History Warns Us — But what do we hear?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
September 30th, 2023
www.zeppscommentaries.online

In 2017 there was a pitch-black dark comedy called The Death of Stalin. A scalpel-sharp political satire, it pasquinaded the utter madness and viciousness that accompanies the decline of all authoritarian governments. It was the age of Stalin at its ultimate. The metronome in the background was the sound of people who were guilty of being accused of anything or nothing being dragged into interrogation cells and shot. At the higher levels of power, the arena of government management, both legal and extralegal, played out like a kindergarten recess where all the children are armed with AR-15s and grenades. With people like Steve Buscemi and Michael Palin it’s side-splittingly funny from the comfort of your living room and if you don’t think too hard about the reality of what you are watching. You can stream a free and legal version of the film at Tubi.
Anyone with even an ordinary understanding of history is going to feel a bit of disquiet while watching the movie. You see, while it’s clearly a parody, it isn’t an exaggeration. While the end of the Stalin era was marked by spasmodic and insane viciousness, the entire era of Stalin was one of persecution, genocide, blind obedience to mad authority, wholesale wasting of lives, and willful blindness by the millions who witnessed all this and said nothing.
But it’s not unique to Stalinism. Quite the opposite. It is a set-in-stone feature of all authoritarian regimes. All of them. No exceptions. All authoritarian structures have the cruelty and insanity that was so evident during the reign of Stalin. It doesn’t matter if they are theocracies, absolute monarchies, fascist or dictatorship, or political or social movements that keep leadership unaccountable to the followers and citizenry. They all become corrupt, brutal, insensate, and intolerant of any dissent of any kind. No exceptions.
The reason is that the coin of such realms is money and power. Nothing else. And those drawn to serve in such regimes are the very worst people for such positions. They are people who value money and power and nothing else. The power struggles are inevitable, and rapidly become no-holds-barred destructive frenzies on incurring court favor and amassing an ever-greater unassailable authority.
Quite often such regimes are “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” as Winston Churchill famously described the machinations of the Kremlin during the Stalin era. The only times we get a look at their inner workings are during their ascendancy, and when they collapse. Hitler ran for office in the 1920s and wrote a book in prison that made no effort to hide his plans for genocide and war. That Nazism devolved into utter lunacy in short order came as no real surprise to historians, who have an endless parade of tyrants and movements and churches they could compare the Nazi regime to. A good correlation to Death of Stalin would be Downfall (Der Untergang) 2004 film by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Source of thousands of “Hitler Finds Out” memes, the movie detailed the final days of the Nazi regime. Again, available to watch for free on Tubi. Not intended as a comedy, but eerily similar, because the pathology of the social phenomenon is essentially identical.
Stalin, while in his role of “Lenin’s left foot” wrote in Marxism and the National Question this summation: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” You don’t have to squint very hard to see the bones of “Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer” behind that thought. The {collective, state, church} above all, accountable only to itself.
Authoritarians usually make no real secret of what they are or what their plans are for you. But they wrap the malice in conspiracy theories and claims that you are the victim of enemies, real and imagined, inside or outside your nation. Most Americans are familiar with the hatred Republicans spit at single moms for daring to ask for help raising their kids, and blandly ignore the trillions stolen by the plutocratic class.
Accountability is the key element. It always has been. Freedom and social progress began only when leaders and prelates and governments had to become accountable for their actions. In the west, it began in 1215, when the King was forced to adopt the Magna Carta, making him responsive to the nobility. It culminated in 1789 with the Constitution, which set out to make the government the design of the people, and very deliberately worked to keep religious entities and the aristocracy out of power. It had mixed results, but it enabled Americans to largely avoid the madness and brutality of autocracy for 200 years. It was an ongoing process, of course. In the beginning, less than 10% of the population actually had rights.
It leaves Americans unprepared for the rise of an authoritarian movement, and even with a half-century of warning signs, most don’t recognize the GOP, hagridden with fascists, plutocrats, dominionists and libertarians, for the extreme danger that it is. Many believe that they lie for you, cheat for you, steal for you, kill for you, to protect your freedoms. It isn’t even intentional dishonesty on their part, usually. It’s willful blindness, denialism carried to an extreme. There are people who earnestly believe Donald Trump is being crucified for us. Most supporters blandly ignore the embrace of racism, deliberate cruelty, and outright Nazism, and parrot the propaganda about how the GOP is conservative, patriotic, and beholden to God.
When you watch the destructive nihilism of Republicans trashing the economy deliberately in a vain effort to pass cruel and draconian laws, or seeking to imprison women for the crime of not wanting to be pregnant, or staging the farcical and inane kangaroo court like the “Biden Impeachment hearings” remember Hitler and Stalin and many others, who made it crystal clear what they were, and what they would become if they seized power. The GOP want to be the Fourth Reich, the new Soviet State.
Denialism stretches to insane lengths. I began by discussing Russia in the throes of the death of Stalin. I’ll return there, only not as seen through the lens of a satire, but from a very grim reality, one described by a master eyewitness of that era, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The acclaimed novelist was, like millions of other Soviet citizenry, incarcerated in Stalin’s vast Gulag prison system (the book itself is part one of “The Gulag Archipelago”). He was there doing a ten-year stretch for “Anti-Soviet Agitation.” The so-called ASA laws allowed the state to imprison anyone for pretty much anything, or nothing at all. One of his cellmates was a peasant, learning to write. He had been taught to sign his name, and, proud of this new accomplishment, signed it wherever he could put pen to paper. One of the papers he used was the daily Pravda, and he signed his name across a picture of Stalin that happened to be there. His party block captain noticed. Ten years, ASA.
Solzhenitsyn was in prison with thousands of others that day in 1953 when news of Stalin’s death was broadcast. These were people whose lives had been destroyed, usually unfairly and often capriciously, and all knew people who had been ground to death under the wheels of the Soviet state. Many had seen the unbelievable carnage that ensued when Stalin attempted to stop the German army behind walls of bloody splintered bones that had been the pride of the Soviet Union. Millions more perished because of the mad agricultural polices of Lysenkoism.
You might think the prisoners all erupted in joy over the death of the man who had ruined their lives and murdered so many of their family and friends. But no! They wept! They wailed! They mourned the loss of this despot as if their own fathers had died (and in many cases, Stalin had caused the deaths of their own fathers!). There was an orgy of unfeigned and unstaged grief, totally genuine. Stalin was the state. He was the father figure. He was the kindly ruler who sometimes had to do hard things for the sake of his people. His victims wept, not for themselves and their loved ones, but for their loss of Stalin.
In the GOP, we find history has repeated itself. These people are showing us what they are, and anyone with any knowledge of history knows what they will do. Without restraint, and without limits, seeing cruelty as strength and freedom as a threat to their authority. Their coin is the frightfulness of madness, the inexorability of blind authority. They want to crush you. They will crush you, and they will work hard to persuade you to praise them as they do so.
Watch the Republicans, and see them for the horrible danger they are.

* * *

The Libertarian Party, and its fascist leaders, are one of the main reasons madness has taken over the Republican party and threatens to destroy all of us. Thom Hartmann, the renowned columnist, has a pair of deeply insightful pieces on the rise of this evil empire.

How Libertarianism is a poison that’s crept into America

And

As Republicans begin phony ‘impeachment hearings’ Democrats are ignoring real crimes

 

Zealotry Aborted — Kansas shows America not ready for religious fascism

Zealotry Aborted

Kansas shows America not ready for religious fascism

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 5th 2022

The only thing about the Kansas vote to reaffirm the state Supreme Court upholding the right to abortion that surprised me was the amount it won by: 59-41. I figured it would pass, but I wasn’t expecting the blowout margin.

Poll after poll has shown that the usurpation of the Constitution by the zealots on the federal Supreme Court is wildly unpopular, and free states are hustling to encode abortion rights if needed, and vowing to provide such rights to enslaved women in the zealot states. That’s why Kansas wasn’t a surprise so far as the result went. Abortion, and separation of church and state, cross partisan lines. It’s one thing to say that Kansas is one of the reddest states in the union; but not all Republicans march in lockstep with the preachers and demagogues that dominate that beleaguered party. And independents in particular will break ranks when it comes to maintaining rights and freedoms.

Kansas all but invented the term “prairie populism.” Often deeply religious, and conservative, but also strong-willed and independent. They may like and respect their Sunday preacher just fine, but they aren’t about to let him dictate how they should vote, or what rights the church can take away that the Constitution promises.

Kansas is one of the most heavily propagandized states in America, with all radio and much television devoted to reactionary Protestant broadcasting, or the endless lies and undermining of freedom that stems from hate radio. I figured that there were maybe 5% of the voters there brainwashed enough to cut off their own noses to “own the libs.” Well, it’s happened before. Look at the obviously incompetent, unfit, and inept trolls in Congress who got there despite having nothing—nothing at all—to offer other than snark and clownish defiance.

I’m happy to see that I was wrong, by about 7% of Kansas’ population. I figured abortion rights would win, but I was expecting a 52-48 margin. That it went the way it did is cause for considerable optimism.

One phenomenon that may have underlay the result was the open, gleeful, and acquisitive viciousness and cruelty that the zealots and the fascists of the GOP displayed. A few days after the Supreme Court (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Comey Barrett) decided to kick the rights of hundreds of millions of people under the nearest Bible, a nightmare scenario emerged, of a ten year old rape victim who had to travel to a neighboring state for an abortion. Any reasonable or rational people would look at that situation and consider making the new law less strident, more humane. There is no situation in which any government, no matter how god-burdened, should force a ten-year-old to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

The Washington Times is one of the shabbier exercises in propaganda journalism given birth by a different set of Zealots, the Moonies, although they dumped the rag a few years back, but it’s still a rag. That exercise in dysfunctional journalism cast doubt on the story, writing, “If there was a 10-year-old girl out there who had been impregnated, certainly there’d be a criminal investigation into her rape.

“But Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said this week that there was “not a whisper” of evidence to back up the story. ‘The bottom line is it is a crime if you’re a mandated reporter to fail to report. It’s also the fact that in Ohio the rape of a 10-year-old means life in prison,’Mr. Yost said on Fox News.” Yost either had no idea what he was talking about and didn’t bother to fact check first, or he was flat-out lying. The rape and rapist had been reported, and he is awaiting trial. But that didn’t stop zealots from sending death threats meant for the girl for the crime of getting raped and being a political embarrassment to them.

And then there’s the lies. Several “justices” on the Supreme Court lied, blatantly and with malice, declaring before the Senate and while under oath that Roe Vs. Wade was “established law” and they would respect stare decisis, which is the legal notion that precedent should determine legal decision making in a case involving similar facts. They lied, and got appointed under fraudulent circumstances.

All the anti-abortion crowd who said they just wanted to limit abortion, and didn’t want to interfere with contraception or a woman’s right to private medical counsel immediately started passing pre-written laws contradicting those stances. Some states are even trying to make it illegal to go to another state for an abortion, or even protest against the law.

Religious zealots believe that they have to be cruel in god’s name either because a) god is cruel, or b) god is kind, but wants to test his followers by making them be cruel. Zealots also believe that it’s ok to lie to “unbelievers” (everyone else) in the name of god. The zealots and corrupt toadies on the Supreme Court have unleashed this miasma of humanity loose on the land, and hideous stories of repression, cruelty, and oppression are emerging every where.

It’s how theocracies—all theocracies—work. The starry-eyed idiots who declare that life would be perfect if we put [god, allah, jesus] in charge miss an important fact: god isn’t running the show. It never has. It doesn’t exist. What a theocracy is is a group of politicians who find god to be the perfect figleaf for their own corruption and viciousness. God is the trump card that ends debate. You end up with The Church running the country, and it’s accountable only to an imaginary doormat that says whatever it is The Church wants it to say and says so on its behalf. It’s the ultimate scam, the Saudi Arabia, the 14th century Europe, and Cromwell’s England. The lowest misery of history, repeated over and over.

Kansas voters may or may not have figured that out. But a significant number of them realize that these people, these zealots, are not to be trusted, and allowed to run loose, will destroy America and everyone in her.

The naked face of religious and fascist zealotry has been exposed. People who wanted to believe are turning away.

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