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Dispatches from Phil Farruggio
TAKE ONE
Goebbels Is Alive and Well...In Amerika!
Goebbels, official portrait.
Peter Longerich's 2015 biography Goebbels instructs well how history can and does repeat itself. Like many of the NeoCon ex ' Lefties' who loaded up the Bush Sr. and Jr. administrations, Goebbels was at first a true socialist, perhaps even a Marxist sympathizer. [He had also seriously considered the Catholic priesthood.] As a young novelist and later journalist, he had a real dislike for the Fat Cat capitalists who he and others from both the political left and right blamed for Germany's fall from grace. When he ' found ' Adolf Hitler, despite his many disappointments about Hitler from his diary entries ( including the fact that he fervently believed that Hitler was in love with Goebbels' fiancé Magda ... and perhaps vice versa), Goebbels joined the new Fuehrer Cult. As with many others in economically and culturally depressed Germany, Goebbels was enamored with the man he referred to as ' The boss'. The need for a messianic leader , actually a dictator, was very prevalent among many in the NASDAP (1) (Nazi party). So much so that nothing else mattered as to actual policy vs. actual power. As Long as Hitler hammered home pride in the ' Fatherland ', Volk family values and rejection of the Versailles Diktat, Goebbels forgave Hitler's indecision on other issues. Of course, Goebbels's bitter hatred toward all things Jewish kept him on a course that Hitler himself had steered for so long. Matter of fact, in the biography we learn how even Hitler had to slow Goebbels down at times , and show more patience... and wait for the opportune moments to strike hard against the Jews.
Joseph Goebbels was a master in the use of propaganda. He knew what Edward Bernays accomplished in our nation through his introduction of propaganda into commercial and then political advertising. (2) Without Bernays's skills, the United States may never have even entered into WW1. Goebbels could have gotten lots of his ideas right out of Bernays' 1928 book aptly entitled Propaganda. Jingoistically, one cannot view any films showing the Nazi regime at work without noticing the abundance of flags and banners everywhere. Additionally, Goebbels' use of pomp and circumstance with the trumpets and horns and of course the drum beats combined with the marches and uniforms was very effective. Why? Well, during troubled times all that is needed to indoctrinate the populace are repetitive sound bites and slogans used over and over and over again. Did not Mr. Trump use such populist propaganda on a great segment of the populace fed up with their economic plight and the absence of good jobs? Of course all successful propaganda must have scapegoats ready in the wings to blame most of this on... with a savior standing by to lead them out of the abyss. Nazi Germany had the Jews and European banking system, and Trump's Amerika has the Muslims and illegal Latino aliens as they are referred to.
Another interesting fact mentioned in the biography is that the Nazis did not need to play the ' God card ' in order to get the masses to follow. Hitler and his cronies, Goebbels included, had a deep revulsion towards any form of Christianity. They despised it because their goal was to make the Fuehrer the new 'Christ' , or messiah, for Germany's resurrection as a European power once again. Christianity also was a faith (that at least formally) preached peace and forgiveness, seen as "weak" values by the militarist Nazis. This anomaly was not what we here in this Amerikan empire have ever experienced. The great and insightful American author Sinclair Lewis said it best 79 years ago with: " When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." Sadly, we are on our way to seeing it happen here soon.
The Neocon propaganda has worked so well for the ' The Right Wing'. They have hijacked our wonderful flag and made it into a symbol of their perversions. They have hijacked the great avatar, Jesus of Nazareth, and made him the symbol of this ' born again empire', as if he would ever bless our illegal and immoral invasions and occupations... along with our merciless drone missiles. Their (so called) adversaries, the Democratic Party, which great propaganda has labeled as ' Left wing ' or ' Liberal ' or even ' Socialist/ Marxist ' , are just more ' kinder and gentler ' servants of that same empire. They too kneel at the altars of Big Business and the Pentagon. Yes, dear friends, fascism, with its corporate police state, has arrived and most of us do NOT even realize it! Of course, our newest ' Emperor with no clothes', Mr. Trump, overtly does the bidding of the Deep State that he claims is " Out to get me!" He, along with his predecessors, will assure the Super Rich that the rest of us, the 99+ % , will become the drones that they need to service their beehive. Goebbels, if he is looking UP from his lowest point in the cosmos, must be so proud of what his profession has accomplished here in Amerika.
—PA Farruggio
TAKE TWO
To Be a ( REAL) Jew
The new film "Killing Gaza" by Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen ( both proud Jewish men) has just been released. Every American Jew, especially our Jewish American politicians, should watch it. I would imagine that even Israelis would have to acknowledge that Gaza is a ghetto. Of course, most Israelis who support the settler movement etc will blame it on the victims, and not on Israeli policy. This kind of astonishingly twisted and inane justification of horrific treatment has always been used by the conqueror. You shut off a man's water supply and then call him a ' dirty slob' when he cannot wash properly. The bottom line is what the truth reveals, and nothing more. Finally, one anecdote from this writer seems to sum it all up. In 1988 I was traveling from NYC to Arizona by plane one night. It was a long 5 hour flight, and we were on a jumbo jet. I was standing alongside this man, late 40s perhaps, who said he was an Israeli engineer. During our conversation, I asked him about his feelings on the Palestinian situation, and now remember that this was 1988. He began explaining things as he saw it, and then said the following, with no emotion at all: " You have to understand that we Israelis see the Palestinians as you in the USA see your blacks. Quite honestly, they breed like rabbits, and if this continues they will outnumber us with their excess population. As much as I hate to admit it, the only recourse we have is to push them into the sea before they totally overwhelm us!"This writer has been a student of both WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust for most of my adult life. I believe it was 1988 or 89 and I was home watching the made for television movie ' Murderers Among Us- The Simon Wiesenthal Story'. A scene from the film caused me great consternation. In the scene, Wiesenthal , played by Ben Kingsley, is searching for his mother by the railroad station. He had heard that she was going to be ' deported ' and he knew what that really meant. She was obviously in one of the crowded ' cattle cars' ready to depart the station. He was on the platform yelling out her name. There was a German guard off in the near distance. Wiesenthal was desperate. Who wouldn't be, knowing your mother, the woman who nurtured you and loved you unconditionally, was being sent to most likely her death. Suddenly, he heard a cry from one of the cattle cars: " Simon!" He looked in the direction of the car that the cry came from. The train began to pull away, and the guard was between Wiesenthal and his mother's cattle car. He fell to his knees and silently wept, so as not to startle the German soldier.
I quickly wiped my own eyes and grabbed a pen and notepad. This is what I wrote within a few minutes:
Never Again
To be a Jew
and outcast with nothing
neither the dignity of a cell
nor the honor of a soldier
hunted, tormented shamelessly
JUST FOR BEING A JEW!
To be a Jew
homeless, loved by no one
godless, but in memory
of a Father so forgiving
yet turned away once more
JUST FOR BEING A JEW!
To be a Jew
a creature of the day
for the night has eyes
eyes that can condemn
eyes that can haunt
JUST FOR BEING A JEW!
To be a Jew
standing proud in cattle cars
marching silently towards death
for only God holds redemption
for those who are the chosen
JUST FOR BEING A JEW!
My poem was laser engraved onto a plaque and sent to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where it remains today as part of the holocaust museum's archives. This is just how affected I was by my study of that horrific era in the history of the 20th Century.
Well, sadly I must state that many of my fellow Jewish brethren ( I just found out, through Ancestry.com, that I am 8% Jewish, and interestingly, 8% Middle Eastern) have failed to understand what the holocaust really meant. To forcefully remove perhaps as many as 750,000 Palestinians from THEIR HOMES in 1948 to finalize the Jewish state of Israel makes one recall similar such actions by the Germans in the 1930s. Is the ghetto that Gaza has become that much different than the ghettos created in Warsaw and Krakow? The Germans allowed for their citizens to move into areas in Poland and other Eastern countries, after displacing the natives of those areas (many being Jewish) under the guise of Lebensraum or ' Living space imperative'. How is that any different from many of my Jewish fellow citizens from Borough Park Brooklyn and other places moving to Israel and forming settlements in former Palestinian areas? How in the hell does a Jewish person from another country have such living rights over a Palestinian whose family has lived there for countless generations?
—PA Farruggio
The Russian Peace Threat examines Russophobia, American Exceptionalism and other urgent topics
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report