Throughout history, the strong have attempted to prey on the weak, and have used all manners of disguises and systems to do so more effectively and especially to camouflage themselves when under suspicion. From Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism:
We have demonstrated that fascism is not a problem of Hitler’s person or of National Socialist party politics. It is a problem of the masses. We have shown how it is possible that pauperized masses give themselves over with such enthusiasm to an arch-reactionary party. In order to arrive at the practical consequences which result from this for sex-political work we must turn our attention to the symbolism which the Fascists use in putting the revolutionary structures of the masses into reactionary fetters. They themselves are not conscious of their technique. In the SA (the military organization of the party), National Socialism brought together largely workers with vague revolutionary but at the same time also reactionary feelings, mostly unemployed workers and adolescents. For this reason, the propaganda was full of contradictions, varying, as it did, from audience to audience. It was consistent and unequivocal only in the management of the mystical feelings of the masses. Talks with National Socialist followers, particularly with members of the SA, showed clearly that the decisive factor in winning over these masses was the revolutionary phraseology of National Socialism. One heard National Socialists deny that Hitler was representing capitalism. One heard SA members warn Hitler not to betray the cause of the “revolution”. One heard other SA people state that Hitler was the German Lenin. Those who shifted to National Socialism from Social Democracy and the liberal parties of the middle were revolutionized masses who previously were unpolitical or politically undecided. Those who shifted from the Communist party were partly revolutionaries who did not comprehend the many contradictory slogans of the [84] Communist party, and partly people who were impressed by the external make-up of the Hitler party, its military character, its parading of strength, etc.
Jeff Sharlet is the author of several books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which explores the inner workings of specific segments of the religious right. Sharlet’s story of “The Family” often begins with the 2009 Republican sex scandals involving politicians John Ensign, Mark Sanford and Chip Pickering, who all have in common a fundamentalist Christian fraternity in Washington, D. C. known as “C Street House.” C Street’s version of Christianity holds that the best way to help the poor is by giving as much power as possible to “godly” strongmen who believe absolutely in laissez-faire economics. And because they are “chosen,” they say, they ought to be given carte blanche to be as corrupt and terrible as they please. [END] Permalink: Jeff Sharlet and “The Family”
In case you missed Heidi Ewing’s and Rachel Grady’s “Jesus Camp” when it was released in 2006, here’s your chance to check it out. The super-creepy preacher featured in this video, Ted Haggard, has since been involved in a child abuse scandal in which he masturbated while sharing a bed with a sixteen year old boy (and subsequently admitted that he was raped by a man at a very young age). It’s about a lot more than “God” or “no God”; what is shown in this video demonstrates a system of powerful behavior conditioning which has been used to spread some very inequitable political ideologies far beyond safe levels. [END] Permalink: Jesus Camp: Evangelical Christian Fundamentalism
“Here’s what populism is not: it is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort is and as most of it is still today — though there is legitimate anger within it in terms of the people who are there. But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. And I guess that’s one big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can’t say, ‘Let’s get rid of government.’ You need to be saying, ‘Let’s take over government.’”
-Jim Hightower (for whom the 9/11 inside job concept is not completely taboo) to Bill Moyers, 30 April 2010 After Bush II, after Bush I and Reagan, after Ford and Nixon, the Republican Party should never be trusted again, no matter how they re-brand themselves, never. That leaves the U. S. with one major political party: the Democrats. Although this is a deeply flawed party which is deserving of contempt and scorn for a variety of reasons, recent history is proof that a Democrat-led America is an America on much better ground economically and socially (unless, perhaps, you are a billionaire, in which case, you are probably not reading this). This is why I am giving a general endorsement to the Democratic Party this election and calling on everyone who can vote to help keep the Republicans out of office. While “third” parties can and should be organized — Vermont, for instance, is home to a very large Progressive Party which occupies several seats in the state legislature — they cannot be organized to win in a matter of weeks. If a candidate does not have a commitment from a significant portion of the electorate going into the election, he has little hope of realizing power as a result of it, and power is the objective when it comes to seeking office. While planning for the long term, we must work with what we have in the short term, and it should be obvious to all that while their priorities must ultimately be changed in many areas, the Democrats are a much easier party to work with than their only major competitor. While voting is simple, a one day activity, organizing for the medium to long term requires a much more sustained involvement. You might be surprised, however, how much you can accomplish at a local, county or even state level with the concerted efforts of even a few dozen individuals. Following are two speeches by Mary Elizabeth Lease from the original populist movement in the “gilded age” of the late 19th century, which, along with the progressive movement of the early 20th century, contributed significantly to the much-needed reforms of the New Deal. May her words be an inspiration to us today as we work to create a better world. Courtesy of History is a Weapon: “Wall Street Owns the Country” (ca. 1890):
This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that’s what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them… We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out… We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
Speech to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1890):
Madame President and Fellow Citizens:- If God were to give me my choice to live in any age of the world that has flown, or in any age of the world yet to be, I would say, O God, let me live here and now, in this day and age of the world’s history. For we are living in a grand and wonderful time-a time when old ideas, traditions and customs have broken loose from their moorings and are hopelessly adrift on the great shoreless, boundless sea of human thought-a time when the gray old world begins to dimly comprehend that there is no difference between the brain of an intelligent woman and the brain of an intelligent man; no difference between the soul-power or brainpower that nerved the arm of Charlotte Corday to deeds of heroic patriotism and the soul-power or brain-power that swayed old John Brown behind his death dealing barricade at Ossawattomie. We are living in an age of thought. The mighty dynamite of thought is upheaving the social and political structure and stirring the hearts of men from centre to circumference. Men, women and children are in commotion, discussing the mighty problems of the day. The agricultural classes, loyal and patriotic, slow to act and slow to think, are to-day thinking for themselves; and their thought has crystallized into action. Organization is the key-note to a mighty movement among the masses which is the protest of the patient burden-bearers of the nation against years of economic and political superstition… Yet, after all our years of toil and privation, dangers and hardships upon the Western frontier, monopoly is taking our homes from us by an infamous system of mortgage foreclosure, the most infamous that has ever disgraced the statutes of a civilized nation. It, takes from us at the rate of five hundred a month the homes that represent the best years of our life, our toil, our hopes, our happiness. How did it happen? The government, at the bid of Wall Street, repudiated its contracts with the people; the circulating medium was contracted in the interest of Shylock from $54 per capita to less than $8 per capita; or, as Senator [Preston] Plumb [of Kansas] tells us, “Our debts were increased, while the means to pay them was decreased;” or as grand Senator [William Morris] Stewart [of Nevada] puts it, “For twenty years the market value of the dollar has gone up and the market value of labor has gone down, till to-day the American laborer, in bitterness and wrath, asks which is the worst-the black slavery that has gone or the white slavery that has come?” Do you wonder the women are joining the Alliance? I wonder if there is a woman in all this broad land who can afford to stay out of the Alliance. Our loyal, white-ribbon women should be heart and hand in this Farmers’ Alliance movement, for the men whom we have sent to represent us are the only men in the councils of this nation who have not been elected on a liquor platform; and I want to say here, with exultant pride, that the five farmer Congressmen and the United States Senator we have sent up from Kansas-the liquor traffic, Wall Street, “nor the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.” It would sound boastful were I to detail to you the active, earnest part the Kansas women took in the recent campaign. A Republican majority of 82,000 was reduced to less than 8,000 when we elected 97 representatives, 5 out of 7 Congressmen, and a United States Senator, for to the women of Kansas belongs the credit of defeating John J. Ingalls; He is feeling badly about it yet, too, for he said to-day that “women and Indians were the only class that would scalp a dead man.” I rejoice that he realises that he is politically dead. I might weary you to tell you in detail how the Alliance women found time from cares of home and children to prepare the tempting, generous viands for the Alliance picnic dinners; where hungry thousands and tens of thousands gathered in the forests and groves to listen to the words of impassioned oratory, ofttimes from woman’s lips, that nerved the men of Kansas to forget their party prejudice and vote for “Mollie and the babies.” And not only did they find their way to the voters’ hearts, through their stomachs, but they sang their way as well. I hold here a book of Alliance songs, composed and set to music by an Alliance woman, Mrs. Florence Olmstead of Butler County, Kan., that did much toward moulding public sentiment. Alliance Glee Clubs composed of women, gave us such stirring melodies as the nation has not heard since the Tippecanoe and Tyler campaign of 1840. And while I am individualizing, let me call your attention to a book written also by an Alliance woman. I wish a copy of it could be placed in the hands of every woman in this land. “The Fate of a Fool” is written by Mrs. Emma G. Curtis of Colorado. This book in the hands of women would teach them to be just and generous toward women, and help them to forgive and condone in each other the sins so sweetly forgiven when committed by men. Let no one for a moment believe that this uprising and federation of the people is but a passing episode in politics. It is a religious as well as a political movement, for we seek to put into practical operation the teachings and precepts of Jesus of Nazareth. We seek to enact justice and equity between man and man. We seek to bring the nation back to the constitutional liberties guaranteed us by our forefathers. The voice that is coming up to day from the mystic chords of the American heart is the same voice that Lincoln heard blending with the guns of Fort Sumter and the Wilderness, and it is breaking into a clarion cry to-day that will be heard around the world. Crowns will fall, thrones will tremble, kingdoms will disappear, the divine right of kings and the divine right of capital will fade away like the mists of the morning when the Angel of Liberty shall kindle the fires of justice in the hearts of men. “Exact justice to all, special privileges to none.” No more millionaires, and no more paupers; no more gold kings, silver kings and oil kings, and no more little waifs of humanity starving for a crust of bread. No more gaunt faced, hollow-eyed girls in the factories, and no more little boys reared in poverty and crime for the penitentiaries and the gallows. But we shall have the golden age of which Isaiah sang and the prophets have so long foretold; when the farmers shall be prosperous and happy, dwelling under their own vine and fig tree; when the laborer shall have that for which he toils; when occupancy and use shall be the only title to land, and every one shall obey the divine injunction, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” When men shall be just and generous, little less than gods, and women shall be just and charitable toward each other, little less than angels; when we shall have not a government of the people by capitalists, but a government of the people, by the people. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.
Author Peter Dale Scott here delivers a speech before the Coalition on Political Assassinations comparing suspicious elements in the JFK assassination and 9/11 attacks. Both Lee Harvey Oswald and most of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, for instance, were identified by the FBI under questionable circumstances within minutes of the crimes being committed. Scott’s long research into what he’s termed “Deep Politics” comes into handy use in describing the nightmare world unleashed by these traumatic events. [END] Permalink: Insights Gained from September 11
BBC reporter Jon Snow’s “Iraq: The Hidden War” focuses on the impossibility of accurate media coverage, or even of much media coverage at all in Iraq’s “Red Zone,” the unsheltered area of extreme violence outside of the heavily fortified U. S. military compound known as the “Green Zone” in Baghdad. The U. S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in a deadly destabilization of the country, where electricity is often available only a few hours per day and the cost of fuel has skyrocketed, where it can be purchased at all. In Iraq, much of the journalism by Westerners must be done from within the Green Zone and consists of the editing of footage shot by hired locals paid to capture what they can where it is safe to get a story. Reporters then attempt to apply what context is available to them to weave a narrative for the viewer. The kidnapping of journalists in Iraq is widespread and cameramen must be extraordinarily careful when in the field. These difficulties have resulted in a war of which the reality, the overwhelming day-to-day violence, has yet to be fully appreciated by the Western nations whose governments have commissioned the fight. [END] Permalink: Iraq: The Hidden War
James Collier, author of Votescam: The Stealing of America (web site archived by the Wayback Machine here) discusses in the above interview from 1996 methods of vote rigging in U. S. elections which have been used since the 1970′s. James and his brother, Kenneth, discovered extensive electoral anomalies and high-level government corruption while doing research for a book they were writing about running for political office without spending money.
The 2000 election saw the installation of George W. Bush as U. S. President after hotly contested election results in Florida. “Unprecedented” details some of the processes by which many eligible Florida voters were wrongly purged from the voter rolls, by which many Florida voters’ ballots were discarded and by which post-election legal processes hampered the various recount initiatives which were undertaken, some automatic and some by request. This was election tampering of a highly visible sort which saw, among other things, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in a massive conflict of interest, serving both as election overseer and as George Bush’s campaign manager.
Similar dynamics arose yet again in 2004, as documented in several features including Free for All and “Uncounted – The New Math of American Elections” and by more decentralized efforts such as Video the Vote. This time, the spotlight was on Ohio, where Secretary of State Ken Blackwell served as the head of George Bush’s reelection campaign. In the above lecture, NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 – 2008, describes a broad range of tactics used to suppress Democratic votes in 2004, including vote machine shortages which created excessively long lines, sometimes with a two or more hour wait time, vote machines recording votes for Kerry as votes for Bush, and up to ten to twenty percent of Democratic voters being told at the door that they were not on the roster and therefore unable to vote. In many of these cases, voters were reduced to casting provisional ballots instead of a traditional ballot, many of which were not included in the final count. Many Americans put in a lot of effort to try to defeat Bush that election in the hope of putting America on at least a marginally less apocalyptic trajectory, holding their noses to vote for “the lesser of two evils” despite their conscience telling them that Kerry was simply, as the saying went, “Bush Lite,” and the Kerry team’s thanks was to roll over silently on November 3rd despite overwhelming evidence of a crooked election. According to the lecture above, John Kerry told Miller at a party that he agreed that there had probably been a misvote but that high-ranking Democrats including Christopher Dodd told him not to pursue the topic. (Incidentally, Miller also notes that “alternative left media” outlets including Mother Jones, The Nation and Salon all went out of their way to write against the possibility of election fraud. A similar situation was encountered by 9/11 skeptics with these same publications.)
A 2008 supplement to Crispin’s UC talk on Democracy Now! is above in which he discusses a legal case involving Republican computer guru Michael Connell, who had worked with both the George W. Bush and John McCain Presidential campaigns. Connell was subpoenaed in December 2008 with regard to the alleged vote fraud in Ohio but, like Iraq war opponent former Senator Paul Wellstone, met an untimely fate in a plane crash after only one deposition.
Here, in an interview with Velvet Revolution, Stephen Spoonamore, a computer security professional who is involved with the Ohio vote fraud case with which Connell had been connected, provides technical details about the situation. In the sense that Democratic Party leadership has not made electoral integrity much of a public issue, this is a non-partisan issue. However, as Spoonamore notes, the active conspirators in the above cases are all closely connected with the Republican Party. [END] Permalink: The Integrity of American Political Elections
Starting with Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and on through George W. Bush, “With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America” describes the influence of the Evangelical Christian movement on American politics and especially on the Republican Party. George W. Bush, here, is shown as the ultimate political puppet, a befuddled alcoholic and son of a CIA director duped into undertaking a Christian transformation, then run for President to woo the Christian right more effectively than his somewhat religiously inept father. “I think the prayers of a lot of people tipped that [2000 U. S. Presidential] election. I really believe that with all my heart. And I believe that five to four vote in the Supreme Court which could have gone the other way, I give God the credit, that he wasn’t finished with us yet.” – Jerry Falwell [END] Permalink: With God on Our Side
While Bush’s Brain may overstate the relative importance of Bush advisor Karl Rove in terms of who was ultimately responsible for the agenda advanced by the Bush II administration, this film makes a strong argument that Rove, the Lee Sarason of the Bush White House, was a or perhaps the critical player in the operational policy machine that enabled the Neocons to grasp and maintain U. S. Presidential power the way that they did. [END] Permalink: Bush’s Brain
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