We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, June 2, 2013

June 6 is D(isinformation) Day: The “Good War” Lie

Click here to access article by Mickey Z. from World News Trust.

The author provides a very good contribution to the deconstruction of a frequent form of mythology used by media operators employed by the One Percent to glorify WWII and war in general. I would only add a few things.

First of all, Hitler was brought to power by German industrialists, most notably Fritz Thyssen (see this and this) who was a leading steel magnate. He and other industrialists were extremely concerned about Russian-inspired radical ideas that nearly brought about a revolution in Germany in 1919. With the depression hitting all Western capitalist countries in the early 1930s, he and other industrialists were again concerned about the prospect of revolution. Thus, they decided to back Hitler and the Nazi party. In other words, fascism in Germany, as is always the case, was sponsored by leading capitalists when they felt their system threatened.

2nd, after fascism gained considerable support in Germany and Italy, capitalist ruling classes were split in the other Western countries. Mickey Z. only refers to IT&T head and the Dulles brothers in the US, but there were many others in the US, Britain, and France who were very pro-Nazi. The primary source of this split was the concern among many in the Anglo-American ruling circles that Germany would become a dominant force in the capitalist world thereby threatening Anglo-American dominance, while others saw fascism as necessary to counter radical movements in their own country and that German fascism was a force that could eliminate the Soviet Union. This had consequences for the lead-up to the war and how the war was fought.

This split accounts for why early on leaders in the other Western countries were so accommodating to German demands. They very much wanted to encourage Germany to move east and dispose of their Soviet nemesis. Even after war was declared by Britain when German troops moved into Poland, there was an initial nine month period (popularly known as "the phony war") when no action was taken against Germany. The problem for the German industrialists is that they couldn't always control Hitler and the Nazis. The big mistake the latter made, probably due to overwhelming arrogance, was to move their army against the other West European countries. This was a direct challenge to Anglo-American capitalists and they responded, although rather feebly until the Russians broke the back of the German army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. 

For more details on all this, I highly recommend that you read books by independent sources of that time: several books by George Seldes and Charles Higham's American Swastika.