaganda than the Voelkisher Beobachter , Der Angriff, or the films of Leni Riefenstahl.
I fear for my country led by a weak president who uniformly concedes to the political Right as did President Von Hindenburg in the final days of The Weimar Republic. Note the Obama Commission to review the national debt and his continued support of Bush policies regarding civil rights and surveillance of the people.
As one who lived throughout the era and now comes face-to-face with their latter days on earth it is not a bit consoling to think back on the history of events per Nuremberg, Sept 15, 1935; those throughout Germany November 9-10, 1938, or that momentous meeting at Wannsee on January 20, 1942. Yet, when one watches the present day culture of corruption, class division, militarism, hate for minorities, and public ignorance in the United States one must be afraid.
Dr. Steve Keister
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