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Now and Then- Part
III
Hitler's
Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power
by
W.
David Jenkins III and Sara DeHart July 4, 2002
"Fascism should more
appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and
corporate power." (Benito Mussolini, Encyclopedia Italiana)
According to David Gergen (1999), the 2000 election was about raw political
power. He termed it a hinge point in history. The last time the GOP controlled
the White House and the Congress was when "Ike" was in charge and he
didn't want to rock the boat. "Conservatives have very different ideas in
mind if they can grab the helm now." What Gergen and other members of the
media didn't mention to the American people is that if the Far Right could
control the White House and Congress, they could also control the judiciary and
the fate and face of America for generations to come. (Gergen, David (November
15, 1999). Editorial: A Hinge Point in History. U.S. News and World Report)
And grab the helm they did, not by winning the White House by a majority, but by
Supreme Court fiat ( with at least two judges violating several statutes of
Title 28 Sec. 455 of the Judicial and Judiciary Procedure). Even with the
legitimacy of the Bush presidency in question, the Conservatives -- those with
the Far Right agenda -- grabbed the raw political power that Gergen predicted
would be the outcome of that election. The abuse of power in the guise of
pushing an agenda which the majority of the electorate voted against would now
become a perverted rule of law. The Far Right transformed into the Far Reich. We
need only to look at Bush's nominations and appointments to fully appreciate
this tactic. Corporate America's cronies were placed in every powerful position
within the Bush administration. From Alcoa's O'Neil as Secretary of Treasury to
Enron's White as the Secretary of Army, this administration represents
Totalitarian Corporatism. And what precisely does Totalitarian Corporatism look
like and how does this play out in the United States? Will the outcomes be any
different for America than they were for Germany?
When most people hear the word "fascism" they think of racism and
anti-Semitism, the hallmarks of the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and
Hitler. But do not forget there is an economic policy component of fascism known
as "corporatism," an essential ingredient of economic totalitarianism
(DiLorenzo 1994). This is why corporate leaders played key roles in financing
Hitler as Chancellor and George W. Bush's run for the White House. Corporate
heads from the United States, England and Germany financed Hitler's rise to
power. These same powerful worldwide forces from the Military-Industrial
Complex, Oil, Energy, and Media spent millions of dollars to influence the
American 2000 election. And when the election could not be bought, they used
five members of the United States Supreme Court to stop the Florida vote,
thereby giving election "victory" to the eldest son of George Herbert
Walker Bush. Now why was this election so important to the Far Right forces? And
having gained the White House, what -- besides greed and power -- motivates them
to change the face of America? Why would a political party supposedly dedicated
to "states' rights" use the Supreme Court to usurp those rights? Why
would a political party with slogans such as "get the government off our
backs" move to take over the government and all its vast financial
resources? There is only one explanation. Totalitarian corporate industrial
policy. From the Department of Energy to the Departments of Justice and Defense,
the Bush administration has worked to establish policies that do not serve the
interests of the people, but serve the interests of rich and powerful
corporations.
"Totalitarianism is a form of government in which all societal resources
are monopolized by the state in an effort to penetrate and control all aspects
of public and private life, through the state's use of propaganda, terror, and
technology. Totalitarian ideologies reject the existing society as corrupt,
immoral, and beyond reform. They project an alternative society in which these
wrongs are to be redressed, and provide plans and programs for realizing the
alternative order." http://www.remember.org/guide/Facts.root.nazi.html
These ideologies are supported by propaganda campaigns and demand total
conformity on the part of the people. Can we honestly say that the Bush Far
Reich agenda is any different from that of Hitler's Third Reich when it comes to
this form of ideology?
Parallels
Between Hitler's and Bush's Power Game Plan
As Chancellor, Hitler
manipulated President Hindenberg into dissolving the Reichstag to permit new
elections. He sought a Nazi majority in the Reichstag to rubber-stamp whatever
laws the big corporations that financed him wanted. Hitler abused democracy to
establish his dictatorship. Is this any different from the methods Mr. Bush used
to secure the presidency -- by Supreme Court fiat rather than an election by the
people? And then he used a slim Congressional majority to push through
legislation favorable to corporations.
Following his inauguration Vice President Dick Cheney was all over the Congress
and Senate imposing the Far Reich agenda. This is the "raw power" that
Gergen meant in his "Hinge Point in History" editorial. Deals from
energy to defense were made in secret in the Vice President's office. Enron
wrote Cheney's Energy Policy that cost Californians and North Western citizens
billions. Texas and international oil interests had the entire country by the
tail and a Republican majority in Congress rubber-stamped everything from the
tax cut for the wealthiest 2% to the rape of the environment. And with few
notable exceptions, the media were silent. How very much like Hitler's Third
Reich and his propaganda machine.
Bush's cabinet was installed to serve the interests of corporations, not the
people. His actual disdain for regular American citizens is typified by his
quote about those citizens who objected to his administrative choices. "My
picks obviously activated the voices of a few, the fringe people, the
special-interest groups whose job is to make a lotta noise in Washington,
DC." If you are not with Bush, you are fringe. If you want to stop global
warming, you are fringe. If you object to any of his policies, you are fringe.
How very much like Hitler's marginalization of the people, group by group.
And then came September 11, 2001, with the direct attack on America followed by
the counter-attack on Afghanistan. This unleashed a whole new level of Far Reich
control over the American people and the agenda. To keep a population in line,
both Hitler and Bush declared perpetual war. Or in Hitler's words: "Another
weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me.
The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag-a thing with a soul that could mirror my
own." But in this case technology has moved light years ahead of Hitler's
time and Bush's Far Reich uses the power of television, controlled by a few
corporate heads, to control and sway. Following 911 the patriotism of the
American people was twisted to suit the purposes of the Far Reich Agenda just as
patriotism of the German people was twisted following the Reichstag fire to suit
the purposes of the Third Reich.
 | You are with us or
against us. In Germany if you were against Hitler and the Nazis you were
subjected to tribunal "justice." Civil rights were discarded and
many ended up in concentration camps. In Bush's America, an unknown number
of Arab detainees are being held in U.S. jails and the Guantanamo Naval
Base. They do not have access to legal representation. Their resources are
frozen, and the American public is assured that if they are charged they
will have access to legal representation. Though their actual numbers and
identities were kept secret, we were told that these detainees were not
American citizens. Now we learn that an American citizen, Jose Padilla, is
being held without legal counsel in a catch-22 situation that is worthy of a
Joseph Heller plot. (Heller, Joseph (Reprint edition 1966). Catch-22. NY:
Scribner Paperback)
| Secrecy is the Far Reich
Bush policy and if you question that policy, you are unpatriotic. German
citizens learned very early to keep quiet and not ask questions. American
citizens are learning the same painful lesson. The Bush administration is
the most secret in our recorded history and those who dare question the
administration's secrecy are labeled "unpatriotic."
| Fear and isolation are
weapons. The German people were not stupid or unaware. They saw their
neighbors beaten and threatened. They saw them disappear. And they did not
want this to happen to themselves or their families. Now we are seeing the
same situation in the United States as members of the FBI intimidate people
who dare dissent. Those who choose not to stand miles away in the
"First Amendment Zones" whenever a Bush official speaks in a
public arena do so at risk to their freedom. This happens and the media
remains silent. The TV cameras focus on those in agreement with Far Reich
policies and ignore those who dissent. News people who dissent lose their
jobs. Professors who dissent are held up to ridicule by university
administrators. It did not take long for all in the news business to realize
that Bush praise is the secret formula for survival in a tough competitive
market.
| Attack Intellectualism.
Hitler's Playbook specified that Intellectualism must be attacked and did so
by book burning and destruction of news sources unfriendly to the Third
Reich. Goebbels presided over a communications monopoly. Nazi youth groups
heckled professors until administrators forced them out of universities. We
need go no further than Lynne Cheney's American Council of Trustees and
Alumni (http://www.counterpunch.org/foley0522.html)
to see the corollary of Bush's Far Reich. "Lynne Cheney's right wing,
not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization collected "unpatriotic"
utterances and issued its report, "Defending Civilization: How our
universities are failing America and what can be done about it" (Foley,
5/22/02). Germany lost incredible intellectual talent in the 1930s (e.g.,
Einstein, Freud). Will the United States lose its most talented university
people by 2004?
| Closely allied with
Cheney's ACTA is William Bennett's Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT)
project. According to their campaign literature "AVOT is designed to
combat those who would weaken the nation's resolve and erode our commitment
to end the international menace of terrorism." One of their articles
stated that "anti-war ferment in America is growing." In other
words, speak praise of Far Reich policies or expect to be attacked. Will
ACTA and AVOT grow so powerful that we will be afraid to dissent? At what
point will the media notice that our right to free speech is gone? |
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The abuses of power before
and, especially, after 9/11 by the Bush Reich have been unsettling, to say the
least. The world is watching us, believing we all support the policies Bush and
his thugs are pursuing. They see the similarities. But our former main source of
information, television and the newspapers, seems silent in the face of such a
threat to what our founding fathers had in mind.
There has been no attention paid to the Metropolitan Detention Center in
Brooklyn where uncounted numbers of American citizens are being held without
charge while Ashcroft petitions the courts to allow their deportation. The
defense counsels of John Lindh, Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard Reid and Jose
Padilla have had their hands tied by the DOJ in the name of "national
security." If George and his gang decide to call you a "hostile
combatant" then you can just kiss your rights goodbye. Some still argue
that these people and others like them are proven enemies of the country or just
"very bad people," but how long will it take before the precedent
being set with these accused "terrorists" trickles down to folks like
you and me?
There is an ugly secret being kept from all of us. Some of us recognize this --
especially those who see it from afar -- and then there are those who continue
to refuse to believe it could happen here. And there lies the danger. Arthur
Livingstone (2001) asked the question, "Does history repeat itself?"
and the answer, unfortunately, is yes. (http://www.goodwriters.net/dhri1.html)
We, in America, are seeing a reincarnation of the Third Reich, and its name is
Corporatism. If left unchecked, the worst case scenario will be that Americans
will be left without liberty, justice or freedom. Thomas Jefferson saw the
threat in 1816: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our
moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial
of strength and bid defiance of the laws of our country."
The only thing standing in the way of the Far Reich's goal of corporatism is the
American public. One stumbling block that Bush faces that Hitler didn't have to
contend with, is the vast amount of information available with today's
technology. The Internet has brought a world together in ways never dreamed of
in the days of WWII. It is both a source of comfort that we are not alone and a
source of frustration as it causes us to wonder when will the rest of the
country catch up?
We all
know that our European neighbors notice the similarities discussed in this
series. They wonder when we are going to finally wake up. So many Americans have
given their lives to defend that which makes this country a unique and special
place. Will we let the noble experiment in democracy die in the 21st Century?
Will we let it die at the hands of George W. Bush's version of the Third Reich?
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