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Versailles via Hubbert
Jun. 6th, 2005 07:11 amBy now you've probably read the "14 points about fascism" piece by L. Britt. There is a good compendium of links that expands each of those points and it keeps up to date with current news links over at old american century.
Some people have compared 9/11 to the 1933 Reichstag fire which led to the vast powers placed in the hands of the chancellor and the early countenancing of Nazi thuggery. I think there are parallels with the situation here in the USA. Evidence suggests Hitler and Gorring planned and staged the Reichstag fire. I'm not prepared to say that Bush and the GOP regime planned 9/11, I'm not even prepared to imply it. these guys and these guys are leaning that way, and this guy certainly is. However, what concerns me is the way they capitalized on it. The government has moved in a fashion that echoes the actions of that earlier march to fascism.
But one thing that nagged me is the comparison breaks down because it's apparent the U.S. has no Treaty of Versailles. Our Christianist/Fascist Right had a humiliation in Vietnam, but nothing to hang their disgust on quite like the Treaty of Versailles provided Hitler. Railing against Versailles became a kind of shibboleth for a great deal of what followed: anxiety and powerlessness, self perception that all are against the German people, that their rightful place in history had been usurped by this emasculating event at the conclusion of WWI.
However, when Hubbert's peak hit in 1970, the USA slouched right into what some might be privately thinking of as its own economic Versailles: dependence on foreign oil. Thus what followed... growing resentment at the 'wealthy Arabs who control our fate'; increasing suspicion that anyone who isn't overtly for us is against us; increasing cognitive leaps that all are suspect, all are complicit, bomb the brown people bomb the brown people...
In many ways we're behaving like 9/11 is our Reichstag fire. I submit that in many ways it's rooted in our domestic peak of oil production, making the oil shocks of the 70s our Treaty of Versailles. Have we built our Dachau in Cuba? Shall we yet build our Auschwitz-Birkenau? (perhaps they figure we could just re-use the Japanese internment camps) Did Ann Coulter already describe our Final Solution?
(we have a good deal of practice, you know. America practically perfected the Final Solution when we exterminated 11 million Natives over the course of 400 years. Is it any wonder they seek to bring censure against Ward Churchill, a voice rising out of our own prior history of holocaust crimes? Further Churchill reading: interview, an essay by Churchill, commentary by counterpunch and hackjob from the Weekly Standard. Churchill is provocative, but he speaks with an authority about these things that few people have the stomach to face.
Reminds me of First They Came for the Terrorists)
Some people have compared 9/11 to the 1933 Reichstag fire which led to the vast powers placed in the hands of the chancellor and the early countenancing of Nazi thuggery. I think there are parallels with the situation here in the USA. Evidence suggests Hitler and Gorring planned and staged the Reichstag fire. I'm not prepared to say that Bush and the GOP regime planned 9/11, I'm not even prepared to imply it. these guys and these guys are leaning that way, and this guy certainly is. However, what concerns me is the way they capitalized on it. The government has moved in a fashion that echoes the actions of that earlier march to fascism.
But one thing that nagged me is the comparison breaks down because it's apparent the U.S. has no Treaty of Versailles. Our Christianist/Fascist Right had a humiliation in Vietnam, but nothing to hang their disgust on quite like the Treaty of Versailles provided Hitler. Railing against Versailles became a kind of shibboleth for a great deal of what followed: anxiety and powerlessness, self perception that all are against the German people, that their rightful place in history had been usurped by this emasculating event at the conclusion of WWI.
However, when Hubbert's peak hit in 1970, the USA slouched right into what some might be privately thinking of as its own economic Versailles: dependence on foreign oil. Thus what followed... growing resentment at the 'wealthy Arabs who control our fate'; increasing suspicion that anyone who isn't overtly for us is against us; increasing cognitive leaps that all are suspect, all are complicit, bomb the brown people bomb the brown people...
In many ways we're behaving like 9/11 is our Reichstag fire. I submit that in many ways it's rooted in our domestic peak of oil production, making the oil shocks of the 70s our Treaty of Versailles. Have we built our Dachau in Cuba? Shall we yet build our Auschwitz-Birkenau? (perhaps they figure we could just re-use the Japanese internment camps) Did Ann Coulter already describe our Final Solution?
(we have a good deal of practice, you know. America practically perfected the Final Solution when we exterminated 11 million Natives over the course of 400 years. Is it any wonder they seek to bring censure against Ward Churchill, a voice rising out of our own prior history of holocaust crimes? Further Churchill reading: interview, an essay by Churchill, commentary by counterpunch and hackjob from the Weekly Standard. Churchill is provocative, but he speaks with an authority about these things that few people have the stomach to face.
Reminds me of First They Came for the Terrorists)
Well how 'bout them... apples! OS X is bi, too!