"Odd isn’t it, how our enemies never change. During World War II, they recited Mein Kampf while shoving people into gas chambers. And during most of my professional life, they shot you in the back of the head, quoting Marx and Engles. And now, they misuse the Koran. Same people, different books.”
- Andrew Schmidt, CIA Agent, The Closer, Season Two, Episode Fourteen, Serving the King.
November 28, 2012
By: Linda Case Gibbons
I wonder how long it took before the German people realized Adolph Hitler was a madman?
Did people living near Dachau, site of the "model” concentration camp notice anything out of the ordinary?Did the German people object to the Fuhrer’s edicts that targeted, punished and killed Jews?
Did they object to censorship and punishments imposed by Hitler and Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels?
A mentally ill Dutch citizen set fire to a government building in 1933. Hitler and Goebbels seized upon this odd, chaotic event, describing it as a prelude to armed Communist uprisings and used it to establish a "permanent state of emergency” in Germany.
The decree, the Reichstag Fire Decree, meant that the provisions of the German Constitution which protected freedom of the press, speech and assembly were suspended. It also allowed state and police intervention into private life – mail could be censored, phone conversations listened to, private homes could be searched without warrants or probable cause and citizens arrested without cause.
Armed with this power Hitler was able to effectively suppress opposing viewpoints and information and enforce Nazi power.
While his entire agenda may have been a hidden one, it was never a secret Hitler intended to control the German people to get what he wanted. All you had to do was read the man’s book. He wrote in Mein Kampf:
"The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time so they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind.”
Did the Germans notice? Did they mind? Maybe they didn’t mind at all.
Hitler was known as a persuasive orator, able to whip crowds into a frenzy, inciting the people of Germany to accept what most of the world would consider unacceptable. Why?
Author Gotz Aly in his book Hitler’s People’s State: Robbery, Racial War and National Socialism explains why he believes average Germans supported the Nazis and the Third Reich:
"Hitler was a ‘feel good dictator,’ a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state. To do so, he gave them huge tax breaks and introduced social benefits that even today anchor the society.”
Amazon describes Aly’s book this way: "Historian Gotz Aly addresses one of modern history’s greatest conundrums: How did Hitler win the allegiance of ordinary Germans? By engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale and by channeling the proceeds into generous social programs – Hitler literally ‘bought’ his people’s consent.
"Aly shows that while Jews and citizens of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement and destruction, most Germans enjoyed an improved standard of living and also benefited from the systematic plunder of Jewish possessions. Any qualms were swept away by waves of tax breaks and government handouts.”
Hitler promised to give the people what they wanted. He used the Jews and others as scapegoats, blaming the German peoples’ problems on them. After devastating post-war hyperinflation, some said because of the burdens imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler said he had the solution and he made them feel good, dubbing them the "Master Race.”
He made sure he took care of the people upon whom he depended to keep his power.
And it worked.
But weren’t there signs that this man was a madman and his only goal was to transform Germany into a one-party dictatorship?
There were signs that the poetically named "Arab Spring” in Egypt wouldn’t be going anywhere good any time soon. Although it was heralded and supported by Obama and Hillary Clinton as a triumph for democracy, the Arab Spring has gone off the tracks, heading toward hardline Islamic theocracy similar to Iran.
When Mohammed Morsi was elected president, it was not difficult to see that no good could have come from a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group, heading up the government in Egypt. But our president and secretary of state were surprised when predictably the other shoe fell.
The chairman of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing called for institution of Sharia law and the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader called upon Muslims to liberate Jerusalem by means of jihad
Then on November 22, 2012, Morsi announced that Egypt’s judiciary would have no power to interfere with his decisions, nor to stop his plan to write a new constitution, granting himself sweeping legislative powers.
Did Morsi’s statement that "God’s will and elections made me the captain of this ship,” leave any doubt that this guy had big plans that probably would not be good for the United States?
Do his words seem familiar to those of other "power grabbers” from whom we have heard?
And yet it is all so simple. One has only to look back on history to learn that the goals of Islam have always been dictated by their religious beliefs and that every Muslim’s duty has always been to spread that religion, to overcome and establish caliphates, not to compromise.
Sharia law by sheer definition has always erased Western-type rights. The "infidels” have always been enemies to be defeated, not friends to be embraced and we, friends, are part of that group. It is naïve and dangerous to think otherwise.
But all this seems to have come as a surprise to our secretary of state and president or they seem okay with it or at least let’s say neither have anything to say publicly in opposition to this turn of events.
Both congratulated and praised the evolution of this "democratic” movement, yet both have yet to condemn President Morsi’s assumption of what are clearly dictatorial powers.
Opponents of Morsi’s elevation to dictator in Egypt call him a pharaoh. Our press and this administration call his actions a "power grab,” an innocuous description akin to the way they called the murders at Fort Hood "workplace violence.”
Did all of this really come as a surprise to our elected officials? Not if you read Obama’s "Cairo Speech,” an elaborate statement of where our president’s loyalties really lie. The speech shows our president has more concern for the welfare of Islam than for the concerns of the American people. (See FYI this week for full text of Obama’s Cairo Speech.)
So what is President Obama’s plan? Hard to say because he doesn’t say, but there must be clues. There are always clues.
Looks like redistribution of wealth is in there. Favoring some groups over other groups and dividing America still further, we’re seeing that. Pushing through legislation, at the eleventh hour. We’ve been through that before.
And more "campaigning”, this time flying around the country to encourage his "voters” to put the pressure on legislators to do what he wants, taxing the rich.
Because in the end, he believes he alone knows best what is good for us. He believes he alone can decide what needs to be done without help from other branches of our government and without Constitutional oversight.
Marxism? Erosion of our Constitutional rights? Could be. You decide.
Happily Marxism, Communism and other dictatorial tactics are unknown concepts to Americans who have never had to address them in their lifetimes, so they are a little rusty in their reactions. Unhappily they truly do not smell the danger in the air.
What Obama plans isn’t clear from anything he says because he says what his supporters want to hear. But all you have to do is read the man’s books. It’s all there.
Hold the line, America.