A WALK IN THE SUN FOR DEAR LEADER
This is a discussion of the proposed Freedom March in terms of its fascist trappings. I edited Steve Gilliard’s post on THE NEWS BLOG for clarity only. Interesting study and references on fascism. Bush fits the profile I would say.
A WALK IN THE SUN FOR DEAR LEADER
This came in the mail and it interested me:
The Pentagon's "walk" (not "march") on Washington on 9/11 isn't just disgusting; it's an attempt to play on Americans' patriotism and fears for the benefit of the sinking Bush admin. It's a dangerous exercise in fascistic propaganda by our military in collusion w/ Bush that could sow seeds that split the country. The Pentagon has no business calling out the citizens for a political event -- a "walk" into the nation's capital.
Let's get real about this event -- it's timing and character. It's intended to deflate what may be a huge anti-war march less than two weeks later in Washington that is being coordinated by United for Peace and Justice -- the org that produced an orderly million-person anti-Bush march thru the streets of Manhattan last year on the eve of the GOP convention. Grabbing "9/11" and telling the public to "support your troops" and "the commander in chief", the Pentagon's political rally is right out of the Nazi's fascist propaganda playbook.
Those two terms "propaganda" and "fascism" are so rear-view mirror that many people have no connection.
FYI -- below is info w/ sources and links.
When you read the seven key propaganda techniques of fascism that are identified by Columbia Univ. academics, who studied the Nazi takeover of the German people some 60 yrs ago, you may get a chill.
------
From "Modern English Readings" edited by Columbia University people, a 1942 tract on "Propaganda Techniques of German Fascism"
It illuminates seven propaganda techniques used by the Nazis:
1) Name Calling
2) Glittering Generalities
3) Transfer
4) Testimonial
5) Plain Folks
6) Card Stacking
7) Band Wagon
But first ----- what is Fascism?
The 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted that fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." -- US VP Henry A. Wallace, 1944
Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt calls these the 14 identifying characteristics of fascism.
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Supremacy of the Military
Rampant Sexism
Controlled Mass Media
Obsession with National Security
Religion and Government are Intertwined
Corporate Power is Protected
Labor Power is Suppressed
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fraudulent Elections
Some critics say the Britt list above is oversimplifed, and point to the earlier list of 14 characteristics of "Ur-Fascism," or Eternal Fascism, by Umberto Eco: "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt."
- The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
- Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
- Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
- The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
- Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
- Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
- To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
- The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
- For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
- Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and - militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
- In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
- Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
- Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
- Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Now -- excerpts from the tract from Columbia University on Propaganda Techniques of German Fascism:
Skip the first part of essay because the conditions giving rise to Bush's Fascism in America are different from the situation in post-WW I Germany where Nazi Fascism arose.
- The social strain created by this condition (post 9/11 for US) made possible an audience highly susceptible to the propaganda of demagogues and cliques of demagogues.
- Sometimes a demagogue is sincere in his propaganda; usually he is confused. Typically, a demagogic clique is corrupt in whole or in part. The corrupt elements are usually successful in proportion to their astuteness and unscrupulousness. They will agitate for a fee; they will exact for their services all that the traffic will bear; they will serve or pretend to serve many interests.
The extent to which Hitler and his Nazi clique were sincere, astute, or unscrupulous may never be fully known. At the critical moment the NSDAP did receive the secret financial backing of a small group of Germans who wanted a government which would abolish freedom of speech, press, and assembly; which would eliminate labor unions; and which would deal effectively with expressed opposition. Such a government was established in Germany in 1933 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
- To win their way to power the National Socialists used all the techniques of propaganda, all the avenues for its dissemination which modern science and invention have made possible, and all the old appeals and shibboleths. Professor Schuman gives a vivid picture of one of the thousands of carefully planned great mass meetings: the waiting, the expectancy, the late hour when people's resistance is low, the decorations, the company of storm troopers drilling, the dramatic torchlight parade, the bands, the singing, finally the hush, a crash of drums and trumpets, the slow solemn entrance of a well disciplined procession to stirring martial music or perhaps Richard Wagner's "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla"; at the end a special bodyguard, the uniformed party leaders, and then, "the centre of all eyes, Der Fuehrer in his tan raincoat, hatless, smiling, and affably greeting those to right and left. A man of the people! Germany's Savior!" "Heil! Heil!" and the third "HEIL!" swells into a great ovation. Speeches, spotlights, cheers, waving of arms. The audience responds at the end with an overwhelming chorus, "Heil! Heil! Heil! Hitler!" The bands blare forth, and the multitude chants the "Horst Wessel Lied."
- American newspaper correspondents point out that Hitler's addresses are often unintelligible. Large numbers of his listeners apparently listen with their emotions. When their tension becomes high, they intercept the speech by emotional outbursts at seemingly inappropriate times. Here we see the force of language with or without meaning as a molder of public opinion. Only intelligent citizens skilled in analysis of propaganda and immunized against the wiles of the orator were unaffected by Hitler. Among such doubtless were editors, writers, teachers, clergymen, and others who later were to be killed, imprisoned, or forced to acquiesce in silence to a regime they disapproved. Hitler, the master propagandist, knew that propaganda, to be effective, must be keyed to the desires, hopes, hatreds, loves, fears, and prejudices of the people; he knew that most human beings crave a scapegoat to take the blame of disaster and to bolster their own pride. The Jews were made the scapegoat.
- Spellbinding, emotional meetings were not the only Nazi techniques of propaganda which helped bring the party to power. With its mysterious swastika, its parades, its officers, its "Third Reich," its esoteric "wisdom," its solidarity achieved by familiar symbols and uniforms, the party was and is actually a secret society. It is elaborately organized with a women's auxiliary, children's groups, youth divisions” -- a place for every one.
- Since the advent of the National Socialists the power of the agencies of propaganda has been intensified and coordinated so that all avenues of communication -- ”press, school, radio, motion picture, and even the church --”must carry but one propaganda to the public mind, must express one will, one voice, one opinion. Hence the Hitler regime has, in common with other fascist countries, established a system wherein authority flows from the top down; and from the people comes blind, instant, unquestioning obedience.
Seven common propaganda devices identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis:
1) "Name Calling" is a device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence on which it should be based. Here the propagandist appeals to our hate and fear.
"Liberals" are classified as weak, insipid, vacillating, temporizing, and unprincipled. To be a "liberal" or to believe in the "stupid doctrine of equality" fostered by "Jewish-invented democracy" is to be a lily-livered "red." "Jewish democracy" is opposed to the "true democracy," which Hitler claims to have established.
Nazi propagandists supercharge words with feeling and emotion in order to give them greater force in Name Calling. The same supercharging is applied to the "virtue words" which they employ in the Glittering Generalities device. Many of these words derive their virtue from the immense reservoir of honesty, decency, good workmanship, good will, fine imagination, and rich emotionalism of the German people. Others are given significant new meanings.
2) "Glittering Generalities" is a device by which the propagandist identifies his program with virtue by use of "virtue words." Here he appeals to our emotions of love, generosity, and brotherhood.
The most sweeping generality is that conveyed by the word Volk (folk or people).
The Volk, after purging itself of Jewish blood, is to return to the true Germanic tradition of the Middle Ages. To lend authority to this theory a "biological mythology" has had to be invented, and is now proclaimed by professors appointed to university chairs for that purpose. Thus, we see the Card Stacking and Testimonial devices used to strengthen an application of the Glittering Generalities device. The regime utilizes the word "science" to sanction practices, policies, beliefs, and races which it wants approved. By "science" it obtains approval for the destruction of all opposition and of all "Marxist liberal culture."
3) "Transfer" is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept. Something approaching deification of Chancellor Hitler is an outstanding example of this device. Nazi propagandists seek to establish him as a quasi-divinity and to transfer to him the religious feelings of the German people; then to transfer from him the "divine" sanction of the policies, practices, beliefs, and hatreds which he espouses.
Pope Pius XI(20) in his encyclical on Germany, March 14, 1937, stressed the same point when he wrote:
Beware, Venerable Brethren, of the growing abuse in speech and writing, of using the thrice holy name of God as a meaningless label for a more or less capricious form of human search and longing.
When members of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Protestant churches are not sufficiently influenced by the attempt to transfer their allegiance from the church beliefs which they have held to the beliefs "coordinated" with those of the state, more direct means of persuasion are used.
Effective in transferring the sanction of the Almighty to his program are Hitler's public prayers. For example, in his address to the Reichstag, February 20, 1938, in which the Nazi aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia and other nations was forecast, Hitler used this device to give his acts divine approval in advance. He closed that address with these words:
At this hour I should only like to pray the Lord God also in years to come to bestow his blessing upon our work, our acts, our insight and our resolution to preserve us from overbearing as well as cowardly subservience, guiding us on the right path which His providence mapped out for the German people and that He always will give us the courage to do what is right and never waver or shrink before any violence or any danger. Long live Germany and the German nation.
For children the Transfer device most frequently employed is the symbol of the Nazi hero --”especially in his role of soldier. Manliness is identified with the glory of the party and is used as a means of encouraging in German boys an attitude of superiority toward women and a belief in the doctrines of militarism and anti-Semitism. Words and symbols appertaining to war have been endowed with a glorious sense to make war appear heroic and thrilling. Little children know and give the Hitler salute. Toy soldiers, tanks, machine guns, and simplified battle instructions abound everywhere -- ”symbols to transfer sanction to the later use of real tanks and machine guns. During special "children's evenings" boys and girls read books like Horst Wants to Be a Soldier, A Child Goes to War, The Battle of Tannenberg, and Two Lads in the Navy. Problems in some arithmetic books deal with such questions as the quantity of gas bombs that would be necessary, if dropped from an altitude of ten thousand feet, to destroy a town of five thousand inhabitants.
4) The "Testimonial" is a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy.
From the fact that "the Fuehrer knows the goal and knows the direction," it follows that his is the supreme testimonial. No authority and no judgment which does not follow from or accord with his can be right. No specialist knows better than he, no recommendation can be better than his. He can deny even the authority of science. Only the conclusions of "German science" as approved by the Fuehrer may be accepted. When the conclusions of science do not accord with his wishes, as in genetics, a new science has to be invented (Card Stacking); its prestige then has to be established by his testimonial. So also with the arts. Only that art which is approved by the Fuehrer and his subordinates as German art may be accepted by the German people. So also does he decree how men and women shall live their lives.
5) "Plain Folks" is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even by ministers and educators to win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves -- "just plain folks among the neighbors."
At the same time that the Fuehrer is canonized, an attempt is made to transform him into a "man of the people." In this, the propagandists are greatly assisted by his habits; for he affects ordinary clothes, wears no medals other than his simple Iron Cross, eats plain food and that sparingly, and leads a quiet, secluded life. He is pictured as a man of the people meeting plain Folks in their ordinary walks of life, enjoying with them their simple work and pleasures.
6) "Card Stacking" is a device in which the propagandist employs all the arts of deception to win our support for himself, his group, nation, race, policy, practice, belief, or ideal. He stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evade facts.
The misrepresentation of facts works in two ways. On the one hand there is a rigorously enforced censorship, backed by an elaborate spy system and the constant threat of concentration camps..... In line with this policy is the destruction of books and papers which contain what the Japanese call "dangerous thoughts." Even long accepted classics are not immune.
By this means the regime can suppress facts, prevent discussion and expression of discontent and opposition. This largely accounts for the fact that many visitors on returning from Germany report that they heard no expression of discontent. On the other hand the regime has freedom to give publicity to falsehoods. Hitler approves such publicity in Mein Kampf (deleted from the English translation) which he writes:
"Propaganda . . . does not have to seek objectively for the truth so far as it favors an opponent . . . but exclusively has to serve our interests." It must adopt every device of slander that ingenuity can suggest: "whenever our propaganda permits for a single moment the shimmer of an appearance of right on the other side, it has laid a foundation for doubt in the right of our cause . . . especially among a people that so suffers from objectivity-mania as the German!"
An analysis of parallel news reports in German and foreign papers offers examples of the effective use of Card Stacking by a controlled press. For instance, during the trial of Pastor Niemoeller the only news carried by the German papers was a brief attack upon him as one who advocated a policy of love to Jews and traitors and preached from the Old Testament. His release by the court was announced but his rearrest by the secret police was not. Convictions of Roman Catholics for "immoral practices" were published; acquittals were "played down." Although the Minister for Church Affairs, Herr Hans Kerrl, announced that more than 8,000 Catholic religious leaders were or had been under arrest, he did not publish the fact that only about forty-nine had been convicted of immoral actions. Similarly, many crimes of individual Jews are publicized, but no publicity is given to ways in which German Jews have served their country. No intimation, for example, is made of the fact that 12,000 Jews died for Germany in the World War; or that, despite official discouragement, approximately the same proportion of Jews as of Gentiles served in the German army and navy.
7) The "Band Wagon" is a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist's program en masse. Here his theme is: "Everybody's doing it." His techniques range from those of medicine show to dramatic spectacle.
One of the great unifying principles adopted by the National Socialists is that of hate. Among the passages deleted from the English version of Mein Kampf, Hitler has written:
"Hate is more lasting than dislike, and the thrusting power for the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times come less from scientific recognition than from a fanaticism that fills the souls of the masses and in a forward-driving hysteria" (vorwÃrtsjagenden Hysterie).
In accordance with this principle Jews, communists, liberals, and democrats, became objects of hatred and scapegoats which could be made to suffer for the people's distress. Unity is further encouraged by patriotic demonstrations, Typical in these are gigantic crowds of people, massed ranks of uniformed troops, bands playing patriotic and martial airs, voices declaiming from a hundred mechanical mouths, ecstatic marchers carrying flickering torches, their resinous smoke blending into the darkness, flags and swastikas everywhere.
A WALK IN THE SUN FOR DEAR LEADER
This came in the mail and it interested me:
The Pentagon's "walk" (not "march") on Washington on 9/11 isn't just disgusting; it's an attempt to play on Americans' patriotism and fears for the benefit of the sinking Bush admin. It's a dangerous exercise in fascistic propaganda by our military in collusion w/ Bush that could sow seeds that split the country. The Pentagon has no business calling out the citizens for a political event -- a "walk" into the nation's capital.
Let's get real about this event -- it's timing and character. It's intended to deflate what may be a huge anti-war march less than two weeks later in Washington that is being coordinated by United for Peace and Justice -- the org that produced an orderly million-person anti-Bush march thru the streets of Manhattan last year on the eve of the GOP convention. Grabbing "9/11" and telling the public to "support your troops" and "the commander in chief", the Pentagon's political rally is right out of the Nazi's fascist propaganda playbook.
Those two terms "propaganda" and "fascism" are so rear-view mirror that many people have no connection.
FYI -- below is info w/ sources and links.
When you read the seven key propaganda techniques of fascism that are identified by Columbia Univ. academics, who studied the Nazi takeover of the German people some 60 yrs ago, you may get a chill.
------
From "Modern English Readings" edited by Columbia University people, a 1942 tract on "Propaganda Techniques of German Fascism"
It illuminates seven propaganda techniques used by the Nazis:
1) Name Calling
2) Glittering Generalities
3) Transfer
4) Testimonial
5) Plain Folks
6) Card Stacking
7) Band Wagon
But first ----- what is Fascism?
The 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted that fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." -- US VP Henry A. Wallace, 1944
Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt calls these the 14 identifying characteristics of fascism.
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Supremacy of the Military
Rampant Sexism
Controlled Mass Media
Obsession with National Security
Religion and Government are Intertwined
Corporate Power is Protected
Labor Power is Suppressed
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fraudulent Elections
Some critics say the Britt list above is oversimplifed, and point to the earlier list of 14 characteristics of "Ur-Fascism," or Eternal Fascism, by Umberto Eco: "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt."
- The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
- Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
- Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
- The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
- Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
- Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
- To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
- The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
- For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
- Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and - militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
- In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
- Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
- Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
- Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Now -- excerpts from the tract from Columbia University on Propaganda Techniques of German Fascism:
Skip the first part of essay because the conditions giving rise to Bush's Fascism in America are different from the situation in post-WW I Germany where Nazi Fascism arose.
- The social strain created by this condition (post 9/11 for US) made possible an audience highly susceptible to the propaganda of demagogues and cliques of demagogues.
- Sometimes a demagogue is sincere in his propaganda; usually he is confused. Typically, a demagogic clique is corrupt in whole or in part. The corrupt elements are usually successful in proportion to their astuteness and unscrupulousness. They will agitate for a fee; they will exact for their services all that the traffic will bear; they will serve or pretend to serve many interests.
The extent to which Hitler and his Nazi clique were sincere, astute, or unscrupulous may never be fully known. At the critical moment the NSDAP did receive the secret financial backing of a small group of Germans who wanted a government which would abolish freedom of speech, press, and assembly; which would eliminate labor unions; and which would deal effectively with expressed opposition. Such a government was established in Germany in 1933 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
- To win their way to power the National Socialists used all the techniques of propaganda, all the avenues for its dissemination which modern science and invention have made possible, and all the old appeals and shibboleths. Professor Schuman gives a vivid picture of one of the thousands of carefully planned great mass meetings: the waiting, the expectancy, the late hour when people's resistance is low, the decorations, the company of storm troopers drilling, the dramatic torchlight parade, the bands, the singing, finally the hush, a crash of drums and trumpets, the slow solemn entrance of a well disciplined procession to stirring martial music or perhaps Richard Wagner's "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla"; at the end a special bodyguard, the uniformed party leaders, and then, "the centre of all eyes, Der Fuehrer in his tan raincoat, hatless, smiling, and affably greeting those to right and left. A man of the people! Germany's Savior!" "Heil! Heil!" and the third "HEIL!" swells into a great ovation. Speeches, spotlights, cheers, waving of arms. The audience responds at the end with an overwhelming chorus, "Heil! Heil! Heil! Hitler!" The bands blare forth, and the multitude chants the "Horst Wessel Lied."
- American newspaper correspondents point out that Hitler's addresses are often unintelligible. Large numbers of his listeners apparently listen with their emotions. When their tension becomes high, they intercept the speech by emotional outbursts at seemingly inappropriate times. Here we see the force of language with or without meaning as a molder of public opinion. Only intelligent citizens skilled in analysis of propaganda and immunized against the wiles of the orator were unaffected by Hitler. Among such doubtless were editors, writers, teachers, clergymen, and others who later were to be killed, imprisoned, or forced to acquiesce in silence to a regime they disapproved. Hitler, the master propagandist, knew that propaganda, to be effective, must be keyed to the desires, hopes, hatreds, loves, fears, and prejudices of the people; he knew that most human beings crave a scapegoat to take the blame of disaster and to bolster their own pride. The Jews were made the scapegoat.
- Spellbinding, emotional meetings were not the only Nazi techniques of propaganda which helped bring the party to power. With its mysterious swastika, its parades, its officers, its "Third Reich," its esoteric "wisdom," its solidarity achieved by familiar symbols and uniforms, the party was and is actually a secret society. It is elaborately organized with a women's auxiliary, children's groups, youth divisions” -- a place for every one.
- Since the advent of the National Socialists the power of the agencies of propaganda has been intensified and coordinated so that all avenues of communication -- ”press, school, radio, motion picture, and even the church --”must carry but one propaganda to the public mind, must express one will, one voice, one opinion. Hence the Hitler regime has, in common with other fascist countries, established a system wherein authority flows from the top down; and from the people comes blind, instant, unquestioning obedience.
Seven common propaganda devices identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis:
1) "Name Calling" is a device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence on which it should be based. Here the propagandist appeals to our hate and fear.
"Liberals" are classified as weak, insipid, vacillating, temporizing, and unprincipled. To be a "liberal" or to believe in the "stupid doctrine of equality" fostered by "Jewish-invented democracy" is to be a lily-livered "red." "Jewish democracy" is opposed to the "true democracy," which Hitler claims to have established.
Nazi propagandists supercharge words with feeling and emotion in order to give them greater force in Name Calling. The same supercharging is applied to the "virtue words" which they employ in the Glittering Generalities device. Many of these words derive their virtue from the immense reservoir of honesty, decency, good workmanship, good will, fine imagination, and rich emotionalism of the German people. Others are given significant new meanings.
2) "Glittering Generalities" is a device by which the propagandist identifies his program with virtue by use of "virtue words." Here he appeals to our emotions of love, generosity, and brotherhood.
The most sweeping generality is that conveyed by the word Volk (folk or people).
The Volk, after purging itself of Jewish blood, is to return to the true Germanic tradition of the Middle Ages. To lend authority to this theory a "biological mythology" has had to be invented, and is now proclaimed by professors appointed to university chairs for that purpose. Thus, we see the Card Stacking and Testimonial devices used to strengthen an application of the Glittering Generalities device. The regime utilizes the word "science" to sanction practices, policies, beliefs, and races which it wants approved. By "science" it obtains approval for the destruction of all opposition and of all "Marxist liberal culture."
3) "Transfer" is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept. Something approaching deification of Chancellor Hitler is an outstanding example of this device. Nazi propagandists seek to establish him as a quasi-divinity and to transfer to him the religious feelings of the German people; then to transfer from him the "divine" sanction of the policies, practices, beliefs, and hatreds which he espouses.
Pope Pius XI(20) in his encyclical on Germany, March 14, 1937, stressed the same point when he wrote:
Beware, Venerable Brethren, of the growing abuse in speech and writing, of using the thrice holy name of God as a meaningless label for a more or less capricious form of human search and longing.
When members of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Protestant churches are not sufficiently influenced by the attempt to transfer their allegiance from the church beliefs which they have held to the beliefs "coordinated" with those of the state, more direct means of persuasion are used.
Effective in transferring the sanction of the Almighty to his program are Hitler's public prayers. For example, in his address to the Reichstag, February 20, 1938, in which the Nazi aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia and other nations was forecast, Hitler used this device to give his acts divine approval in advance. He closed that address with these words:
At this hour I should only like to pray the Lord God also in years to come to bestow his blessing upon our work, our acts, our insight and our resolution to preserve us from overbearing as well as cowardly subservience, guiding us on the right path which His providence mapped out for the German people and that He always will give us the courage to do what is right and never waver or shrink before any violence or any danger. Long live Germany and the German nation.
For children the Transfer device most frequently employed is the symbol of the Nazi hero --”especially in his role of soldier. Manliness is identified with the glory of the party and is used as a means of encouraging in German boys an attitude of superiority toward women and a belief in the doctrines of militarism and anti-Semitism. Words and symbols appertaining to war have been endowed with a glorious sense to make war appear heroic and thrilling. Little children know and give the Hitler salute. Toy soldiers, tanks, machine guns, and simplified battle instructions abound everywhere -- ”symbols to transfer sanction to the later use of real tanks and machine guns. During special "children's evenings" boys and girls read books like Horst Wants to Be a Soldier, A Child Goes to War, The Battle of Tannenberg, and Two Lads in the Navy. Problems in some arithmetic books deal with such questions as the quantity of gas bombs that would be necessary, if dropped from an altitude of ten thousand feet, to destroy a town of five thousand inhabitants.
4) The "Testimonial" is a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy.
From the fact that "the Fuehrer knows the goal and knows the direction," it follows that his is the supreme testimonial. No authority and no judgment which does not follow from or accord with his can be right. No specialist knows better than he, no recommendation can be better than his. He can deny even the authority of science. Only the conclusions of "German science" as approved by the Fuehrer may be accepted. When the conclusions of science do not accord with his wishes, as in genetics, a new science has to be invented (Card Stacking); its prestige then has to be established by his testimonial. So also with the arts. Only that art which is approved by the Fuehrer and his subordinates as German art may be accepted by the German people. So also does he decree how men and women shall live their lives.
5) "Plain Folks" is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even by ministers and educators to win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves -- "just plain folks among the neighbors."
At the same time that the Fuehrer is canonized, an attempt is made to transform him into a "man of the people." In this, the propagandists are greatly assisted by his habits; for he affects ordinary clothes, wears no medals other than his simple Iron Cross, eats plain food and that sparingly, and leads a quiet, secluded life. He is pictured as a man of the people meeting plain Folks in their ordinary walks of life, enjoying with them their simple work and pleasures.
6) "Card Stacking" is a device in which the propagandist employs all the arts of deception to win our support for himself, his group, nation, race, policy, practice, belief, or ideal. He stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evade facts.
The misrepresentation of facts works in two ways. On the one hand there is a rigorously enforced censorship, backed by an elaborate spy system and the constant threat of concentration camps..... In line with this policy is the destruction of books and papers which contain what the Japanese call "dangerous thoughts." Even long accepted classics are not immune.
By this means the regime can suppress facts, prevent discussion and expression of discontent and opposition. This largely accounts for the fact that many visitors on returning from Germany report that they heard no expression of discontent. On the other hand the regime has freedom to give publicity to falsehoods. Hitler approves such publicity in Mein Kampf (deleted from the English translation) which he writes:
"Propaganda . . . does not have to seek objectively for the truth so far as it favors an opponent . . . but exclusively has to serve our interests." It must adopt every device of slander that ingenuity can suggest: "whenever our propaganda permits for a single moment the shimmer of an appearance of right on the other side, it has laid a foundation for doubt in the right of our cause . . . especially among a people that so suffers from objectivity-mania as the German!"
An analysis of parallel news reports in German and foreign papers offers examples of the effective use of Card Stacking by a controlled press. For instance, during the trial of Pastor Niemoeller the only news carried by the German papers was a brief attack upon him as one who advocated a policy of love to Jews and traitors and preached from the Old Testament. His release by the court was announced but his rearrest by the secret police was not. Convictions of Roman Catholics for "immoral practices" were published; acquittals were "played down." Although the Minister for Church Affairs, Herr Hans Kerrl, announced that more than 8,000 Catholic religious leaders were or had been under arrest, he did not publish the fact that only about forty-nine had been convicted of immoral actions. Similarly, many crimes of individual Jews are publicized, but no publicity is given to ways in which German Jews have served their country. No intimation, for example, is made of the fact that 12,000 Jews died for Germany in the World War; or that, despite official discouragement, approximately the same proportion of Jews as of Gentiles served in the German army and navy.
7) The "Band Wagon" is a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist's program en masse. Here his theme is: "Everybody's doing it." His techniques range from those of medicine show to dramatic spectacle.
One of the great unifying principles adopted by the National Socialists is that of hate. Among the passages deleted from the English version of Mein Kampf, Hitler has written:
"Hate is more lasting than dislike, and the thrusting power for the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times come less from scientific recognition than from a fanaticism that fills the souls of the masses and in a forward-driving hysteria" (vorwÃrtsjagenden Hysterie).
In accordance with this principle Jews, communists, liberals, and democrats, became objects of hatred and scapegoats which could be made to suffer for the people's distress. Unity is further encouraged by patriotic demonstrations, Typical in these are gigantic crowds of people, massed ranks of uniformed troops, bands playing patriotic and martial airs, voices declaiming from a hundred mechanical mouths, ecstatic marchers carrying flickering torches, their resinous smoke blending into the darkness, flags and swastikas everywhere.
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