"A Horrible Brainless Empire"

 

"It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous..." -George Orwell. review of Mein Kampf, The New English Weekly, March 21, 1940 

     A little over 74 years ago, Eric Blair, more popularly known as George Orwell, wrote a review of Hitler's Mein Kampf. The book had already been out for 15 years but Orwell was reviewing the 1939 edition brought out by British publishers, Hurst and Blackett. As Orwell wrote in his review, Hurst and Blackett introduced the translated book to British readers with a decidedly pro-Hitler bent. They'd even pledged that all proceeds to the book were to be donated to the Red Cross in order to make Hitler seems less dangerous and demagogic than he actually was.

     But Orwell, as you can expect, wasn't fooled. His review of Mein Kampf, of course, wasn't a book review as much as it was a quasi psychological explication of Hitler's motives for advancing his ideas. In Orwell's view, it was all based on personal grievance, a twisted notion of nationalism that somehow was metamorphosed into actual patriotism. And it was all powered by Hitler's personal charisma.

     Keep in mind, Orwell's review was written less than six months before the London Blitz that had begun on September 7, 1940. And there was a major event that had occurred between Hurst and Blackett's translated edition and Orwell's review: Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which, of course, touched off WWII.

     Early in his review, Orwell had written, "When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics."

     That's a ready-made segue into, yes, yet another comparison between Hitler and Donald Trump. If these comparisons are getting wearisome and perhaps even less relevant than ever, please keep in mind that Trump himself invites these comparisons, parallels that the perspicacious would do well to not ignore.

     As Orwell said, the English ruling class, the property owners, industrialists and even the aristocracy had by the time of Poland's invasion had begun slowly crawling away from their previous support of Hitler. Their German counterparts were grateful to him for crushing the German labor movement. Little else if anything mattered to them as long as Hitler represented an immovable bulwark between them and Socialism. Socialism represented, to the property class, the most horrifying nightmare imaginable. And, just to play Devil's advocate, Stalin's own nightmarish vision for Communist Russia made this perception more than plausible.

     Since the birth of our nation 250 years ago with the formation of the first Continental Congress, democracy and capitalism had formed an uneasy and theoretically incompatible alliance that never should have succeeded as long as it has (depending on one's rubric for "success".). 

     Capitalism, of course, is a system in which a handful of the wealthy get to decide what wages their employees need for basic sustenance. It's a system in which power flows from the top down in a reprise of the pre-guild feudal ages of Europe. Democracy, on the other hand, represents the opposite: It's a system in which the power flows from bottom to top in which the power of the governing class comes, theoretically, from the consent of the governed.

     Hitler plainly wasn't interested in any of that and obviously not is Trump. And the simple fact is, neither Hitler nor Trump would've gotten as far as they had without the willing complicity of a supine press. The tragic part is, Hitler completely subsumed the German press and stuffed the newspapers and radio station with his own ideologues. Here in the US, the support is willingly given even though the American mainstream media still like to cling to the illusion that they're "the watchdog of democracy."

     But how can a press can be a watchdog of democracy when literally 100% of the mainstream media is owned by fewer than a half dozen corporations who are antithetical to the very concept of a democratic republic?

     Look at Arthur Sulzberger's diatribe about Biden's refusal to sit down for an interview with the NY Times. It was posted, not on the pages of the Times, but the paper's official blog. Sulzberger's Times has devoted more ink and space to Joe Biden's age than it has to Trump's. It's obvious Sulzberger and his people are just trying to trap Biden into a Gotcha moment. The irony is that, unlike Biden, Trump has insulted the Times at every opportunity.

     And the MSM's failing, as we see this with virtually every other Republican administration, is failing to recognize Trump for the danger that he is or at least represents. No matter how many times the snake bites them, they can't stop approaching it to pet it. Aside from the media's obsession with access, this lack of self respect and journalistic integrity makes no sense.

     But an uncritical press that pledges to never speak truth to power is exactly what power wants, especially if it's a totalitarian regime. The media know damned good and well about Project 2025, the nakedly neo Nazi agenda that's single-mindedly obsessed with stuffing the US government with over 100,000 ideologues if Trump gets back in the White House. It's beyond ironic that their agenda is remarkably similar to what Hitler did 80 years ago in Germany because Hitler's template for national domination was probably their inspiration.

     And yet, the MSM still treat Trump as if he's merely an alternative to Biden, just another presidential candidate, just a harmless presumptive nominee.

     He is not.

     This is why I said Trump is both a danger and a danger in what he represents. When Orwell wrote his review in 1940, Hitler was still not quite 51. Trump is 77, four years past the average life expectancy of an American male. After his time is over. there will be others like him, younger men not hobbled with incipient dementia, more energetic men who won't lounge in bed until 12 noon. Men who know how to use the levers of power.

     Will the MSM finally stand up and oppose them? I think we can be forgiven for our pessimism.

     Post WWII Germany wasn't merely suppressed as post WWI Germany was through the Treaty of Versailles. The creation of NATO in 1948 that prevented another threat like Nazi Germany, the introduction of democracy, military checks and balances, the deNazification programs managed by the Allies and the reinstatement of a free German press are some of the factors that led Germany to see the light, Yes, there's still a fascist movement in Germany in the form of the Afp but they're little more than a rump movement.

     Will the United States have the power and resolve to turn against the dangers of this "horrible brainless empire" promised by Trump that it's even now still courting? Again, I hope we will be forgiven for our pessimism.