Jul 07 2007
Follow the Lemmings
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By Sylvain Lamoureux
7/7/07
In many comments and previous posts on Thomas Paine’s Corner, I may have referred to the masses as being easily hypnotized by the status power of shiny gadgets. After viewing the following link, I had to re-think that statement:
http://www.technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEjQ4Nza34ak
I have determined that it is not the mere “wow factor” that influences consumers, but a variety of factors, all of which are equally ridiculous. Let’s take the two examples of Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft. A trusted name? Not likely. If not a trusted name, then what? Ask “why Microsoft?” and most people will reply “because everyone else uses it.” When presented with superior (and free) options like Linux or OpenOffice, they are suspicious, fearful and dismissive. This leads me to conclude that because “everyone else” uses MS Windoze, consumers will not even consider another product. Is this the way that they go through life? Stampeding with the herd?
Apple - a trusted name? More so than Microsoft. Yet it is not as much about “trust” as it is about “cool.” Apple products are cool: iPods, iPhones, i-yi-yi. They are the latest craze and they are expensive, more so than their counterparts. People line up for days to get these things. How did marketing gain such control? Quite simply. Bernays’ disciples, Madison Avenue, and the corporate media assault us constantly with an array of psychological manipulations. And they work!
Price differential allows consumers to elevate their pride by purchasing an expensive item. One might even say “elevated above others”. One can achieve this feeling of elation through various forms, such as driving an expensive gas guzzling Hummer, buying a new car every three years, living in a Mcmansion with your trophy wife and 2.5 children, maintaining multiple residences, or constantly upgrading to the latest technology. This is no dream capitalist system. It is an abomination based upon constant expansion that is destroying the Earth and its sentient inhabitants.
Why do we all have to compete with such ferocity? With whom are we competing? At one time I thought it was just with everyone else, but many amongst the herd seem to be competing with themselves.
The damage we are inflicting upon this planet boggles my mind. Just so we can compete and feel like we “came out on top”. Yet on top of what? A spiritually barren existence that we, the “civilized” people, call life? A system that we have the audacity to call “democracy” as we shove it down developing countries’ throats as a means to economically enslave them?
Our unspoken motto? Consume until you die or the planet self-destructs.
I observe the lemmings when I am at work or out in public. I hear them talking about other people, their latest purchase, their jobs, their homes, their families, TV shows, movies—spewing inanities in a desperate attempt to convince themselves and others that they have a good life and enjoy it. I note the sadness, loneliness, self-loathing and emptiness in their eyes. They are zombies with no direction. Crippled by a fractured consciousness and a limited capacity to think critically, they rely on commercials, pundits, books like The Secret, Oprah, and a host of other shills for our depraved system to direct their lives. They are lemmings. Watch out for that cliff! It is just ahead….
How can a sane person go through life without engaging in deep thought or introspection? I have had friends tell me things such as “you think too much”, “happiness is (insert a word from the platitude of your choice here)”, “just worry about your life”, or “you just need a good woman”. This baffles me, especially when I tell them that I have heard this comment from many others, verbatim. To which they respond, “Well it must be true then”. I didn’t realize that brain washing completely disabled the capacity of the mind to apply reason and individual thought.
As we evolve as human beings, we will require the use of that chunk of gray matter that rests on the shoulders of more than 6 billion of Earth’s inhabitants. The species cannot evolve without it. Are we meant to be the obedient little consumers that Corporate America wants us to be? I don’t think so. We are destined for far greater things.
Our principal noble pursuit is to take care of our own. We have the resources on this planet to feed, educate, house, and clothe every human being; we simply CHOOSE not to. It is time to rethink that seriously deranged decision.
Secondly, we need to clean up our act. Destroying the Earth, the very entity that sustains our existence, is beyond stupidity. I know that death is inevitable for each person, but our mortality does not relieve us of our responsibilities to the Earth, its sentient beings, and future generations.
I do not subscribe to society or its system. I am Canadian by birth, not by choice. I claim my rights as a world citizen and a natural being. Don’t follow the lemmings. Act according to what’s sane and just. Together we can bring down the beast of savage capitalism.
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Quote: ‘I do not subscribe to society or its system. I am Canadian by birth, not by choice. I claim my rights as a world citizen and a natural being.’
I absolutely agree with the above quoted statements. Substitute ‘Canadian’ with British (or whatever we are called nowadays) and it it what I have been saying for years.
I have kept apart from society as much as I could both in England and Australia (where I have lived a goodly part of my life). I intend going to France to live. It may not be the best place but better than here. Continentals have a much more philosophical view of life.
As I’m on a pension, I cannot give you monetary value but my wishes for your continued existence. I owe the World nothing; it owes me a great deal. I owe the earth a great deal; it owes me nothing.
i am so cynical nowadays that i think you are just one of the octopus’ agents. your job as an intelligence officer is to collect data, isps and the sentiments of the last reasonable people on earth. this is why your blog is full of common sense, logic and love.
here in ny, ive been interrogated by feds twice just for posting on this kind of blog. however, i would still like to give my opinion on your site. i think your site is gangsta! however, i have a much gloomier outlook on these morons. they wont speak out until its too late, they have no problem sacrificing their life to satan. i rather starve than take a wack, unfullfilling job working with people i dont like. not my friends, family or acquaintances….they will work and do whatever satan tells them. poor lost souls. i used to feel bad for them until i started paying consequences for my own decisions. no one puts a gun to anyones head and tells them “Go Sellout the only life you have, go be a (insert dead end job here). ” One thing is temporarily selling out to pay bills, a whole other thing is dedicating one’s entire life to lies and bullshit…aka my cousin the Insurance agent, my uncle the corporate lawyer….so…until satan comes breathing down their necks and fucks up their credit score, hospital bill, insurance, tax payments, lays them off, sleeps with their wives, get their kids hooked on lust and drugs (thanks MTV!!!) or puts them in severe consumer debt….they wont get the point.
If you are the real deal and not a complicit bastard….may the great spirit of life bless you and guard your soul. If you are just some other punk federali sellout snitch, well, karma has a funny way of getting at those losers….
Thanks for the blog and keep up the good fight.
I thought I was crazy! Seems that a few others are seeing what I have been seeing and are asking if this madness that we call life is worth the time! A person’s worth is totally determined by the size of their bank account-no matter how they got that bank account!(Hired killer? Crooked banker? Rotten politician?) No matter! Just have the money and everything else is overlooked! And forgiven! We have a legal system that totally sanctions corporate greed at the expense of everything else! Hungry? Steal a loaf of bread? Death Sentence! A CEO that steals pension plans? Good boy! Great businessman! The businessman takes importance over the doctor or scientist or artist-great! See how well your businessman can save your life! Your future! The earth or whatever else you might cherish! We worship the technology of death and not the technology of life! Something to save life? Ha! The Illuminatti want to get rid of all but 600 million of us and have scientists figuring out how to do this most quickly! They are getting rich on making bombs and building weapons for endless wars! And no one stops them-not as long as the stock market gets higher and higher. Not as long as they can pay the mortgage on their McMansions and drive their gas-guzzling SUVs(which is why we are in the wars in the first place!) This is insanity and madness! And few see it for what it is. One wonders what next? God help us! No one else will!
No Bernadette Bay O’, God won’t help us if we don’t help ourselves (that pretty much leaves him/her off the hook, don’t you think? It’s always like that with the deities.)
God—if he is such an omnipotent being is (a) not as good as he’s cracked up to be, or (b) he’s powerless, hence not godlike. Proof? He allowed this criminal business system to put George Bush and his crooked to the root warmongering cabal in power, to the detriment and death of everything that is good and honest in this land or anywhere else of that matter. Better if, as George Carlin suggests, you start praying to Joe Pesci. He’ll deliver at least 50% of the time. And beter still if you stop the praying and concentrate on hard political work, self-education, to get rid of this pestilence once and for all. While you’re at it, lose that Illuminati bullshit which will also lead you nowhere. It’s pure manure and a deadend. We donpt need esoteric conspiracies to explain our stinking reality. What’s killing us is that we have allowed our beautiful republic to be overrun by the business system, the corporatocracy and its rotten values, all in the name of the American Dream! Wake up and get to work. You’ll be joining millions of others struggling to make it happen. And by the way, thank you for your post. I liked it a lot.
Thank you for the comments, just a few thoughts.
We have to stop trying to put a “value” on everything. What we have done is to allow them to commoditize life itself. Everything that sustains life is being charged a premium.
As a product of nature, we have the right to exist. I turns out that we don’t if we haven’t any money. There are no lands that are airable that one can just choose to make home and live in peace. “You must be a productive member of society”, you must buy your place in life. Says who? Says society. We are born as slaves.
“It’s ok though because at 60 or 65 or 70 or 75 (we’ll raise it as the life expectancy raises) you may be able to retire (if we let you work here that long) - then you may enjoy life. Hope you didn’t spend everything on the crap we offer and that you saved some money, you’re going to need it. How’s your health? I see, bad everything from all those years of working. Well, at least you’re retired now and can go do all those things you couldn’t do earlier, good luck.”
Nice picture isn’t it? I refuse to do it, I will be free.
I come back when I need to work for money, but solely to finance my next trip. I hope not to come back this time.
As for the Illuminati, I believe the plan is for about 2/3 of the world population - 4 Billion people. God, don’t count on it. The only way is for 6 billion people to say “ENOUGH!” and then, instead of an economic path, we choose an evolutionary one.
You lost me at “superior (and free) options like Linux”. Linux is NOT a “superior” option. For people like me that play a lot of games and aren’t willing to constantly screw around with emulators like Wine, Linux is a non-option. But what do I know? I’m just a guy who has repaired computers for a living since the early 90s and is now trying to get into programming/game design. My install of Ubuntu Linux sits idle on my second computer because it does nothing better than the OS (XP) it shares a drive with.
Linux is the superior snob option. It’s what a few people hold as evidence that they are better/smarter/whatever than the next guy. I don’t use Windows because someone else tells me I should. I use Windows because it does what I want it to better than the rest. The Linux geeks have been deluding themselves for years.. just like the Mac geeks, and the Amiga geeks before them.. all supposedly “superior” choices.
This reminds me of the episode of South Park where Stan wants to become a Goth, and is told that to be a non-conformist, he has to dress the way they do, wear his hair the same way they do, listen to the same music they do..
I dare say it’s rather lemming-ish these days to write long-winded articles bemoaning the fact that most other people are lemmings. A snobbish offshoot of the herd that is itself a herd. Of course they’re lemmings. Of course you are a lemming. Humans are herd-animals. You think we’re suddenly capable of ignoring millions of years of evolution just because we were able to invent Velcro or potato-peeling gloves?
Don’t bother responding with the intent to strike up conversation. I won’t be returning. I’m not joining this herd or the herd you’re complaining about.
In my humble view, there are two main eason our country (USA) is in this big mess, waging false flag operations on it’s own people in order to justify war and military expansion for profit, in absolute disregard for human life- the main reason that this was possible at all, is the lack of free speach, free press and media. Americans are uninformed, unispired with good ideas for their own country or the world. The corporate world, the international bankers and globalist (want one world goverment)
are using our (and the most of the world) media, for their own propaganda, making sure most people are uniformed and easy fooled.
The other, just as important issue is the fact that the international bankers where
able to fool us all into the acceptance of their fiat money. This keeps them in complete
control of the economy, makes slaves out of most people, and gives them the funds to perpetuate wars for their profits.
Nothing short of second revolution can save us .Empeach Cheney- Bush now. The world can’t wait.
Choose Ron Paul for president!! Stop the Zionist and International Bankers
controlling our Congress. We must get involved and educate our fellow citizens now.
Lemmings is a rather harsh term to use on human beings (in hindsight usage of the term is in error as lemmings do not really proceed every year over the cliff one after another)
It would be more accurate to say that a host of events are used to attack the psyche of the human being as each person is different in design and function (no two backgrounds of any human being are the same but can be similar in results).. Its more akin to the media, governments, and the work environments one becomes a part of that dictate the level of given “control” over ones life (key word being given) .
No human on this planet is under anyone else’s control, as all situations that seem to assume control over another are based upon many different factors of the environment that the human is in. Pain is a motivator, fear is another, while greed is also a well documented form of “directional” control over another, yet this control is “false” it does not exist in any form whatsoever as it requires the level of control which does not exist except in the warped mind of a few..
You have to give in and “allow” another’s actions or desires to become the influencing event of your life for it to even have a chance of becoming a reality.. if one accepts that no human has control over another, then the threads of dissent are sewn into the very fabric of ones being while the need to respect another becomes tantamount as one must “ask” another rather then “demand” from another what one wishes to accomplish.
We are not lemmings, mindless and unable to think for oneself, we are always thinking wither we admit this or not, it the lack of “conviction” that is the root cause of such problems we have in todays world, not the will to “allow” others to control us (that we have in infinite abundance)
James
Infinity Is Just A Name, It’s Application Is “Forever”….
“Together we can bring down the beast of savage capitalism.” Is the way the author chose to end, what was otherwise a thoughtful, provocative peice. I would note that “together” we ARE the ‘mindless mob’ that IS the “beast of savage capitalism”.
It is dilemmacracy that has backed each individual into a corner with false choices. Let us consider the idea of “I am a citizen of the world.” This is precisely the goal of the New Word Order. Is it not?
NO, the admonation to heal the earth did not fly over my head. I understand that with a passion.
Illuminati, bullshit? [scaramouche]…How about, ‘Elite Central Banking Cartel’? is that non-esoteric enough? That is “the business system, the corporatocracy,” that you oppose. A ‘Theory’, once proven is no longer a theory, it is a fact…this goes for ‘conspiracy theory’ as well. Read, THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND, if you doubt that a conspiracy has been revealed.
If you know not your true enemy, you are apt to stike at a freind who is only trying to warn you. “Our beautiful republic” [scaramouche], is the quest that was never fulfilled. Even in the very beginning it was compromised by the international banker, through such traitors as Hamilton and Jon Jay, through such hypocrits as, “the only good injun is a dead injun” crowd–and the slave traders, and white exceptionalists. Don’t get me wrong here, the Declaration of Independence is, to me, the most beautiful manuscript ever penned. I do not oppose you scaramouche–I bicker with some of your apparently naive assertions, but I know your heart is in the right place…most likely all of us here (on this blog) have our heart in the right place, we just squabble over fine points.
My fear is for the individual. There are ’socialists’ here, there and everywhere. For those of you who lean towards socialism, read Hayek’s, The Road To Serfdom. You will understand that socialism is a trap–for it to work there must be a powerful centralized state. In fact, what we have here in the US at this very moment is socialism…not exactly the utopia you would have imagined is it? We have not been jealous of our liberty–individual liberty, and the responsibilities that that demands.
It is with great sadness then, that I must bid you Welcome to the New World Order.
Unfortunately between the public school system, TV, movies, poisoned food and water, forced injections, chemical spraying, GM crops and who knows what else there really is no end in sight to the production of lemmings. Free thinkers have no place on “plantation earth” where we will follow orders or else our chip will be deactivated by a low level bureaucrat who doesn’t like the cut of our jib and we won’t be able to acquire food or drink or whatever the said bureaucrat decides to cut us off from.
Bravo! We were beginning to believe we were a voice in the wilderness. It’s time to build lifeboats for us who are awake and refuse to follow the lemmings. Join us!
Titanic Lifeboat Academy
Willy, thank you for your comments.
First here is the original ending to this piece:
I do not subscribe to society or it’s system, I am Canadian by birth, not by choice. I claim my rights as a world citizen, as a natural being; I claim the laws of common sense. Don’t follow the Lemmings, follow what’s right; only then can a system be changed.
The entire unedited version can be viewed at
syllamo.blogspot.com/2007/07/follow-lemmings.html
Second - I am a believer that there is more than one way to view globalisation.
The New World Order - ok, we have all read, heard rumours, been presented by facts, etc. This is not the way globalisation will help our planet or it’s inhabitants and certainly not humanity.
I do, however, believe that in order for the species to properly evolve, there has to be unity. The take care of our own part of the piece was also a reference to this. I think that we have to stop trying to label everything as a finite. Socialism, globalisation, black, white, gay, straight; why the perverse need for labels?
Turn THEM off.
Simply Walk AWay.
Find The Life that makes YOU happy.
You have The Power.
I agreed with most of this article, but have found its philosophical underpinnings unacceptable.
What’s so great about being a citizen of the world?
How do you propose to have unity without coercion?
Coerced collectivism will be the death of us all.
To be GOVERENED
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality - Pierre Joseph Proudhon (General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century)
http://www.taroscopes.com/miscellanous-pages/weapons.html
McLuhan wrote that the best artists and writers in America work for Madison Avenue. To that you can add ‘the best psychologists.’
Turning Americans (and most other prosperous earthlings) into consuming machines has been child’s play for these geniuses, who have the ultimate brainwashing device (TV) available for applying their subtle and irresistable subconscious-altering techniques directly to the almost all the brains in the US and Canada.
I’m surprised by how few people write or discuss the incredible dangers of TV, even today. Without it, Madison Avenue couldn’t have turned almost every American into a sleep-walking nonstop consumer, and the government could not have manufacturered the consensus required to launch the Iraq Slaughter. (After 9-11, TV ran those clips of the plane hitting the tower almost non-stop for weeks. ‘Hammering home’ the lesson.)
(Anyone interested in more on this topic may wish to check out my book ‘Too Much TV’ at www.firstchapter.net.)
Society functions due to the vast difference in humans. The largest bulk of the population always follows the trend, the herd. Unwittingly, they base truth on a popularity contest. This is simply the nature of the largest bulk of the population. For if it wasn’t so, strong willed, independent-minded souls would clash and society couldn’t function.
You’ll find huge amounts of non-lemmings, independent-thinkers in non-traditional movements, such as www.stormfront.org. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of independent-thinkers in any one population makes that society ripe for conflict. Furthermore, although overwhelmingly independent-minded, they too have no real grasp on human nature and are therefore, doomed to failure…
MARCH OF THE TITANS -
A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
Chapter 64:The Racial State - The Third Reich
Part One: The Ideological Background of Hitler’s Germany
Adolf Hitler is without question the one towering figure over the 20th Century - and perhaps even of the 21st, even if measured only in the reaction against him. Because of this fame, or infamy, Hitler and the Third Reich remain one of the most controversial topics of contemporary history.
Above: Adolf Hitler, a Nordic racial type with slight Alpine ancestry.
Yet despite all the intense scrutiny and historical evaluation, Hitler and the Third Reich remain one of the most difficult historical areas with which to come to grips. The reason for this is that Hitler still has a massive influence on everyday politics and life at the end of the 20th Century, and it is difficult to find any source which has an objective view of the state created by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 in Germany.
In fact, a large amount of what has been written about Hitler and Nazi Germany has been particularly subject to the pressure of political correctness: a good example is the story of 1936 Olympics and the Black American athlete Jesse Owens.
The 1936 Olympics
The story most repeated about Hitler and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, which were unquestionably put on as a political showcase for Nazi Germany, is that Hitler refused to shake the hand of the American Black athlete Jesse Owens after the latter had won a race. This myth is extremely widespread: the Encarta Encyclopedia, issued by Microsoft (1998 edition) states the following in its entry under Jesse Owens:
“Owens, Jesse (1913-80), one of the greatest track-and-field athletes of all time . . . A member of the U.S. track team in the 1936 Olympic Games, held in Berlin, Owens won four gold medals. He won the 100-m dash in 10.3 sec, equaling the Olympic record; set a new Olympic and world record of 20.7 sec in the 200-m dash; and won the running broad jump with a leap of 26 ft 5I in., setting a new Olympic record. He was also a member of the U.S. 400-m relay team that year, which set a new Olympic and world record of 39.8 sec. Despite Owens’ outstanding athletic performance, German leader Adolf Hitler refused to acknowledge his Olympic victories because Owens was black. Owens went on to play an active role in youth athletic programs and later established his own public relations firm. His autobiography, The Jesse Owens Story, was published in 1970.” - “Owens, Jesse,” Microsoft Encarta, 98 Encyclopedia.1997 Microsoft Corporation.”
The reality was in fact substantially different: what happened was that Hitler personally attended the first day of the track and field competition on 2 August 1936, and did personally congratulate the German athlete Hans Woellke, who became the first German to win a gold medal in the Olympics since 1896.
Throughout the rest of the day, Hitler continued to receive Olympic champions, German and non German, in his VIP box.
The next day, 3 August, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, Comte Baillet-Latour, approached Hitler early in the morning and told the German leader that he had violated Olympic protocol by having winners paraded to his box.
Hitler apologized and gave an undertaking that he would from then on refrain from publicly congratulating any winners, German or otherwise. During this day, Owens won his gold medals - and in line with the Olympic Committee’s ruling, Hitler did not shake his hand, or anybody else’s for that matter, at the games again.
It is therefore utterly false to claim that Hitler deliberately chose to ignore Owens. In fact, in the very autobiography that the Encarta Encyclopedia extract above refers to, The Jesse Owens Story, Owens himself recounted how Hitler had stood up and waved to him:
“When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.” - Jesse Owens, The Jesse Owens Story, 1970.
Another common story about the 1936 Olympic games is that Owens’ victory “disproved the Nazi master race theory” - in fact the Olympic games as a whole were won by the German team with 89 medals, compared to the 56 medals won by the second placed USA team.
Above: The 1936 Berlin Olympics. Because they were the first political Olympic games, there are a huge number of distortions about the event. One of the hidden facts was the large degree of European support for Hitler: here the French Olympic team enter the stadium in Berlin, giving the Nazi salute while marching behind their country’s flag.
In what was to become an act of extreme irony, the American president of the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then involved in an election and concerned about the reaction in the USA’s southern states, refused to see Owens at the White House: Owens was later to remark that it was Roosevelt, not Hitler, who snubbed him.
This is a good example of one of the more outstanding distortions which have sprung up around Nazi Germany, all as a result of a political agenda linked to Nazi Anti-Jewishness. It is also true that it is the victors’ prerogative to write the historical account of events: this too has served to cloud the issue of the Third Reich and to make it into the political hot potato that it remains over fifty years after it vanished.
“THE BIG LIE” - HITLER WARNED AGAINST IT
Another good example of the type of deliberately false representation which has sprung up around Hitler and Nazi Germany is the story of the “Big Lie.” Most often it is repeated that Adolf Hitler invented the “Big Lie” technique, to the effect that “the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.” It is presented as evidence that Hitler himself used this technique.
Once again, just like the 1936 Olympics, the truth is actually precisely the opposite: in fact Hitler warned against the Big Lie technique, attributing it to his enemies, the Jews.
The quotation from where the ‘Big Lie” story emanates, is in Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, Chapter 10, where he writes about the “big lie” technique being used by Jews against the World War German General Ludendorf. It is by deliberately misquoting this section of Mein Kampf, that it is alleged that Hitler propagated the “big lie” technique - when in fact, as can be read, he specifically warned against it:
“But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall [of Germany in WWI] precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.
All this was inspired by the principle — which is quite true in itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He (Schopenhauer) called the Jew “The Great Master of Lies.” Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail.”
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter X
NAZIS SUPPRESS DEMOCRACY
A trademark characteristic of Hitler and the Nazi Party - they never made any secret of it - was their abhorrence of democracy. Firmly believing in the leadership principle, where one leader took the responsibility for the major decisions, as soon as the Nazis came to power, they started with a program of entrenching themselves in power to the exclusion of other parties and opposition movements.
This anti-democratic movement extended past the political front: freedom of the press and eventually freedom of speech was also suspended. Although these were reversals of the democratic process, Germany was not alone in this: indeed, even at the end of the 20th century, still only one country on earth - the United States of America - guarantees its citizens total freedom of speech: every single other country on earth has one or another form of restriction on free speech, most notably in the area of race relations, where all European countries have made it a criminal offense to discuss racially related topics which are openly debated in America.
Hitler Elected to Office
It was thus ironic that Hitler came to power by being voted into office, and not through a coup (although he tried that early in his career in 1923; he failed and served nine months in prison as a result).
In the election of March 1933, the Nazi party received the single largest share of the vote, giving them 44 per cent of the seats in the German parliament. This in itself was not an outright majority, but when the smaller nationalist and right wing parties were added to the Nazi total, Hitler in effect had 52% of the popular vote behind him. These smaller parties were to later of their own free will merge with the Nazi Party.
Fifty two percent of the popular vote is a total that most modern politicians would regard as an overwhelming majority: Most Western European governments come to power with far less, usually around 30 to 40 per cent of the vote.
Above: Hitler and hundreds of thousands of his followers gather at a rally: the Nazi leader was unquestionably the single most popular elected leader of all time.
Once in power, the Nazis then combined their mastery of propaganda with an extended program of political and social reform. Within three years, this had persuaded the vast majority of Germans to vote for Hitler. Upon taking office in 1933, Hitler made a public speech asking the Germans for four years in office, after which he would hold a referendum to test the popularity of his government. This referendum was duly held with the simple question ” Do you approve of the National Socialist Government or not” being printed on the ballot papers.
The result even surprised Hitler: a staggering 44,461,2787 “yes” votes, or 98.8 per cent of the qualified voter total of 45,453,691 was recorded. “No” votes amounted to a paltry 540,211 total. (Baynes, Hitler’s Speeches, 1922-1939, Vol. 2 Royal Institute of International Affairs, London).
Even taking into account that some people might have been too frightened to express opposition, this still indicates a level of support which would be unobtainable by any politician in any modern democracy.
Internal Policies
Hitler’s personal popularity remained very high for almost the entire duration of the war, and serves as the single most important reason why Germans fought to the bitter end without large scale mutiny, as had happened in the First World War. This was astonishing in itself: but even more amazing when it is considered that the Nazi state became ever more authoritarian in nature.
It was not long before the Communist Party had been outlawed: Germany quickly became a one party state and all other parties were eventually outlawed. Germans were given the right to vote every now and then in referendums on set issues only: in each and every case they returned over 98 per cent endorsements for whatever the government had done.
Literature and art deemed to be undesirable was placed on a banned index: this automatically included any works by Jews, but also many non-Jews. The famous book burning incident occurred only once: after that, books deemed undesirable were simply not printed in Germany any more.
Economic Reforms
On all fronts, the German state was revolutionized: with one of the most significant being with the economy. When Hitler came to power in 1933, 30 per cent of the working population was unemployed: by 1938, Germany had a labor shortage.
In this economic recovery, Hitler hit upon something which helped to arouse the everlasting hatred of the international banking community: instead of basing Germany’s recovery on enormous loans from foreign and local banks, Hitler based the German economy onto a barter system, by which he could get much of what he needed by exchanging German surplus for the surplus of other countries - in common language, by swapping.
The next radical change Hitler brought about was to take the right to print money away from private banking institutions - which he viewed as Jewish - and restored the sole right to print money to the German state itself (it is interesting to compare the contemporary systems in both Britain and America, where consortiums of private bankers - the Federal Reserve in America and the Bank of England - print the money and then “sell” it to the governments, incurring the massive national debts of these countries).
Freed of the peculiar and complicated system of instant national debt through the issuance of their own money, the German economy took off like a rocket. Hitler also abandoned the Gold Standard as a means of weighting the Reichsmark: money in Hitler’s Germany was not based on gold but on the capacity of the German people to produce goods.
Hitler said in 1937:
“We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency coverage of gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark’s worth of work done or goods produced. . . .we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank.” (CC Veith, Citadels of Chaos, Meador, 1949.)
Workers’ Rights
Labor Unions were dissolved and reformed under the authority of the state controlled Labor Front. The right of workers to strike and of management to lock workers out were both forbidden, and the state actively intervened in labor disputes. The unemployment problem was tackled by the creation of great building projects, most notably Hitler’s pet project, the Autobahns.
The standard of living increased dramatically, with workers for the first time being able to travel abroad in state sponsored holidays through the “Strength through Joy” program.
Children were obligated to serve in the Hitler Youth or its female equivalent as a form of national service: the meetings of these youth organizations were timed to be on Sundays at exactly the times that the main churches held their services. Soon the pews began to empty of young people who preferred to go camping or playing sport rather than sitting in church.
Nazi Atomic Science
Another common myth about Nazi Germany is that the country was not able to build an atomic bomb of its own because it rejected the “Jewish science” of Albert Einstein and other Jewish scientists.
This has however been proven to be untrue with the 1999 release of previously top secret files on Nazi Germany’s race to build an atomic bomb. Among the materials now available to the general public in the Munich state museum, are research notes by famous German physicists who took part in the program, such as Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn, as well as notebooks, photos and correspondence between scientists and Nazi authorities.
The documents show that German research into the atomic bomb was parallel with efforts in the United States, but that the Third Reich lacked materials to build one only because of the Allied bombing campaign.
A November 1945 report by two U.S. investigators, six months after the German defeat in World War II, says “only the lack of plutonium” kept Adolf Hitler from building an atomic bomb. (Nazi Atom Bomb Files To Be Opened, Associated Press, January 1999).
If the Allied bombing campaign had been any less severe, there can be no doubt that Nazi Germany would have been able to build an atomic bomb as well - which may well have changed the course of the war.
Medical Advances
An overview of Nazi medical advances makes interesting reading for the modern health conscious person: Nazi scientists were amongst the first in the world to warn of the dangers of radiation; asbestos, lead, cadmium and mercury (all of which have only re-emerged in the health field many years after the end of the Second World War, when much German medical research was dismissed as Nazi hallucinations).
In addition to this, German medical journals of the 1930s and 1940s were the first in the world to warn against the ill effects of artificial food colorants and preservatives in food and drinks, and stressed the need for a return to “organic” or natural ingredients in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fertilizers and foods.
Vivisection Outlawed
The very first law passed by the Nazi controlled parliament of the territory of East Prussia in 1933, under the premiership of Herman Goering, was the abolition of vivisection, or experimentation on animals.
This law also included a ban on the Jewish ritual whereby meat is made kosher: the ritual includes the slitting of an animal’s throat and letting it bleed to death while a rabbi prays over the dying animal: this was rejected by the Nazis as a barbaric way of slaughtering animals which inflicted unnecessary pain. Eventually the anti-vivisection law was extended throughout Germany.
Nazi Germany also forbid the use of the pesticide DDT on the grounds that it was a health hazard (it would be decades before this policy was adopted by other countries) and instead used a German produced version known as Cyclone-B.
Hitler Backed Anti-Smoking Drive
Nazi Germany was also the first country in the world to actively launch anti-smoking campaigns: in July 1939, the Bureau against the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco was founded, with the Reich Health Office sponsoring cash prizes for research into the effects of nicotine upon human chromosomes. In June 1942, the Institute For The Struggle Against Tobacco was founded at the University of Jena in Saxony, funded personally by Hitler who gave 100,000 Reichmarks of his own personal money to the project. By 1944, Germany had also become the first country in the world to ban smoking on public transport.
Above: “Is smoking hazardous to your health?” reads this anti-smoking article in the Nazi publication, Gesundes Volk (”Healthy People”) April 1939. The illustration on the left shows the amount of tobacco consumed by Germans in one year (1935) is equal to the weight of one million people, and that in one year “our people spend 2.5 billion Reichmarks on tobacco; for the same amount we could buy 2.5 million Volkswagens.”
NAZIS DISCOURAGE Alcohol ABUSE
In 1937, the Nazis enacted laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to minors and enacted stiff penalties for drunken-driving, introducing the first blood tests for automobile drivers suspected of being under the influence while behind the steering wheel.
As part of the state’s efforts to control drinking, the SS undertook the promotion of mineral water. The SS’s business interests in mineral water extended to the point where by 1945 it controlled 75 per cent of all Germany’s mineral water production.
HITLER AND CHRISTIANITY
Also contrary to popular belief, Hitler and the Nazis were not Christians, and were in fact vehemently opposed to that religion, which they saw as a Jewish originated belief system. In public, Hitler accepted or even praised Christianity when it was anti-Jewish, but in private, he detested it, as a reading of his personal dinner table chat recorded by Martin Borman and published as “Hitler’s Secret Conversations”, Farrar, Straus and Young, New York, 1953:
“The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practices a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its keynote is intolerance.
Without Christianity, we should not have had Islam. The Roman Empire, under Germanic influence, would have developed in the direction of world-domination, and humanity would not have extinguished fifteen centuries of civilization at a single stroke.
Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things.”
- Adolf Hitler, ibid, Night of 11th-12th July 1941.
“Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.”
- Adolf Hitler, ibid, 10th October 1941, midday.
Part Two: Racial Hygiene - Nazi Germany’s Racial Laws
Part Three: European Support for Hitler
Part Four: The “Final Solution” - Nazi Policy towards Jews
or back to
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All material (c) copyright Ostara Publications, 1999.
Re-use for commercial purposes strictly forbidden.
There is no excuse for human behavior, we are all in this together. Who is worse for current society, one who ignores reality to live for illusion/fantasy or one who ignores reality to imposes illusion/fantasy. All humans, regardless of which fantasy they pursue or protect cannot by implication understand the world they live in without denying individual self interest. God has provided us consciousness to seek the truth, begin within yourself so no “system” can decieve you.
Well to add a few additional thoughts to the above responses.
Yes, to the idea T.V. (IMO) has become one of the most destructive drugs a person can consume to destroy independent thinking and critical analysis abilities. Obviously this is because just like State-run (corporate) print media it has had decades for certain alphabet soup agencies and commercial interests to experiment with various methods to find the most effective ways of keeping the herd from mentally wandering too far outside the fence.
As for strong willed people necessarily having to clash, I consider myself VERY strong willed, VERY VERY much outside the mainstream, but yet through it all I have learned (and am still learning) the ability to agree to disagree and/or disagree agreeably. While NOT always easy, it is something I desire, simply by “choice” and continue to work toward. I think rather one of the biggest causes for conflict is simply one or a group of individuals attempting to FORCE their will/views on another. Governments and those who carry out their bidding by force and decree have probably caused more conflict, death and suffering than any amount of “individuals” acting alone.
BY the way, sites like this one are a breath of fresh air to State-run media, where citizens can not only read the “news/editorials” but discuss what it means to them and how they each interpret it. I Look for state-run/corporate lemming pied pipers whether on the so called ‘left’ or the so called ‘right’ to try and end this ASAP.
Dear Sylvian, Thank you for your response. I hope you understand my compassionate veiw of your article, my critique is meant as food for thought. As for “lables”, let us admit that each word we use is a lable for some concept, and if our language is not Newspeak; the words we use actually express our thoughts.
I long for ‘Goodwill amongst men (excuse my political incorrectness, I mean humanity and use ‘man’ in the old sense, not as in wereman, and woman; if you know the etemology of these terms), and Peace on Earth. I would hope that we could find global peace, and humanity could coexist in harmony. That form, of ‘globalism’ is an ideal that I hold as well. and yet, as they say, “the road to hell is paved with good entintions”. Put another way; history has shown that all socialist experiments lead to dystopia. Central Planning is the only way that a socialist state can opperate. The social program must be enforced…collectivism will work in no other fasion. If you haven’t read The Road To Serfdom, I beg you do. Hayek explains this, historically, and philosophically in very clear cut reasoning.
Let all of us here recognise that the founding generation of this nation were not naive people. They understood Machiavelli as well as Carl Rove. The breakdown of the system is the fault of those who lost sight of thier call for eternal vigelance against the aquisition of unwarrented powers by those in public office. My opinion is that, until there is movement towards a world order giving the individual the same liberty called for in the Bill of Rights, and iterated in the Declaration; Americans are safer holding on to the nation as a sovereign and independent state. At the same time, we must recognise the dire situation and face it squarely. The belligerant forces in control at the present moment hold all of our hopes and dreams, shackeled and bound in a nightmare.
That being said; the most simple and proven path must be to regain the rights and liberties we already held at one time. Once that is regained we might be a light to the whole world again, as America surely once was–not perhaps as a fact, but as an ideal being reached for.
This truly has turned into a most interesting discussion. Let us all hope that any agents here, may have learned something and might take up the cause for liberty as well.
Willy Whitten
For Shane Nelson, excellent comment! I took my TV to the curb (rather than shooting it, which was my first impuse) in 1984…another lifetime ago. There is no other way to come fully awake than to stop being programmed. “Why do you think they call it programming?” I warned the kids who came to the door asking if it was okay to take the TV, that it was very dangerous–but I let them take it. Maybe it would have been better to have shot out the screen…?
I haven’t read your book yet, but I have studied the psycological effects of TV veiwing, and am up on Bernays, McCluhan, CIA’s Mockingbird, etc.
Willy, your TV beat mine to the street by six years. Congratulations! Getting rid of one’s television is one of the easiest steps one can take to unplug, at least partially, from the propaganda matrix. I’d recommend it to anybody.
Just when I thought I was alone, I read your essay. Now you too need to realize their are others with similar thoughts and feelings. I watched “Brazil” tonight for the first time in twenty years. Not everyone can be a dreamer or a leader. Not everyone is equal. Most are just lemmings. Just cattle. It’s just the way it is. You might as well become comfortable with your outsider status. Think of it as your comfort zone. Play the game intelligently. Place yourself in the company of thoe who think like you. Start a small revolution. There is hope. - With warm and positive wishes