The Myth of National Victimhood

[4morewars]

The Myth of National Victimhood - All Wrapped and Delivered for Christmas
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1220-20.htm

It's Christmas week - Adolf Hitler's favorite season after he declared an official merger of church and state - and, ironically, conservatives are using the occasion to mount a new and bizarre attack.

They said liberals are out to destroy Christmas. Cobbling together a few anecdotes (unsupportable attacks are always anecdote-based), they managed to imply a vast anti-Christian conspiracy bubbling just under the belly of America, and pushed that frightening implication into the minds of millions of Americans just in time for the holiday season.

Conservatives must constantly attack others (and focus on "morality") to keep hidden their own true agenda, which is no less than a return to the world of Scrooge & Marley, Inc. They're working to bring about a return to Robber Baron feudalism, with a stable, rich, and powerful ruling class, and an impoverished, frightened, and politically impotent working class.

But for conservatives to keep the loyalty of the working-class victims of their policies (which are shipping American jobs overseas, while fighting unions and minimum-wage increases here), they must convince people that there is a "them" out there - liberals in this case - who are out to destroy America's moral fiber and are thus responsible for working-class misery.

This is an old trick, and one the cons know is very difficult to counter. Consider what happened when German militarism in WWI led, through the punishing Treaty of Versailles and then later the Great Depression, to the collapse of the German economy in the 1920s and early 1930s. Hitler couldn't blame the militarists and corporatist conservatives who had led his nation into WWI and mismanaged the economy afterwards, so he pointed to the Jews as the "them" responsible for the problems in German society.

[sandnsea]

1. "a world of hate and fear"

This is the scary part, this is what pains me most about America today, when did it become acceptable to spew venomous, murderous hatred? I know minorities will say it's always been that way, and I would agree. But I also think this world of hate and fear is different today, much different.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God." ...

[4morewars]

3. All the more reason to share this knowledge

We MUST resist these facsists with every cell in our bodies.
Please share this article with all your progressive friends, but more importantly, share it with at least one not as enlightened person. Or more than one if you wish ! And then ask them to do the same. Every day, please do something to end this. The bush criminal enterprise can not thrive in the light. It is our duty as humans to join together and end this nonsense. I promise to do all I can, everyday, to see these people stopped.
Educate and organize !!!!!!

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Thank you for posting this.. Thom Hartmann, as always, is a must read.

[4morewars]

4. Isn't he brilliant ?

Please share this with your friends. Also, ask them to share it with their friends. Together we can start a movement ! Thanks

[BrklynLiberal]

5. I have already copied it and emailed it to everyone on my email list....

I had read some of his things before, and have always been impressed. He has been sitting in for Randi Rhodes on AirAmerica a few times this week and I am now even more impressed. I want him to have a regular show so I can hear him all the time. He is very inspiring..intelligent, and I even enjoyed hearing him deal with people who disagreed with him.

[4morewars]

6. Excellent !

Once again, my faith in humanity has been restored!
That made my day ! Thank you !
:yourock:

[BrklynLiberal]

7. Truly my pleasure. I am grateful that you posted it..and I had the chance

to read it and share it with others...

[Skittles]

8. it is astonishing how many Americans fall for this ruse

sad and scary too

[teryang]

9. It's already happened

Return to corporate feudalism?

<And when a consortium of news organizations recounted the Florida 2000 vote and it was found that Al Gore actually won the entire state - and thus the presidency - no matter what standard was used to count the ballots, the corporate news organizations of America buried the story (although the New York Times and Washington Post at least did report it on 09/12/01).>

911 was the Reichstag Fire. We're already living in the Reich. The intellectuals I know are aware of it, regardless of party stripe. The Arabs are the Jews (or anyone who looks like an Arab)and play the role of international and domestic scapegoats. The liberals, socialists, intellectuals and gays are the same targets they always were. Neo-con/Straussian ideology is little more than an inversion of Nazi era-fascist philosophy in which the victims become the persecutors.

Read Elaine Cassel's Christmas column on Counterpunch.org. We already have a fascist regime. She documents it very well.

[AllegroRondo]

11. Great recommendation

I just read Cassel's column. Wow.

[bpilgrim]

12. here's a link to the article you recommended -------------- LINK

http://counterpunch.org/cassel12252004.html

excellent read, thank you :toast:

peace

[proudbluestater]

10. self-delete

[pelagius]

13. I am a Christian...

...and the only persecution I've felt this Christmas season has been from relentless commercial hucksterism. And that's easy enough to ignore. Switch off the damn tube and stay away from the mall!

I freely attend the church of my choice and affirm my belief in God incarnate through the gift of a child. I kneel at the Communion rail in an ancient ritual devoutly believing that I share in the mystery of Christ's real presence. At the dismissal, I "go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit" and try my best to follow in the footsteps of my Lord, remembering always that "inasmuch as you done this to these, the least of my children, you have done it to Me."

At no point this Advent season did I scurry in fear from secret policeman stalking me. My church was not shuttered and locked, my minster was not imprisoned and tortured. Our Bibles, prayer books, and hymnals were not thrown into a bonfire nor we were, the "persecuted" Christians similarly immolated.

Yes, I've had angry people decry my beliefs, I've had others wish me ill for believing in "fairy tales". Some people have chosen to personally attack me for the sins of the institutional church throughout history. It can get quite heated until they find out I mostly agree with them!

But persecution? Preposterous. It demeans the lives and deaths of saints and martyrs, as well as the less-noted sufferings of common people who clung to their faith when authority was against them. The United States of America allows for the fullest and freest expression of Christianity perhaps in its 2000-year history. In fact, we tend to give more deference than is perhaps required to any nut with a Bible.

Anybody who spreads this nonsense is a dissembler and anyone who believes it is a fool. Fascism is the politics of eternal grievance and in the absence of actual persecution, it must be manufactured.