Today's history lesson: How the Brownshirts used street violence as martyrdom propaganda
By David Neiwert Saturday Aug 08, 2009 4:00pm
[Script reads: "We Are Creating the New Germany! Remember the victims -- Vote the National Socialist List". Larger image here.]
Following up on yesterday's correction of Rush Limbaugh's historical revisionism, noting that both Blackshirts and Brownshirts made their political bones by beating up on union organizers and socialists ...
From State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, by Steven Luckert and Susan Bachrach, pp. 48-50:
In the final years of the Weimar Republic, Germany was mired in a grave political and economic crisis that left the society verging on civil war. Street violence by paramilitary organizations on the Left and the Right increased sharply. In the final ten days of the July 1932 parliamentary elections, Prussian authorities reported three hundred acts of politically motivated violence that left twenty-four people dead and almost three hundred injured. In the Nazi campaigns, propaganda and terror were closely linked. In Berlin, Nazi Party leader Joseph Goebbels intentionally provoked Communist and Social Democratic actions by marching SA [Brownshirt] storm troopers into working-class neighborhoods where those parties had strongholds. Then he invoked the heroism of the Nazi "martyrs" who were injured or killed in these battles to garner greater public attention. Nazi newspapers, photographs, films, and later paintings dramatized the exploits of these fighters. The "Horst Wessel Song," bearing the name of the twenty-three-year-old storm trooper and protege of Goebbels who was killed in 1930, became the Nazi hymn. The well-publicized image of the SA-man with a bandaged head, a stirring reminder of his combat against the "Marxists" (along with other portrayals of muscular, oversized storm troopers), became standard in party propaganda. In the first eight months of 1932, the Nazis claimed that seventy "martyrs" had fallen in battle against the enemy. Such heroic depictions -- set against the grim realities of chronic unemployment and underemployment for young people during the Weimar period -- no doubt helped increase membership in the SA units, which expanded in Berlin from 450 men in 1926 to some 32,000 by January 1933.
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The Horst Wessel Song comes to mind!
because now I can't get it out of my head. :(
busch und cheney ruined everything.
Man what a vicious bunch of weasels these Republicanz are huh?
I bet nobody ever thought in their wildest dreams... no wait, some of us knew a long time ago.
Notice that Horst Wessel is the son of a Lutheran Pastor?
The church etches the brains of the youth to follow the leader.
Just like the freaks in America do.
I just came back from the grocery store for some items I forgot earlier.
Can you believe they already have Halloween candy out?
but do they have those molasses rip-your-fillings-out kisses? Those I would buy early.
Now, can you believe that Sarah Palin this week announced that Obama was setting-up a panel to determine whether her Down's Syndrome child, Trig, should be terminated as unworthy to live? Enjoy your candy. Bet it's really fresh...
defines a whole new level of stupid.
Prove it.
Is she expressing her desires toward the baby? Apparently, she had old eggs and resents the fact that people can now figure that out. I would like to point out to her that if God sent her a special needs child, she should at least stay home and take care of him. How old is that hag, anyway? Poor baby. He deserves better than her.
Re: The candy. it could be last year's.
I'm beginning to wonder about that woman's reason for having that kid. She's way too eager to trot him out and wave him like a flag at any excuse. Smells of Octomom-style opportunism if you ask me.
Well, skanky is as skanky does. Do they have Child Protective Services in Alaska, I wonder?
Yes, but kids have to pay for it out of their own pocket...
Palin had him for political purposes. That's it. Prove to the anti-choicers she was a true believer. She doesn't even hold him correctly.
When have you ever seen her hold Trig? One of the older children is always holding him every time I have seen him.
Expect Christmas decorations by Labor Day. I am not kidding. That's when I first noticed them last year.
on the way to the Airport today also at the railroad terminal.
For heating our homes
Or for filling republican stockings?
for making energy and/or steel.
Just trying to beat the Christmas rush.
They don't wear brown shirts.
Earth shoes, bell-bottoms. Patchouli oil.
I can't quite sort out how to "come back" at accusations from people acting like brownshirts that the other side (Obama, dems) are acting like brownshirts. I don't get it.
I'm really fed up with the stupidity of people who don't even know their medicare is run by the govt. geesh.
Blackshirts.
This is what worries me about the plans being reported for SEIU and other unions to come out and confront the Tea Baggers at Town Hall meetings. There will be violence and, knowing the sympathies of the MSM, it will be the unions which get the blame.
http://teapartypatriots.org/
that we have been breaking Godwin's Law a lot lately, but considering that the wingnuts have already abandoned it, we may as well join the party.
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.
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but not the one above....
I'm going to say that either Godwin's law no longer applies, that it applies only up to the point that those accused really are guilty of naziesque thinking and behavior or that maybe even Godwin was wrong.
has always been a joke. If an analogy fits, it should be made. The Hitler analogy has always been apropos with these people. The Nazis arose slowly, after all, not full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus.
Instead of asking for Hephaestus's help with his splitting headache, He should've asked for an Exederin.
I have been waiting for liberal/left-wing bloggers to wake up and call this so-called "town hall protest" for what it is. You can research it for yourself---these people are operating out of the 1930-32 Nazi playbook. Everyone in America needs to be aware of this!
yet. Neither were the Germans until it was to late.
Yeahp . Any one who has read about or studied how Hitler came to power would recognize immediately that the tactics of Rove and the hard right are in fact right out of the Hitler / Goebbels play book , was obvious during the Bush / Gore election when the Repugs brought their thugs out to the polling places in Florida and then over the eight years of Bush /Cheney / Rove and all that went on , blatantly obvious . The scary part is that the American people , enough of them , absolutely ignorant , dumb as a box of rocks and totally naive are such easy prey . With the MSM ,Fox in particular , journalism and reporting being the pathetic joke that it is and this population of so many ignorant simpletons and bad apples we are in trouble , big trouble . The left does next to nothing to counter them , we just complain to each other on our blogs and the Dem party ? Just as nutless and split as ever . So frustrating to watch it happen , helplessly watching my country self destruct .I'm through venting for the night , thanks .
Enababling Act ( Patriot Act Part I)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_...
The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) was passed by Germany's Reichstag and signed by President Paul von Hindenburg on March 23, 1933. It was the second major step, after the Reichstag Fire Decree, through which Chancellor Adolf Hitler legally obtained plenary powers and became Führer. The Act granted the Cabinet the authority to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag for four years.
Göring's commentary
William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich details how at Nuremberg, General Franz Halder stated in an affidavit that Hermann Göring had joked about setting the fire:
On the occasion of a lunch on the Führer's birthday in 1942, the people around the Führer turned the conversation to the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears how Göring broke into the conversation and shouted: 'The only one who really knows about the Reichstag building is I, for I set fire to it.' And saying this he slapped his thigh.[16]
The Communist were accused of setting on fire the German Congress
Sounds familiar?
By the way patriot act has not been reversed..yet
The Italian Black Shirts were in business years before the German Brown Shirts. They were the first fascists. Their target of preference: union meetings.
Back to health care today and a little MODERN HISTORY LESSON for the wingnuts:
For those who currently have insurance, 49% are covered by Medicare and Medicaid – both government sponsored programs. If you add to that figure the number of persons covered by the Federal Employees Health Program, The Veterans Administration, and Department of Defense (Tricare), the number of persons with insurance covered by one or another government sponsored program moves over 50%. While there are certainly problems within each of these programs that need to be addressed, there is no grass roots movement to do away with any of these programs. A public option for the uninsured or those who elect to join the public option – would simply add to the already large group of satisfied consumers covered by one or another government run or government sponsored group.
Gee, you think some rich liberals would make a commercial about this and get it aired?
It is disgusting how repukes can bamboozle people into believing B.S. (even after they financially rape them). Yet liberals have a hard time getting any traction with the truth, which is in their best interest and has actual historic evidence to support it.
Man, something is messed up here folks.
If things keep gong the way they are, there's not going to be a happy ending to the short-term story.
Beck, etc, and all the stealth players be charged with inciting riots and violence?
Lenny Bruce was arrested for saying the F world on a comedy stage. Obviously times have changed since then.
I would love that, but it might turn them into martyrs. Scott Roeder has already been canonized by the wingnuts. Think about it: Beck the martyr, Rush the martyr. Excuse me, I have to hurl.
Haggis?
: )
I've done that, along with the hay toss and the stone throw.
to the long term story either. This country has been flirting with this stuff for nearly a hundred years now. We're due for a blow-up, I'd say. I just hope the country will survive.
…calling other people Brown Shirts is the ultimate form of projection. It’s using the ‘so am I, but what are you?’ frame of logic. They’re favorite.
"I know you are, but what am I?" is their standard defense. That's their biggest problem, they're overgrown children, resorting to childish tactics, dirty tricks, hypocrisy, lies - all the stuff little kids do because they know nobody will spank them for it. And they won't stop 'til they're hauled out back to the woodshed for a good long session with a sharp birch rod.
Only trouble is, there are no adults around to administer the whipping, deserved as it might be.
I'll make the sacrifice.
might actually enjoy it.
I'll make them listen to Bill Moyers, Rachel Maddow, Olberman, and Politically Incorrect while I whip them.
I have a South African whip called, I think, called jambok.
It's like a rubber hose with a handle.
.
work, too.
Like Lyndie England.
If it's at all reasonable to be talking about what's happening at these town halls in the same breath as the Horst Wessel Lied, then I think it's long past time that we get rid of the laws passed in the panicked crisis atmosphere following 9/11 that allow the president to jail anyone without habeas simply by declaring them enemy combatants.
And, no, it isn't sufficient to let the courts declare these laws unconstitutional for us. We were lucky that Dubya lacked the work ethic and imagination of der Fuehrer. Another president who possessed those attributes, along with Dubya's fanaticism, would go about using these laws to their hilt, declaring any judges who threatened to block his actions to be enemy combatants as well and sending them to the gulag along with the folks they foolishly try to shield.
Dick and the Mafia Gang learned from Goring (check Anabling Act comment above)
You are corect all those laws including spying on Americans are still alive.
They did not expect to lose the last ellections since they had Mickel Connel in charge.
But the Patriot Act Gives to much power in hands of the executive branch.
Good post as always David, ty.
History lesson ........ in america ......... wow now there is a novel concept.
The more the people of the US knew about their own history and what the US really gets up to around the world the better.
Might get to hang some real war criminals then, opposed to just having to tolerate them.
you missed the memo , this country now looks forward ! , where have you been ? .
Those Who Forget (or are wilfully ignorant) History Are Doomed to Repeat It.
The US cannot look forward until it has the ability to, which at the moment with the insane levels of selfishness and ignorance, it can't.
It makes me think of how Christians play up the "early martyrs" propaganda. Is it in the nature of bullies to have fantasies that they're persecuted?
But in Wiemar Germany, the inflaming fear and hatred wasn't solely for the purpose of TV ratings.
Who says it is now? These people would like to take over the USA, not just get bigger ratings on TV
This post is an excellent and hauntingly parallel example of how the right-wing echo chamber uses methods from Goebbels' playbook to attack moderates and progressives. I wish I had nickel for every time Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Rielly, Beck or Savage trotted out the latest coordinated talking points laced with race-baiting, homophobic, sexist or other similar garbage, and then followed up the next day by labeling the civilized world's reaction to it as race-baiting, homophobic, sexist, etc.
I only hope that Eric Holder appreciates what is happening and has mobilized the FBI to deal with this threat.
Did you notice that with all of the screaming and hollering at these town hall meetings that no discussion about different health care concepts occurs?p>
Or any facts of reality ......... or how well it works in other countries.
The people are ready to believe the Big Lie. The bigger the lie the easier for them to delude themselves into thinking it's true. The main problem I see has to do with temperament and personality. The wingnut is the type to believe the ends justify the means and to win at all costs even if it means cheating. The left unfortunately, thinks that ideas have truths and that in a rational debate these truths will become evident therefore swaying the opinion of those that oppose the idea initially. Liberals are at a disadvantage without rule of law. Liberals are less likely to resort to violence and intimidation, less likely to hold the right accountable, see Holder and President Bush, Look at the right, they went after Clinton and impeached him for lying about a blowjob under oath, all the while claiming rule of law, rule of law. Look at the liberals, Bush, ignored warnings about 9/11 committing negligence, illegally spied on Americans, suspended Habeus corpus, LIED us into war, had shady dealings with big energy, see Enron. All the Democrats say is, ohh we don't want o cause waves, lets let the past be in the past, we don't actually want to hold anyone accountable.
Reverse the teams and think what happens. Al Gore ignores 9/11 warnings, Gore tortures, Gore steals 2004 elections, Gore suspends HC, Gore illegally wiretaps, Gore uses the AG to prosecute people based on their political affiliations, Gore outs a CIA operative etc. What do you think would have happened? I bet Gore would be in prison , his henchmen would be in prison, CIA operatives would be in prison, the list goes on. Liberals grow a F****** spine, ask your self what would a conservative do? Then do it! The truth does matter, the law does matter, prove to us that we are not the lamb to be slaughtered by the proactive and aggressive right. Should we lie down meekly and submit ourselves to their will every time we want to do something? Like health care, we won the election, we won the house and senate, the people want change and look who controls the conversation? The left the majoruity? NO, it is controlled by very active, very convinced mminority, who will sabotage health care and anything else if we keep pretending they care about our ideas.
Bi-partisan means today thet the Left goes to the right, it's been that way for 30 years, when do we get bi-particanship where the right moves to the left? Why do the left start in the center and negotiate from there? Start at the Left and move center, because starting in the center only leads right. I'm so fucking disgusted with our politicians, the media and the people of this country that wouldn't know a good thing if it bit them in the ass.
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