With Hunter's eloquent, yet distressing explanation of America's slide into inhumanity, I am reminded of how easily this country truly is being duped into going down the same path as Nazi Germany. Continued ..
Now I will not take this opportunity to unleash a Hitler comparison against Republicans as a whole, because that is both cliched, and actually, banal. No the problem goes far beyond the elephants, for out of 59 percent of people supporting flushing REAL American exceptionalism down the drain there are plenty of guilty donkeys as well. But first, a trip to a land long ago, and far away..
These are images from the Quentin Tarantino classic, Inglorious Basterds, from the beginning of the film. In it, the spectacular Christophe Waltz, perhaps the world's very best actor, plays a self-titled Colonel by the name of Hans Landa. Landa, is very smart, and very mean, and very deranged. He combines these traits to great effect, to both charm, and terrorize, those who would trifle with the Nazi dictate. He is seen here, pointing a gun at a Jewish girl, the only one of her family, able to escape his clutches. He and his crew have just exterminated her entire family, leaving her in shock, and running for her life.
Landa, perhaps like a smug feline delighted to leave some mice to toy with later, decides to let her go, surely to reunite at some point in the future. To Americans, this scene is unnerving, and disgusting, but perhaps, there is more connection to the Nazis than the Jewish victims of the Holocaust than we would like to admit.
The film, is of course, fiction, but the scene was likely played out in actuality in many different incarnations. The names are not so important as is the message. Important though, we truly understand the message, and focus on that more than its delivery.
This is probably some nutcase site, but am using it for the quote,
Michael Ostrolenk joins ret- SEAL Rob DuBois as a co-host for Powerful Peace Radio. They talk with Mike German who prior to joining the ACLU, served sixteen-years as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations. He authored, ”Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent”
In the interview they discuss:
-Constitutional rights in the age of terror
– The need to protect national security whistleblowers against retaliation
– Why is it important to think like a terrorist
– Terrorism as a political tactic
– What are the real threats in America today
Yes it seems as if we had our own Hans Landa, in fact probably many hundreds of them, and still do. Oh but wait, yes you are probably going to stop me here, and say it is not fair to compare innocent Jews to vicious terrorists. And you would be right. But let me stop YOU. What about the above blockquote makes you think the powers of discernment necessary exist within Agent German to tell the difference between a threat, and an innocent Muslim?
Read-
Col. Hans Landa: The feature that makes me such an effective hunter of the Jews is, as opposed to most German soldiers, I can think like a Jew, where they can only think like a German … more precisely, German soldier. Now, if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast, it would be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk. But if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with a beast, it would be that of the rat. The Führer and Goebbels's propaganda have said pretty much the same thing, but where our conclusions differ is I don't consider the comparison an insult. Consider, for a moment, the world a rat lives in. It's a hostile world, indeed. If a rat were to scamper through your front door right now, would you greet it with hostility?
And later, in regard to a persistent instinctual disregard for rats-
I didn't think so. You don't like them. You don't really know why you don't like them; all you know is you find them repulsive. Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews. Where does the hawk look? He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere he would hide. But there's so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide. However, the reason the Führers brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me. Because I'm aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.
Again, not historical fact, but historically approximate. What do we know about this man, and men like these? They are highly intelligent, amoral, merciless, and sociopathically charming. They can use their wit and twisted philosophies to convince you that they "have a point." The only point Colonel Landa has of course, is that he is a sick, depraved man with a bloodthirst for a certain kind of people, the Judaic kind.
From Nizkor.org
In the introduction to Die Judenfrage im Unterricht , which was published in 1937 by Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher made the following statement: "The National Socialist state requires its teachers to teach German children racial theory. For the German people, racial theory means the Jewish problem."[3] The teacher's manual on the Jewish problem maintains that German children have an inborn aversion to Jews that is intensified by references made to Jews in the newspapers, conversations, and songs sung by members of the SA and HJ. Intermarriage between Germans and Jews is portrayed as unnatural because it does not follow the Nazi perversion of the natural biological order, which does not allow for intermixing. Storks mate with storks; swallows mate with swallows, etc. The Nuremberg Laws are depicted as a return to the natural order that God intended, and the Jew is thus shown as a threat to God's order.
From this point, the projection of the Jew as an enemy of the German people is a quick and easy step. He is conveyed as an infiltrator, who, upon gaining entry into German society, has usurped the political and economic power of Germany and focused his attention upon the destruction of the German people. Because the Jew is deemed such a threat to German society, the Nuremberg Laws are viewed as a justifiable means of self-defense.
First, you undermine the humanity of your target, in the modern era, the Muslims of the world. Once you have successfully dehumanized your target, tearing them down becomes easy, and finding "soldiers" to do your bidding, even easier. These polls, that show large majority support for torture, do you think these numbers would apply to Canadians threats? Do you really?
That is what I thought. Of course not. When Americans answer that they are okay with torture, what they are really saying is that they are ok with certain peoples being tortured, for "good cause." Well rationalization is guaranteed to invent "good cause." And this playbook, so artfully and effectively employed by Streicher, and Goebbels, and Hitler himself, is being re-deployed on multiple fronts today, right here, in the United States of America.
Be it Michael Brown or numerous victims of police brutality, "thugs", Guantanamo prisoners "terrorists" or Mexican immigrants of varying legality, "illegals" the right wing uses hate radio as the entrance to its echo chamber to champion purity and foster resentments among most often, poor, uneducated, rural whites. When the religion button is needed they speak of family values, and when the fear button is called for they simply dial, "911", truly, they have inherited a playbook of psychological warfare designed to divide and conquer.
When it becomes clear that education is often a cure for bigotry, they subjugate their base even more, always careful to disguise the real source of blame, and shift it onto their desired targets. Keeping them poor and angry and resentment filled is their formula to dominance both electorally and financially, and the reason for this diary, is to point out just how many different outfits this particular scoundrel can change into.
Yesterday it was Jews, today it is Muslims, and African Americans, and even women. Who shall it be tomorrow? Where shall this hate train make its next stop?
Better yet, how do we derail it, before it is too late?