The capitalist cabal doesn't need all the trappings of Nazi Germany because it has replicated Hitler's policies and tactics through different--though identical in essence--means.

    The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation and downfall as the German nation when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

     We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

     So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives! (Just as now, unthinking Americans think Trump is making America great again.)

Milton Mayer's book, They Thought They Were Free, concerns Germans still living after World War II who had been members of the Nazi Party. Mayer came to know them and studied their lives and attitudes.      "As we know Nazism, it was a naked, total tyranny which degraded its adherents and enslaved its opponents and adherents alike; terrorism and terror in daily life, private and public; brute personal and mob injustice at every level of association . . .      "These nine ordinary Germans [who lived in Nazi Germany] knew it otherwise, and they still know it otherwise.       "An autocracy? [they say] Yes, of course . . . But a tyranny, as you Americans use the term? Nonsense."

     How could Germans living under Hitler's National Socialism not have seen what it was? How did their lack of social and personal awareness make them blind to their reality?

  How could Americans now possibly be living under a creeping dictatorship and not know it? And how could we not only not see a police state condition but actually think we're living in complete freedom?

  Because most of us don't WANT to know what's going on. We've lost the ability to think critically about political, economic, and social dangers confronting us.

   We now have, in America, the same kind of mindless lumpen proletariat that "loved" Hitler, brought him to power, and continued to support him even when his policies were killing them. The Republican base "loves" Trump, cheers mindlessly at his Hitler rallies, and supports his fascist policies even as these policies destroy their lives.

  If we have a job--as most people did in Nazi Germany--if the political-economic system seems somewhat stable--as it does in America--then that's all we want to know.

"When [modern man] is completely infantile ... he does not need and does not have an understanding of the outer world. It exists for him merely as gratification or denial." Walter Lippmann (1889-1973)

      To the Germans in Mayer's study, each occasion of Nazi violence was worse than the last, but only a little worse. So they waited for the one shocking event, thinking that they would join with others if or when it happened. But as the violence escalated, no one rose up to condemn the concentration camps and general oppression. No one wanted to act alone, and when a mass uprising failed to occur, the common people just let events take their course. They increasingly lost the ability to understand the horror of Nazism and the will to oppose it.

     Similarly, we don't see the growing fascism in America and the world because we don't want to see it and because it happens somewhat gradually, which makes it almost imperceptible to those who don't think critically. Everything in your society--Nazi Germany or twenty-first century America--seems so ordinary.

The Increasing Loss of Freedom in the United States
      As 1930s Germans and twenty-first century Americans wait, believing things won't get any worse--it's finally too late. The imperceptible changes have totally transformed you and your society into a totalitarian state. Self-deception has infected almost everyone.

      One of the Germans in Mayer's study was only shocked into awareness when he heard his little boy say "Jew swine" and he suddenly realized that his whole society had degenerated into racism, leader-worship, violence, and depravity. By 1939, when Hitler had consolidated his power, most Germans citizens were incapable of recognizing their society's corruption, so few spoke out. Even fewer opposed the totalitarian nightmare.

      By learning from the German Nazi tragedy, we can see--in twenty-first century America--that we could easily wait too long. For example, we must look at the interesting similarity of Hitler's use of the Reichstag Fire to seize dictatorial powers and Bush's use of the September 11 terrorist attack as his excuse to move us to a police state where the cabal can simply "declare" that a foreigner is a terrorist and that person's rights become almost non-existent.

      Without any necessity of presenting evidence, the president can now brand a non-US-citizen--OR A US CITIZEN--a "terrorist" and the suspect is brought before a secret military tribunal where the rules of evidence and prisoner rights are drastically attenuated. Trump can rip children from the arms of immigrants, place the children in cages, and refuse to reunite the parents with their children.

     Hitler was able to brand anyone he considered an enemy and see that that person was summarily executed. And now, the President who stole the 2016 election with assistance from Russian hackers was able to brand as "enemy of the people" any journalist who disagreed with him.

     The fact that ivy league university professors and other supposedly intelligent persons think the President's seizure of such police-state powers is okay, and that throwing immigrant children into cages is fine, and the Republicans condoning of the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, proves that the fascist mentality is rampant in our society. I am updating this essay on the day (November 18, 2021) when a Trump-backed stone-cold killer (Kyle Rittenhouse) is deemed not guilty, when it is undeniable that he committed murder (NOT justified manslaughter).

Are You a War Criminal?

     You could, sometime in the future, be put on trial for FAILING to fight against the crimes against humanity that the cabal and the Trump Big Lie nazis are now perpetrating! You certainly are complicit in the destruction of constitutional freedoms and democratic norms and safe-guards perpetrated by the cabal, Trump, and the fascist Republican Party if you fail to speak out against them.


  In a nation such as America--where citizen rights have now been almost totally destroyed--but the tradition of democracy is still somewhat strong--it's the responsibility of citizens to inform themselves and to struggle against the further destruction of constitutional liberties. If some people are too unintelligent or morally deficient to see the tyrannous acts of the Trump administration, if some people are too cowardly to stand against those acts, it's still your individual responsibility as an American citizen to uphold the principles of democracy on which this nation is founded.

     One of the most effective ways of understanding this is to view the 1961 Academy Award-winning film, "Judgment at Nuremberg," and consider how you could, in the future, be considered as one of three classes of war criminals depicted in the film:

• Nazi villains such as Goering (though not depicted in this movie, the Nuremberg tribunals included Goering's trial and conviction as a war criminal)

• Ordinary criminals such as the German judges who took advantage of the Nazi tyranny to feather their own nests

• German citizens who prided themselves on upholding the nation's principles, such as Emil Janning, former German secretary of justice (portrayed in the movie by Burt Lancaster) and the widow of a convicted German general executed for ordering the murder of American POWs (portrayed by Marlene Dietrich). These kinds of people were shocked when they found that the world held them responsible for what had happened in Nazi Germany.

     Abby Mann's brilliant screenplay "Judgment at Nuremberg" drives home several crucial points that we cannot afford to overlook:

• We're responsible for being aware of what's going on in our society; we can't plead ignorance. In the movie, the defense attorney argued strenuously that all those who supported or tolerated Nazis were guilty, not just those individuals then being tried.

• We must make sure we're aware of what kind of criminal trampling of our constitution and war crimes our government officials may be involving us in.

• American cabal leaders, Britain (open letter to the "Times" by Winston Churchill in 1938 praising the strength of Hitler), the Vatican (corcordat with the Nazis), and others were all complicit in creating the Nazi horror, as the defense attorney in the movie pointed out.

• We cannot legitimately try to excuse ourselves with catch-phrases such as:

  • "My country right or wrong"

  • "I'm only following orders"

  • "We don't make the laws, we merely carry them out"

  • "I'm only agreeing with the ideas of our leaders"

  • "If I'm critical of my country's leaders, I'm a traitor"
    
    

      It's possible that American leaders at any level could at some time in the future be brought before an international war crimes tribunal for those criminal acts. None of the excuses above (the catch-phrases) would be allowed as mitigating circumstances. In the movie, the defense attorney argued in support of mitigation the fact that all German judges during the Nazi regime were forced to swear to the Civil Servant Loyalty Oath of 1934.

     Trump and all members of the current Republican Party are trying to frighten Americans by telling us that we are traitors if we criticize their actions--or those of the capitalist cabal in general. On the contrary, they are traitors to the American practice of democracy in trying to suppress honest citizens' thought and dissent. It's possible the tables may be turned, as in post-World War II Germany: the leaders who forced obedience to criminal acts may be put on trial for crimes against humanity!

"Imagine if you can a world in which truth is one general and something we will call blindness is the opposing general. These two simple factors one must choose between. There are no neutrals. We are frankly for or against and hold our positions by the force of the effort we put forth. The great struggle is not only to conquer our opposing forces, but to reclaim and form them into fighters for the truth." Stewart Edward White

     You are not so much struggling against the cabal and the Trump/Republican Party brand of tyranny as you are fighting for the inalienable democratic principles which once made this nation somewhat free:

• The individual does not receive government and authority from a deity who gives his secular sword to princes and magistrates to rule by his divine right.

• The individual does not have a subordinate place in a divinely inspired hierarchy, in which kings, nobelmen, political leaders, and corporate executives are placed above him as 'your highness.'

• Government is voluntarily established by free individuals through a willful act of contract, individuals rationally consenting to limit their own freedom and to obey civil authority in order to have public protection of their natural rights.

• Government's purpose is to serve the interests of the people, to enable individuals to enjoy peacefully their rights to life, liberty, and property.

Is It Too Late?
     In the United States and the world today, we still can stop this escalating descent into total tyranny. We can learn to face up to the political, economic, and social oppression that is rampant; learn to think critically about what our leaders are doing, and join together to safeguard and re-establish our freedoms. But we must not delay, we cannot simply do nothing or we'll be plunged into the same terror that destroyed Nazi Germany.

     Pastor Niemoller, a German clergyman under the Nazi regime, later confessed that when the Nazis attacked opposing groups such as the Communists, he was a little uneasy. But, he said, after all, he was not a communist, so he did nothing. When the Nazis began to attack the Jews he was even more uneasy, but he still did nothing. Then they attacked the Church, and because he was a clergyman he tried to do something, but it was too late.

     We in the modern world are in exactly the same situation as the German people in the early days of Nazi totalitarianism. Daily, staring us in the face, is the unmistakable evidence of brutality, economic oppression, fear-ridden conformity, pleasure-deadened mindlessness, normalized outrageousness, ignorant know-it-allness, Big Lie insanity, and rising violence and insurgency.

     But people totally blinded by their pursuit of pleasure or engrossed in destroying some enemy, don't see the crises in the modern world.

     The general intellectual incompetence of Americans at present leads directly to a blindness to our current catastrophic situation. Without the learned ability to make decisive distinctions, people cannot discriminate between, for example, "economic downturn" and depression, or between "change of leaders through free elections" and coup d'etat through monied interests buying and selling presidents and congresspersons. Our minds are so undeveloped that we lack the capacity to discriminate between the essentials and the changing, superficial forms.

     "There couldn't be a police state in the U.S.," says Joe American, "because we don't see men in uniforms with swastikas on their armbands goose-stepping down our streets! "

     "We can't be losing our freedoms," says Jane American, because I didn't see anything about it in the New York Times and there was nothing about it on the evening news."

     We like to delude ourselves that the 1930s German citizen was some special case. ³  But Nazism didn't arise because a few maniacs somehow got into power and did something unique to the German people's minds. Those myths have been exploded once and for all by our more recent understanding that those same tactics have been used and are being used to enslave the minds of people in many different societies.

"'Fascism' is only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man's character, a structure that is confined neither to certain races or nations nor to certain parties, but is general and international. . . 'Fascism' is the basic emotional attitude of the suppressed man of our authoritarian machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life." Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

     So our present "enemy" is our own conditioned lack of progressive awareness, our love of ease, our unwillingness to dispel our social and moral delusions, our headlong rush into the mindless attitude that "everything is okay."

     Even though our society faces a truly alarming situation, people find ways to ignore the peril. One way to do this is to assume that such an episode as the 1930s-1940s Nazi terror could not possibly recurr in twenty-first century America. But we have a number of horrible examples of what happens TODAY to a society when its people fail to develop progressive awareness abilities, the most ghastly perhaps being that of the September 11th false flag attacks and, now, Trump's stealing of the 2016 election, the Trump-created January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, and rapidly rising fascism throughout the un-United States.

We Are Responsible
  As Mayer began his study of ordinary Germans who had been former members of the Nazi party, he reports that he "saw the German people, people I had known when I visited Germany as a boy, and for the first time realized that Nazism was a mass movement and not the tyranny of a diabolical few over helpless millions." Similarly, Americans must wake up to the fact that the current Trump fascist kleptocracy has been brought on by the mindlessness and stupidity of a segment of the American population.

  Even though we may not be a part of the mindless "Republican base" that brought Tump to power and continues to approve and support every outrage he and his mindless lackies perpetrate, we are nonetheless responsible for working to rid ourselves of this scourge. First, we must rid ourselves of our delusions and face the reality of what America has become: a fascist, imperialist nation identical in essence to Nazi Germany of 1933.

     Thus we return to the absolute necessity to learn how to think critically. And perhaps now we can begin to see why it is essential to our very existence. Progressive awareness is no longer an intellectual option for the few; it is a necessary tool for discovering what kind of people we have allowed ourselves to become.

     Through self-study and change we must find out just what in us makes it possible for a new, more sophisticated "Nazism" to now be taking control, a more insidious brand of fascism, undetected because the blatant symbols and familiar catchphrases are indiscernible to our undeveloped minds.

     We either learn to use progressive awareness now, or we can passively watch while the new, disguised gas-chambers and death squads are prepared for us.

     We're facing a life-or-death crisis with the cabal's attack on our constitutional rights. Trump, with the help of Putin, stole the 2016 election--and he will certainly try to do the same again in 2024.

     We Americans must immediately wake up to the dangers facing us and begin:

• Regaining our ability to be informed citizens

• Learning from our own history how to bring down a tyrant

• Recognizing the tell-tale signs of increasing tyranny in America: 9/11 Black Flag Attack, Patriot Act, Bailout Economic Terrorism, NDAA, and Trump Fascism
  
  
• Avoid deluding ourselves that this new fascist kleptocracy will somehow magically disappear of its own accord, or that we can somehow "correct" it through voting in a Democratic party regime, or that we can tinker with the current fascist capitalist order and magically overcome its flaws
  
  
• Begin creating cooperative commonwealth communities to replace the fascist state that the capitalist cabal has created

Cooperative Commonwealth Communities Screening and training of community applicants for membership, not indiscriminate acceptance of all applicants Democratic control: policies and actions decided by democratic consensus of all community members Community ownership of the means of production by members Production solely for use, not profit: community-regulated production of goods and services relative to need without the intervention of a buying and selling market mechanism Replacement of capitalism by a commonwealth polity one community at a time, not nationally as a whole

  The only way to counter humankind's rapid loss of the ability to understand reality and the resultant fascist "slavery" that we're suffering under, is through developing small cooperative commonwealth communities in which human evolutionary development can be achieved in all areas of life. Persons in these communities can then make available the framework for a New Culture--the one viable answer to the present political-economic-social chaos that faces us. Humankind's spiritual--and physical--evolution has been guided by seers such as Hermes, Plato, Jesus, Rumi, Francis of Assissi, and Shakespeare, and continues to be inspired and directed by contemporary Perennialist teachers.

"Say to yourselves: the little group of us here have waked up a little sooner than the rest of them, can see the danger a little clearer, are passionately convinced of the thing to be done. Then we're the ones to do it. It's only the conviction that we are the ones to do it that is going to accomplish it." Betty White and Stewart Edward White, With Folded Wings

An early version of this essay was first presented in 1997.

Notes:

¹ While Cambridge Analytica has folded, due to the total indescretion of its executives on tape, the social media manipulation, micro-targeting, and push-polling techniques have continued with firms that have stepped in to replace Cambridge Analytica. These companies include Emerdata of London, which now occupies the same building out of which Cambridge Analytica once operated; Data Propria of San Antonio, Texas; and Awareness Analytics Partners (A2P) of Alexandria, Virginia.

² Spiessbiirger, in German, means, very roughly, "little men gone wild"

³ Molly Harrower (1976). "Were Hitler's Henchman Mad?", Psychology Today, July, pp. 76-80. Also see the review by Richard L. Rubenstein in the same issue of Psychology Today of the book The Nuremberg Mind.


Updates:

• 8/9/2019: Trump is deliberately copying Hitler's fascist tactics of oppression
  
  
• 3/7/2012: Police State America
  
  
• 5/28/2011: "America's" Fascist Paradigm & the Myth of Democracy
  
  
• 3/31/2008: When A Great Power Goes Mad