War and Propaganda
Fundamentalists and Fascists
Abstract
© 2003 Freely distribute
Contents Updated: Thursday, 10 April 2003, Friday, 2 October 2009
US Intentions
At the beginning of his presidency Ronald Reagan called on the Americans not to be afraid of “heroic dreams”. It seems that Bush was giving the same message, except that there was no heroism in bombing innocent people unnecessarily. Have Americans nothing more heroic to dream about than bombing people? Did they enjoy the second world War so much that they do not want it to stop? US foreign policy is in a dream world. It has lost contact with the interests of American people and its immense creative achievements and possibilities in favour of murdering people all over the world in the interests of a minority of war addicted gangsters.
The addiction is fed by the political platform of the Republicans—in the intentions, views and ideology of many of the people who took up senior posts in Washington under the gerrymandered President Bush. These people were concerned that they no longer had an excuse for militarism with the defeat of communism, and concluded that they needed a new evil empire. Adopting a famous slogan, “Onward Backwards”, they cried, and became hysterical with their own convictions.
These shallow and hypocritical, so called Christians chose the insane policy of the “crusade” against the Moslem countries, thus turning the clock back an obvious 1,000 years and, in fact, through their underlying Fundamentalist ideology, a real 2,500 years. Their aim is Messianic! Even sober generals have been astonished, and so have been sacked and sidelined. Republican demagogues imitate Hitler in believing they know better than the professional soldiers how to conduct war, and declare they are intent on carrying out their new adventurist plans, “My Way!”. They have a complete disregard for the realities of the contemporary world, because they live in their apocalyptic dream world that might be the end of us all.
The consequences of any policy will correspond to its aims. In practical terms, Bush’s main aim was to ensure the United States would enforce its will on other countries, bribe or blackmail them with impunity, and, if Washington deemed it necessary, to resort to measures of coercion, including extreme ones. Hence the emphasis on the buildup of armed force, greater “usability” of it in foreign policy, continuing to demonstrate military supremacy, and practising rapid deployment. Whipping up xenophobic hysteria became the alpha and omega of US official documents and speeches by American leaders, with the gift to them of 9/11 allowing them to name “global terrorism” as the new communist threat. Some things were “more important than peace” we heard again. They still believe that even a nuclear war was not that bad—it could be survived and won, and had the bonus of being the signal for the Parousia of Christ—George W Bush, no doubt.
This administration, like all of them irrespective of the wishes of the voters in the great society, came to office intent on escalating militarism for their own profit. They are callous men who worship Rambo not any God of love, and do not care an iota about the deaths of anyone, whether the sons of Ishmael whom it is permissible to kill as one of God’s errors, or their own soldiers, whose deaths they try to minimise by giving kill ratios to prove that not many die compared with the people of the evil empire. That’s all right then!
Whether Washington ever admits it or not, the oligarchy in charge of the USA was deeply deluded. If Bush got away with the most blatant lies, he concluded he could get away with anything. It was his God assured destiny—the messianic delusion—showing how dangerous religion can be. Insane policies can never make anyone feel safe, particularly from the mad policy makers themselves.
The sad thing is that the Americans who can see what is going on have been disenfranchised, either by Bush family style gerrymandering or voluntarily, because they saw no hope of ever winning against the cheats. That is why the supposed great democracy is anything but. Most eligible voters did not bother to vote because it was pointless, they concluded. They ought to have registered, en masse, to see what happened in Washington. Obama did this, but the wars go on! Plans for the continued militarisation of the US economy must be resisted by popular outrage.
For long, West Europeans have been thinking, or feeling subconsciously, that the USA and Western Europe are diverging in their intentions. Blair in the UK decided to abandon European friendship in favour of a God cemented alliance across the Atlantic. The French are appalled that European countries can be dragged again into unnecessary wars launched for plainly spurious reasons.
What the Bush administration has done strengthened West Europeans’ suspicion that, for the USA, Western Europe is a poodle that not only should be eternally grateful for past assistance but should eternally repay with eternal unqualified support for US bullying all over the world. Europeans are indeed grateful for the support, though it did not come entirely freely. It was paid for in European assets being taken over by the USA, and indeed, in the USA hedging its bets for two years before deciding which side to back. Europeans now think the USA backed the right side, but it seems pointless if the US oligarchs in Washington adopt the same bully boy tactics as the Nazis.
The Bush US Administration was an ideologised group of people, professing extreme, perhaps the most extreme, right wing views of those current in the West. The right wing elements do not take kindly to Liberals and the Social Democrats and Socialists, whose numbers in Western Europe are considerable. In its own country the grouping which was in power in the USA was locked in a struggle with their many opponents—“anyone who is not for us is agin us”—with little if any regard for the means it used.
Europeans feared that the Bush Administration would not hesitate to interfere in Europe once its new policy of ignoring the international ways of behaving set down in the UN had been dropped forever, and its new policy of regime change was pursued to its logical conclusion. You begin to see why Blair was so opportunist, but the US oligarchs had no respect for their supposed friends abroad. They were there to be used and then dropped like hot bricks when it suited. Saddam was not the first US friend and ally to suffer this fate.
The self-righteous contempt of Bush for law and proper behavioural norms left the relations between the United States and many of its allies strained. The men in Washington proved that talks on arms limitation and the prevention of nuclear war held sporadically for years were all bluff and bluster. With communism defeated, there was no need for the huge excess of weapons of mass destruction that the US had. So, here was the chance to reduce arms unilaterally. To satisfy public opinion, some moribund weapons were destroyed but meanwhile, the US administration drew attention to the WMDs held by one of their puppets in Iraq. Thus arms reduction suddenly becomes an excuse for a military invasion of another and far weaker country in the names of US homeland security and Iraqi salvation! The propagandists thus put it over and large sections of the populace of both the UK and the US fell for the spin. The adventurers should not count on keeping the people gulled while at the same time fanning hatred in the world. Perhaps they allow for ripples but they might get bigger waves than they expected.
The subjective mood is always volatile in circumstances based on falsehood, and it is always hard to guess how events might develop. Had it not been for the US policy of whipping up tension and aggravating relations with the UN and its constituents, had the inspections and dialogue with the Iraqi regime continued—admittedly improved in effectiveness by the threat of war—the conflict need not have happened. It happened because the US intended it to happen, and not for the ostensible reasons. It was, at the least, hypocritical and, at the worst, treacherous to give WMDs to a puppet dictator, then to use them as an excuse for bombing his innocent subjects. Playing with fire is dangerous for those with the matches as well as those with the paper.
For American people, it is time that they began to reckon that US policy is only as safe as it is not allowed to be dangerous. No one with a brain cell still alive in their head could imagine that mass bombing Moslems will make the USA safer from terrorists like Osama Bin Laden. These people are like Bush himself, as a Fundamentalist Christian—they believe in a better place, and feel strongly enough about it, unlike most Fundamentalist Christians, that they do not mind sacrificing their lives on earth to get an assurance of paradise. 9/11 ought to have made that clear.
American people need to be brought back to an understanding of the blatant contradictions in their traditional leadership’s pro war propaganda. It cannot make the world safer for anyone, and in fact makes the US the target for all Moslems in the world—a billion of them. Peace is of common interest to all human beings, even if it is not of Fundamentalist Christians like Bush’s congregation. Nothing suggests that the US will be doing anything after this war other than converting Iraqi oil into US dollars. That will be a measure of success for the greedy Republicans, but for no one else, whether Arabs or Americans.
Patrick Henry was the famous leader of the American revolution who said, “Give me liberty or give me death”. Modern Republicans take it to mean that Americans have the liberty and everyone else can have the death.
Where is it Leading?
The novelist, Laurence W Britt, has analysed seven fascist regimes, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia, revealing fourteen common characteristsics.
- Fervid nationalism and patriotism, and a suspicion of foreigners and their ideas.
Often this is worked up into a hysteria or frenzy in the worst cases. The regime and its propaganda machine devises slogans, inculcates excessive pride in the military, and its achievements, and deplores those who criticise as being unpatriotic or treacherous in failing to preserve the unity of the people.
- Disdain for human rights.
Plainly no regime could denigrate the human rights of everyone, so human rights are eroded piecemeal. People were led, through clever propaganda, to accept the erosion of the human rights of marginal groups on the basis of religion, ethnicity or sexual inclinations. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Eventually, the targeted scapegoats were demonized and the lynch mentality encouraged.
- Unification through the common enemy.
The people’s attention was ditracted to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration by spreading the propaganda of a common enemy whether external of internal, or often a combination, leading to paranoia and fears of conspiracy. Relentless propaganda and disinformation were the methods used, and ordinary people rarely have the critical faculties to see they are being manipulated and fall right into the trap with enthusiasm. Scapegoats have been communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and anarchists, now called “terrorists”. Critics were identified as friends of the state’s enemies and were treated as traitors.
- Militarism.
Ruling elites always identified closely with the military industrial complex. The military was an expression of nationalism, and national resources were disproportionately allocated to the military, even at the risk of leaving domestic needs unfilled. Militarism meant that military adventures were needed to intimidate enemies and rivals overseas, and to give the population victories to cheer.
- Excessive masculinity in culture.
Women were inferior, and had to play a supporting role as mothers and wives. Homosexuals were not proper men. Abortion was strictly forbidden. All of this was achieved through establishment of Christianity in some form or other as the state religion, giving divine purpose to the elite caste.
- Mass media under control.
The mass media were controlled by the governing elite, either directly or through ownership by members of the elite. Latterly, direct control has looked too obvious, and now ownership is the preferred option. The main evidence is that the media do not criticise the government over anything serious. Criticism is a pantomime, and the media were invariably utterly nationalistic whatever the issue. The general public always think their own press is free, but not their enemies’.
- Fears of national security.
A national security apparatus which was inevitably secret, effectively unconstrained, and apparently out of control of the government, because it was controlled by a clique of the ruling caste, was used for oppression. This secret police force defended “national security”, but really snooped for the government, terrorising its critics as unpatriotic or traitorous.
- Establishment of a National Religion.
The rulers of fascist states like to portray themselves as doing God’s work, and so hide behind the local religion—inevitably a form of Christianity. Since the most obscene acts in history have been done under the guise of Christianity, and Christians show no signs of getting any more reasonable, it is always easy for fascists to use a Christian cover. It had the added advantage, that any critic of the ruling clique could be depicted as being anti-religious.
- Corporations freedom.
The elite were also the CEOs of the large corporations, and the purpose of fascist government essentially is to allow corporations utter freedom to make money hoever they like. The legal environment for businesses was usually lax, but the legal environment for their employees was strict.
- Trades Unions suppressed.
Fascist governments are right wing and inevitably opposed to labour unions, which they see as the only internal threat to their power. Unions were therefore crushed, and the leaders of them dispersed, jailed or murdered. This was preceded by strong propaganda painting unions as undemocratic, unpatriotic and treasonable. A framework of laws were introduced by degrees limiting union power until they had none, and on some pretext, the leadership of the unions could be arrested.
- Anti-intellectual and anti-culture.
Intellectuals were too likely to notice what was going on and to object to it, and so intellectual academic freedom were restricted. \Academic critics and intellectuals were denigrated by the propaganda machine and were arrested. Dissenters were silenced, and perhaps murdered, or were gagged or expelled. No art and literature critical of the regime had the right to exist.
- Obsession with law and order.
Justice was draconian, and the number in prison was large. Police were often brutal but had could often do as they liked. Trumped-up charges were used against political opponents of the regime. Xenophobia, and the fear of the absence of law and order was an excuse for extending police power.
- Corruption.
The two arms of the ruling class, that in politics and that in business, favoured each other with bribery, and special deals. Everyone in the clique got richer. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing National resources were often stolen, as was the property of oppressed minorities. The police and national security apparatus kept protests under control, while the media ignored what it did not want to see. Corruption became a way of life.
- Fraudulent elections.
The ruling class controlled the election machiney, and so could wangle the results when necessary. Some voters were intimidated by gangs of bullies, and others were illegally disenfranchised, or their votes were destroyed or illegally disallowed. Since the judiciary were in the hands of the ruling caste, any legal challenges to illegal elctoral practices could not succeed.
