Recently it has come to my attention that there are a number of so-called “Historical Revisionists” who have taken up the idea that Adolf Hitler was a “good guy” and that, as one of them wrote to me recently, “we now need an American Leader like Hitler.”
I am dismayed by such naivete, but not entirely surprised. For anyone who studies the nature of evil and its origins in psychological pathology, it is not a surprise that persons who are not fully familiar with this problem can be so easily taken in. It is, however, a perennial problem, and until normal people learn this most essential thing about our world, they are helpless, and there is no hope for change for the better. The fact is: we ALREADY have an American leader like Hitler.I frequently get emails and letters from readers who simply cannot understand how psychopaths – and other related or similar psychological deviants – can move into positions of power, how they can “put one over” on so many people. It strikes the average person as preposterous that even they can be taken in by a deviant. As I wrote in my blogpost, “The Cult of the Plausible Lie“:
“Our culture agrees on the signs of lying. Ask anyone how to tell if someone is lying and they will tell you that they can tell by “lack of eye contact, nervous shifting, or picking at one’s clothes.” Psychologist Anna Salter writes with dry humor: “This perception is so widespread I have had the fantasy that, immediately upon birth, nurses must take newborns and whisper in their ears, “Eye contact. It’s a sign of truthfulness.” [Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.]
The problem is, if there is a psychopath – or those with related characteropathies – who doesn’t know how to keep good eye contact when lying, they haven’t been born. Eye contact is “universally known” to be a sign of truth-telling. The problem is liars will fake anything that it is possible to fake, so in reality, eye contact is absolutely NOT a sign of truth telling.
The practiced liar: a category of liar that even experts find it difficult to detect.
Problem is, even when dealing with people who are not practiced liars, such as college students who have volunteered for a research study of lying, most observers are not as good as they think in detecting deception. The research shows consistently that most people – even most professional groups such as police and psychologists – have no better than a chance ability to detect deception. Flipping a coin would serve as well. [Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.]
The fact is, MOST psychopaths are not like Hannibal Lecter or Patrick Batemen, the Harvard educated banker with murderous proclivities as portrayed in “American Psycho.” Most psychopaths are not physically violent, though they most certainly do extensive damage to the soul of their victims.All of us have many encounters with other people in our lives; most of these encounters are stimulating and encourage us to do our best. There are other kinds of encounters that always and inevitably, in one way or another, lead to destruction. This is accomplished by individuals who are quite charming, often evoking feelings of admiration or protectiveness and even “instant likeability” in their victims. These are individuals who give the right impression, who look and sound like superior specimens of humanity, and carefully conceal the dark side of their nature; a side that is deceitful and manipulative in ways difficult for a normal person with conscience to even conceive. They are capable of infiltrating any kind of social or organizational group, creating a “power base of helpers” in a covert way that escapes all but the most careful scrutiny, and ultimately generating confusion, tumultousness, bad feelings, and eventual destruction of the social ties holding the normal people together.
The destructive personality traits of the psychological deviant – the psychopath in particular – are so well hidden that they are virtually invisible to most of the people with whom they interact. They often tell others how ambitious they are to achieve a particular goal, and they will include a hard-luck story about how they have overcome incredible odds to achieve something remarkable, (growing up poor or underprivileged, or abused as a child), but over time, it will be noticed that they are actually quite lacking in conscientiousness, diligence, and hard work. Somehow, they always manage to create a “support team” that does the actual work for them while they take the credit.
Psychopaths are quite adept at weaving stories that are very emotionally stimulating. They can do this with a fantastic, deft touch, restraining a furtive tear, or clearing a cracking voice at the right moment, so that even the most practical of normal humans is taken in and convinced that here is the “real thing,” a noble human being who needs my help, my support, my all.
They are master manipulators, able to sense with ease what their target wants and needs to hear. Personal interactions are where they excel because they are so skilled at telling exquisitely acted stories that may, indeed, contain some elements of truth. They can tell these stories so impressively that normal due diligence is cast aside as being insulting to such a noble and oppressed character.
Psychopaths are masters of rising to the top in any field or organization. They know how to worm their way into the good graces of those at the top, and how to get those who work alongside them to carry the load for them and be happy doing it! They deliberately seek to build emotional attachments between themselves and those with power thus making sure that they have guardians and boosters to their “careers.”
The fact is that the most pronounced traits of the psychopath just happen to be traits that American Capitalistic society values: egocentricity, lack of concern for others, superficiality, manipulativeness, an ability to “play the game” better than others. Looking at these characteristics in isolation is a big mistake, we are told by Prof. Robert Hare, an expert on psychopaths. Yes, many of these characteristics are valuable for accomplishing all sorts of different things – politics, business, show biz – for example. These characteristics can lead to productive output. But it is when they are combined with the hidden part of the psychopath that they become disastrous.
People might say that a psychopath is “charismatic”, “high profile”, “gets things done”, and that is exactly the impression that they wish to create and are able, with preternatural cunning, to do so.
The fact is, to a psychopath, the entire world is one big feeding trough and they are going to get in and get it all and they’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish this, including playing weak and defenseless, maintaining an incredible cover of lies for as long as necessary, and using anybody and everybody, including their own family members.
Psychopaths live their lives incognito: outside they are often lawyers, politicians, entertainers, religious leaders, military leaders, union leaders, media moguls, artists and critics; and most often they are at the top. They are persuasive, charming, charismatic, and easily able to make masses of people like them. They are fun to be around because they are everything that the usually neurotic, guilt-ridden, normal human wishes he could be. It can take a long time before anyone figures out that there is really something missing, that the image is not the reality.
Inside, the psychopath is really insincere, arrogant, untrustworthy, manipulative, insensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others, remorseless, shallow, irresponsible (blames others for anything and everything that goes wrong), impatient, unreliable, selfish, parasitic, and quite willing to take shameless advantage of the goodwill they manipulatively engender in those individuals they intend to use to get to the top. They treat all people, including their families, like objects and can do incredible damage to anyone who crosses them or frustrates their goals. And, the horrifying fact is, most of them never get caught.
We live in a high speed, high pressure world where a lot of the traditional social structures that used to contain and protect us have been stripped away. Many of us are involved in virtual interactions with others and this presents its own set of problems. As the old-fashioned way of doing things is forced to change with the times, pressures for speed, technology, new systems, create a sort of frontier capitalistic reality where ideas and information are the new commodities.. Psychopaths thrive in this type of chaotic, high-pressure world. In the realm of ideas as commodity, there’s no shortage of opportunities for psychopaths to rise to the top.
The 9-11 Truth Movement, Historical Revisionism, Alternative Media are part of this Frontier. Such venues are ripe for takeover by people who are high-energy and fast-moving, two of the characteristics of psychopaths that rise to the top. Psychopaths are impulsive and thrive on stimulation; they require it. They can do many things at once, though they often do not finish them, but leave that to their “lackeys.” It also happens that things may move so fast that no one notices how they change and shift their position according to the wind of the moment.
Psychopaths are more likely to join organizations that offer them the possibility of getting to the top such as those that are formed on the basis of “cutting edge” ideas, or even revolutionary ideas, because in such an environment, often in a distressed state due to attacks from the outside, it is easier for them to hide. They are able to do this because the kinds of things they say and do under such stresses are the kinds of things the organization seems to want: they are able to pour on the charm, the charisma, to command respect, be larger than life; all things that are natural to the psychopath. Neurotic, guilt-damaged people easily mistake such traits as true leadership abilities, especially when the psychopath builds everyone up with their carefully crafted false stories about how they have suffered to pursue the goal! Never forget that psychopaths are great storytellers and they can weave disjointed facts in so seamlessly, bringing it to such a dramatic conclusion that it almost seems like a vision.
The fact is, the Truth vacuum in our society – the lack of official Truth – has created opportunities for psychopaths to be suddenly cast as great heroes and saviors; someone who can offer us transformational visions of the future. Everyone is searching for meaning, for Truth, for something solid to stand on, and what is so disturbing is the way we are looking more and more to psychopathic types as being above the rest of us, offering charismatic ideals and greater and more glorious visions. The appetite of the masses of people for leadership, even if it is a false leader, as long as he has a good story, is disturbing. It reveals to us that people have become reluctant to look at the truth, that they have become inculcated in denial of reality in favor of the 30 minute drama with a resolution after four commercials.
The psychopathic leader is an interesting study. The persona of the great leader – the archetype – is one of mercurial highs and lows; dramatic achievements and equally dramatic betrayal and losses. The leader is expected to have strong views and to be absolutely confident of his rightness; to make demands of others, to have high expectations that his ideas will serve as the vision for others who will follow him. A real leader has to be a driven individual, ambitious for a certain goal, and with sufficient ego to sustain themselves in times of set-back and betrayal. That’s what the masses of people want and need from a leader, and it just happens to also be the very thing that is easiest for a psychopath to fake and generally their motivation is not Truth, but rather envy and rivalry. Nothing is wrong with any aspect of leadership if the views are based on Truth, if the goal is sincere and truly for the good of many others, if the followers are treated with understanding and compassion. […]
Amanda Sinclair of Melbourne Business School says:
If we actually had a much more well-rounded understanding of the fragilities that often lead people to become leaders in the first place, then we would be better placed to make more discerning judgments when those same leaders we’ve treated as saviours, just demonstrate the other side of their personalities.
So, how do we tell when the behavior of a “leader” is actually malignant or even psychopathic? What are the signs?
Robert Hare tells us:
The problem for the organization is that only one or two of these people can do enormous damage, particularly if they get very high up in the organization.
An even bigger problem is the fact that, as I mentioned above, the 9-11 Truth Movement, the Alternative Media, and other similar organizations seeking to fill in the vacuum in the Information Frontier are prime targets for psychopaths because they will function very well in an information culture that is designed to manipulate, con, lie and cheat. You could say that the lack of a real structure of vetting “experts” because the field is outside the pale of official discourse, almost compels psychopathic behavior.
So, let’s look at an actual case to try to get a handle on this thing. We will be looking at a “corporate” situation, but that is little different from the almost anything goes, “dog eat dog” world of 9-11 research, Alternative Media and Historical Revisionism, not to mention the total global Political Scene.
Paul Babiak is a corporate psychopath’s worst nightmare: he knows how they think. Babiak’s an industrial/organizational psychologist from upstate New York and a regular consultant to many A-list corporations trying to remedy dysfunctional behavior in the workplace. More than anyone, he’s helped invent the term ‘corporate psychopath’, and has done most of the work in studying how they operate.
It all started, though, by accident, as part of a consultancy job 12 years ago, and a case that had him baffled.
Dr. Babiak had been brought in to help a major corporation in Colorado. His job was to assess a management team that was underperforming. A new recruit had joined its ranks. Morale was low, conflict high.
Initially, Babiak was charmed by the fast-talking guy at the center of the problem. But as his investigation progressed, it turned out he’d uncovered a genuine “snake in a suit”. Babiak tells us:
He came across very sincere, and modest, and I only came to realize there was something going on when I got the results of the assessments that were being done, and I found quite a discrepancy. A number of people really, really liked him, and that included some of the higher level people I must say. And a number of people really despised him, really thought he was evil. One person referred to him as a “snake.” It was only later really, after the assignment ended and I consulted with Bob Hare, that I saw the light. Bob had sent me the PCL-R, or the Psychopathy Checklist, which he had developed while studying psychopaths in prison samples.
He came out high on the conning and manipulation side of the PCL-R equation and middle-of-the-road on the anti-social behavior side. Thus he was able to hide his manipulations from view of those around him, yet he exerted undue influence, negative influence, on the group.
Babiak dubbed the troublesome manager “Dave.”
According to Babiak, there are three main archetypes of psychopaths that operate in such venues. Babiak says:
One we’ve labeled The Con, and that’s the individual who deals one-on-one with individuals, primarily tries to exert influence over them, and then swindles them out of something. It’s a very simple process, and they may not make it into the high levels of the corporate structure, but they can do some serious damage.
The second kind of psychopath is The Bully. And that’s a person that influences others by intimidation. It could be overt, verbal threats, maybe even physical violence, but it can also be very covert intimidation. [Psychopaths in Suits, Radio program, Sunday 18 July 2004, Produced by Ian Walker]
A few words need to be said about “covert intimidation.” Such individuals use a number of destabilizing techniques common to abusive people: innuendoes, spiteful allusions, lies, and humiliating remarks. They are quiet, cold, and mean in a way that does not alert those around them to what they are doing to their targeted victim. They often set things up so that they appear as the victim and making their target the persecutor. Generally, because they are easily able to create a “pitiful persona,” as their foil, even the victims don’t react appropriately. The victim may exert themselves to be even kinder, to set an example that they hope will soften the aggressor toward them.
This type of individual usually works with others of the same type. The process of destruction consists of either overt or hidden hostility on the part of the gang of deviants toward the designated target who is a REAL target in every sense of the word. It is effectively possible to destabilize and even psychologically destroy someone with words, hints, inferences, and unspoken suggestions; and usually those close to the target cannot even see it and will thus not intervene. Most often this is due to the fact that the abuser is constantly shifting the blame to the victim. France’s premier Victimology Expert, Marie-France Hirigoyen writes:
Perverse abusiveness fascinates, seduces, and terrifies. We sometimes envy abusive individuals because we imagine them to be endowed with a superior strength that will always make them winners. They do, in fact, know how to naturally manipulate, and this appears to give them the upper hand, whether in business or in politics. Fear makes us instinctively gravitate toward them rather than away from them: survival of the fittest.
The most admired individuals are those who enjoy themselves the most and suffer the least. In any case, we don’t take their victims, who seem weak and dense, seriously, and under the guise of respecting another’s freedom, we become blind to destructive situations.
In fact, this “tolerance” prevents us from interfering in the actions and opinions of others, even when these actions and opinions are out of line or morally reprehensible.
We also weirdly indulge the lies and “spin” of those in power. The end justifies the means.
To what degree is this acceptable? Don’t we, out of indifference, risk becoming accomplices in this process by losing our principles and sense of limits? Real tolerance means examining and weighing values.
This type of aggression, however, lays traps in the psychic domain of another person and is allowed to develop because of tolerance within our current socio-cultural context. Our era refuses to establish absolute standards of behavior. We automatically set limits on abusive behaviors when we LABEL them as such; but in our society, labeling is likened to intent to censure. We have abandoned the moral constraints that once constituted a code of civility which allowed us to say “That just isn’t done!” We only become indignant when facts are made public, worked over and magnified by the media. […]
Even psychiatrists hesitate to use the term “abuse”‘; when they do, it’s to express either their powerlessness to intervene or their fascination with the abuser’s methods. […]
[Psychopathy] arises from dispassionate rationality combined with an incapacity to respect others as human beings. Some [psychopaths] commit crimes for which they are judged, but most use charm and their adaptive powers to clear themselves a path in society, leaving behind a trail of wounded souls and devastated lives. … We have all been fooled by abusive human beings who passed themselves off as victims. They fulfilled our expectations in order the better to seduce us. …
We subsequently feel betrayed and humiliated when, in their search for power, they show their true colors. This explains the reluctance of some psychiatrists to expose them. Psychiatrists say to each other, “Watch out, he’s a [psychopath]”, the implication being “This could be dangerous,” and also, “There’s nothing that can be done.” We then give up on helping the victim.
Designating [psychopathy] is certainly a serious matter… whether the subject is serial killing or perverse abusiveness, the matter remains one of predatory behavior: an act consisting in the appropriation of another person’s life.
The word “perverse” shocks and unsettles. It corresponds to a value judgment, and psychoanalysts refuse to pronounce value judgments. Is that sufficient reason to accept what goes on? A more serious omission lies in not labeling abuse, because the victim then remains defenseless…
Victims are often not heard when they seek help. Instead, analysts advise them to assess their conscious or unconscious responsibility for the attack upon them. … Emotional abusers directly endanger their victims; indirectly, they lead those around them to lose sight of their moral guideposts and to believe that freewheeling behaviors at the expense of others are the norm. [Dr. Marie-France Hirigoyen, Stalking the Soul]
Now, returning to Babiak’s Psychopathic Archetypes. The most dangerous of all the psychopaths is a prize manipulator called the “PuppetMaster.” Babiak says:
That’s an individual who is very savvy, is quite a student of human behavior, is quite capable of manipulating individuals into hurting other people. So it’s a two-step process. The Puppetmaster manipulates individuals and these people whom they are manipulating do the dirty work for them. They reap the benefit, but their minions do the work for them. …
Psychopaths are primarily driven by a thrill-seeking drive… they have perhaps a physiological drive for stimulation. The second thing that operates in them is a need, a drive if you will, to play games, to play the game, to play with people as if they’re pawns … they’re game players. And they like to win, of course. And, the third aspect of their personality which I think is a driver, is that they are immune to the damage they do. At some level, they might even enjoy the damage they do.
This last remark seems to be true. In the May 29 edition of the journal, “Nature,” British researchers reported that a psychological test designed to detect unconscious or frowned-upon attitudes picked up a decided tendency among psychopathic murderers to have abnormally positive attitudes toward violence.
Paul Babiack still clearly remembers his earliest encounter with the psychopath he called ‘Dave’. It took Babiak more than two years to figure out what Dave the corporate psychopath was up to. Please notice this: Babiak was a psychologist, one who should be expected to be able to “see through” people. But he was confronted with a psychopath, and they are often very difficult to detect other than by their effects. Even so, when analyzing a group dynamic where you can tell that something is wrong, it is not always easy to isolate the pathological element. By piecing together parts of the story from many different people, Babiak was finally able to illuminate exactly how corporate psychopaths get away with it for so long.
It turns out that Dave had woven a complex web of manipulation by grooming what Babiak calls the ‘Pawns’ and the ‘Patrons’. He tells us:
When I sorted through the data I found that the supporters and the detractors could actually be broken down into four groups, based upon the amount of first-hand experience they had with Dave, and the amount of help they could be to his career. One group, I called them The Patrons, was made up of the President, the Vice-President and some Directors of the firm, effectively the higher levels of the organization. Now, this group of individuals had considerable formal power in the company but they actually knew very little about Dave. What limited interactions they had with Dave were positive but, I learned later, each had been carefully staged by Dave to get the effect he wanted. As a result, these executives protected and defended him from subsequent criticism.
While Dave was buttering up the upper management who all thought he was a great guy, Dave was equally busy making friends with those who had no power, but could do his work for him and make him look good. They covered up his inadequacies and in exchange, he went out of his way to make them feel special. Babiak offers some details of how this was done:
One in particular, I called her The Soulmate, seemed to glow every time Dave spoke to her. As it turned out, she, being an expert in the technical area that Dave claimed as his background (and I later discovered he didn’t have), she did all of his work for him, and actually covered for him when he couldn’t complete his assignments. So, in total, this group, despite having little formal power, actually had considerable informal power and utility to Dave, and he played them very well.
The problem is, of course, as Marie-France Hirigoyen, French expert on Victimology, points out: people admire the accomplished psychopath. Why?
Indeed, we often project onto leader figures a better self, you know, the self that we might want to be, but we create leaders in order to destroy them, so it’s a pretty fragile kind of thing. We think for a short period of time that they’re going to solve everything for us, they’re going to turn around organizations, they’re going to deliver miracles. But our patience is often not all that long-term, and then we get an equal sort of gratification about seeing the fall from grace.
Did Dave – Babiak’s case study – get his comeuppance?
No, he didn’t. And that is the way most cases of psychopathy go: they are resounding successes, never mind that they leave a trail of destroyed lives in their wake or that they achieve their positions by stealing work from others who are capable. As it happens, after the “honeymoon period” in the job, the problems with Dave kept growing and Dave’s immediate boss, Frank, finally began to figure out that there was something wrong with Dave. He knew he was up to something, but was never able to catch him. Babiak fills in some details:
Later it was discovered that he was taking company products for his own use, selling some of it on the side. He didn’t have a degree in the area of expertise he claimed, and the work experience on his resume was, let’s say, enhanced, to fit the job requirements. But The Pawns supported him, by making excuses for him, covering him, and basically helping him get through all this.
The third group, called the Organizational Police, includes the Human Resources folks, the campus security, accounting and auditing staff; functions like that. What surprised me was that they were basically ignored by Dave. Because they had no utility to him, he was not interested in dealing with them. And, when one or two of them uncovered some of his behavior and brought it to the attention of upper management, they were just pushed aside. He had successfully neutralized their power, and he sought protection of the higher-ups, his Patrons, who allowed him to continue this behavior.
By this time, Dave’s boss Frank, decided to set a trap so as to expose Dave to the Big Boss. He wanted to prove to him that Dave was a liar. Unfortunately, as you will see, he didn’t let the Big Boss in on the plan and Dave, like most psychopaths of his type, was way ahead of him. Frank confided a company secret to Dave, making him swear he wouldn’t tell a soul. Then, he waited.
It wasn’t an hour before Dave went to the Vice-President who was in his office and telling him this information. But the way he told the story was twisted. He turned it around to make Frank look like he was betraying the company, and that Dave was actually loyal and was going to the Vice-President with this information because he wanted to protect the Vice-President and the organization from Frank’s deceitful behavior.
The VP was, of course, in on the plan and Frank thought that, with the VP backing him up, they had Dave on the run. Like I said, Frank (and the VP) should have gone right to the top with this one from the very beginning.
Frank and the Vice-President got together, and decided to go to the CEO, got an appointment with the CEO for the following week. When they were in the waiting room, waiting to have their meeting, because they were going to suggest that Dave be removed, the door opens, and who walks out but Dave. And he smiled and walked out.
These two gentlemen then went in to meet with the CEO and you can imagine how shocked they were. They presented their case to the CEO, who looked at them, and basically told them he didn’t believe anything that they had said, that he had heard what Dave had said, believed Dave, and felt they should leave him alone.
Two weeks later, Frank was demoted and Dave was promoted. Dave is, apparently, still climbing to the top.
Now, it’s not hard to imagine large numbers of these types of people being attracted to professions where they can achieve great power, money, and other attributes of control over others. It’s also not hard to imagine the very same types being drawn into the vacuum of Truth where 9-11 Researchers, Alternative Media Personalities, Historical Revisionists, find a venue to set up a “stock-market of information”. The question we then must deal with is how to deal with people like “Dave”?
Babiak in collaboration with Robert Hare believe they have part of the answer: an 111-point questionnaire they call the ‘Business Scan’ or ‘B-Scan’.
The thing about the B-Scan is that it is not filled out by the individual in question: his claims or words are not even considered. Instead, it is a questionnaire that is completed by others above and below the ‘problem employee’ to pinpoint personality traits and behaviors which may be destructive. In short, they have developed a business specific questionnaire (which costs a lot of money, by the way) that imitates what we have long promoted: the idea of a network that honestly and openly shares information about their experiences with others, and does due diligence about those others the instant any questions arise, and shares that information. We are all taught: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” or “least said, soonest mended,” or “don’t talk about others, that’s gossiping,” and so on. All of these “rules” are devised and set up by a psychopathic culture that thrives in the darkness that is created by people being afraid to discuss their observations about, and experiences with, others. Additionally, it has to be kept in mind that when you are dealing with psychopaths, about all you are going to get is impressions, opinions, and anecdotal experiences: they are generally that good and don’t leave bodies around to be found.
Now, having said all of the above, I want to come back to the issue that I began with: that there are a number of so-called “Historical Revisionists” who have taken up the idea that Adolf Hitler was a “good guy”. I think that there is a problem here and I want to explain why I think so. In order to do that, I want to quote from the book I am presently reading, “Defying Hitler,” the memoirs of Sebastian Haffner, a German journalist who escaped Nazi Germany.
After his opening remarks, which I include for context, I then skip to his description of the Nazi takeover of Germany. He talks about all the other possible leaders who might have lead the people away from Hitler, but who did not, who caved in. This is so similar to what we see in the U.S. today that we have to consider the fact that we are seeing the same dynamic: psychopaths looking after their own interests across the board..
Reed, of course, in Controversy of Zion, talks about the Jews being active behind the scenes and creating this “caving in” phenomenon wherever they “applied pressure,” so it is only reasonable to assume that since the pattern “fits,” that this is what they were doing in the case of the Nazification of Germany which otherwise is inexplicable. As Reed writes:
But for one later event, the [Zionist] undertaking [to acquire Palestine] would have died a natural death within a few years and would survive today in the annals merely as Balfour’s Folly. This event was the coming of Hitler, which for a while filled the gap left by the collapse of the legend of “persecution in Russia” and produced in some Jews a desire to go even to Palestine. For the Zionists Hitler, had he not arisen, would have needed to be created; a collapsing scheme was made by him to look almost lifelike for some time.
We can see this repeated “caving in to pressure” in the present day in our own Congress and media.
The passage of the Torture bill of the other day is a case in point. As has been said in the media, this legislation is held by Republicans to be necessary to win them political points in the upcoming elections. I just wonder where they are hoping to get those political points from. Certainly not from the majority of Americans. A recent MSNBC Poll revealed that at least 61% of Americans believe that the government is NOT telling the truth about 911; more than that, they suspect government involvement and complicity in 9-11. So, since the whole War Against Terrorism is based on 9- 11, and 61% of Americans think that the government is lying about it, why is it that the Republicans think that they have to rubber stamp Bush’s drive to make torture and military tribunals legal? Could it be that there is a very different group whose favor they are currying, that has the power to award those highly coveted “political points”?
This extraordinary pressure of Zionists, and their ability to exert it cleverly, either by financial support or mobilizing votes, (as they did in the past), or promising the results of the fraudulently programmed electronic voting machines and good media coverage, (as they do in the present), is one of the main subjects of Reed’s book. Of course, he cannot prove anything, but he provides documentation of the attitudes and writings of people BEFORE Zionist pressure, when their careers were going down the toilet, and then AFTER the Zionist pressure is applied when they suddenly “change their tune.” Churchill was a case in point. Those they could not change, they killed, and Reed notes this repeatedly.
So, as I am trying to say here, what we are seeing in the U.S. today seems to be modeled quite closely on the events of the Nazification of Germany. In that context, by being able to witness it before our eyes, and to FEEL it and KNOW it, we are better able to make assessments of what may or may not have been the truth about Hitler and the Nazis. More than that, it enables us to see our own future.
As one progresses through Reed’s book, the scale of the problem seems almost unbearable, but in order to be effective in future one must take every step now to be absolutely clear that we understand that the problem is not being Jewish, but is that of psychological deviance. Zionism, anti-Semitism, Neo-conservatism and the like, are all symptoms of the same psychological disease, and that is precisely how Reed explicates the problem.
In order to make this clear, I want to quote some excerpts from the book, Defying Hitler, paying particular attention to the descriptions of the actual Nazi takeover, the “Nazi Revolution,” as they liked to call it. Very little is written about this; about how a civilized nation could be taken over by madmen who then sought to use the population as pawns to take over the World. And make no mistake about it: history shows that Hitler certainly intended to conquer the world. One impression that comes through strongly from his first person account, is the way in which the process of Evil – what Andrzej Lobaczewski calls “ponerization” – gradually crept upon the Germans unseen, even to the extent of sweeping the author along with it to an alarming degree at one point. He takes you along on the journey with him and you can see and feel the events as he describes them happening. With Lobaczewski’s work in mind, the whole thing is illuminated in sharp relief..
Haffner begins by recalling his first experience of war, as a child:
This is the story of a duel.
It is a duel between two very unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful, formidable and ruthless state and an insignificant, unknown private individual. The duel does not take place in what is commonly known as the sphere of politics; the individual is by no means a politician, still less a conspirator, or an enemy of the state. Throughout, he finds himself very much on the defensive. He only wishes to preserve what he considers his integrity, his private life and his personal honour. These are under constant attack by the Government of the country he lives in, and by the most brutal, but often also clumsy, means. …
The individual is … ill-prepared for the onslaught. He was not born a hero, still less a martyr. He is just an ordinary man with many weaknesses, having grown up in vulnerable times. He is nevertheless stubbornly antagonistic. So he enters into the duel – without enthusiasm, shrugging his shoulders but with a quiet determination not to yield. He is of course, much weaker than his opponent, but rather more agile. You will see him duck and weave, dodge his foe and dart back, evading crushing blows by a whisker. You will have to admit that, for someone who is neither a hero nor a martyr, he manages to put up a good fight. Finally, however, you will see him compelled to abandon the struggle, or if you will transfer it to another plane.
The state is the German Reich and I am the individual. … My private duel with the Third Reich is not an isolated encounter. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of such duels, in which an individual tries to defend his integrity and his personal honour against a formidably, hostile state, have been fought in Germany during the last six years. [These words were written in 1939]. Each is waged in total isolation and out of public view. Many of the duellists, greater heroes or martyrs by nature, have taken the fight further than I – as far as the concentration camp or the gallows… Others were defeated much earlier and are now silent grumblers in the ranks of the SA reservists…
One might well consider my case as typical. From it, you can easily judge the chances for mankind in Germany today. [Again, note that this was written in 1939.] You will see that they are pretty slim. They need not have been quite so hopeless if the outside world had intervened. It is still in the world’s interest, I believe, for these chances to be improved. It is too late to avoid a war, but it might shorten the war by a year or two. Those Germans of goodwill who are fighting to defend their private peace and their private liberty, are fighting, without knowing it, for the peace and liberty of the whole world.
[…]
My conscious life started with the outbreak of the Great War. [WW I] It found me, like most Europeans, on my summer holidays. Indeed, the worst thing the war did to me was to spoil those holidays. …
On the 1st of August 1914, we had just decided not to take the matter very seriously, and to continue our holidays. We were on a farm estate in eastern Pomerania, lost to the world, in the midst of woods which I, as a small boy, knew and loved like nothing else in the world. The return from those woods to town, which usually took place in the middle of August, was the saddest and most unbearable event of the year for me…
On the 1st of August, that return was still two weeks away. A few days earlier, some disquieting things had happened. The newspaper contained something never seen before: headlines. My father read it longer than usual, looked very worried, and cursed the Austrians when he put it down. On one occasion the headline was “WAR?” I kept hearing new words which I did not understand, but which were soon to be explained by events: ultimatum, mobilisation, alliance, Entente.
A major who was staying on the same estate… suddenly received an “order” – another of those new words – and departed precipitately. One of our host’s sons was also called up. As he drove off to the station in a gig, we all ran after him shouting “Be brave!” “Take car of yourself!” “Come back soon!” …
It made a far deeper impression on me to hear that the best horses on the estate … were being taken away because (what a quantity of words to be explained!) they belonged to the “cavalry reserve”.
Most depressing of all was hearing the word “return” every now and then. “Perhaps we shall have to return tomorrow.” That sounded to me exactly as if someone had said “Perhaps we shall die tomorrow.”
In those days there was no wireless, of course, and the papers arrived in our woods with twenty-four hours delay. They also contained far less than nowadays. The diplomats were much more discreet. So it came about that, on the 1st of August 1914, we decided that there was not going to be a war, and that we were going to stay put.
I shall never forget that 1st of August. The memory of that day will always instill in me a profound feeling of calm, of suspense resolved, of “all’s well again.” It was a Saturday, with all the wonderful stillness that a Saturday produces in the country. The day’s work was done. Bells of cattle returning home tinkled through the air. Peace and quiet reigned over the entire farm. …
Downstairs in the hall, with its hunting trophies on the walls and a row of pewter jugs and bright earthenware plates ranged along a high shelf, I found my father and our host, the owner of the estate, seated in deep armchairs, solemnly and weightily discussing the situation. Of course, I did not understand much of what they were saying and I can recall no details. But I have not forgotten how calm and consoling their voices sounded… how reassuring the sight of their leisurely manner was, the fragrant smoke of their cigars rising above them in slender columns; and how, the longer they talked, the clearer, the better and the more comforting everything became. Until, finally, it was irrefutably clear that war was quite impossible and, therefore, we would not let panic chase us back to town. Instead, as in all previous years, we would stay on to the end of the holidays.
Having listened this far, I walked outside, my heart swelling with relief, contentment and gratitude, and gazed with feelings almost of piety at the sun setting over the woods which had been returned to me. The day had been cloudy, but had cleared toward evening and the sun, ruddy and gold, floated in the sheerest blue, promising a cloudless new day. Cloudless as, I was sure, would be the entire fourteen-day eternity of those holidays which again lay before me.
When I was awakened next morning, packing was in full swing. At first, I did not understand what had happened. The word “mobilisation” which they had sought to explain a few days previously, conveyed nothing to me. Anyhow, there was little time to explain anything. We had to clear out, bag and baggage, that very afternoon. It was doubtful if a train would be available any later. …
I never saw my childhood woods again.
With great difficulty, the family returned to Berlin and Haffner’s descriptions of growing up during WW I, and the conditions that prevailed in Germany during that time and after, give considerable insight into how and why Nazism was able to take root and overwhelm an entire nation which then nearly destroyed Western Civilization. It is well worth reading.
In the extract about his father’s deliberations on the possibility of war quoted above, we see what could be described as a fairly typical effect of “self-calming,” of denial of reality. But it is actually – more than anything – an example of ignorance of how things really work: the naivete of the liberal, humanistic mind.
Twenty years later, in 1934, Haffner faced something quite different: instead of a sudden onslaught, he saw the “slow, tortured approach” of the Nazi juggernaut. What’s more, he understood – to a great extent – what he was seeing. Haffner tells us:
I had studied law and become a Referendar. …[As a Referendar, he participates in the work of the courts or the civil service like a judge or administrator]… In two of the courts where I worked, the judge even let me run the proceedings. This sudden power has a profound effect on a young man… and it inevitably influences him deeply. It had two principal effects on me. The first was composure, an attitude of cool, calm, benevolent dryness… The second was a certain facility in following official thought processes and legal abstractions. …[T]he second facility was literally to save the life of my wife, and my own a few years later. …
Apart from that, I can only smile ruefully when I consider how prepared I was for the adventure that awaited me. I was not prepared at all. I had no skills in boxing or ju-jitsu, not to mention smuggling, crossing borders illegally, using secret codes and so on: skills that would have stood me in good stead in the coming years. My spiritual preparation for what was ahead was almost equally inadequate. Is it not said that in peacetime the chiefs of staff always prepare their armies as well as possible – for the previous war? I cannot judge the truth of that, but it is certainly true that conscientious parents always educate their sons for the era that is just over. I had all the intellectual endowments to play a decent part in the bourgeois world of the period before 1914. I had an uneasy feeling, based on what I had experienced, that it would not be much help to me. That was all. At best I smelled a warning whiff of what was about to confront me, but I did not have an intellectual system that would help me deal with it.
True, that was not just my situation but that of my whole generation, and even more the situation of the older generation. (It is still the situation of most foreigners, who only know about Nazism from the newspapers and newsreels.) Our thinking is usually constrained by a certain civilisation in our outlook, in which the basics are unquestioned – and so implicit that they are almost forgotten. When we argued about certain opposites – freedom and slavery, for example, or nationalism and humanism, or individualsim and socialism – the discussion always respected certain Christian, humanistic, civilised principles as axiomatic. Even some of those who became Nazis at this time did not fully realise what they were doing. They might think that they stood for nationalism and socialism, were against the Jews and for the pre-1914-18 status quo… Still, they expected all that to take the humane forms usual in a civilised nation. Most of them would have been deeply shocked if one had suggested that what they really stood for were torture chambers and officially decreed pogroms (to name but two of the most obvious things, and these are certainly not yet the final horrific culmination). Even today there are Nazis who are shocked and alarmed if this is pointed out to them.
At that time I had no strong political views. I even found it difficult to decide whether I was “right” or “left”, to use the most general political categories. … None of the existing political parties seems particularly attractive to me, despite the abundant choice. Anyway, belonging to any of them would not have saved me from becoming a Nazi…
What saved me was – my nose. I have a fairly well-developed figurative sense of smell, or to put it differently, a sense of the worth (or worthlessness!) of human, moral, political views and attitudes. Most Germans unfortunately lack this sense almost completely. The cleverest of them are capable of discussing themselves stupid with their abstractions and deductions, when just using their noses would tell them that something stinks. …
As for the Nazis, my nose left me with no doubts. It was just tiresome to talk about which of their alleged goals and intentions were still acceptable, or even “historically justified” when all of it stank. How it stank! That the Nazis were enemies, my enemies, and the enemies of all I held dear, was crystal clear to me from the outset. What was not at all clear to me, was what terrible enemies they would turn out to be. I was inclined not to take them very seriously – a common attitude among their inexperienced opponents, which helped them a lot, and still helps them.
There are few things as comic as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theatre. It was, after all, a movement with the declared intention of doing away with us. Perhaps the only comparably comic thing is the way that now, years later, Europe is permitting itself exactly the same indifferent attitude, as though it were a superior, amused onlooker, while the Nazis are already setting it alight at all four corners….
The Nazis celebrate the 30th of January as their day of revolution. They are wrong. There was no revolution on the 30th of January 1933, just a change of government. Hitler became Chancellor, by no means the Fuehrer of a Nazi regime (the cabinet contained only two Nazis apart from him). He swore an oath of allegiance to the Weimar constitution. …
Outwardly the day had no revolutionary aspects… For most of us outsiders, the experience of the 30th of January was that of reading the papers – and the emotions we felt while we were doing so.
The morning headline was: “Hitler called to President”. That produced a certain nervous, impotent irritation. Hitler had been called to the President in August and November. He had been offered the vice- chancellorship and then the chancellorship. Both times he had set impossible conditions, and both times there had been solemn declarations: “never again…” Each time “never again” had lasted exactly three months. Hitler’s opponents in Germany at that time suffered from a compulsive urge to offer him everything he wanted, indefatigably and at an ever cheaper price, indeed to press it upon him. It is the same now with his opponents outside Germany. Again and again this “appeasement” was formally renounced, and again and again it gaily reappeared at the crucial moment; just so today. Then as now, one’s only hope was Hitler’s own unreasonableness. Would it not sooner or later exhaust the patience of his opponents? Then as now, it became apparent that their patience knew no bounds…
At midday the headline said: “Hitler makes impossible demands”. We nodded, half reassured. It was only too credible. It would have gone against his nature to ask for less than too much. Perhaps the cup had one more passed from us. Hitler – the last defence against Hitler.
At about five o’clock the evening papers arrived: “Cabinet of National Unity formed – Hitler Reichschancellor”.
I do not know what the general reaction was. For about a minute, mine was completely correct: icy horror. Certainly, this had been a possibility for a long time. You had to reckon with it. Nevertheless it was so bizarre, so incredible, to read it now in black and white. Hitler Reichschancellor … for a moment I physically sensed the man’s odour of blood and filth, the nauseating approach of a man-eating animal – its foul, sharp claws in my face.
Then I shook the sensation off, tried to smile, started to consider and found many reasons for reassurance. That evening I discussed the prospects of the new Government with my father. We agreed that it had a good chance of doing a lot of damage, but not much chance of surviving very long; a deeply reactionary government, with Hitler as its mouthpiece. Apart from this, it did not really differ much from the two governments that had succeeded Bruning’s. Even with the Nazis it would not have a majority in the Reichstag. Of course that could always be dissolved, but the Government had a clear majority of the population against it, in particular the working class, which would probably go Communist… In the meantime the Government would be likely to implement reactionary social and cultural measures, with some anti-Semitic additions to please Hitler. That would not attract any of its opponents to its side. Foreign policy would probably be a matter of banging the table. There might be an attempt to re-arm. That would automatically add the outside world to the 60 per cent of the home population who were against the Government. Besides, who were the people who had suddenly started voting Nazi in the last three years? Misguided ignoramuses for the most part, victims of propaganda, a fluctuating mass that would fall apart at the first disappointment. No, all things considered, this government was not a cause for alarm. The only question was what would come after it. …
The next day this turned out to be the general opinion of the intelligent press. It is curious how plausible an argument it is, even today, when we know what came next. How could things turn out so completely different? Perhaps it was just because we were all so certain that they could not do so – and relied on that with far too much confidence. So we neglected to consider that it might, if the worst came to the worst, be necessary to prevent the disaster from happening.
Through the whole of February 1933 everything that happened remained a matter for the press, in other words, it took place in an arena which would lose all reality for 99 per cent of the population the moment there were no newspapers. Admittedly, enough occurred in that arena: the Reichstag was dissolved; then, in a flagrant breach of the constitution, Hindenburg also dissolved the Prussian regional parliament. There were fast and furious changes of personnel in the higher civil service, and the election campaign was accompanied by ferocious acts of terror. The Nazis no longer felt any restraint with their gangs, they regularly broke up the election meetings of other parties. They shot one or two political opponents every day. In a Berlin suburb they even burned down the house of a Social Democrat family. The new Prussian regional interior minister (a Nazi: a certain Captain Goring) promulgated an incredible decree. It ordered the police to intervene in any brawl on the side of the Nazis, without investigating the rights and wrongs of the matter, and furthermore to shoot at the other side without prior warning…
All this was still something one only read about in the press. You did not see or hear anything that was any different from what had gone on before. There were brown SA uniforms on the streets, demonstrations, shouts of “Heil”, but otherwise it was “business as usual”. In the … court … where I worked as Referendar at that time, the process of the law was not changed at all by the fact that the interior minister enacted ridiculous edicts. The newspapers might report that the constitution was in ruins. Here every paragraph of the Civil Code was still valid and was mulled over and analysed as carefully as ever. Which was the true reality? The Chancellor could daily utter the vilest abuse against the Jews; there was none the less still a Jewish [judge] and member of our senate who continued to give his astute and careful judgments, and these judgments had the full weight of the law and could set the entire apparatus of the state in motion for their enforcement – even if the highest office-holder of that state daily called their author a “parasite,” a “subhuman,” or a “plague.” Who cut the worse figure? Who was the butt of the irony of the situation?
I must admit that I was inclined to view the undisturbed functioning of the law, and indeed the continued normal course of daily life, as a triumph over the Nazis. They could behave as raucously and wildly as they wished. They could still only stir up the political surface. The depths of the ocean of life remained unaffected.
Entirely unaffected? Did not some of the surface waves send out vibrations, as evidenced by a new jittery tension, a new intolerance and heated readiness to hate, which began to infect private political discussions, and even more by the unrelenting pressure to think about politics all the time? Was it not a remarkable effect of politics on private life that we suddenly considered any normal daily private event as a political demonstration?
Be that as it may, I still clung to this normal un-political life. There was no angle from which I could attack the Nazis. Well then, at least I would not let them interfere with my personal life.
At this point, Haffner attends a social event:
I found it difficult to get into the mood. On the contrary, I arrived feeling rather depressed. I had had some worrying news that afternoon. The election campaign was not going the way the Nazis wanted. They were planning a coup, with massive arrests and a regime of terror. We should be prepared for the worst in the next few weeks. It made me uneasy, but of course it was still only a matter for the press. This was the true reality, wasn’t it: the overheard scraps of conversation, laughter, music, the freely given smiles?
I stood there on a step, distracted and undecided, watching the revelers around me – the hot, shiny, glowing, eager, smiling faces; so many, so innocent, all just hoping to meet a nice boyfriend or girlfriend for a night, or a season, a whiff of the sweetness of life, a little adventure, something to be fondly remembered. All at once I had a strange, dizzy feeling. I felt as though I was inescapably imprisoned with all these young people in a giant ship that was rolling and pitching. We were dancing on its lowest, narrowest deck, while on the bridge it was being decided to flood that deck and drown every last one of us.
Haffner describes how the party is broken up by the police and he has his first encounter with the SS.
“Do we really have to leave?”
“You have permission to leave,” was the reply, and I flinched, so threateningly had it been said: slowly, icily and maliciously. I looked at him – and flinched again. What kind of face was that? Not the usual, familiar, friendly, honest face of an ordinary policeman. This face seemed to consist entirely of teeth. The man had literally snarled at me, baring both rows of teeth, an unusual grimace for a human being. His teeth showed, small, pointed and evil like a shark’s. The whole pale, blond face was fish- like and shark-like under the helmet, with watery colourless eyes and a pike’s pointed nose above the teeth. Very Nordic, one had to admit, but then again not really human, rather more like the face of a crocodile. …
Two days later there was the Reichstag fire.
…I was visiting a friend in the suburbs. … I provoked general mild disapproval with the “frivolous” remark that it seemed to me a matter of good taste to vote against the Nazis, independently of where one stood politically. …
While we were arguing rather pointlessly and drinking Moselle wine the Reichstag was burning. Poor Marinus van der Lubbe was found in the building, equipped with every conceivable piece of identification.
This certainly brings to mind the miraculous survival of the identifiers of the alleged “Muslim Terrorists” that attacked the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001.
Outside, against a flaming backdrop like a Wagnerian Wotan, Hitler uttered the memorable words, “If this is the work of the Communists, which I do not doubt, may God have mercy on them!” We had no inkling of all that. The radio was switched off. Around midnight we sleepily took the night buses to our various homes. At that very moment the raiding parties were already on their way to get their victims out of bed, in the first great wave of concentration-camp arrests: left-wing deputies and literary figures, unpopular doctors, officials and lawyers.
This has already happened in the U.S., though to a limited extent. It only needs another false-flag terrorist attack, with the new torture and military tribunal law in place, to move to this phase. At this point in time, the law permits anyone to be accused of supporting terrorism if they simply criticize the government: “If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.” So certainly, anyone with any inclinations to criticize the government, with any authority or following who is NOT an embedded COINTELPRO agent will be hauled out in similar fashion. Expect it.
It was only the next morning that I read about the fire, and not until midday that I read about the arrests. Around the same time a decree of Hindenburg’s was promulgated. It abolished freedom of speech and confidentiality of the mail and telephone for all private individuals, while giving the police unrestricted rights of search and access, confiscation and arrest. … All the parties of the Left had been prohibited from any further election publicity. Those newspapers that still appeared reported all this in a fawning, fervently patriotic, jubilant tone! Next Saturday all Germans would come together in a festival of national exaltation, their hearts swelling with gratitude! Get the torches and flags out!
We may also expect an equivalent action in the U.S. following the next staged terrorist attack. Martial Law will be declared, all political discourse will end, and very likely, Bush – or a similar puppet – will be declared military dictator.
Thus the press. The streets were exactly the same as always. The cinemas were open. The law courts sat and heard cases. No sign of a revolution. At home, people were a little confused, a little anxious, and tried to understand what was happening….
So the Communists had burned down the Reichstag. Well, well. That could well be so, it was even to be expected. Funny, though, why they should choose the Reichstag, an empty building, where no one would profit from a fire. Well, perhaps it really had been intended as the “signal” for the uprising, which had been prevented by the “decisive measures” taken by the Government. That was what the papers said, and it sounded plausible. Funny also that the Nazis got so worked up about the Reichstag. Up till then they had contemptuously called it a “hot air factory”. Now it was suddenly the holy of holies that had been burned down. … The main thing is: the danger of a Communist uprising has been averted and we can sleep easy….
More seriously: perhaps the most interesting thing about the Reichstag fire is that the claim that it was the work of the Communists was so widely believed. Even the skeptics did not regard it as entirely incredible. …
The same can be said about the 9-11 attacks. However, more and more people in the U.S. are questioning the government’s story which is one of the things that probably was driving the passage of the “Military Tribunal and Torture” bill. Most certainly, when this law goes into effect and is implemented, there will be long lists of terrorists and terrorist supporters that suddenly appear after every torture session…
There are still some people in Germany that fall for the Communist scare… The numbers that do so are not very large anymore; the poor showing of the German Communists is becoming common knowledge. Even the Nazis tend to avoid this particular tune, except with distinguished foreign visitors. They still fall for anything. […]
After all that, I do not see that one can blame the majority of Germans who, in 1933, believed that the Reichstag fire was the work of the Communists. What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character clearly for the first time during the Nazi period, is that this settled the matter. With sheepish submissiveness the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution; as though it followed as a necessary consequence. If the Communists had burned down the Reichstag, it was perfectly in order that the Government took “decisive measures”!
Next morning I discussed these matter with a few other Referendars. All of them were very interested in the question of who had committed the crime, and more than one of them hinted that they had doubts about the official version; but none of them saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from now on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened and one’ desk might be broken into. “I consider it a personal insult,” I said, “that I should be prevented from reading whichever newspaper I wish, because allegedly a Communist set light to the Reichstag. Don’t you”? One of them cheerfully and harmlessly said, “No. Why should I? Did you read Forwards and The Red Flag up to now?” […]
And so it seems to be in the U.S. What shows the terrible, collective, weakness of character of the soft and hedonistic U.S. population is their acceptance of the loss of their freedoms in exchange for protection from those who are claimed to “hate us because of our freedoms.”
What is a revolution? Constitutional lawyers define it as a change of constitution by means not foreseen therein. By this definition the Nazi revolution of March 1933 was not a revolution. Everything went strictly ‘by the book’, using means that were permitted by the constitution. At first there were ’emergency decrees’ by the President of the Reich, and later a bill was passed by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag giving the Government unlimited legislative powers, perfectly in accordance with the rules for changing the constitution.
Now, that is obviously shadow-boxing, but even if we look at things as they really were, there is still room for doubt whether what happened that March really deserves the name of a revolution. From a simple common-sense point of view, one would say that the essential characteristic of a revolution is that people violently attack the established order and its representatives, police, army, etc., and overcome them. It need not always be thrilling and glorious. It can be accompanied by atrocities, brutality, plunder, murder and arson. At all events, we expect revolutionaries to be on the attack, to show courage, risk their lives. Barricades may be out of date, but some form of spontaneity, uprising, commitment and insurrection seem to be an essential part of a genuine revolution.
None of that was to be found in March 1933. The events were a combination of the most disparate ingredients. What was completely absent was any act of courage or spirit by any of the participants. The month of March demonstrated that the Nazis had achieved an unassailable position of power: through terror, celebration and rhetoric, treachery and finally a collective breakdown – a million individuals simultaneously suffered a nervous collapse. More bloodshed has accompanied the birth of many European states, but none came into being in a more loathsome way.
European history knows two forms of terror. The first is the uncontrollable explosion of bloodlust in a victorious mass uprising. The other is cold, calculated cruelty committed by a victorious state as a demonstration of power and intimidation. The two forms of terror normally correspond to revolution and repression. The first is revolutionary. It justifies itself by the rage and fever of the moment, a temporary madness. The second is repressive. It justifies itself by the preceding revolutionary atrocities.
It was left to the Nazis to combine both forms of terror in a manner that invalidates both justifications. In 1933 the terror was practised by a real bloodthirsty mass (namely the SA – the SS did not play a part until later) – but this mass acted as ‘auxiliary police’, without any emotion or spontaneity, and without any risk to themselves. Rather, they acted from a position of complete security, under orders and with strict discipline. The external picture was one of revolutionary terror: a wild unkempt mob breaking into homes at night and dragging defenceless victims to the torture chambers. The internal process was repressive terror: cold, calculated, official orders, directed by the state and carried out under the full protection of the police and the armed forces. It did not take place in the excitement following a victorious battle or danger successfully overcome – nothing of the kind had happened. Nor was it an act of revenge for atrocities committed by the other side – there had been none. What happened was a nightmarish reversal of normal circumstances: robbers and murderers acting as the police force, enjoying the full panoply of state power, their victims treated as criminals, proscribed and condemned to death in advance.
And this is exactly what the new legislation is intended to permit. Hillary Clinton, who certainly does her share of bowing and kowtowing to the Zionist controllers of the Press and votes did make an attempt – feeble though it was – to register protest against this bill. She said “The bill before us allows the admission into evidence of statements derived through cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation. That sets a dangerous precedent that will endanger our own men and women in uniform overseas. Will our enemies be less likely to surrender? Will informants be less likely to come forward? Will our soldiers be more likely to face torture if captured? Will the information we obtain be less reliable? These are the questions we should be asking. And based on what we know about warfare from listening to those who have fought for our country, the answers do not support this bill. As Lieutenant John F. Kimmons, the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence said, “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive interrogation practices.” ”
An example that became public knowledge because of its scale occurred some months later in the Côpenick area of Berlin, where a Social Democratic trade unionist defended himself, with the help of his sons, against an SA patrol that broke into his home at night to ‘arrest’ him. In obvious self-defence he shot two SA men. As a result, he and his sons were overcome by a larger troop of SA men and hanged in a shed in the yard that same night. Next day the SA patrols appeared in Côpenick, in disciplined order, entered the homes of every known Social Democrat and killed them on the spot. The exact number of deaths was never made public.
I would like to point out that there has been a lot of recent encouragement for U.S. citizens to arm themselves and to feel some confidence in their rights to their home as their castle. This is an obvious set-up. Ask yourself just what will happen when a man with a handgun or rifle stands up against a man with a tank? Do the Zio-Cons intend to set up conditions where a couple of U.S. citizens will resist as the trade unionist described above did? And then, will the Department of Homeland Security use this as an excuse to go to the homes of all registered gun owners and kill them on the spot? It really begins to look that way.
This form of terror had the advantage that, according to the circumstances, one could either shrug one’s shoulders and speak of ‘the unavoidable, if regrettable, side effects of any revolution’ – using the justification for revolutionary terror – or point to the strict discipline and explain that public law and order were being maintained and that these actions were required to prevent revolutionary disorder overwhelming Germany the justification for repressive terror. Both excuses were used in turn, depending on the audience being addressed.
And they have been – and will be – used in the United States.
Certainly, this kind of publicity made, and still makes, the terror under the Nazis more repulsive than under any other regime in European history. Even cruelty can have a magnificent aspect, if it is practised with open commitment and idealism; when those who are cruel stand by their deeds with fervour – as happened in the French Revolution and the Russian and Spanish civil wars.
In contrast, the Nazis never showed anything but the sly, pale, cowardly face of a murderer denying his crime. While they were systematically torturing and murdering their defenceless victims, they daily declared in fine, noble words that not a single hair of anyone’s head would be harmed, and that never before had a revolution shed less blood or been conducted more humanely.
And that perfectly describes the Bush/Zio-Con regime: exporting democracy by force. I am reminded of Condoleezza Rice describing the Israeli bombing of Lebanon as “birth pangs of democracy.” Indeed, sly, cowardly murderers, blaming the victim; a chief trait of the psychopath; also the Israeli army calling itself the “most moral force in the world.”
Indeed, only a few weeks after the atrocities began, a law was passed that forbade anyone, under pain of severe penalties, to claim, even in the privacy of their own home, that atrocities were taking place.
Of course, it was not the intention to keep the atrocities secret. In that case they would not have served their purpose, which was to induce general fear, alarm and submission. On the the contrary, the purpose was to intensify the terror by cloaking it in secrecy and making even talking about it dangerous. An open declaration of what was happening in SA cellars and concentration camps in a public speech or in the press – might still have led to desperate resistance, even in Germany. The secret whispered rumours, ‘Be careful, my friend! Do you know what happened to X?’ were much more effective in breaking people’s backbones.
The effect was intensified by the way one was permanently occupied and distracted by an unending sequence of celebrations, ceremonies, and national festivities. It started with a huge victory celebration before the elections on the 4th of March – ‘Tag der nationalen Erhebung’ (day of national rising). There were mass parades, fireworks, drums, bands and flags all over Germany, Hitler’s voice over thousands of loudspeakers, oaths and vows – and all before it was even certain that the elections might not be a setback for the Nazis, which indeed they were.
These elections, the last that were ever held in pre-war Germany, brought the Nazis only 44 per cent of the votes (in the previous elections they had achieved 37 per cent). The majority was still against the Nazis. If you consider that terror was in full swing, that the parties of the Left had been prohibited from all public activity in the decisive final week before the elections, you have to admit that the German people as a whole had behaved quite decently. However, it made no difference at all. The defeat was celebrated like a victory, the terror intensified, the celebrations multiplied. Flags never left the windows for a whole fortnight.
A week later Hindenburg abolished the Weimar national flag, which was replaced by the swastika banner and a black, white and red ‘temporary national flag’. There were daily parades, mass meetings, declarations of gratitude for the liberation of the nation, military music from dawn to dusk, award ceremonies for heroes, the dedication of flags and, as a final climax, the tasteless display of the ‘Day of Potsdam’ – with the traitor Hindenburg visiting the grave of Frederick the Great, Hitler swearing loyalty to something or other for the n-th time, bells tolling, a solemn procession to church of the members of the Reichstag, a military parade, swords lowered in salute, children waving flags and a torchlight parade.
The colossal emptiness and lack of meaning of these never-ending events was by no means unintentional. The population should become used to cheering and jubilation; even when there was no visible reason for it. It was reason enough that people who distanced themselves too obviously – sshh! – were daily and nightly tortured to death with steel whips and electric drills. Better to celebrate, howl with the wolves, ‘Heil, Heil!’ Besides, people began to enjoy doing so. The weather in March 1933 was glorious. Was it not wonderful to celebrate in the spring sunshine, in squares decked with flags? To merge with the festive crowds and listen to high-sounding patriotic speeches, about freedom, and fatherland, exaltation and holy vows? (It was certainly better than having one’s belly pumped up with a water hose in some hidden SA cellar.)
People began to join in – at first mostly from fear. After they had participated, they no longer wanted to do so just from fear. That would have been mean and contemptible. So the necessary ideology was supplied. That was the spiritual basis of the victory of the National Socialist revolution.
True, something further was necessary to achieve all this. That was the cowardly treachery of all party and organisational leaders, to whom the 56 per cent of the population who had voted against the Nazis on the 5th of March had entrusted themselves. This terrible and decisive event was not much noticed by the outside world. Naturally, the Nazis had no interest in drawing attention to it, since it would considerably devalue their ‘victory’, and as for the traitors themselves: well, of course, they did not want attention drawn to it. Nevertheless, it is finally only this betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight.
The betrayal was complete, extending from Left to Right. I have already described how, behind their façade of being ‘ready’ and prepared for civil war, the Communists were only preparing for the emigration of their leading members. What of the Social Democratic leadership? Their betrayal of their faithful and blindly loyal millions of followers, for the most part decent, unimportant individuals, had begun on the 20th of July 1932, when Severing and Grzesinski ‘yielded to greater force’. They had fought the election campaign of 1933 in a dreadfully humiliating way, chasing after the Nazi slogans and emphasizing that they were ‘also nationalist’. On the 4th of March, a day before the elections, their ‘strong man’, the Prussian prime minister Otto Braun, drove across the Swiss frontier. He had prudently bought a small house in Ticino. In May, a month before they were finally dissolved, the Social Democratic faction in the Reichstag had unanimously expressed their confidence in Hitler and joined in the singing of the Horst Wessel Song, the Nazi anthem. (The official parliamentary report noted: ‘Unending applause and cheers, in the house and the galleries. The Reichschancellor turns to the Social Democratic faction and applauds.’)
The great middle-class, Catholic party, Zentrum, which in the last few years had attracted the backing of more and more middle-class Protestants, had already fallen in March. It was this party that supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that ‘legalised’ Hider’s dictatorship. In this it followed its leader, the ex-Reichschancellor Bruning. This is frequently forgotten abroad, and Bruning is still considered as a possible replacement for Hitler. Believe me, it is not forgotten in Germany. A man who, even on the 23rd of March 1933, thought it tactically justifiable to procure for Hitler the votes of his party on a decisive issue has ruled himself out for ever there.
Finally, the German nationalists, the right-wing conservatives, who venerated ‘honour’ and ‘heroism’ as the central characteristics of their programme. Oh God, what an infinitely dishonourable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterwards! One might at least have expected that, once their claim in January proved illusory – that they had ‘tamed’ the Nazis and ‘rendered them harmless’ – they would act as a ‘brake’ and ‘prevent the worst’. Not a bit of it. They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of the Jews, the persecution of Christians. They were not even bothered when their own party was prohibited and their own members arrested. Socialist officials who abandon their party members and voters are a dismal enough sight; but what is one to say of aristocratic officers – like Herr von Papen – who stand by when their nearest friends and associates are shot, and who remain in office and shout ‘Heil Hitler!’?
As the parties, so the leagues. There was a ‘League of Communist Front-Line Veterans’ and a centrist association called Reichsbanner with a black, red and gold flag, the colours of the Weimar Republic. It was organised on military lines by a coalition of centrist parties including the Social Democrats, had arms and millions of members and was explicitly intended to hold the SA in check. During the whole period this association remained completely invisible, not a glimmer. It disappeared without trace, as though it had never existed. Resistance in Germany only took the form of individual acts of desperation –as in the case of the trade union official in Côpenick. The officers of the Reichsbanner showed not the slightest opposition when their facilities were ‘taken over’ by the SA. The Stahlhelm, the army of the German nationalists, permitted itself to be absorbed and then dissolved bit by bit. They grumbled, but offered no resistance. There was not one single example of energetic defence, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. Some tried to join the Stahlhelm and the German nationalists, when it became clear that none of the others were going to fight. For a few weeks their membership numbers showed an exceptional rise, then the organisation was disbanded – and it, too, capitulated without a fight.
The fact that so many of the “opposing parties” just withered away without protest as Haffner describes it entirely supports the remarks of Douglas Reed about this period. Reed wrote:
But for one later event, the [Zionist] undertaking [to acquire Palestine] would have died a natural death within a few years and would survive today in the annals merely as Balfour’s Folly. This event was the coming of Hitler, which for a while filled the gap left by the collapse of the legend of “persecution in Russia” and produced in some Jews a desire to go even to Palestine. For the Zionists Hitler, had he not arisen, would have needed to be created; a collapsing scheme was made by him to look almost lifelike for some time. […]
The years which followed, 1933-1939, were those of the brewing of the Second World War. “Prussian militarism”, supposed to have been laid low in 1918, rose up more formidable than ever and the spectacle so absorbed men’s minds that they lost interest in the affair in Palestine, which seemed unrelated to the great events in Europe. In fact it was to loom large among those “causes and objects” of the second war which President Wilson had called “obscure” in the first one. The gap left by the collapse, in 1917, of the legend of “Jewish persecution in Russia” was filled by “the Jewish persecution in Germany” and, just when Zionism was “helpless and hopeless”, the Zionists were able with a new cry to affright the Jews and beleaguer the Western politicians. The consequences showed in the outcome of the ensuing war, when revolutionary-Zionism and revolutionary-Communism proved to be the sole beneficiaries.
My own experience during those years ultimately produced this book. When they began, in 1933, I had climbed from my clerkship to be a correspondent of The Times in Berlin and was happy in that calling. When they ended, in 1939, I was fully disenchanted with it and had felt compelled to throw up my livelihood. The tale of the years between will show the reason.
From 1927 on I reported the rise of Hitler, and by chance was passing the Reichstag when it burst into flames in 1933. This event (used to set up the secret-police-and-concentration-camp system in Germany, on the Bolshevist model) cemented Hitler in power, but some prescience, that night, told me that it meant much more than that. In fact the present unfinished ordeal of the West dates from that night, not from the later war. Its true meaning was that the area of occupation of the world-revolution spread to the middle of Europe, and the actual transfer to Communist ownership in 1945 merely confirmed an accomplished fact (theretofore disguised from the masses by the bogus antagonism between National Socialism and Communism) which the war, at its outset, was supposed to undo. The only genuine question which the future has yet to answer is whether the world-revolution will be driven back or spread further westward from the position which, in effect, it occupied on the night of February 27, 1933.
From the start of Hitler’s regime (on that night) all professional observers in Berlin, diplomats and journalists, knew that it meant a new war unless this were prevented. Prevention at that time was relatively simple; Mr. Winston Churchill in his memoirs rightly called the Second War “the unnecessary war”. It could have been prevented by firm Western opposition to Hitler’s preliminary warlike forays (into the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia) at any time up to 1938 when (as Mr. Churchill also confirms) the German generals, about to overthrow Hitler, were themselves undone by the Western capitulation to him at Munich.
The trained observers in Berlin were agreed that he would make war if allowed and so advised their governmental or editorial superiors in London. The Chief Correspondent of The Times in Berlin, Mr. Norman Ebbutt (I was the second correspondent) reported early in 1933 that war must be expected in about five years unless it were forethwarted, and this particular report was printed. He, I and many other reporters during the following years grew alarmed and perplexed by the suppression, “burking” and ignoring of dispatches, and by the depiction of Hitler, in Parliament and the newspapers, as an inherently good man who would remain peaceable if his just grievances were met (at others’ expense).
This period has become known as that of “the policy of appeasement” but encouragement is the truer word, and the policy changed the probability of war into certainty. The strain brought Mr. Ebbutt to physical collapse. From 1935 on I was Chief Correspondent in Vienna, which was then but another vantage-point for surveying the German scene. From there, late in 1937, I informed The Times that both Hitler and Goering had said that the war would begin “by the autumn of 1939”; I had this information from the Austrian Chancellor. I was in Vienna during Hitler’s invasion and then, after brief arrest by Storm Troops on the way out, transferred to Budapest, where I was when the supreme capitulation of Munich followed in September 1938. Realizing then that a faithful reporter could do nothing against “the policy of appeasement”, and that his task was meaningless, I resigned by expostulant letter, and still have the editor’s discursive acknowledgement.
Fourteen years later The Times publicly confessed error, in respect of its “policy of appeasement”, in that curiously candid Official History of 1952. This contains a grudging reference to me: “There were resignations from junior members of the staff” (I was forty-three in 1938, was Chief Correspondent for Central Europe and the Balkans, had worked for The Times for seventeen years, and I believe I was the only correspondent to resign). In this volume The Times also undertook never so to err again: “it is not rash to say that aggression will never again be met at Printing House Square in terms of mere ‘Munich’.” The editorial articles and reports of The Times about such later events as the bisection of Europe in 1945, the Communization of China, the Zionization of Palestine and the Korean war seem to me to show that its policies did not change at all.
Thus my resignation of 1938 was inspired by a motive similar to that of Colonel Repington (of whom I then had not heard) in 1918. There was a major military danger to England and qualified reporters were not allowed to make this plain to the public: the result, in my opinion, was the Second World War. The journalist should not regard himself too seriously, but if his reports are disregarded in the most momentous matters of the day he feels that his calling is a sham and then he had best give it up, at any cost. This is what I did, and I was comforted, many years later, when I read Sir William Robertson’s words to Colonel Repington: “The great thing is to keep on a straight course and then one may be sure that good will eventually come of what may now seem to be evil”. [Controversy of Zion]
Thus it seems almost certain that the rise of Hitler in Germany was aided and abetted by the same Zionist pressure that has now been brought to bear on the U.S. Congress, inducing the passage of legislation legalizing torture and doing away with habeas corpus, and establishing of Nazi-like military tribunals. These pressures also include such things as the co-opting of the 9-11 Truth Movement, the Alternative Media and Historical Revisionism. Returning now to Haffner’s account, keeping in mind that he was writing in 1939:
This terrible moral bankruptcy of the opposition leadership is a fundamental characteristic of the March ‘revolution’ of 1933. It made the Nazi victory exceedingly easy. On the other hand, it also sheds doubt on the strength and durability of that victory. The swastika has not been stamped on the Germans as though they were a firm, resistant but malleable mass, but as though they were a formless, yielding pulp that can equally easily take a different form. Admittedly, March 1933 has left open the question as to whether it is worth the effort to try and reshape it. The moral inadequacy of the German character shown in that month is too monstrous to suppose that history will not one day call them to account for it.
With other nations, every revolution has ultimately led to an enormous increase in the moral energy of both sides, however much blood might initially have been shed, however much they had at first been weakened. In the long run, revolutions have thus always strengthened the nations concerned. Just consider the vast quantity of heroism, death-defying courage and human greatness exhibited by the Jacobins and the Royalists in the French Revolution – admittedly against a backdrop of cruelty and violence. It is the same with the Republicans and Franco supporters in Spain. Whatever the outcome, the courage of the fighters remains a source of strength in the mind of the nation. Instead of that source of strength, today’s Germans have the memory of shame, cowardice and weakness. That will inevitably have consequences one day, perhaps even lead to the dissolution of the German state.
It was out of this treachery of its opponents, and the feeling of helplessness, weakness and disgust that it aroused, that the Third Reich was born. In the elections of the 5th of March the Nazis had remained a minority. If there had been elections three weeks later, the German people would almost certainly have given them a true majority. This was not just a result of the terror, or intoxication resulting from the constant festivities (though the Germans like being intoxicated by patriotic celebrations). The decisive cause was anger and disgust with the cowardly treachery of their own leadership. That had become for a moment stronger than the rage and hate against the real enemy.
Hundreds of thousands, who had up till then been opponents, joined the Nazi Party in March 1933. The Nazis called them the ‘casualties of March’ and treated them with suspicion and contempt. The workers also left their Social Democratic and Communist unions in equally large numbers and joined Nazi Betriebszellen (factory cells) or the SA. They did it for many reasons, often for a whole tangled web of them; but however hard one looks, one will not find a single solid, positive, durable reason among them – not one that can pass muster. In each individual case the process of becoming a Nazi showed the unmistakable symptoms of nervous collapse.
The simplest and, if you looked deeper, nearly always the most basic reason was fear. Join the thugs to avoid being beaten up. Less clear was a kind of exhilaration, the intoxication of unity, the magnetism of the masses. Many also felt a need for revenge against those who had abandoned them. Then there was a peculiarly German line of thought: ‘All the predictions of the opponents of the Nazis have not come true. They said the Nazis could not win. Now they have won. Therefore the opponents were wrong. So the Nazis must be right.’ There was also (particularly among intellectuals) the belief that they could change the face of the Nazi Party by becoming a member, even now shift its direction. Then of course many just jumped on the bandwagon, wanted to be part of a perceived success. Finally, among the more primitive, inarticulate, simpler souls there was a process that might have taken place in mythical times when a beaten tribe abandoned its faithless god and accepted the god of the victorious tribe as its patron. Saint Marx, in whom one had always believed, had not helped. Saint Hitler was obviously more powerful. So let’s destroy the images of Saint Marx on the altars and replace them with images of Saint Hitler. Let us learn to pray: ‘It is the Jews’ fault’ rather than ‘It is the capitalists’ fault’. Perhaps that will redeem us.
The sequence of events is, as you see, not so unnatural. It is wholly within the normal range of psychology, and it helps to explain the almost inexplicable. The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called ‘breeding’. This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial. It is missing in the Germans. As a nation they are soft, unreliable and without backbone. That was shown in March 1933. At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown.
The result of this million-fold nervous breakdown is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.
Now, what you have just read is an exact description of what Andrzej Lobaczewski talks about in Political Ponerology: how deviants operate, how they develop their ramified networks, how they intimidate and control … and you also can see, if your eyes are open, the workings of the Zionists in the background. Nothing else explains the strange abandonment of the German people to the Nazis by otherwise “worthy leaders” of various other parties, leagues and groups.
We see exactly the same thing in the U.S. today.
Everyone wonders why there is no real leadership, why no one is standing up to the Zio-Con takeover.
Well, Reed describes HOW, Lobaczewski describes WHY, and above, Haffner has described the events that fit the theories of both Reed and Lobaczewski and which serve as a template for understanding what is happening in the U.S. today.
One most important point needs to be made here: the phenomenon has nothing to do with the Ideologies used by the various deviant players. Being a psychopath is common to any and all groups, Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. The second point is: Just because we can identify many Zionists as a gang of psychopathic manipulators on one side, because they have used Judaism as their ruse, and have hidden themselves behind the masses of normal Jews, does not mean that their ostensible nemesis, Adolf Hitler, was a “good guy.” In fact, it is not uncommon for psychopaths to play exactly this sort of game: to be working together behind the scenes while presenting a confrontational front to the masses. This is typical of COINTELPRO, and is even delineated explicitly in the Protocols. As Andrzej Lobaczewski writes:
It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda. Even a small-time gang of hoodlums has its own melodramatic ideology and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one’s own or those of others.
If such a ponerogenic union could be stripped of its ideology, nothing would remain except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of course provoke “moral outrage”, and not only among the members of the union. The fact is, even normal people, who condemn this kind of union along with its ideologies, feel hurt and deprived of something constituting part of their own romanticism, their way of perceiving reality when a widely idealized group is exposed as little more than a gang of criminals. Perhaps even some of the readers of this book will resent the author’s stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary motifs. The job of effecting such a “strip-tease” may thus turn out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected. […]
The greater and truer the original ideology, the longer it may be capable of nourishing and disguising from human criticism that phenomenon which is the product of the specific degenerative process. In a great and valuable ideology, the danger for small minds is hidden; they can become the factors of such preliminary degeneration, which opens the door to invasion by pathological factors.
And so it is with the efforts to bring Truth to the Masses. It is a great Ideal, but fraught with difficulties and opposition and certainly, the most devastating problem is the fact that normal people who claim to want the truth, have difficulty in letting go of their wishful-thinking attachment to simplistic and doctrinaire answers to complex and difficult questions. Lobaczewski write:
Observation of the ponerization processes of various human unions throughout history easily leads to the conclusion that the initial step is a moral warping of the group’s ideational contents. In analyzing the contamination of a group’s ideology, we note first of all an infiltration of foreign, simplistic, and doctrinaire contents, thereby depriving it of any healthy support for, and trust in, the necessity of understanding of human nature. This opens the way for invasion by pathological factors and the ponerogenic role of their carriers.
The idea that since the Zionists were the bad guys, so Hitler must have been a good guy, is a perfect example of the infiltration of foreign, simplistic, and doctrinaire contents. Lobaczewski describes not only the corruption of the so-called Historical Revisionism groups, but the 9-11 Truth Movements and many of the Alternative Media groups. It also describes what happened in Nazi Germany, and what is happening today in the U.S. The problem is
psychopaths and their “ponerization” of society at all levels. The USA and Israel seem to be at the top of the ponerized
list, but every group or faction has its version.
Any human group affected by the process described herein is characterized by its increasing regression from natural common sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality. Someone considering this in terms of traditional categories might consider it an instance of “turning into half-wits” or the development of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings. A ponerological analysis of this process, however, indicates that pressure is being applied to the more normal part of the association by pathological factors present in certain individuals who have been allowed to participate in the group because the lack of good psychological knowledge has not mandated their exclusion. […]
Thus, whenever we observe some group member being treated with no critical distance, although he betrays one of the psychological anomalies familiar to us, and his opinions being treated as at least equal to those of normal people, although they are based on a characteristically different view of human matters, we must derive the conclusion that this human group is affected by a ponerogenic process and if measures are not taken the process shall continue to its logical conclusion. We shall treat this in accordance with the above described first criterion of ponerology, which retains its validity regardless of the qualitative and quantitative features of such a union: the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic.
Such a state of affairs simultaneously consists as a liminal (watershed) situation, whereupon further damage to people’s healthy common sense and critical moral faculties becomes ever easier. Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subjecting its more normal members to pressure characterized by corresponding paralogical and paramoral elements.
For many people, such pressure of collective opinion takes on attributes of a moral criterion; for others, it represents a kind of psychological terror ever more difficult to endure. The phenomenon of counter-selection thus occurs in this phase of ponerization: individuals with a more normal sense of psychological reality leave after entering into conflict with the newly modified group; simultaneously, individuals with various psychological anomalies join the group and easily find a way of life there. The former feel “pushed into counter-revolutionary positions”, and the latter can afford to remove their masks of sanity ever more often. […]
When a ponerogenic process encompasses a society’s entire ruling class, or nation, or when opposition from normal people is stifled — as a result of the mass character of the phenomenon, or by using spellbinding means and physical compulsion, including censorship — we are dealing with a macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon.
Like I said: we ALREADY have an American leader like Hitler, and just like Germany back in 1933, it seems that the U.S. is on the verge of a macro-social Nervous Breakdown; the invariable result of psychopaths in charge.
Originally Published 2006_10_02
Discover more from Cassiopaea
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.