The Republican Party and Genocide
A Tale of Two Diaries: Anne Frank and Joseph Goebbels
Writing Anne Frank’s name next to Joseph Goebbels bothers me. Goebbels was a disgusting creature and Anne Frank was an innocent, wonderful person. Surely Goebbels never knew Anne, but it was he who murdered her, albeit from a distance, but in the end, it was her spirit who triumphed over him and fascism. To this day, Anne Frank is an enduring symbol of anti-fascism whose memory could never be turned on its head by the far Rightwing.
Each left a diary: one of hope and inspiration and the other of destruction and psychopathy*
Anne Frank and Goebbels represent two ends of a very broad spectrum of human nature, where on one side is full of love, affection, altruism, and cooperation and the other: hate, hostility, selfishness, and antagonism. One side is interested in peace, compassion, tolerance, equality and justice, and the other: war, killing, prejudice, discrimination, and cruelty. The right-wing, aware of it’s brutal tendencies, often equate extremes on both side as equally bad, however, that line of argument is hypocritical and disingenuous. At it’s worst, the left side of politics fails to address the inherent darker sides of human nature that are taken as desirable in Western society, such as envy, competition, and dominance.
On the far left is pacifism and altruism, and on the right it is violence and genocide.
On the far left of the political spectrum is pacifism and altruism, and on the right it is violence and genocide. People on the right refuse to acknowledge the darkness at the end of their political spectrum, but it’s absolutely real and absolutely dark. The Right or Conservatives, promote the idea of a Libertarian utopia driven by a “virtue of selfishness” which on it’s face is absurd to any rational onlooker (Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964). (read about how this Libertarian utopia failed in New Hampshire: The Free State Project)
It is dangerous for us to believe that the Holocaust was a unique event interred in the past. The potential for genocide is clear and with increasing instability of food sources, shelter from fires, storms, and floods due to the climate crisis, the likelihood of more genocides is growing and coming closer to home.
Those on the Right point to Stalin and claim that since he was on the Left, and he committed mass murder for decades, that the left is just as violent as the right. Yes, Stalin was the leader of Communist Russia, but he was a cultist autocrat, killing anyone he saw as a threat to his position, including his own national, Communist leaders. His murderous regime had nothing to do with leftist values; to be clear, autocracy and communism are antithetical to each other. Stalin abandoned Lenin’s quasi-capitalist goals, and he treated peasants as slaves to feed workers for his own military industrial complex. Additionally, some on the right make the false claim that Hitler was a “Leftist” which is absurd because Hitler was a self-proclaimed fascist who supported other fascists, including, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Hideki Tojo of Japan, and Francisco Franco Bahamonde of Spain.
All fascist leaders sided with the status-quo: a male-dominated, centralized government, in service of business interests. Indeed, it was the German billionaires who bailed-out the broke Nazi party of the 1930’s, for example, IG Farben and Krupp. Hitler addressed corporate leaders in a speech stating that, “private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy,” adding that he was going to get rid of trade unions and Communists.
Read more here: Captured German Records ^^
What is true, is that either side of the political spectrum may use violence towards their political ends; however, one thing is very clear throughout history: the Left is the side of the political spectrum who resorts to violence in self-defense, or after all other options are exhausted. As Malcom-X pointed out in a 1963 interview: the lyncher will accuse the lynched of being violent when they are really just fighting for their life. There’s a reason for this: the Right has been in control of religions, governments, economies, and social institutions for millennia, and their control of society has meant the oppression of anyone who was not a White man. When the oppressed (everyone else) want freedom, rights, fairness, equality, and justice, then they are wanting change (liberalism), and so it becomes a clash of Liberals versus Conservatives, or Left v. Right. Of course, the terms, “Conservative” and “Liberal” have other meanings, but from a political standpoint, to be Liberal means that you want everyone else who is not a White man to be treated as equal to White males, and to be Conservative means that you don’t! It’s just that simple; Liberal means to spread democracy, Conservative means to not. Today, the Right rallies against “wokeness” which is the idea that everyone is created equal and deserves equal treatment under the law; Republicans rally against this! - fighting against allowing women, people of color, and LGBTQ to treated equally under the law.
There are 10 stages to Genocide that have been identified by Gregory H Stanton, President of Genocide Watch (you can read them here). Looking at the stages, you can see how Conservatives (Republicans) will naturally move towards Genocidal behavior. The reason is that as democratic societies increase equality to more people, Conservatives feel threatened and react with violence. They will target the groups who are most recently seeking equality, such as transgender humans, and then work their way back almost to punish others next in line: gays, women, people of color. This is exactly what is happening in America since 2017.
The greatest achievement of the Conservative Super Rich has been to divide and conquer the lower classes: middle, working, and poor.
In my younger years, I believed that the Holocaust was an aberration in human history. By the time I finished college, it was clear to me that the German genocide of Jews was well within the range of common human behaviors, but something that exclusively occurred under dictators furthering conservative, nationalistic goals. Since 1945 the world has seen no less than two-dozen additional genocides, including: Sétif and Guelma, Algeria, 1945; the Partition of India, 1946; the Australian Aboriginal Genocide until 1969; Zanzibar, 1964; Biafra, Nigeria, 1967; the Harkis, Algeria, 1954; Cambodia (Polpot), 1946-79; Guatemala (1981–1983); Bangladesh Liberation War Genocide of 1971; Burundi in 1972 and 1993; North Korea, 1995 to present; Equatorial Guinea, 1968-1979; Indonesia, 1965-66; West New Guinea and West Pau Pau, 1963; East Timor, 1974-99; Moros, 1968, Biharis; 1971, Indigenous Chakmas, 1971-2000; Laos, 1975, Ethiopia; 1977, Amhara, 1990; Acholi and Lango Soldiers, Uganda, 1971; Ugandana Bush War, 1980; Iraq Kurds, 1980’s; Marsh Arabs, 1950-2000; Tibet, 1959-on-going; Paraguay, 1956-1989; Soviet Afghanistan, 1980’s; Bosniak Muslims, 1995; Tutsis, 1994; Hutus, 1996; Isaaq, Somalia, 1988-91; Peru, 1990’s; and Uyghurs, China, present day. None of these genocides have approached the size and scale of the German genocide of the Jews - not for lack of intent but military power. Arguably, we can add Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as genocide given the complete annihilation of towns and cities, the general bombing and assassination of civilian men and women and children, and the kidnapping of tens of thousands of children and their subsequent confinement into Russian concentration camps.
The aforementioned are genocides after WWII; it does not include the genocide of indigenous humans in North, Central and South America from 1492 through 1924; the Atlantic Slave trade; Belgium in the Congo; French in Algeria; Germans in South West Africa; British in India; Dutch in East Indies; Dzungars in China; Japan in Hokkaido; the Kurds, Armenians, Australian Aboriginals, and many, many more examples. Hitler modeled his annihilation of Jews, in part, after the United State’s genocide of its indigenous peoples, particularly the gradual and methodical process of it all.
How was it that Joseph Goebbels, a young man from a working class Catholic family with a deformed foot and weak lungs, who aspired to become a priest instead ended up becoming a womanizer who pushed Germans into genocidal maniacs hell bent on world domination? If you think this transformation is unusual, it is not. Everyday in America, young Christian, working class White men are joining one of nearly 1,000 right-wing extremist groups such as the Aryan Freedom Network, Iron Youth, America First Foundation, Dominion Active Club, Patriot Front, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, the KKK and many more.
Goebbels was shaped into becoming a genocidist by powerful forces, including the Christian religion, but also by the charisma of the grandiose cult leader, Adolf Hitler. Goebbels wrote in his diary, in 1925: “And these large blue eyes ! Like stars ! He is glad to see me. I am supremely happy … Wit, irony, humor, sarcasm, earnestness, passion, white heat — all this is contained in his speech. This man has everything needed to be king. The great tribune of the people. The coming dictator."
The connection of Christianity to genocide is not just biblical, such as when the Israelites captured Jericho and anihilated all of their people, man, woman and child, it is religion itself that maintains the most rigid conservative ideas that often require punishment such as death. Adding to that, religion offers humans the idea that their behavior is approved by a higher power, albeit one that they made up to conveniently authorize their horrific deeds. The problem with Christianity, and any other religion, is that any cult leader can come along and interpret the vague writings to mean anything, and lo and behold: moral authority.
In deed, the Catholics were directly involved in the murder of indigenous humans throughout the world; the validity of the Catholic religion was assured by providing moral authority to Western governments to annihilate and dominate the world even if this meant slaughtering children. Worse yet, many of these children were raped and sold into slavery. To this day, it remains clear that Conservatives care not about children as evidenced by choosing assault rifle ownership over incessant school massacres where tiny tots are getting their heads blown off and need to be identified using DNA. When you care about a fetus more than a living child, you really care about nothing, because that’s what the fetus is - it has no mind, personality or voice, and it doesn’t vote.
There are many other factors that underlie the motivation of men towards genocidal ideations. For Goebbels, he was also driven by his own psychological issues: in his era, he came of age as a defective man who was unable to to don the German uniform in WWI. Goebbels compensated for his lack of contemporary manliness by becoming a womanizer; thus establishing his self-worth to others, similar to how White male Americans low on income, height or hand size compensate with sizeable Ford Trucks. Another factor was was that Goebbels was a failed author; he was unable to make anything of his career choice. He had aspired to be a playwright but no one was interested in his work. He kept a journal to someday publish, but he quit pursuing that line of work probably for lack of immediate success. Status was everything to Goebbels, and having the power to destroy successful Jewish men who were artists, authors, doctors and lawyers probably gratified him further burying his defects, shortcomings, and failures.
Christianity provides the moral authority for Conservatives to oppress others, but it is unregulated Capitalism that provides the money which allows them to stay in power. Capitalism is many things, but most importantly it is the concentration of wealth in the few that is the greatest cause for concern because their money buys their power. The Super Rich conservatives have always funded the fascists, autocrats, coups, and so on; during Hitler’s regime, they built the concentration camps and used the free labor to save money: Volkswagon, Chase, AP News, BMW, Zeiss, Ford, Hugo Boss, IBM, Merck, Mercedes, Standard Oil, and Siemens to name a few.
We have the same characters today. Like zombies rising from the dust of failed Nazism, Stephen Miller stands out as today’s counterpart to Joseph Goebbels. With Donald Trump as his right-wing cult leader, Miller found opportunity to express his extremist views, an opportunity to be special without being competent.
Like Goebbels, Miller likely believes that he is superior to people of color and seems to loathe them. It was Miller who came up with the idea of separating innocent and vulnerable children from their parents and locking them in cages as a way to reduce the number of Latinos in the US. He also worked to criminalize abortion to force White women to have more babies, as a way to increase the White population. His motives come from a conspiracy theory described in the Great Replacement Theory written by Conservative White nationalist, Renaud Camus. Stephen Miller is a propagandist. As a speechwriter, he was able to inject all kinds of absurd propaganda into American discourse through the White House press secretary and in Trump’s speeches. He also buried truths and facts, such as data that shows that refugees have a positive impact on American society. Miller was one of the initial broadcasters of the big lie that the election was stolen. He promoted articles published in White supremacist papers, and he made the list of extremists at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which he probably wears as a badge of honor (SPLC has been monitoring extremists since the 1970’s).
Anne Frank’s Diary, July 15th 1944: “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them.”
There is no corresponding entry for this day in Goebbel’s diary. Goebbel’s mostly reads like a log book of events, issues or conversations, but to him it was probably meant to illustrate his importance to future readers where he would like to be seen as someone who was at the center of it all when Germany was trying to establish its grandiose Third Reich. On April 24, 1943, Goebbels wrote: "The Fuehrer told Speer he never once discovered a psychological error in my propaganda." It was as if he was Hitler’s pet excited to receive bones of praise from his master for biting vulnerable people in the neck. Goebbels had lost self-awareness and this exacerbated his genocidal interests. Essentially, he believed his own horrific propaganda.
What is important about reading these two diaries is how they show us the major differences between the Left and Right, between Liberalism and Conservatism. To be extremely Liberal is not to be “a Communist,” but to be compassionate towards others, to desire equal and fair treatment, and for justice when things are not fair. To be Conservative means to oppose the efforts of others to be equal, treated fairly, and find justice. In Germany, for the Jews, the Germans of the time sought leaders who promised greatness through oppression. Unfortunately for those Germans, they were just the latest set of fools that the oligarchs used as soldiers for their own imperialistic ends. If those average Germans were smarter, they would have realized they were no more special than the Jews, the Poles, the French, the Africans, the Gypsies, or anyone else Hitler and Goebbels wanted to destroy. What is profoundly disturbing is how far Hitler and Goebbels would go in order to maintain the propaganda which furthered their desires for power and wealth. Only a complete fool would believe that Jews were a threat, but the Catholic church was officially anti-Semitic until at least 1960, and many Protestants and Evangelicals remain anti-Semitic to this day. The affirmation provided to genocidal maniacs by Christianity was as powerful as it was disturbing.
If history is written by the victors, then it’s easy to see who they are: the Super Rich - the oligarchs. They have allegiance to no country but at the same time control them all.
I only hope that the White men here in America realize and understand what the Germans of 100 years ago did not: that their minds are being sharpened into swords to oppress others; but, the real enemy of White men, as well as women, people of color, the poor, the LGBTQ, the unemployed, the homeless, and children are the oligarchs. The struggle between the Super Rich and other classes has been the primary struggle of human civilization for thousands of years - albeit in different forms - it’s all the same. It has persisted because the history books are written by the victors, the Super Rich, who have you learn about Kinds, Queens, Dictators, Dynasties and their bloody wars rather than the struggles of the working class and poor. Probably the best history book every written is The People’s History by Howard Zinn. Nothing else seems to come close to documenting and sharing the important perspectives of everyday people, but this is not required reading in public schools for a reason.
Propaganda is expensive, and the Conservative Super Rich spend billions on it each year, paying people like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, and Sean Hannity hundreds of millions to maintain the divide between working class males and everyone else.
We know they are phonies, for example, Tucker Carlson pretended to love Trump for years but the release of his texts in the Dominion court case revealed how much he truly hated Donald Trump and made fun of Trump voters. Laura Ingram is unusual as her father was a closeted Nazi supporter. The Left just lacks the money to pay for propaganda to support it’s cause. So, it has to rely on the truth or facts to spread over time, which they do, but at such a slow pace that society seems to take forever to change. Once it does change, the Conservatives mount a full reactionary attack like they did after Americans elected a Black president, which continues to this day.
Conservatives have fought against change for thousands of years in every institution that they control. The Catholic church, for example, did not admit that the Earth revolved around the Sun until around 1992. As for Republicans, they have done everything possible to stop women and Blacks from being treated as equal to White men, and everything possible to prevent the working class and poor from having economic independence. Conservatives or Republicans have opposed Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment benefits, Worker’s Compensation, and Unions of any type; they even opposed anti-child labor laws arguing that businesses would fail without it. The calculated control of the US Supreme Court by unqualified jurists funded by Koch and the CNP is one of the final blows to US democracy. Their goals are clear and illegitimate, but as billionaire Betsy DeVos said, they are tired of donating billions without seeing results!
With regards to Civil Rights, Republicans^^^ have attempted to stop every civil rights bill from becoming law. Republican Senator Strom Thurmond used the filibuster to try to prevent passage of the Civil Rights act, reading aloud non-stop for 24 hours. Since then, Republicans fought against the Equal Credit Act for women so that they could have their own credit card and take out loans, the Pregnancy Act, which prevented employers from firing women for being pregnant; the Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act; the Violence Against Women Act; the Equal Pay for women Act; the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women act, and recently, overturning Roe v. Wade, and passing laws to criminalize abortion.
The propaganda of the Super Rich is incessant, insidious, and sophisticated. The beauty of it is that the victims of the propaganda have no idea that they are victims. Working class White men who beat up gays, Asians and Jews, and stock pile guns truly believe that these minority groups are a threat or are somehow bad. The “gods, gays, and guns” propaganda continues to work wonders for the Conservatives and it comes as not small cost: school shootings, hate crimes, mass shootings, and hostility between minority and majority. Like Hitler, the Republican party has cornered itself into having to prove that they believe their own rhetoric. There is no way out of this for them except going further to the right, and we know where that ends - violence and genocide.
The Middle class is a policy choice, so is the working class and poor, so are the existence of Billionaires. The more billionaires we have, the more income inequality. Three billionaires own more wealth than half the country. Republicans work for the billionaires, period.
Wealth inequality is the main source of all problems we face today, it is the continuation of the struggle between the classes. It is the root cause of why we are not addressing the Climate Crisis, or why we lack modern public transportation like high speed rail, or why we spend 800,000,000,000 a year on our military. We cannot achieve equality without addressing Conservative propaganda. Due to funding issues, Democrats have left Rural America to the Republicans at everyone’s peril. Democrats need to work on their messaging for sure, but they also need to find ways to reach rural America and counter the gods, gays and guns messaging. The stability and future of our democracy relies on united our divided classes against the oligarchs. This is something we all have in common.
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