How do you know when you’re slipping into fascism?

I was never really a WWII nut. Growing up with living history/reenactment groups and then going to college for history, I was surrounded by people obsessed with WWII. There is something about that war and the American civil war that just seem to bring out the armchair generals in older white guys. The one thing, however, that has always fascinated me about the war is fascism and how it took over Germany like a virus takes over the brain.

How did a democratic nation (albeit a very young democracy)  go from that to fascism, secret police, war, and the systematic murder of over six million men, women, and children?

Answer? Slowly.

Hitler was democratically elected to power in Germany. He was able to very gently and carefully nudge the country into fascism by exploiting the fact that the country was going through hard times and by masterful manipulation of base human instincts. Sitting atop a sky scraper or watching the space shuttle launch, you may thing that we’re an advanced species, but we’re still beholden to barbaric instincts. These instincts best come out when we’re gathered in a crowd. The hive mind takes over; we revert back to panicky, superstitious, violent animals.

So how does a people know when fascism is taking over a country? In Germany there was never a big announcement declaring: “Attention! We are all now fascist!” No, it happened gradually and before they knew it they were murdering people in gas chambers. Nazi Germany is the perfect embodiment of the boiling frog metaphor. In case you haven’t heard of it, the metaphor is thus: If you throw a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump out; yet if you place the frog in normal water and slowly continue to raise the temperature, the frog will be cooked.

Moral of the story: people won’t be aware of slow change until it is too late.

There was a now famous experiment back in 1967 in a California high school. The Third Wave was an experiment where a history teacher successfully turned his entire class of students into fascists. The experiment took on a life of its own and had to be stopped, but it went to show just how vulnerable democratic societies are to the appeal of fascism.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe we have the ability to defend ourselves against a gradual erosion of our rights. The “patriot act” for example strips us of many of our constitutional freedoms in the name of “protection.” It passed after 9/11, when all the panicky animals were desperate to be protected. It has passed again every time since. The problem with trying to stop such an erosion is that when you cry out that things are wrong, people look at you like you’re insane. They’re all on guard for a lion, when the true threat is a mouse. “Relax! We’re not fascist, nothing much has changed!” By the time it does become noticeable, it’s too late for anyone to do anything.

Liberty & Freedom are worthless

Liberty and Freedom are worthless words. The ideas those words used to represent are still invaluable, but we no longer have words to represent those concepts.

In George Orwell’s 1984 there is the important concept of “double speak“. Double speak is the deliberate distortion of language in the hopes of making meaningful discussion impossible. Controlling language, just like controlling history, is an extremely powerful weapon. If you can debase and alter the very language of a debate, you can frame it any way you want. Your opponents will become victims of their own language.

We see this happening in America today. In the past, conservatives successfully altered the connotation  of the word liberal. They turned it into something dirty, a crime, a perversion. What did liberals do? They cowered and switched to progressive. Now the right is hammering away at progressive as hard as they did liberal to try and make that a dirty word too.

Liberty & Freedom have fallen victim to the same war. What do those words mean? I don’t know what they mean now. I see them constantly being used by people who would, if elected, severely restrict who could marry who, what women could do with their bodies, where women and blacks could work and go to school, who could serve in the military, what religion the government would favor, who could enter this country in search of a better life. The people using the words Liberty & Freedom would make a lot of decisions controlling the actions and choices of other people. Is that what Liberty & Freedom mean?

There was a time when those words, like liberal and progressive meant something different. There was a time when Liberty & Freedom meant the lack of control. Liberty and Freedom were words feared by people who sought to coerce and control others. People uttering those words were to be quickly and mercilessly put down by the authorities.

Now those who would take away people’s ability to do what they please use these words to describe their cause. Liberty & Freedom are now worthless words.

Atheists have killed millions!

One of the most often used attacks against Atheists is to try and associate them with the French revolution and Communism. The “argument” goes something like this:

“The French revolution and Communism were run by Atheists and they killed millions of people! Therefore Atheism is evil and morally bankrupt.”

This claim is ridiculous on so many levels, yet this does not stop people from hurling it at Atheists. So, where many leaders of the French revolution Atheists? Yes. Were some leaders of communism Atheist? Yes. So that’s checkmate for the Atheists right? No.

There is a very important point that people repeatable fail to recognize: Killing is one thing, killing in the name of something else is another.

This is very important because although the French revolution and communism killed a lot of people, they did not do it in the name of Atheism. Religious fanatics on the other hand have been killing people for thousands of years in the name of their religion, because of their religion.

This is not to say that the killing done by the French revolution and communism should be dismissed, but that you’re comparing apples to oranges. People who killed other people and happened to be Atheists vs people who killed other people because of their religion. In fact, this is an extremely slippery slope for religious people to go down. If they want to claim that Atheism is bad because some people who happened to be Atheists committed crimes, then they are completely damning themselves for this simple reason:

There has always been more religious people than Atheists. Because of Atheism’s smaller population, inevitably more people have been killed throughout history by those who happened to be religious. This includes all murders done by religious people for religious AND non-religious motives. Comparatively murders committed by Atheists are fewer in number, and murders done by Atheists for religious reasons fewer still.

“Well, ok, so there are more theists than Atheists, I bet proportionally the numbers are still equal.” Wrong. When you average out the data to see the ratio of murders done by Atheists per population of Atheists to murders done by theists per population of theists, Atheists commit fewer crimes than theists.

Sometimes I like to push buttons

There are some republicans that have gotten so crazy lately, I’m tempted to play straight into their paranoia to see if they might actually explode. It’s like poking a wild animal just to make it madder.

I’m tempted to plaster my car with bumper stickers that read “Take their guns and their bibles!”, “Make pot and abortion mandatory for all students”, “Burn all the flags!”, “I support gay sex in public”, “Let terrorists free in our homes”, “I support total gov. control!”

Do I actually support any of those things? of course not, and I don’t know any democrats that do either. The republicans I hear about just seem so convinced that if they’re not running the country, it must be the end times, and that democrats are all evil communists that want to destroy the country in the name of their anti-christ god Obama.

I really feel the republicans’ attacks on Obama have been unfair. Did democrats make pictures of Bush as Hitler? Yes. Was it justified? No. I hate the man, and I think he was the worst president ever, but he didn’t round up 6 million people and send them to death camps.

I see republicans doing a lot of things I saw democrats doing during Bush. While I think it’s wrong when both sides call the other side Hitler and the anti-christ; I feel that republicans are attacking Obama much harder and sooner than dems attacked Bush.

The guy’s only been in office a few months. He’s trying to clean up an economic mess that was building up all throughout the Bush years, and republicans want to blame him for it. Bush and the republicans, on the other hand, went to sleep at the wheel and allowed terrorists to kill 3000 Americans, and then spent the next 8 years trying to milk it harder than George Lucus milks star wars. I’m sorry, but so far Obama is off to a better start than Bush.

Gott Mit Uns!

Earlier this morning I went with some friends to see “Valkyrie”. My extremely religious friend was unable to tag along, but I wonder if he would have given this any thought. When Hitler survives the assassination attempt (again) he goes on the radio and talks about how this is proof that god is protecting and guiding him, and by extension guiding Nazi Germany.

Hitler  used this to reinforce the idea that what Nazi Germany was doing was god’s will. At the time, to the average religious Joe, this might seem plausible. Hitler had survived “miraculously” and Germany had all of Europe under it’s dominion. Clearly some higher power was helping.

I suspect my religious friend would counter by saying “No, god was not helping the Nazi’s, he was helping us. We won in the end after all.” True, we did win in the end, yet 70,000,000 human beings died in the conflict. If it was god’s will for Hitler to be defeated, then why didn’t he just zap him and the Nazi’s out of existence? If he’s all knowing then he knew this was going to happen when he created everything. He knew the names and faces of every man, woman, and child that was systematically slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis. He knew how much grief and destruction the war would cause.

Why not just stop it? Since god had the power to prevent it and didn’t, then that means he wanted it to happen. He wanted us to go through it. What like a test? Murder 70,000,000 people just so we would learn a lesson? (This isn’t the first time he’s reported to have done this. See also Noahs ark) Are you going to sit there and tell me you’re comfortable with a god that lets atrocities like this happen, all for the sake of learning a lesson, whatever it might have been?

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God? –Epicurus