"How completely isolated a world the German people live in..."

I'd like to share with you an excerpt from William Shirer's famous book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer, a newspaper reporter who lived in Berlin throughout the 1930s and into the early years of World War II, recounts how startled he had been at the ease with which German propaganda managed to fool an ever-more gullible German public. What follows is Shirer's description of the headlines of German newspapers during August, 1939, during the final days leading up to Germany's wholly unprovoked invasion of Poland:

In Berlin [...] a foreign observer could watch the way the press, under Goebbels' expert direction, was swindling the gullible German people. For six years, since the Nazi "co-ordination" of the daily newspapers, which had meant the destruction of a free press, the citizens had been cut off from the truth of what was going on in the world. For a time the Swiss German-language newspapers from Zurich and Basel could be purchased at the leading newsstands in Germany and these presented objective news. But in recent years their sale in the Reich had been either prohibited or limited to a few copies. For Germans who could read English or French, there were occasionally a few copies of the London and Paris journals available, though not enough to reach more than a handful of persons.

"How completely isolated a world the German people live in," I noted in my diary on August 10, 1939. "A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it." I had returned to Germany from a brief leave in Washington, New York and Paris, and coming up in the train from my home in Switzerland ten days before I had bought a batch of Berlin and Rhineland newspapers. They quickly propelled one back to the cockeyed world of Nazism, which was as unlike the world I had just left as if it had been on another planet. I noted further on August 10, after I had arrived in Berlin:

Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland... here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is maintained ... What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion...

"Poland, Look Out!" warns the B.Z. [cft note: Berliner Arbeiterzeitung] headline, adding: Answer to Poland, the Runner-Amok [Amokläuffer] against Peace and Right in Europe!"

Or the headline in Der Fuehrer, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train: "Warsaw Threatens Bombardment of Danzig—Unbelievable Agitation of the Polish Archmadness [Polnischen Groessenwahsn]!"

You ask: But the German people can't possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.

By Saturday, August 26, the date originally set by Hitler for the attack on Poland, Goebbels' press campaign had reached its climax. I noted in my diary some of the headlines.

The B.Z.: "Complete Chaos in Poland—German Families Flee—Polish Soldiers Push to the Edge of the German Border!" The 12-Uhr Blatt: "This Playing With Fire Going Too Far—Three German Passenger Planes Shot At by Poles—In Corridor Many German Farmhouses in Flames!"

On my way to Broadcast House at midnight I picked up the Sunday edition (August 27) of the Voelkischer Beobachter. Across the whole top of the front page were inch-high headlines:

WHOLE OF POLAND IN WAR FEVER! 1,5000,000 MEN MOBILIZED! UNINTERRUPTED TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARD THE FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!

There was no mention, of course, of any German mobilization, though, as we have seen, Germany had been mobilized for a fortnight.

The truth is a beautiful thing, even when it stings a bit. Do you suppose that the great William Shirer was spinning in his grave during the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction deception/embarrassment, which was aided and abetted by our American—putatively free, democratic—press?

I think it's fair to say that Shirer, like many in America's longstanding tradition of democratic patriots and truth-tellers, would be disappointed. He expected better of our elected leaders. We, unfortunately, have seen far too much arrogance and corruption among our leaders and their corporate handlers to reasonably hold the same expectation. But we can work hard to rebuild a genuine American republic in which future generations might reasonably expect it, just as Shirer did.

Crib From This Contra Glenn Beck

The diatribe that follows was prompted by having heard an excerpt of a certain very dumb man's radio program, which I encountered courtesy of PhuckPolitics.com:

Now, the fact is that this dude ain't worth it, because unlike, say, Rush Limbaugh -- who, despite having a lot of dumb people in his audience, cannot himself truthfully be said to be dumb, on the basis of his considerable moneymaking acumen alone (and who also isn't worth it) -- Glenn Beck's dumb as a rock. And that's an understatement. I mean, the guy is really, really dumb. Not George-W.-Bush/good-ol'-boy/lacking-intellectual-curiosity dumb. We're talking glaring/conspicuous-cognitive-deficiencies-having dumb. That's how dumb Glenn The Dumb Guy Beck is dumb.

And anyway, I tire of expressing pure outrage (because making normal, intelligent people angry is precisely what Glen Beck is designed to do…to what end is beyond the scope of my comprehension), but what the hell is this guy talking about?

All he does is tell bizarre lies and attack both individuals and large communities in a way that is at once deeply vicious and confoundingly non-specific.

The latter is especially troubling, because when he demonizes others by using insinuations and weird neo-McCarthyist rhetoric — be it cries of “communists” or “fascists” or whatever — he is himself by definition engaging in precisely the rhetorical strategies that are the hallmark of propaganda in radical totalitarian regimes. Surely, even someone as willfully ignorant as Beck realizes this, and that’s part of what makes it so outrageous and mendacious as a provocation.

But what offends me even more than his lies, his slander and even his vulgar and continual celebration of his own ignorance, is the fact that he clearly does not have anyone’s best interests at heart. There is no trace of passion for any human cause — however misguided or illusory — to be found in either his persona or rhetoric.

He does not wish to change the minds of his ill-defined ‘political enemies’: He merely wants to silence them or to destroy them. His attitude toward his own audience (and even, at its core, toward himself) consists of nothing more than contempt.

According to the Weltanschauung he espouses (if I may call it that) the world is a dark, dark place where communication, understanding, consensus and even compromise among people is not only impossible but undesirable, whatever the specific circumstances, period.

In short, he's anti-democratic.

If Thomas Jefferson came back today and saw the things that Glenn Beck says in the name of ‘American patriotism’, he’d never stop throwing up.

"War Is Hell!":The perfecters of chest-beating and their epigones.

Let's revisit our discussion of David Brooks's editorial in yesterday's New York Times, which Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald places alongside numerous previous instances in which this neoconservative, who usually plays 'good-cop', metamorphoses into a "grizzled warrior." As Greenwald illustrates, yesterday's transformation finds the usually ostensibly mild-mannered Brooks

perform[ing] a chest-beating war dance over Afghanistan of the type he and his tough guy comrades perfected in the run-up to the Iraq War.  It's filled with self-glorifying "war-is-hell" neocon platitudes that make the speaker feel tough and strong.  No more hiding like cowards in our bases.  It's time to send "small groups of American men and women [] outside the wire in dangerous places."  Those opposing escalation are succumbing to the "illusion of the easy path."  Chomping on a cigar in his war room, he roars:  "all out or all in."  The central question: will we "surrender the place to the Taliban?," etc. etc.

Indeed, in his remarkable piece of propaganda Brooks's appraisal of the political and military situation is selective and slanted in its relationship with facts and irresponsible and, frankly, comical in its use of rhetoric. But, as I pointed out yesterday, what's truly sinister and galling is the piece's attempt to bend recent history to its own political ends. I mean, basically, it conflates statements of unambiguous fact with statements evincing a heterodox conception of political and military historiography. To call it heterodox is maybe too nice: It is nothing less than a neoconservative wet dream of blood-lust, self-righteousness, pedantry and calls to the cause of freedom and destiny!!!, pitting the United States (unambiguously good, honorable, honest, free, saintly) against...

Well, let's pause there. Against who, exactly? Who is it that we are fighting, and what is it that makes our enemies so damned evil, Dave Brooks?

Since 1979, we have been involved in a long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism. We’ve fought this ideology in many ways in many places, and we shouldn’t pretend we understand how this conflict will evolve. But we should understand that the conflict is unavoidable and that when extremism pushes, it’s in our long-term interests to push back — and that eventually, if we do so, extremism will wither..*

We've been, for 30 years now!, engaged in a "long" conflict (i.e.: we're already knee-deep in this conflict, so giving up now would mean that the brave sacrifices of those who have gone before us will have been in vain!, a dishonor done to their memories!!!), a "complex" conflict (i.e.: a chess-like series of highly technical maneuvers, tactics, strategies, intelligence-gathering measures by way of "data-mining," spying, "harsh interrogations," computers and machines and all sorts of stealth, jargony technical and technological and academic and bookish stuff that you could never hope to understand in a million years, so just back off and leave it to us experts).

And the conflict has been with "Islamic extremism." But, wait, I thought it was a conflict with Al Quaeda? Or, wait: no!, it's a War On Terror, right? Or was it the Taliban in Afghanistan? Or was it in Pakistan? Or was it against Osama bin Laden? Or, wait: against Saddam Hussein? Or wait, what about Omar Kadafi? Or...uh...what about those mean-looking dudes in Iran? Hold on! I think I'm sensing a pattern here..... Don't tell me!

Okay: the idea of a "long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism" is so inexcusably hamfisted, willfully ignorant, so transparently calculated to render as ambiguous as possible the identity of our putative enemy, American aims in the putative conflict, its theater of action, and its putative moral authority, and moreover it's so classically, paradigmatically Orwellian (remember how the government kept switching the war enemy between Eurasia and Eastasia?: the point is that the more ambiguous the nature of the enemy/terms of conflict, the more potentially sinister, totalitarian and just plain dangerous it becomes for people like Brooks to issue absurd calls to arms in the name of empty, cynical and dishonest conceptions of quote-patriotism-unquote!!!).

I leave you with a side-by-side comparison of my own which I hope will illustrate in no uncertain terms why it's so very dangerous when asshole pseudo-intellectuals like David Brooks write like chest-thumping, fist-pounding neanderthals, particularly when they are saying War Is Hell, But We Americans Had Better Tough It Out To Preserve Our Honor And To Protect Our Way Of Live Against A Threat Posed By AN IDEOLOGY THAT'S INCOMPATIBLE WITH OUR OWN, This Is, If You're A Decent Honest Non-Terrorist American!!!!

Here's Brooks, giving it his best, really throwing the full strength of of his will into his appeal, the purity -- uncontaminated by 'foreign, un-American ideologies' -- of his thick-skinned, ideologically correct moral righteousness, his steadfast refusal to fall victim to the illusions of weaker men!!!!:

Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon’s Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping your troops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.

[...]

We have tried to fight the Afghan war the easy way, and it hasn’t worked. Switching now to the McChrystal strategy is a difficult choice, and President Obama is right to take his time. But Obama was also right a few months ago when he declared, “This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. ... This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

I can just hear the John Phillip Sousa march emanating from the speaker system of Brook's swanky corner office in The New York Times building. But the United States has not monopolized the use of careless bombast in attempts to justify not just warfare but ideological warfare, The same holds for ideological warfare in which the homeland's Weltanschauung or way of life or values or blood is cast as incompatible with another.

Who else was fond of saying, This planet ain't big enough for the both of us! and, It will take a long, possibly thousand-year struggle, but we must always be willing to attack in the most unrelenting and steadfast way, including the use of 'extraordinary measures, which will require a decisive break from the old, outdated philosophies, practices and values of the old, feeble-minded military hierarchy...?

I know who! A propagandist, political leader and military leader all rolled into one, who had the following to say to the German generals at a meeting in early March, 1941, before their glorious, hard-willed march into Russia and, as we all know, their eventual doom:

The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies. I know that the necessity for such means of waging war is beyond the the comprehension of you generals but...I insist absolutely that my orders be executed without contradiction. The commissars are the bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore the commissars will be liquidated. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law...will be excused. Russia has not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore has no rights under it.  [Adolf Hitler, as quoted in William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich]

Phew! I don't need to point out all of the parallels explicitly, do I? And the last couple of quoted sentences provide illuminating comparisons with not only Brooks's article but with the justifications used by Bush and Cheney, et al. for their (once-) secret approval of the use of torture in various "national security"-related interrogations.

Finally, just to really make everyone even more sick to their stomachs, let us consider what one Heinrich Himmler had to say to his S.S. generals on October 4, 1943:

...I also want to talk to you quite frankly on a very grave matter. Among yourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly...

I mean...the extermination of the Jewish race....Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time -- apart from exceptions caused by human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written...  [quoted in William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich]

Of course I'm not comparing Brooks to these two dudes. Like I said, I'd happily have a beer with Dave Brooks, should the opportunity arise. He's a decent fellow, etc.

I mean merely to illustrate that the coupling of elegant/pretentious ideological certitudes -- and grand abstract principles generally -- with windy, high-minded rhetoric and fist-pounding putatively patriotic fervor is dangerous. Especially when this combination is used to advocate long, violent, multi-front wars against an enemy whose identity is ambiguous, whose goals are completely abstract and easily doctored both in the framing of present and future debates but in rewriting our collective/cultural consciousness retrospectively. The latter is at the heart of any decent definition of Orwellian governance.

Last of all, don't let Brooks and his friends get away with convincing the American population that we must violate our own values, principles and ethics in order to stave off an enemy with which we are supposedly engaged in a never-ending existential conflict. That's the worst kind of bullying in the world: It doesn't make sense, it isn't an argument but a exercise in rhetorical and symbolic power, and we must fight back against it.

I know, I sound like Bono or something, but this stuff is just so unbelievably sleazy and unjust....

__________________

* All quoted passages that appear in bold typeface were chosen for emphasis by the present blogger.

The point about Sarah Palin is that she's amoral.

News about Sarah Palin: apparently she's blah blah blah blah blah.

Sarah Palin: theories as to why she apparently arouses hatred. I probably do hate her, and insofar as I do, I hate that I hate her. To inspire the hatred of others is to wield a peculiar kind of power. There's also a part of me that is in a sense unfazed by her personally, that sees in her a representation of many of contemporary America's most morally objectionable tendencies. It is these tendencies that I oppose with all my might, whether she's there to embody them or not. Right? ...

But, Sarah Palin: she's got to be a symptom of something rather than the other way around, right? Because what symptom could possibly be CAUSED by a Sarah Palin? No. She must be the symptom. The side effect.

Sarah Palin: a side effect. Like television commercials for various god-knows-what prescription medications marketed to Baby-Boomers, so that they don't have to poop at inopportune moments, or whatever it is. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE SARAH PALIN. Sometimes these advertisements -- the funniest of them, to be sure -- devote, like, over half of their running-time to the announcer guy reading out laundry lists of scary-ass side effects, which MAY INCLUDE MUCUS, SEIZURE, BLOOD CLOT, LOSS OF HEARING, OR -- IN RARE CASES -- SARAH PALIN...

I don't hate Palin so much as I fear the consolidation of political power among those who love her.

Sarah Palin -- to paraphrase the Sex Pistols -- She ain't no human being!, but a constellation of images, allusions and gestures.

The mediated phenomenon "Sara Palin" evokes nostalgia among a large number of Americans -- although, as far as I can tell, not a majority of them -- for a past that does not exist/that never existed.

I am reminded of accounts I have read of what it was like to witness the ascendancy of National Socialism in the tempestuous final days of the Weimar Republic: the celebration of ignorance, of seething, unfocused resentments.

The final revenge of style over content.

Sarah Palin makes George W. Bush look like a civil libertarian. She makes Ronald Reagan look pro-education. Sarah Palin is worse than these men because, whereas their moral precepts were delusional, hers are non-existent.

She's amoral: she represents indifference toward morality, indifference toward the Constitution, indifference toward the quality of life -- and livelihoods -- of present and future generations, indifference toward science, indifference toward representative democracy, indifference toward the separation of the branches of government, indifference toward education, indifference toward art, toward culture, toward freedom, toward poverty, toward the pursuit of happiness, indifference toward the principles espoused by the Founding Fathers, indifference toward religion in its meaningful sense, indifference toward history, indifference toward ideas, and indifference toward suffering.

The only thing toward which she is not indifferent is Sarah Palin. She doesn't care about the people who celebrate her. The people who celebrate her do so in the sense that they live vicariously through her. She embodies a collective, incoherent and self-contradictory dream. This dream pines for the destruction of all things unfamiliar in the interest of preserving the self as the self construes itself.

We really should be explaining the Left objection to her in moral terms: Sarah Palin is amoral.