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In 1996, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen published Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. His thesis is that the mass murder of Jews was not done on the quiet by a few Nazi fanatics. Instead, Goldhagen writes, by their complicity, ordinary Germans were willing participants in the slaughter.
In other words, the German people as a people were guilty as well, because they accepted and permitted the slaughter of an ethnic group.
Goldhagen’s thesis has had rough sledding. German newspapers in the Third Reich did not report on the progress of the Holocaust. Few Germans had the means or were willing to take the risks of listening to British broadcasts, which had no reporters on the German scene to investigate extermination rumors. By the time the Holocaust was underway, Hitler and the Gestapo had an iron grip on Germans and the German military. The potent German war machine had fallen victim to Nazi hubris and bitten off more of Russia than it could chew. Opposition to Hitler rose within the military. Generals hatched plots to assassinate Hitler, but every attempt failed.
If generals commanding armies could not overthrow Hitler, it is unclear what ordinary Germans could have done. They could not vote Hitler out, as the Enabling Act had made him a dictator. The Gestapo had put a stop to civil liberties, and there was no free press. And, of course, there was no Internet reporting hard facts that the toady German media covered up.
The situation in America today is quite different from wartime Germany. There is still a free press, even though it is a toady corporate press without heart or courage. There is an opposition party, even though it is a toady opposition. Bush is not a dictator, even though a toady Congress has permitted Bush to accumulate power in the executive branch at the expense of both civil liberties and the separation of powers established by the Constitution. Americans have an abundance of hard facts available to them from a world press via the Internet. Americans have the weapons inspectors’ reports, expert testimony, and now top-secret British government documents leaked to the Sunday Times of London. The documents reveal that the British government regarded Bush’s premeditated invasion of Iraq as illegal and had concerns that Prime Minister Blair and his cabinet ministers could be brought up on war crimes charges for participating in naked aggression. The documents reveal that Bush’s decision to invade Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the reasons he gave the U.S. Congress and the American people and that the "intelligence" he cited to justify his invasion was concocted and fabricated.
If Germans were complicit, as Goldhagen claims, how can Americans avoid the charge of complicity in Bush’s crimes against Iraq when Americans are in possession of such damning facts and have the power of impeachment? Why do Americans tolerate a liar and a war criminal as their president?
Why has Congress voted still more money for an illegal war launched in deception?
Why does the U.S. military permit its human and physical resources to be squandered in a pointless war that has no strategy for victory and no timetable for withdrawal?
How can America be so dominated by a lame-duck president that it loses all sense of itself, its honor, and its purpose?
Americans are complicit in the deaths and maiming of thousands of American soldiers for no valid purpose. Americans are complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children as "collateral damage." No one knows how high the number is because the Bush administration does not regard Iraqi lives as worth counting.
Bush’s war of deception has devastated Iraq. Cities and towns are in ruins. Infrastructure is destroyed. Half the population is unemployed. Pollution and disease are rampant.
By continuing to defend Bush’s lies, right-wing talk radio, Fox "News," the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the N.Y. Post, the N.Y. Sun, and the rest of the neocon establishment are Bush’s willing executioners. The neocon media differs not at all from the Nazi propaganda machine. The neocon media fosters the same hatred and blood lust: kill the Iraqis, invade Syria, bomb the Iranians, devise "usable nukes" to subdue the Muslims, kill the American traitors who criticize our Fuhrer, bend the world to our exceptional will.
How much more shame and complicity will Americans allow Bush and his neocon brownshirts to shovel onto their shoulders before Americans say "enough!" and remove from office the war criminal who has sullied America’s good name?
Forum posts
15 June 2005, 19:26
It is impossible as it was in Germany to be free from complicency because of the use of money. It is the power of the state, it is the enablers of the economy, it is the paycheck of our soldiers, it is the lobbist money of influence, it is the CEO bonuses, it is the insurance money paid for the dead in life insurance, and to many other things to mention.
If you want to create a responsible means of motivating people to ethical behavior it would be good for anyone interested in a real democracy, responsible resource management, and world peace then you need to understand the power of money and its influence on behavior. History is repleat with issues and examples of how profits were used over people and government representatives, judicial and military representatives. Some quotes from our founding fathers are in order:
George Washington had specific toughts about the influence of money:
""Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
"Human rights can only be assured under a virtuos people"
James Madison had thougts about free press to establish as working democracy:
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
And we have the old grand master of democracy ..
Benjamin Franklin identified this as the real reason for the War of Independence:
"The refusal of King George to operate an HONEST colonial MONEY SYSTEM which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the manipulators was probably the prime cause of the Revolution."
"The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the Colonies their money, which created unemployment and dis-satisfaction." -
Here we see the cause of poverty, unemployment and financial insecurity.
There can be no personal liberty without financial freedom.
— - READ THE ABOVE AGAIN UNTIL IT SINKS IN. The GERMANS, The Current AMERICANS, The IRAQis and the ENTIRE WORLD NOW HAS THIS PROBLEM, All the while the CEOs, the senior government officals are All MAKING the LARGEST profits ever had on planet EARTH.
Thomas Jefferson and many others knew this. Jefferson prophesized what would happen to America if we ever lost the inalienable right to issue our own money.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Today we and the entire world operate under an UNJUST, IMMORAL, and COMPLICITE system of money and it’s influence.
WE the entire world that has any money issues from corporation controlled banks in their wallet and feels that the use of
such under the system we now have with IMF, G8, and income and property taxiation are all being USED for the furtherment of the POWER interests, the SOCIAL DOMINATION interests, and the ILLEGAL WARS that this system will always create.
There is tremendous profit in war, that is WHY BANKS FUND and are complicit in all modern wars. Its a FINANCIAL ECONOMIC FACT.
If you are interested in REAL PEACE and REAL HONESTY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE and RESPONSIBLE RESOURCE management and a chance for us to live in peace on a NON POLLUTED SANE SOCIAL SYSTEM on planet earth,
YOu should write about what really makes the WORLD GO ROUND the way it does.
You wnat to make a real change in the worlld issue not Colonial Script as money as Benjimin Franklin did to fight the tyranny
of King GEORGE
For ALL PATRIOTS of JUSTICE and FREEDOM worldwide:
Maybe we should do what old Ben Franklin did and Taste the Freedom of REAL DEMOCRACY
— >> ISSUE the "PEOPLES MONEY of the WORLD" and FOFGET the WORLD BANKS. Only takes a printing press and the support of the people of world. That would put a dent in the DOMINATION of DEATH corporations! They do not own OUR world. It belongs to all of the creatures of the world AND NOT to the BANKS.
peace out. 7b4UandMe
15 June 2005, 20:06
bush, same christians who slaughted american indian and enslaved american black people, notice , how they call it cowboys indians ,when it really was eruopean white christians ,thank you.
20 June 2005, 17:09
Well stated but really these so called christians were they also not motivated by the lust of self determination and the
influence of money. Is not the entire system of money influence under capitalism a root cause of the reasons for domination and the destruction of other peoples and cultures. Is money then the thing we should all be working to resolve for our own peace and security. Is it not the reason that the military industrial complex is in IRAQ. Is it not the reason for slavery in the south. Is it not the basis of descrimination? Are not all these things some how tied to the motivations of money?
peace out.
21 June 2005, 13:21
Agree, and love of money is the root of most evil.
Author is correct that situation in US is different to wartime Germany, but maybe Mr Daniel Jonah Goldhagen should point that finger of great perceptive insight at Israel as well.
Are all Israelis complicit in the nazi-like atrocities the illegal state is forcing on the Palestinians ? They know what’s going on but choose to ignore or deny the genocide. So they’re guilty by association as well ?