"Nazism thrived not because most Germans were evil but because...

[madison]

"Nazism thrived not because most Germans were evil but because most were spineless"

< James Baldwin said that Nazism thrived not because most Germans were evil but because most were spineless. One cowardly compromise after another, succumbing to the bluster of bullies, quickly created a climate in which the rare act of courage, however splendid, became futile. Cowardice proved infectious, contagious. Taking a stand against the dark storm, individuals might have redeemed themselves, but their nobility disappeared with barely a trace; the Nazi anti-culture created a kind of collective immunity to anything redemptive.

<snip>

What happens if corporations, in order to achieve their agenda of profit and dominance, take on the cultural agenda of the far right in order to please Republicans? Until now only Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire has openly taken sides in our culture wars. If this becomes standard corporate practice ("the price of doing business," as they say) our atmosphere could resemble Germany's in the early 1930s, when, one by one, the major cultural venues gradually kowtowed to the Nazi Party, allowing no other visions to reach mass circulation. Then think of the far right's cultural agenda: a fundamentalist Christian state; the rights of women, gays, and nonwhites severely curtailed and controlled; creationism taught as fact in public schools; history, science, and art subject to ideological whims. What if that also becomes the corporate agenda? Most people in America, after all, work directly or indirectly for corporations that demand economic obedience; what happens if they begin also to demand right-wing ideological purity, in order to curry favor with the dominant party?

Nothing less is at stake when, for the first time, a political party is allowed to dictate what may be broadcast on the public airwaves.

<snip>

"You won't believe what happens next, even while it's happening.">

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -
By Michael Ventura
Austin Chronicle
Nov. 14, 2003


http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-11-14/cols_ventura.html

[Minstrel Boy]

1. that was excellent, thanks

It's just a mini-series, but its cancellation was an ominous benchmark.

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. Baldwin was right. And the corporations actually have taken sides

When is the last time you heard of a corporate lobby or PAC refusing to give or cause to be given another red cent to a politician's pocket unless he or she introduced or campaigned or voted for a bill that guaranteed a Living Wage, a Right to Housing?

Which corporations have demanded that health care cease to be treated as just another commercial product?

There is no question that feudalism is the most profitable for the lord.

In the US today, the corporations are the lords, the people are the serfs, and if the serfs do not like their paychecks, there are plenty of serfs at the gate who are even hungrier who will be glad to have them.

[mlawson]

3. How many people actually know what 'rightwing' even means?

Oh, they know that 'liberal' is bad: will take their guns and Bibles away; the media has made sure they THINK they know what "leftwing" means.

But what would the 20% apolitical voters in the center make of the phrase 'right wing agenda'??? Would they have a clue?? Would they care? These are the folks who vote for the candidates they LIKE the best. How many elections have been won by liberals, because the public was frightened of a RIGHT wing extremist???

This is, IMO, our biggest problem: how to educate the masses about what RW even means.

[WyLoochka]

20. LBJ won in a landslide

over Goldwater largely because Goldwater was perceived as being too extreme in his conservative ideology.

Unlike the Democrats, who have run for several decades away from the label "liberal," when once they were proud to call themselves by that name, the Republicans responded to the election debacle by embracing the word "conservative" and dedicated themselves to the over arching goal of moving the country to the right, come hell or high water.

We all have to admit they have achieved their goal. Yet they are STILL in overdrive, relentlessly trying to move all of our institutions, our culture and our shared political life further and further to the right.

And STILL way too many of us deny, apologize and grovel for being liberals. This always perplexes me. I just don't get it.

[sweetheart]

4. germany is very conformist

My wife and i were visiting karl marx's birth city a year or two back and we rode a city bus. When it unexpectedly got to our stop, we got out the front of the bus, and several of the german passengers were blabbing away (i don't speak german). My wife told me they were all scolding us for exiting using the front.

German culture had a unique environment that is not the same in the US... The lesson does not travel across the atlantic, except to say bullys exist in all cultures (very much so in britain, despire attempts to conceal that) and by tolerating any bully ever, you tolerate them all.

I don't mean to refute any point you are making, just that there seemed an inference that america and germany have something in common with a bully-totalitarian takeover, and i disagree. Though indeed there is a takeover in a time of weak-democracy, the foundations are quite dissimilar.

[Kellanved]

8. Yes

Germans tend to follow orders - it is not as bad as it used to be, but still... (especially in the "new" states).
The novels/plays about the imperial German society, especially Heinrich Mann's "the Patrioteer", or Zuckmayer's "Captain of Koepenick" are not without relevance today.

One major difference exists however: pre-war Germans weren't too fond of the Weimar Republic; even prominent liberals wanted the Kaiser back - very few people entertain such a notion today. And very few Germans trust (any) the Government - one of the reasons for the lack of all-day schools.


On Edit: Your bus story is interesting; never happened to me - I think they just wanted to criticise the tourists.

[Francesco]

11. National stereotypes: Conformism and 'following orders'

I agree that the Germans are weird. Weird, but in a 'villagy' kind of way (post-'45). As a European I had the same feeling when I went to Florida: it was so scary: everyone was united in slagging off the evil terrorists. And they knew exactly what those terrorists would look like. They would look like someone middle-eastern (like my wife, "but you're OK honey") or at least a non-white foreign type. They were trying to be O so sensitive but the message was clear: "America Rules and Johnny Foreigner is Bad".

I don't know. Every nationality gets stereotyped. I'm Dutch, so I'm supposed to be 'direct', 'stingey' and 'not very bright'. While in fact I'm subtle, generous and extremely intelligent. Good night.

[0rganism]

12. Your trip to Florida illustrates the unfortunate subtext...

namely, that we have made a societal decision to replay excerpts of 1930's Germany in the national theatre.

[Kellanved]

15. stereotypes are a dangerous thing

often wrong and always unfair.

[newyawker99]

23. Hi Francesco!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[sweetheart]

18. as a yank married to a german

i have a special position on the cultural differences... and they are very subtle. Germany has a much more cohesive social fabric than i am accustomed to, and when i visit there, it is both shocking and intimidating that the whole community in those dusseldorf suburbs where the inlaws live... that they are a true community... nothing like i've ever experienced in 4 decades in the US.

The spouse likes the house to be in order, papers neatly piled and all things ordnung... vs... my california... i'm going to the beach. sorta housekeeping. Then my brother in law has been married several times, and i notice a distinct sense of german sexual liberalism that is very un-puritan-american... but that co-exists besides the rigid appearant orderliness of german marriage... and on top of that, after experiencing carnival, i could never say germans were a staid culture, rather just binary, either rigid, or expressive.

I love berlin. Last time, we stayed in the aldon? which is new right behind the brandenburg gate i what used to be a wasteland between walls. It was like sleeping on ground zero of the cold war and feeling its healing. I walked around downstairs the next morning at a morning coffee where the bundesrat was holding a conference and the vibe of the bundesrat was really beautiful. It felt like a totally healthy democracy to me... whatever the history, stereotypes fail... and certainly in marriage we've cut through those illusions.

Yet on my closer relationship to germany, i can't but notice how it really is a different culture, and thought stereotypes don't capture it, something about its oldness, and its great formality "herr etc" has me seeing how it once could have been horribly perverted by bad government. That said, american culture and its intensive social bully nature (as america is the most bully culture i've ever seen on the planet)... is a very dangerous and explosive thing indeed... and my wife just says "you're just being american" when i get in a huff and won't communicate and be social... and she's right.

[Kellanved]

19. OMG

German Carnival is the ultimate torture . One of the reasons I feel at home in the protestant north as a catholic.
Otherwise: I always found the American society similiar to the German; not identical, but similiar. Far more compatible than many others. The sexual part is pretty obvious though: top-less bathing is no problem; breasts are OK even in daytime TV and gay civil-unions are reality.

:hi:

[catzies]

5. Mighty fine read...thanks for the link....used to read Mr. Ventura in

the LA Weekly.

This is an important column IMO.

"CBS Chairman Les Moonves made the decision to pull The Reagans. Moonves is in charge not only of the network's entertainment division, but of CBS News, CBS Sports, UPN, King World syndications (which distributes Oprah), and the 39 TV stations owned by Viacom (CBS's parent company). That seems a lot of power. Yet Moonves couldn't say No to the Republican Party. That is an enormous political and cultural fact. (emphasis mine)

:wow:

[Hieronymus]

6. Cheers

It's time to wake up, folks, and understand what's happening to our country.:toast:

[yella_dawg]

7. I think this article may be putting the cart before the horse

so to speak, and with even more dire implications for the US. The article assumes the party lead culture down the road. But who put up the money to build the party? The real culprits, and they're never mentioned in history, are the financial sources behind Hitler. Those financial entities are still around, and some of them were and are American. They, and similar more recent fortunes, are powerful forces behind our government. It's not the corporates falling into line. It's the corporates finally flexing their muscle in the government.

EDIT: To clarify the point.

[Karenina]

9. BINGO!

.

[TexasMexican]

10. The cost of doing business...

I remember hearing the stories of how CNN and other media turned a blind eye to the bad things going on in numerous countries so that they could continue to get access.

It will be pretty sad when they do the same thing in our own country, but I wouldnt be surprised.

[salinen]

13. saddening

all these serious threads, and really they are powerful, mean nothing. listen to us. yes, we recognize all we've lost. we get angry. we vow to do something. but it is OVER!!!! it's all gone. our ideals and ideas have been thrown into the dumpster. not only have we lost everything dear to us, it's gonna get much, much worse. this is the beginning of the dark days, not the middle or end. the christian industrial capitalist paranoids beat the fuck outta us. this is their nation now. they will do whatever they desire and we can shut up or be shut up (that happened already). i'm so angry i could explode. almost nobody sees the seriousness of what is about to happen. capitalistic theocracy has taken over democratic america and nobody stopped it. it's all but over folks. doesn't matter if dean or clark or kerry win. REVOLUTION IS THE ONLY ANSWER. think i'm nuts? you just wait and see.

[maggrwaggr]

14. interesting. What's the point of getting access in that case?

If you're a journalist, and you can get access, but the trade-off is that you can't tell the truth .... well, what's the point?

That seems to be exactly what's going on today.

It's like in Hollywood where everybody wants to be in favor with the popular crowd. Washington can't be much different. Everybody wants to be "in" with the powerful folks, so they kiss their ass and do what they're told.

That's not journalism.

Oh right, journalism is dead.

[TexasMexican]

16. News Entertainment

Is what I heard someone call it once.

[Eloriel]

17. Re Baldwin's comment

I think it's a little harsh. Maybe a lot harsh. ANd judgmental.

Here's a superb article, an excerpt from a book, "They Thought They Were Free," which outlines what happened to Germans in Nazi Germany with a lot more clarity and insight. IMO it should be bookmarked by everyone and spread around whenever the mood or need strikes:

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free_nn4.html

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

That's just a taste. It is absolutely a MUST READ article.

Eloriel

[Solomon]

21. All you have to do is look at the tapes of the Nazi parades and speeches.

You can see regular people swept up in the orgy of nationalism. I have a collection of tapes and dvds of these things.

What's really scary, is that I saw exact parallels with Bush's speeches. How he always spoke in front of dressed military, and the gross show of "patriotism." Very eerie.

[salinen]

22. nazis

if hitler were alive today he would be studying how bushco. deceives and intimidates a populace into submission.