Revisiting the Night of the Long Knives

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8412

Revisiting the Night of the Long Knives
by Bob Patterson | Jun 29 2007


Thinking that George W. Bush has entered the lame duck phase of his term in office and that the danger has passed might be an enormous mistake. Folks who think that there is some similarity between the political tactics used by the George W. Bush administration and the methods used by Germany’s chancellor for life are aware that the worst could still be yet to come.

In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, on page 185, William L. Shirer wrote: “At the crest of their popular strength, in July 1932, the National Socialists had attained but 37 per cent of the vote. But the 63 per cent of the German people who expressed their opposition to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, however temporarily, to stamp it out.” (Do those percentages sound familiar?)

Contending with dissent in the opposition party is a difficult political challenge, but coping with strong disagreement from members of one’s own party is usually debilitating, unless one has advisers as ruthless and cunning as Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler.

In the early hours of June 30, 1933, (see Shirer pages 220 to 223) Hitler’s supporters, who were becoming an annoyance, were dealt with severely (as in summarily shot on the spot). Hitler quickly change a deteriorating political career with dim prospects via a precedent setting move. He combined the offices of President and Chancellor and decreed that it was an office he would hold for life. Did he, too, use “signing statements”?

The conservative talk radio posse will respond to references to the recent Homeland Security Presidential Directives numbers 20 and 51 with hearty laughter and solid reassurances that any similarity between that bit of current news and the dimming memories of the Night of the Long Knives and its consequences is of interest only to “left wing nutters.”

Conservative talk radio has blanketed the United States with similar smooth talk about how there was nothing to be concerned about at all with a long list of disturbing items. Now that the citizens are alarmed about a war that is expensive and seems to require an open-ended commitment, don’t Rush and his clones deliver explanations that no one could have foreseen the current unfortunate situation, and reassure listeners that there is no cause for alarm?

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