Reply #31: Emotional responses to language..... [View All]

The word "Nazi" seems to elicit emotional responses and bring up a definition that goes far beyond the comparison most people make when they consider this comparison.
With that in mind, I think it might be useful to consider our circumstances from a more general perspective.
I think that our government has most definitely drifted into the realm of fascism.
Fascism, in the sense of concentrated corporate power is influencing our government in a greater proportion than we are.
It is quite obvious that our foreign policy and planning has been similar to the third-reich.
The domestic manifestations have differed, however.
The Nazis had a militaristic fascism internally.
Ours presents as a sort of theocratic\corporatist fascism with minimal militarism (so far) in the interest of "security."
The corporatist fascism has opened the flood gates of animocity toward an "other" identified by skin color. Hating the "other" serves the purposes of binding people together in the interest of self protection. They will be willing to hate more "others" and go along with more wars.
The specifics may not be the same, but some of the general principles are similar.
Many of the invasions and restictions are justified on "moral grounds."
This is what opens the doors for anyone and everyone as a target.
The American eugenics program sterilized people first based on disability, and secondly on "economic\moral grounds" and third based on race.
Consider our current health care rationing and the political rhetoric that is designed to turn us against each other.
We are in very dangerous territory.

The review quoted below is of a book that is extremely well documented on the American eugenics movement.


"But the tearaway success story was in Germany. Hitler closely followed US eugenic legislation — “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock”. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Hitler modelled his ‘race cleansing’ sterilisation laws on US legislation.

US eugenicists looked at Nazi Germany with both “parental fascination” and “Nordic admiration”. Communication and scientific exchanges flowed across the Atlantic, as did Rockefeller funds to numerous Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes which were scientific fronts for Nazi eugenic and anti-Semitic ideology. Eugenical News, the official voice of the American eugenic movement, praised Hitler for his “ideological salvation of humanity”."

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/greenleft.org.au/index.html