In Chris Hedges’ column "How We Fight Fascism", his description of Clara Zetkin’s realization of the threat of rising fascism in Germany in 1923 offered a direction to my confoundedness by the actions of the Democratic Party elite and their media mouthpieces during the 2016 presidential primaries. I was astounded by their literal rants against anyone not supporting Hillary Clinton, their thuggish commands to get in line and their red faced, drooling threats of what would happen if anyone else became the democratic nominee. Unfortunately, my astonishment was nothing compared to my disbelief and outright fear of the effectiveness of the neo-Maccarthy witch hunts they launched in reaction to her defeat.
Around the table at Christmas dinner, all eleven other liberal thinkers aged thirty to seventy believed that Hillary Clinton lost the election because of Russian interference. I suddenly realized that the group I thought had the most potential to rise up against the deliberate fracturing of American society and discourse by the one percent, the educated liberal class, had been coerced by the Democratic Party into believing that the election of a deranged paychopath was not an expression of the middle and working class’ hatred of the ruling elite but rather a result of Russian manipulation of social media.
“The bourgeoisie needs to use aggressive force to defend itself against the working class,” Zetkin wrote. “The old and seemingly ‘apolitical’ repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state no longer provides it with sufficient security. The bourgeoisie moves to create special bands of class struggle against the proletariat. Fascism provides such troops.”
It’s one thing to realize that there is basically no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, that the Republican party takes an ax to our democracy to which the Democratic party holds up a symbolic sword in defense, all the while leaving our dismembered social reforms, policies and accomplishments scattered at their feet. It’s quite another to realize that in its timidity, the Democratic party has become a passive accomplice.
One thing is for certain, just as in the past rise of fascism or any other form of tyranny, the first institution that has found its head on the block is the dissenting voices of what’s left of our free press. The Democrat's hauling up and grilling of the leaders of Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. has resulted in their stifling of virtually the last expression of the first amendment, online independent reporting.
In her last speech before the Nazi controlled German parliament, Zetkin warned, “Our most urgent task today is to form a united front of all working people in order to turn back fascism. All the differences that divide and shackle us—whether founded on political, trade-union, religious, or ideological outlooks—must give way before this imperious historical necessity. All those who are menaced, all those who suffer, all those who desire freedom must join the united front against fascism and its representatives in government.”
In its rants and threats, in its blatant neo-Mccarthyism, the very symbol of the middle and working class, the expression of free speech, the common man’s representative against repression for the last eight decades, the Democratic Party has graduated from a passive accomplice of divisive propaganda and tyrannical group think to an active participant in America’s path toward fascism.
And they are succeeding far more than I could have imagined. I was at first (still) surprised then disgusted at their media’s mouthpieces screaming in outrage at “Russia’s attack on our democracy” and the endless repetition of every detail of the Trump White House/FBI/Russia dog and pony show. I didn’t really expect the corporate media to take advantage of this opportunity to reveal the endless crimes we ourselves have committed against foreign governments, their elections and their elected officials from the Trail of Tears, the theft of half of Mexico, the conquest and absorption of the independent nation of Hawaii and the violent subjugation of the Philippine’s struggle for independence in the 19th century, to the countless coups, assassinations and invasions of the 20th century. I certainly didn’t expect a discussion of the death of the last gasps of our democracy so evidenced in the Democratic National Commitee's crushing of the Bernie Sanders campaign. I did hope and have to some extent seen this in the alternate online news outlets and thought it might be an opportunity for me to use my knowledge to discuss our sad history with friends and acquaintances as well as perhaps write about it or even find an outlet for my novels but I had no idea how wrong I was, how successful this red baiting would be for the majority of the educated liberal citizens, friends included. The fact that Russia is a nuclear power and the Doomsday Clock is set two minutes to midnight has not occurred to them. The fact that we have meddled in Russian elections to the extent of getting Boris Yeltsin elected when he didn’t stand a chance hasn’t either, to say nothing of Reagan’s promises to Gorbachov that NATO would never be extended. What hadn’t occurred to me was the anger and vitriol just under the surface that waited for me or anyone else who might not tow the party line, let alone offer information to the contrary.
There has always been a smug conceit among liberals that conservatives blindly swallow the corporate propaganda that is repeated endlessly in the conservative media but liberals possess their own minds based on rational thinking and a general knowledge of the politics, history and the world. The endless repetitive rants of Fox News have paid off with conservative voters. Goebbels got it right: if you repeat a lie over and over for long enough, it will eventually become truth. Now that the corporate power that runs this country has dropped the last pretense of democracy and taken over the Democratic Party completely, the Goebbels formula has magically appeared on CNN, MSNBC, et all and it is working as effectively on its liberal viewers as Fox News has on theirs. I am in awe at the banality, the simple mindedness of it as it repeats itself over and over in ever finer details day after day after week after month. One would think that, besides being outrageous, blatant, hyper venting lies, it is so breathtakingly boring, that if people didn’t come to their senses after being lectured to like children, they would at least eventually be bored silly. But they are not. They are being whipped up into a frenzy, a very familiar frenzy to any one with any knowledge of history.
Last week, MSNBC had two "experts" compare the Russian meddling in our elections to Pearl Harbor and 911. That should scare the shit out of anyone. That and the fact that Rachael Maddow makes seven million dollars a year.
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