When Democracy Failed - 2005 - The Warnings of History

Wednesday, February 23, 2005  

Published on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

When Democracy Failed - 2005
The Warnings of History

by Thom Hartmann

Excerpt:


"...Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, his corruption of religious leaders, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity.

"...It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will..."



http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-22.htm

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History repeats itself...and on and on we go until the end.

and chilling. It makes you wonder what the good german people were going through watching so many people drink the Nazi kool-aid. The parallels are uncanny.

I'd ask for the link but I had it in my history from last night. I've been thinking about it all day.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-22.htm

...and the parallels ARE uncanny.

But as we can see...even on this board...many will choose to ignore it until it creeps up and bites them in the butt. Is it simply a matter of human nature?

"...Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, bust up unions, and create an illusion of prosperity through government debt and continual and ever-expanding war spending.

America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

(Howie Kurtz and his Repug PR Operative wife Shari Annis come to mind first off...but if we started investigating our MSM, I would bet that we would find hundreds across the country...maybe more)
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Sleuths of Spin

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet. Posted February 22, 2005.

By harnessing the investigative power of hundreds of citizen journalists, media activists John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton aim to reinvent journalism

What can reporters do to break through the sound bite/talking points media culture?

Reporters need to understand the business of propaganda and to view the public relations industry and the culture of spin as anathema to journalism and to democracy. Today PR flacks outnumber real working journalists, and many of the flacks are former reporters who know exactly how best to manage, cajole and manipulate the media because they are from the media. J-schools have combined journalism and public relations and told students that it's all the same, it requires the same skills, and there is little fundamental difference. This is like combining accounting and embezzling as a field of study.

Today in the corporate mainstream media reporters are overworked, underpaid and pressured to avoid topics that offend advertisers. Reporters need to dedicate themselves to real journalism and find ways to practice it. Journalism is a sacred trust in a democracy, and if you don't believe that you should probably go into PR.

Your books have generally focused on the way the American people are getting hoodwinked by PR companies that set and then explain the agenda of powerful corporations and politicians. Is there any way to render them less powerful?

Simply stated, PR firms are corporations that help other corporations and government agencies to manage public information, perceptions and policy. Alex Carey, the Australian academic, and others have pointed out that it is precisely in democracies where sophisticated, hidden propaganda is most prevalent, and the news media has become the major disseminator of propaganda, rather than a force for exposing it.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21307/