Over the past seven years there have been frequent public warnings in the US regarding a loss of democratic ideals and a perceived movement toward an autocratic state characterized by repression of civil liberties. However, any mention of the 20th century’s most vicious example of fascism, Nazi Germany, has generally been met with derision and outrage by those who felt that the comparison was “irresponsible," an insult to those who experienced the full horror of Hitler’s killing apparatus.

Though I would agree that the crimes imposed upon the world by the Bush administration do not compare to those instigated by Nazi Germany, I would also argue that the tactics of the two regimes are remarkably similar, and that the transformation of Nazi Germany into a fascist state during the failed Weimar Republic has strong parallels to the evolution of the United States into a republic devoid of the individual rights and protections associated with an open democracy.

The National Socialist movement in Germany was in essence characterized by the following principles: nationalism, vulgarized ideology, and pursuit of an enemy of the state. With the abject state of the country following defeat in WW I and subsequent imposition of onerous economic requirements under the Versailles Treaty, the Germans were understandably in need of strong leadership and a foundation for restoration of their national pride. Hitler provided this foundation through his focus on reconstruction of national ideals such as bravery, courage, and a rejection of materialism. Germany would reassert itself on the world stage, he promised, and expand national power through annexation of “living space” for the German people. The grandeur of the two previous Reichs, established by Charlemagne and Bismark, was promised to a populace hungry for a recovery of lost Germanic pride.

Additionally, the National Socialists established a strong ideology of sacrifice and rejection of materialism. The Nazi ideals catered to the German’s basest fears of Communism and Western capitalism, cleverly establishing a path separate from both. Germany would reject both the “revolt of the masses” and also the corrupted materialism of the European and US states. Ideals such as sacrifice, self-denial, and individual excellence were incorporated into Nazi propaganda and corrupted in order to allow for achievement of the Nazis’ longer term goals of territorial expansion and extermination of society’s undesirables.

While the specter of Bolshevism and of the degenerate materialism of the Western democracies was held out as a tool to frighten the Germans, the most vehement vitriol and hatemongering was of course reserved for the Jewish race. While all leftists and all of society’s fringe elements were considered the enemy, Hitler and his propaganda machine were able to successfully capitalize on Germans’ most base fears by identifying the Jewish race as the foreign “enemy," the author of threats to society ranging from Bolshevism to finance capitalism to racial miscegenation.

With its simplistic themes, clever use of language, and skillful manipulation of the public, Hitler’s Nazis perverted the course of a nation and set in place their industrialized killing apparatus with the support of a public that, for the most part, had been deceived and bullied to the point where there was little opposition from within.

Sadly, the Bush administration has employed similar tactics to great effect in the United States, to the point where even the New York Times acknowledges that our country is now “unrecognizable." With its simplistic phrasing, repetition of words such as “terrorism," “democracy," and “freedom," and use of bold colors and symbols, the Bush administration is a not too distant cousin to the propaganda machine created by Hitler and Goebbels. The themes are parallel, and the end result has been the transformation of our nation into a vulgarized shadow of democracy.

Just as Hitler appealed to his citizens’ belief in national ideals, Bush has cynically resorted to a successful manipulation of the American population’s desire for a national identity. Whether it is his use of symbols like the flag, the frequent association of his administration with national institutions such as the military, his use of nationalistic language such as “homeland," or his attempt to link himself to the frontier mythology, Bush is a patent nationalist who understands how to adeptly play upon American desires and fears. Above all, Bush seeks to project certainty, an unwavering strength to “steel” the nation. As Hitler wrote: “The psyche of the great masses is not receptive to anything that is half-hearted and weak . . . The masses love a commander more than a petitioner.” [1] With respect to communication, Hitler understood the following:

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be . . . The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand. [2]

The sophisticated propaganda machine created by Bush, Cheney, and Rove has capitalized on these principles to create a culture of being “with us” or “against us," where to question or rebel is equivalent to lack of patriotism and perhaps treason.

The corruption of our nation’s founding ideals has been thorough and insidious, as Bush and Cheney have vulgarized noble concepts such as freedom, democracy, and independence to fit goals that have nothing to do with these ideals. Iraq and Afghanistan have been presented as ways for the United States to bring about freedom and democracy abroad, when in reality the Bush administration has imposed satellite governments backed by US military power. Citizens in each country benefit from none of the civil liberties and protections that one would expect in a functioning democracy, and the repression imposed by military forces and militias in those countries is more representative of dictatorship. At home Americans no longer can depend upon habeas corpus, no longer are protected by Posse Comitatus, and have lost our constitutional guarantees due to passage of the USAPATRIOT Act and Military Commissions Act. The CIA has a network of secret prisons established throughout the world, and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, supported by the administration’s legal maneuvering, has sadly become the face of our nation.

With respect to creation of an enemy, the Bush administration has conveniently developed the specter of terrorism and imagery relating to marauding Muslim fascists to frighten the nation into submission. Just as Jews, Bolsheviks, and Leftists were conflated under Hitler, “terrorist” has come to mean many things under Bush’s propaganda campaign. In Iraq, for example, those fighting against the American forces and the puppet government are “terrorists," when in reality they may be nationalists, freedom fighters, Iraqis seeking revenge for coalition atrocities, dueling factions, or in some cases genuine “terrorists." The US military and the CIA, on the other hand, are described as seekers of justice, spreaders of freedom, guarantors of security, when in reality they are just as guilty of spreading “terror," though in their case the damage is potentially greater due to the fact that their resources are provided by federal receipts from the largest economy in the world. Liberal groups that challenge Bush and the military are often perceived as “unpatriotic” and in extreme cases as being instigators of terrorism, though often those fighting Bush are motivated by a truly conservative desire to protect the sanctity of the Constitution, as opposed to partisan or anarchist goals. The sad truth is that any American citizen can be detained indefinitely through enemy combatant designation, or worse, “disappeared” through Bush’s policy of rendition.

In late February 1933, a young Dutch worker named Marinus Van Der Lubbe set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin. Hitler had become Reich Chancellor only one month before, and his Nazi party was facing an uncertain future in upcoming national elections. Immediately after the fire, the government moved to arrest thousands of Communists and leftists under the assumption that Van Der Lubbe’s affiliation with the Communists was evidence of a conspiracy. Van Der Lubbe was promptly executed. Opponents of the Nazis questioned whether the Nazis themselves had been involved, and Goebbels reportedly destroyed his diary entries for the last days of February. [3] Regardless of the origins of this act of “terrorism," the Nazis used it to accomplish their goals of dismantling the Weimar Republic. To provide legal cover, a decree was issued that suspended key articles of the Weimar constitution, stating in part: “Thus restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property rights are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” [4] The Reichstag Fire Decree was later followed by the Enabling Act (March 23, 1933), providing Hitler with even more autocratic power, and the political system was in effect transformed into dictatorship. The Germany Federal Prosecutor's Office officially overturned the conviction of Van Der Lubbe in December 2007, making reference to "breaches of basic conceptions of justice." [5]

Regardless of one’s beliefs about the truth behind 9/11, it is difficult to challenge the fact that this event has been used by the Bush administration to transform the nation. Whether justification for Iraq and Afghanistan, or a reason for Congress to affirm the USAPATRIOT Act, 9/11 has been the seminal event of the nation’s move away from democracy. The change has been swift and brutally effective, as one of the world’s great democracies has been dismantled from within, sadly reminiscent of the arrival of fascism in Germany in the 1930s.

Sources: The Rise of Nazi Germany, Don Nardo, editor; Hitler's Germany, Roderick Stackelberg; The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans; The Daily Mail, January 11, 2008.

[1]      The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, p. 165

[2]      Evans, p. 168

[3]      Evans, p. 519

[4]      Evans, p. 333