The German Salute

[DavidDvorkin]

In Nazi Germany, what we think of the Heil Hitler gesture was officially called The German Salute. The Nazis wanted Germans to think that greeting their friends by holding their hands up palm out and saying "Heil Hitler!" wasn't Nazi but typically German. A common joke among Germans at the time was that the real German salute was the surreptitious look from side to side to make sure no stranger was listening before speaking frankly with a friend.

I read about that while researching my novel Budspy, and I recognized it instantly. To me, it was The South African Salute, and I had seen it while growing up in Apartheid South Africa.

I remember once watching my father and a neighbor circling around each other verbally at the beginning of a conversation. It turned out that they both wanted to attack the government, but they couldn't just come right out and do it. Instead, they had to sound each other out, make sure the other guy wasn't a government supporter who might inform the government about treasonous talk. Eventually, they each decided the other guy was safe, and then they launched into anti-government vitriol. As I remember, the starting point was that the postman was late that day, but complaints about the postal service quickly moved on to passionate agreement that the government was generally worthless.

That was in a police state. Remarkably, South Africa in those days still had a fairly independent press and judiciary. Well, how about us? We're not a police state at all, right? We're free, a great democracy, the light unto the world, the shining city on the hill. But people in our broadcast media have said that they won't even criticize Bush family members because that could look "unpatriotic". Fourth Estate? Hmph. They're an adjunct of the White House Office Of Propaganda. Our courts have become a stronghold of vile rightwing undermining of democracy. They don't defend us against oppression, they rationalize and uphold it.

This is what we've become. The German Salute and The South African Salute have become The American Salute.

[Richardo]

1. ...and yet you can post this freely on a public message board.

I don't buy it. Is this the worst administration in American history? Without a doubt. Does it rise to the level of Nazi Germany or Apartheit South Africa? Not even close.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. River in Egypt

[Richardo]

3. .

[CGowen]

14. 1/x ? n/t

[libbygurl]

16. "The Nile" = Denial. eom

[Richardo]

21. Right. What does MY post indicate?

[question everything]

4. Right. This is what often bothers me

when people here refers to this country as a fascist state or a police state, not knowing what it means to really live under police state without message boards and blogs.

[tom_paine]

8. True enough. However, do you dismiss the possibility that:

as we are still transitioning and not finished seeking whatever the Final Condition of the New Totalitarianism (I suspect something like the book "Farenheit 451" is taking shape, minus the fireman burning books but there will be BushShirts in some form, I guess), that it might be wise to point out the transition before things get so much worse that comparisons begin to be borderline valid (American Citizen Jose Padilla might agree, if he could de-vegify enough to think about the question)

As in Principaa obstis. Fenim respice. "Resist the Beginnings. Foresee the Ends."

You do realize that if things do continue on their trend, by the time you get the "hard proof" you seek, it will be way past time to do anything about it?

Having said that, you are correct: Our personal lives have not ben that affected by the first 40% of the tranisition. Can you say the same about the upcoming final 60%? Maybe the final 60% will never happen, but that's what everyone said about keeping Magna Carta Values like Habeaus Corpus in 2001.

[question everything]

23. Which is why it is so important to vote for the Democratic candidate

whoever s/he is. There will be at least one, perhaps 3 vacancies in the Supreme Court in the next couple of year and we need to re-balance it toward at least the center. The only defense that we have against proposed fascism is the Supreme Court.

[DavidDvorkin]

26. And that the next president investigate

We'll need the equivalent of de-Nazification. Sweeping things under the rug will just be setting the country up for a repeat of the horror later on.

[stimbox]

22. Friendly Fascism - The New Face of Power in America

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html


It has already arrived.

[Demeter]

5. Not Yet, Anyway, Not Everywhere. But Why Wait? IMPEACH!

[EstimatedProphet]

6. Wait until the investigations make a case! That's why wait!

Impeach now and it FAILS!

[Speciesamused]

15. You would have to do Cheney first.

or he would of course.....

[puebloknot]

20. See Post #19.

[Igel]

7. I've seen the surreptitious "is it safe?" look in only a few kinds of

places.

One was in the church office I worked in when the ministers finally decided they were tired of being "patient" with the congregation's "faults" and wanted to crack down on dissent. 'Nuff said.

The other was in university dept. offices as a grad student and faculty spouse. There it covered (1) academic/theoretical issues, (2) personal things ("did you see professor so-and-so watching John's crotch during the party?"), and (3) politics.

As a grad student, only (1) and (2) were important. Since becoming the husband of a post-doc, then a faculty spouse, I've realized that (3) is also important once you have that PhD in hand.

Apart from routine gossip--things like, (quick look around) "Did you see how Dr. so-and-so couldn't take his eyes off John's crotch during the last hour of the dept. social ... and his wife was there!"--it's really only when you get a repressive workplace or social situation that you feel that kind of pressure.

I don't feel any government pressure for this. No threat of police, CIA/NSA, etc., etc. No unexplained credit problems that I think the government created for my "benefit", no police harrassment, nothing unexpected misplaced when we leave the apt. empty for a day and no mysteriously opened mail (although that Italian/English dictionary I got last week had had its packaging torn open ...).

I'd have to conclude, based on my experience, that university departments and churches are the closest we have to police states, but allow that the conclusion's generalizable to most workplaces and social organizations given the right kind of hierarchical structure populated by self-righteous closed-minded people.

[CGowen]

9. Isn't Homeland Security opening the mail....? n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

10. At least the e-mail

I've been assuming for years that they're eavesdropping on that.

[CGowen]

11. No, no the real one

Homeland Security opening private mail
Retired professor confused, angered when letter from abroad is opened


WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.


...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10740935/

[DavidDvorkin]

12. Jeez, I missed that

I didn't know the SOBs had reached that stage. But I shouldn't be at all surprised.

Step by step. Sometimes the police state comes suddenly, but very often it emulates the story about the frog in the boiling water.

[Eric J in MN]

13. I hadn't seen that article before. NT

NT

[AntiFascist]

17. Are you aware that this was originally how Americans pledged allegiance to the flag?

Also the man who created the pledge of allegiance was a military socialist, as was the German government when Hitler took control.

[puebloknot]

18. Remarkably, South Africa in those days still had a fairly independent press and judiciary.

Remarkably, we can still post on the Internet. For how long we don't know.

There can *be* no denying that we have lost our civil rights, and that other countries maintained some apparent rights, right up to the moment of challenge!

Don't buy it yet, but do start putting some dimes in the piggy bank!

[puebloknot]

19. This post intended as a response to Richardo, Response #1. Sorry. nt

[JohnyCanuck]

24. America 2007 Is Germany 1930

America 2007 Is Germany 1930
By
Norman D. Livergood


We who live in the post-World War II period possess an immensely valuable symbol, even if we don't understand it or use it effectively: the example of Nazi Germany.

"The German experiment, except to those who are its victims, is particularly interesting, and, like the offer of a strong man to let himself be vivisected, should make a great contribution to political science. For the Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat."

Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society

SNIP

The 2004 election revealed that many American citizens are as intellectually and morally incompetent as the Germans in 1930. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!

SNIP

By learning from the German Nazi tragedy, we can see--in twenty-first century America--that we could easily wait too long. For example, we must look at the interesting similarity of Hitler's use of the Reichstag Fire to seize dictatorial powers and Bush's use of the September 11 terrorist attack as his excuse to move us to a police state where Bush can simply "declare" that a foreigner is a terrorist and that person's rights become almost non-existent.

Without any necessity of presenting evidence, the president can now brand a non-US-citizen--OR A US CITIZEN--a "terrorist" and the suspect is brought before a secret military tribunal where the rules of evidence and prisoner rights are drastically attenuated.

Off with their heads Hitler was able to brand anyone he considered an enemy and see that that person was summarily executed. How long will it be before President Bush begins to brand as "terrorist" any US citizen who disagrees with him?

The fact that ivy league university professors and other supposedly intelligent persons think Bush's seizure of such police-state powers is okay, and the civilian and military cover-up of torture in American prisons in Iraq and Cuba, proves that the fascist mentality is rampant in our society.

http://www.hermes-press.com/germany1930.htm

[DavidDvorkin]

25. Yep. But I think he has the year wrong.

It's more like mid-30s Germany.