The Tea Party loves to claim that Obama and a cabal of “socialists” are bringing us to the brink of a totalitarian state. Fox News commentator Glen Beck incongruously adds his own conspiracy theories, in which he obsessively tries to link liberal Democrats with the Third Reich. But for anyone who has actually studied history, Fox News and Glen Beck have more in common with German Fascism than the liberalism they attack on a daily basis.

The Weimar Republic began in 1919 after the collapse of the monarchy. Consisting of a coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Catholic Center Party, and the German Democratic Party, it formed a social democratic government which attempted to provide a safety net for its citizens. That is, until it could no longer pay German war reparations. By 1923 inflation had wiped out the middle class and the Nazi Party, which had formed in 1919, was now a movement of angry, frightened people. In 1925 presidential elections brought back former monarchist and Social Democrat von Hindenburg, who presided over a few years of relative stability.

But the Great Depression of 1929 plunged Germany into massive economic crisis, and by then the Nazi Party had begun to attract serious money from German industrialists. By September 1930, the Social Democrats, who had previously controlled parliament, were down to 37% of the popular vote, and the Nazi Party’s popularity had spiked 700% to become the second most powerful party. In March 1932 the presidential election candidates were von Hindenburg, Hitler, and Thaelmann. In little over a year the Nazi Party had doubled.

Several months later, parliamentary elections led to a Nazi majority, and Leftists were purged. In February of 1933, as we now know, the Nazis torched the Reichstag and blamed it on the Left. Hitler then asked for dictatorial powers, which were granted by both remaining (liberal and conservative) parties. By May of 1933 labor unionists were among the first inmates of newly-built concentration camps. Kristallnacht, which was the beginning of the end for Jews, did not happen for another five years. It had all started with an attack on workers and social democracy.

The obvious question is: how did the Nazis gain such influence so quickly?

The Nazi Party was not established by Hitler, who was only it’s 55^th member. It had been created by hyper-nationalists who believed the Weimar Republic’s social democrats were out of touch with populist sentiments. The early Nazis opposed an “internationalism” they associated with the rise of European social democracy, the League of Nations, and a global economy. They were proponents of “Voelkisch” movements that sought to unify Germans around an idealized (and somewhat artificial) German nationalism established by von Bismarck, which had existed for only thirty years.

Hitler’s platform for the Nazi Party was described in his Twenty Five Points, which included abrogating the treaty of Versailles, imposing punitive measures for foreigners working in Germany, the right to annex territory, the expulsion of foreigners, immigration reform, nationalization of the press, shutting down foreign-language publications, discrimination against Jews, nationalization of trusts, and increasing old-age pensions. Nazism opposed international finance, admired mercantilism, and claimed to hate both capitalism and socialism. Nazis complained that Germans were under attack by Judeo-Bolshevism: Foreigners were out to take over their world, and Jews were the worst of the lot.

The Nazi Party should have, by any reasonable expectations, remained a fringe group of extremists. But Nazism gained great strength among former supporters of the conservative German Democratic Party, particularly among Protestants in Schleswig-Holstein, Pomerania and East Prussia, and particularly among older voters who wanted to return to “traditional German” values. The greatest number of its voters came from the broken middle class, although 40% came from wage laborers.

Despite Nazism’s ideological opposition to capitalism, industrialists supported its anti-union positions. The Nazi Party obtained funding from industrialists like Hugo Stinnes, Fritz Thyssen, Albert Voegler, Adolf Kirdorf, coal mining and steel magnates, a group of Nuremburg industrialists, and international cartels like I.G. Farben, AEG, and Royal Dutch Shell. 1933 records from just one bank show contributions to Hitler from Ford Motors, German General Electric, Telefunken, AEG, I.G. Farben, and the Association of Mining Interests.

Support for Nazism and its principles was not just a German phenomenon. In 1922 Henry Ford printed half a million copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and ran a series for several years in his “Dearborn Independent” titled “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.” In 1937 Thomas Watson of IBM and a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce met with Hitler. Business as usual would continue with der Fuehrer.

Besides censorship and shutting down almost 4000 newspapers by the end of the war, dominating the public discourse meant making sure propaganda was carefully controlled by official sources. The Nazi Party’s official paper, the “Voelkisher Beobachter,” was not the only outlet for Nazi propaganda. “Der Stuermer” was oriented toward the Hitlerjugend. “Das Reich” was established by Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister. “Der Angriff” was the Berlin Nazi daily. But the “Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” was the Fox News of its day and was owned by the Stinnes family, which also directly funded Hitler. This p

aper was among the earliest outlets for Nazi views.

Some of the Nazi party’s tactics will be familiar to today’s Democratic congressmen. The Nazi Party’s “Sturmabteilung” (disruption section) was originally intended for breaking up meetings of its political opponents. Later, this group, which consisted of various militia members, became known as “brownshirts” or “storm troopers” and was used for physical attacks upon its opponents.

So when Fox News propagandist Glen Beck fires up Middle America and the Tea Party with disinformation, I think of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sturmabteilung. When I see legislation like Arizona’s SB1070, I think of the Twenty Five Points.

When I see Muslims vilified on a daily basis, I think of Jews in post-Weimar Germany. When I see Americans slamming the UN and multilateralism while promoting militarism, I think of 1920 German views on the League of Nations and its abrogation of the treaty of Versailles. When I hear about Americans who are tired of “foreigners” building mosques or speaking Spanish in “their” country, I think of the German “Voelkish” movement. When I hear about “Islamofascism” I recall the Nazi phrase “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

And when I think of the old, white, Protestant, frightened, misinformed, angry Tea Party activists longing for a return to traditional American values, I think of the Germans who all too willingly let Hitler destroy their nation.

Charles Osborne’s recent letter (“Bigots in Arizona? Not so fast”) conveniently re-frames a civil liberties debate over a new law in Arizona as an unreasonable attack on sensible, tolerant Arizonans. While the law may be a desperate measure by some residents that state, the peanut gallery is indeed filled with angry white bigots.

There’s no question that there’s an immigration problem in Arizona. But there’s also no question that Americans love their low-wage fish processing workers, their lawn cutters, their farm workers, their meat and poultry workers, janitors, cleaning ladies, and nannies. There never seems to be much interest in cracking down on the demand which fuels the supply of illegal labor – the employers – or in fashioning sensible guest worker programs with citizenship options. And after all, if after five years of making the American Dream a little cleaner, a little more nutritious, a little prettier for American citizens, why shouldn’t those who have contributed to it be able to dream it for themselves?

But the new Arizona law is being questioned – not to ignore that border state’s problems – but because it is simply a bad law which will legitimize racial profiling.

Mr. Osborne takes President Obama to task for pointing out that the new law will indeed lead to families being stopped while enjoying ice cream. But forget the ice cream. Any opportunity – driving with a burnt-out headlight, beating a red light, spitting on the sidewalk, having a noisy party, a nuisance pet, an unkempt yard – can and will be used as an opportunity to check any Latino’s legal status. Furthermore, the new law would make it a virtual necessity for Latino citizens to carry papers all the time to stay out of jail. And let’s give Mr. Obama credit for stating what everyone knows all too well – that “driving Black” may not be a crime but remains a fact. Now to this we can add “driving Brown.”

But Mr. Osborne’s criticisms go a little beyond defense of Arizona citizens. He recalls the glory days when Arizona was a place where citizens who immigrated (in his words) “learned the language, became familiar with our customs.” To me, it sounds like culture war is the real basis of Mr. Osborne’s support for this new Arizona law.

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I was amused by Steven Grossman’s posturing as one of the Tea Partiers. There is a natural affection between people with no ideas and those with poorly conceived ones. They tend to converge in rejecting “Liberal” values of study, reflection, and moderation, along with the recognition of the fact that we’re all stuck together in a construct known as a society. If people like Mr. Grossman had their way, we’d be worshiping at the altar of 80’s style greed like Gordon Gecko or Ayn Rand.

But, ideology aside, Mr. Grossman should be taken to task for some of his bad logic and absent fact.

According to Grossman, Liberal intellectuals have (1) not solved any problems (2) because they contemplate, (3) deliberate, (4) worship complexity – all of which leads to (5) dithering and paralysis. After reading this, I found myself wondering how someone could pack so much nonsense into a single argument.

Let’s take a few examples to see why this is all nonsense. The world economy is fairly complex. Modeling something as mundane as weather requires supercomputers and complex algorithms. Avoiding war requires finesse, deliberation, and compromise. The “dithering” that Mr. Grossman ascribes to a particular Liberal (I assume he meant Neville Chamberlain) in dealing with Hitler was certainly not common to that other Liberal, Franklin Roosevelt, who brought the U.S. into the war. And while we’re on the subject of Roosevelt, he and other Liberals solved a rather big problem called the Great Depression. And, as most people in the financial world (such as another letter in the same issue of the paper) attest, the recent financial bailout was an equally serious situation. Both the Bush and Obama administrations pursued similar solutions to the problem, using the same econometric models and the same Keynesian economic theory. The difference is that Liberals are now attempting to push through changes to protect the economy from questionable banking, insurance, and securities practices. Mr. Grossman may not like it, but that’s hardly “dithering.”

And what the heck is Grossman frothing about when he complains that Liberals are joining conservatives in turning their backs on the Enlightenment or “real” intellectualism? He seems to equate liberalism with New Age mysticism, Marxism, Beatniks and Hippies. Of course, none of these groups (some of which are defunct) ever saw eye-to-eye. But why let facts get in the way of an impassioned argument?

Mr. Grossman does have one thing in common with the Tea Partiers – despite his implied claim to speak for “true intellectuals,” he seems incapable of constructing a reasoned argument based on anything resembling fact.

This was published in the Standard Times on May 6, 2010
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20100506/opinion/5060366

In his piece on radical Islam, Wayne Atkinson argues that Muslims are about to overrun Europe, institute shariah government there, equates Islam with Nazism, calls Muslim immigration a ticking time bomb, writes that Islam contains an “evil element,” and rues the absence of moderate Muslims.

Where to start with all this nonsense?

Writing in this month’s issue of Foreign Policy magazine (“The Islamists are NOT coming“), Charles Kurzman and Ulal Naqvi at the University of North Carolina demonstrate that, with very few exceptions, Muslims seem to prefer democracy over shariah. And when Islamic parties do throw their hats in the political ring, they find themselves liberalized by the electoral process. Gee, it turns out that Muslims are just like us in this regard.

While Atkinson wails about Muslims overrunning Europe, perhaps he forgets that it was the French who colonized North Africa and the British who carved up the Ottoman Empire and invited former subjects to join their Commonwealth. Or that the Germans during the Wirtschaftwunder of the 60’s and 70’s imported huge numbers of Turks to sweep their streets and take out their garbage. Now, like every generation of immigrants, many have become doctors, lawyers, teachers, and members of Parliament. This is in a country where the ruling political party is the CHRISTIAN Democratic Union. Or in England where the official religion is Anglican Christianity. The irony of worrying about religion overrunning Western nations seems wasted on Mr. Atkinson.

Shariah courts in Western countries exist – but they have no legal status. It may surprise some that similar Jewish courts (battei din, “houses of judgment”) have existed for decades if not centuries in the West. And anyone who has watched Judge Judy or Judge Brown on television has seen that many times cases are settled out of mainstream courts when both parties agree. Poor Mr. Atkinson is afraid of … binding arbitration.

And what of the “mysterious failure of moderate Muslims” to speak out against extremism? When one has wax in his ears, he cannot hear. Countless organizations, from CAIR to the ADC, individual congregations, imams, interfaith groups, and individuals have spoken out constantly.

Mr. Atkinson seems to be pushing Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory, ignoring the fact that Muslims have as strong an attachment to democracy and kindness as anyone else. This “clash” is a view that Christian and Jewish fundamentalists love. It’s also pretty self-serving.

Yes, religion is constantly hijacked by extremists. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian extremism all exist. What does its existence say about the faith traditions they hijack? Nothing. Religions are all dialects which express similar human feelings and beliefs. But Mr. Atkinson sees one “true religion” at war with “evil” ones.

Rather than demonizing a religion and falling on simple-minded formulations such as “they hate us for our way of life” it would be more productive to study the politics of terrorist organizations. We might find out, for example, that terrorists tap into widespread resentment of Western nations which prop up kings, dictators, and generalissimos while historically undermining democracies. And uncritical Western support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine does not help either. Take away the itch, and the scratching will go away.

Want to end terrorism? Start looking at the political and historical realities instead of falling back upon ignorant theories regarding other’s religions.

This was published in the Standard Times on February 8, 2010
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20100208/opinion/2080323

Last night I attended what was supposed to be a constituent meeting with Barney Frank at the Dartmouth Council on Aging. Instead, it was like stepping into a Harry Potter novel where the forces of darkness shrieked accusations that national health care would murder grandma, flashed pictures of the President photoshopped to look like Hitler, and proved only that they had no respect for, or intention of conducting, a civil dialog. It further amazed me that the local Republican Party, which orchestrated much of the circus on display last night, was scarcely distinguishable from the Larouchists, Birthers, conspiracy theorists, and the un-medicated in attendance. For all their noise, the Republicans are a party in trouble.

But the fact still remains: Americans actually want national health care and, despite some Blue Dog back-stepping on the public option, Americans like that idea as well.

According to a June survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 53% of Americans strongly support a public option in health care, and another 30% moderately support the idea. And why not? Besides education, many voters feel that their tax money should actually do something for them personally, rather than evaporate in military expenditures and corporate bailouts.

Despite all the fear-mongering, the United States is the only Western nation to have no comprehensive and universal national health care. All of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel – virtually every modern industrial nation we compete with – provides this option for its citizens. The sky has not fallen in any these countries, and many of them are actually doing better than we are economically.

The proposed health plan simply ensures that everyone in the U.S. is covered. Yes, there is never a major change that does not have unintended consequences, and adding primary care for 50 million more Americans will undoubtedly expose weaknesses in our health care infrastructure, require additional physicians and health care workers, necessitate building more walk-in clinics, foster innovations in delivery of services, and stimulate the development of more sophisticated systems for storing medical records. The self-employed could actually develop businesses secure in the knowledge they had a safety net. With a system in place, over time and with more confidence, the burden of health care could shift off employers to the public sphere, making U.S. corporations more competitive with foreign companies who do not have this burden.

I’m afraid that Fox News and CNN got their amusing sound bytes from the mobocracy last night, but a rational consideration of the benefits – and risks – of expanding coverage for all Americans will have to occur off-camera.