Category Archives: Media Criticism

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Heroes Of WW II

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…continue to pass from our presence. Nancy Wake has died at ninety-eight:

Working as a newspaper reporter, Wake found herself in Vienna where she saw Jews being whipped in public by Nazi SS troops. In 2003, she described to News Limited’s then-London correspondent, Bruce Wilson, one of the horrors she witnessed in 1938.

“The Germans and Austrians had set up a kind of Catherine wheel and tied these Jews to it, and as it went around they were beating them and throwing things at them,” she said.

“I thought . . . what had they done, poor bastards? Nothing. So I said, ‘God almighty, it’s a bit much and I’ve got to do something about it’.”

It’s an amazing story. There should be another movie made about her, to reacquaint younger people with her exploits.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Creepy Quote

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…du jour:

“The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led.” No, that isn’t an historian explaining the rise of Mussolini. It’s the Emory psychologist Drew Westen, writing wistfully about the leader he wishes Obama would be.

Somehow, this reminds me of my visit to the Holocaust Museum.

I came across the following striking quote, by a woman in Germany who had attended one of Hitler’s rallies:

How many look up to him with touching faith! As their helper, their saviour, their deliverer from unbearable distress…

I was so relieved that I live almost eighty years later, and that our society had grown beyond that kind of primitive thinking — that the president is responsible for the personal well-being of every citizen, and every sparrow that falls in America, like a demigod. I mean, obviously, any responsible leader today, confronted with such idolatry would use it as a teachable moment about the nature of our Republic, rather than basking in the worship, as Hitler did, to gather more raw unchecked political power unto himself.

I also found interesting the description of how the Nazi authorities encouraged and organized public rituals, ceremonies, meetings and other public events. I could see how this kind of activity might solidify public support behind otherwise less politically palatable notions felt important by the state.

Of course, one of the most disturbing tactics, used not only by the National Socialists, but also the fascistic international socialists in the Soviet Union, was the continual rewriting of history to glorify the state, and make it out to be the victim of past failures and treachery, and misguided policies. Some of the examples they gave were almost as though modern leaders were continually talking, fantastically, about how we got into our current economic problems through deregulation and tax cuts, and (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, rather than overspending and overregulation, and continuing government interference in the free market, often at the behest of corporations.

Not to mention the treachery of Standard and Poors.