For several days, while Wessel lay critically wounded in a Berlin hospital, Goebbels issued daily health bulletins on his new hero. And since Ali Höhler belonged to a Communist street gang, Goebbels portrayed the gun battle as an infamous act of political terrorism. The Gauleiter wrote an emotional account of his visit to the hospital, and he quoted from the hero’s song: “Comrades shot dead by the Red front and Reaction march in spirit with our ranks!” When Horst Wessel finally died, Goebbels staged a tremendous funeral. “His song made him immortal,” Goebbels cried, and, echoing the line about the marching dead, he called out “Horst Wessel!” And the assembled Storm Troopers shouted: “Present!” Goebbels… said of the dead youth “...Come to me: I will redeem you.” Then everyone sang the “Horst Wessel Song,” which, after Goebbels had produced enough pamphlets and posters, was to become the Nazis’ official anthem. Before the Deluge, Otto Friedrich (1972)
The murder or assassination of Charlie Kirk has become an event threatening to radically reshape the political landscape, with the MAGA right exploiting Kirk’s violent death occurring at an outdoor event at a Utah university.
Immediately after Kirk’s demise a storm of controversy arose over its meaning. For most US citizens, Kirk was not a well known figure. As with other instances of political violence, the fact that attacks are growing in frequency draws more concern, more discussion than an identification with the victim.
But with the elites of the right and their media servants, Kirk was a rising star, a charismatic youth leader poised for future greatness. He was credited with bringing young people into the MAGA movement, though polls still show young people leaning more and more left. With a dysfunctional Democratic Party, his role was to herd dissatisfaction rightward, especially with college students. His death has elevated him into a martyr of the MAGA cause. He has been canonized in ruling MAGA circles.
For their most prominent political foes-- the liberal elites and their covey of pundits-- Kirk was a dangerous character, especially on social and lifestyle conversations that obsess them. They recognize that he was good at selecting lightning rod issues that challenge liberals. He was not such an easy target with centrists as Trump, since Kirk offered a self-confident, reasonable style that separated him from Trump’s bombast and arrogance.
While fear was central to his message, it was buffered by a nostalgia for an imagined earlier time when everyone got along, worshiped the same God, and basked in patriotic light. Kirk sought to hide the racism and sexism that flowed freely beneath the surface with denial and artfulness.
In short, Charlie Kirk was a MAGA con man, in a political universe filled with con artists and wannabee con artists.
In the aftermath, MAGA hucksters have manufactured a remarkable narrative that has elevated Kirk to a national status that he never earned; they have constructed an elaborate network of blame that links everything and every one who stood in opposition to MAGA to Kirk’s murder; and they have frightened easily frightened liberals into condoling Kirk’s death and attesting to his great “human” worth.
But most disgustingly, MAGA shock troops established an atmosphere so thick with fear that virtually ANYONE can be banished from status, employment, or reputation who dares challenge the sainthood of Charlie Kirk.
This demonstrates to all the unbridled power and ruthlessness of the MAGA camp.
But there is another side to this story, a chapter of equal, perhaps, more significance.
That is the role of the institutional enablers. A cornerstone of liberal democratic theory is the structural guide rails of political life supposedly established by the constitution, the body of law, the court system, the security sectors, the regulatory agencies, the educational system, and-- perhaps most importantly-- the media. These rules and institutions are hailed as barriers to abuse, corruption, and anti-democratic acts; they are alleged guarantors of universal and absolute personal rights and protections.
Their citation and their celebration are instilled early and often in the citizenry of Europe and North America. Citizens are told that living under the umbrella of these guarantees is what separates the civilized West, from the unfortunates in the rest of the world.
Curiously, they have always failed when they are most needed; they collapse before the weight of powerful forces-- the forces that they are meant to resist. The failure of the guard rails to protect outspoken or dissident voices from the wrath of university administrators, government bullies, anti-immigration thugs, or media executives at this moment is only the latest example of a long history of failure. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the systematic abridgement of the thirteenth and fourteenth Constitutional amendments after Reconstruction, the anti-Red repression after World Wars I and II are among a host of anti-democratic turning points that left the US democratic reputation tarnished and left an indelible stain on political life.
Those who speak most fervently about the virtues of our system, those who manage and govern the institutional guide rails are often the first to surrender to the challenges to free speech and open advocacy. The University presidents and administrators who turned campuses into bastions of thought conformity, the government bureaucrats who quietly watched their colleagues cast into unemployment, the union leaders who vigorously “regretted” the stripping of union rights from hundreds of thousands of government employees, and the employers-- from school boards to corporate media executives-- who fired employees who dared to speak against the ludicrous beatification of Charlie Kirk-- fall in line without a fight.
One of the US’s better writers, Dalton Trumbo, writing in 1949, called the early anti-Red hysteria of the time “The Time of the Toad”. Trumbo-- himself a top Hollywood writer who was fired, jailed, and blacklisted for his Communist Party membership-- recalled a story by Emile Zola involving a man “inuring himself against newspaper columns” by devouring a raw toad everyday “so he could face almost any newspaper with a tranquil stomach… and actually relish that which to healthy men not similarly immunized would be a lethal poison.”
Trumbo and Zola were correct to see the news media and the commentariat as administering “a lethal poison”. Their thirst for sensationalism, scandal, and vulgarity played a significant role in pushing Trump onto the political stage. Their uncritical embrace of bipartisan, imperialist foreign policy accounts for widespread national disinterest in the US’s bloody hand. They have shown themselves dutiful puppets of wealth and power. And now the owners, editors, script writers, and faces of the media are enthusiastically bending a knee to MAGA’s assault on the little independence that they have retained.
In early 1930 Germany, the Hitlerites sought to turn the death of a contemptible, minor SA leader into an affront to the entire German nation. Through Goebbels unprincipled, unscrupulous propaganda campaign, through the support of big business, military leaders, opportunist “mainstream” politicians, and a sensation-seeking media, they succeeded.
The only barriers to their further success in 1930 stood a powerful labor movement, a dominant Social Democratic Party, and a growing, popular Communist Party. Nonetheless, in the September 1930 election the Nazi party became the second largest party, gaining 95 seats in the Reichstag.
What barriers do we have?
Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment