The Splendid Failure of Occupation
Part 7: Is Hitlerism a mentality?
By B.J. Sabri
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 10, 2004, 16:10

�If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens.� �Senator Trent Lott, (2003) on an alternative solution to keeping peace in Iraq [1]

�Of course our whole national history has been one of expansion . . . That the barbarians recede or are conquered, with the attendant fact that peace follows their retrogression or conquest, is due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian people of the world hold sway� �President Theodore Roosevelt, (1901) [2]

�As a matter of public policy the annihilation of the Pequots can be condemned only by those who read history so incorrectly as to suppose that savages, whose business is to torture and slay, can always be dealt with according to methods in use between civilized people� �John Fisk, American philosopher and historian (1889) [3]

Note: Italics added to all quotes for emphasis

Is �depleted� uranium toxic? The US says no. However, �depleted uranium� radioactivity causes a host of deleterious side effects including depression of the immune system, male sterility, leukemia, uterine, ovarian, thyroid, and prostate cancers, in addition to birth defects and mutation of DNA.

Because the U.S. persists in its denial of DU toxicity and continues to reject reports by international scientific organizations and by facts on the ground confirming its deadly health consequences to humans and livestock long after war, we proposed confronting this issue from a different angle.

We invite U.S. hyper-imperialists to perform a fictitious test. We ask the U.S. to announce that because of ongoing disputes about DU toxicity, the Pentagon would silence its critics by dropping the modest amount of 300 tons of DU shells on a wide testing ground (not necessarily contiguous) empty of buildings, but extremely close to urban conglomerates around Washington, D.C. To make the announcement sound serious, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz could suggest that a temporary evacuation of all residents would be necessary until the test is complete. In the meanwhile, we request that independent organizations inform the residents on the nature of the dispute and that DU used in the experiment is potentially and verifiably still radioactive and can cause serious health problems, and name these one by one. We also invite the U.S. to provide the residents with its own �evidence to the contrary.�

Target: we want to see the reaction of all those who may be concerned, and if the residents, in particular, would accept the test and the �assurance� of the US government that DU explosions have no side effects on health.

We are waiting for an answer.

Finally, we can confirm U.S. criminal intent toward Iraq in two ways. First, it launched an unprovoked war of aggression. Second, as if this war, per se, was not sufficient, the US added the use of toxic weapons to make sure that incremental death by poisoning would take its toll on the population. Let us have a look at criminal intent in using radioactive material by addressing a topic not related to dangerous weapons, but to nutritional supplements. In 1990, the Food and Drug Administration banned the commercial form of the amino acid L-tryptophan under the claim that it might cause a deadly flu-like condition, which is dangerous to some individuals.

If the FDA can ban such an innocuous substance as a precaution for the safety of a few people inside the U.S., then we have to ask a question. Why did the United States not show similar precaution toward Iraqis, Afghanis, and Serbians by abstaining from using radioactive material on them? If killing thousands of people by conventional weapons is the price that world nations have to pay because they cannot deter aggressions by superior military powers, then killing more of the same people through radioactive contamination is a crime within a crime. Was the foreknowledge that DU is as harmful as enriched uranium and its side effects would harvest death on generations of innocent people a sufficient moral brake not to use it?

(For solid arguments about the legacy of radioactive �depleted� uranium in Iraq, please follow the link to read an article written by Frederick Sweet, professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis [4]) Also, please link to read Dr. David M. Boje, Ph.D., reporting and adding to the same subject [5])

In conclusion, because military planning is a rational process involving many chain-command levels, and since intention always precedes action, the charge of premeditated mass killing of an invented adversary projected into the future is incontestable and makes part of an agenda.

Because wars of aggression and the weapons used in it such as �depleted� uranium shells and super-conventional weapons are an instrument for mass killing to achieve a purpose, it is imperative that we relate their use to an ideological framework. Consequent to this relation, mass killing, by any means, is a product of a particular ideology. Indeed, the ideological alibi that permitted the U.S. to inflict mass murder on hapless adversaries is identical to the ideological alibi of Hitler when he mass murdered innocent people. Based on the empirical essence of U.S. international outlook as validated by the history of its actions around the world, I forged, in Part 6, a phrase to define that ideological alibi.

I called it, �American Modified and Accepted Hitlerism,� or �AMAH.�

In order to discuss this concept, it is necessary to address first the notion of Hitlerism in relation to mentality and its role in shaping ideology. In fact, applying Hitlerism to U.S. actions abroad is a matter of pragmatic observations relying on historical comparisons with the ideology of past fascist states and its practical manifestations. In the strictest sense of definition, Hitlerism, as it relates to ideological characteristics and practices similar to that of Germany under Hitler, is not an ideology confined to a specific society or to an epoch, nor can one person symbolize it alone, although we tend to identify a standard-bearer for each occurrence of fascism or Hitlerism in history.

Nor is Hitler the worst symbol of violence in history; there are other personalities and entire regimes whose record of atrocities and justifying ideologies make Hitler�s record pale by comparison despite differences in magnitude and scope. However, Hitler encapsulates the cosmic traits of the sinister sides of humanity because he codified his thought as a doctrine and then translated it into practice.

Hitlerism, therefore, could be a universal yardstick by which we measure ideologies that in essence replicate political and racist values as well as concrete modalities of Nazism without necessarily having a total relationship or political affinity with it. This yardstick includes but it is not limited to, mass killing for any purpose, targeted acts of genocide, rhetorical patterns, rationalization models, falsification of history, persuasive induction, explicit or implicit racism and supremacist attitudes, aggressive militarism, interventionist mentality, propaganda, mass control through indoctrination, manipulation of nationalistic emotions, pretense of superior civilization, and unaccountability for crimes committed.

Equally, Hitlerism can relate and identify with mentality as both depend on rooted structural rationalizations, beliefs, and mindsets supported by similar modus operandi at multiple levels of a society that see and adopt their principles as a rational and natural course. This is mainly because of cumulative indoctrinations throughout time, and psychological acclimatization to the ideas of supremacist political ideologies appearing as a means for national identity or chauvinistic grandeur, and that is without discounting restrictive factors including limits of popular participation, and spread or reversal of fascist thought contagion.

On the other hand, and aside from a mentality constructed by consecutive historical stratifications, Hitlerism can be a pre-determined and an exclusive external option of a specific state toward specific foreign nations, whereby that aggressive state conducts Hitlerian policies aboard, while sparing its own population the horrors of that policy. According to this pattern, the state, large corporations connected to its foreign policy, and a financial capital ready to take part in its military interventions by investing in the military industry, tend to exist in spheres separate and independent from those of the population, but in connection with them for functional necessities. In other words, a state�s foreign policy has its own path and rationales and is separate from the options and agenda of the population at large. For example, if Reagan had refrained from invading Grenada, the American people could not have forced him to rethink his course.

The situation of separation between state and citizens happens when two super-structural conditions exist in society. First, the population of that society is generally passive, has no voice in the policy of fascism, and follows indoctrination paths, whereby the state enjoys exceptional powers and it is above the law, and beyond accountability. Second, this in turn, creates a modus vivendi between state and citizens, whereby the population accepts Hitlerism as projected externally in exchange for unspecified dividends residing in the realms of the intangible, ideological, and inconsequential, although certain material dividends because of war and Hitlerian policies can benefit limited sectors of the same population.

For example, how did the American people benefit from the U.S. Hitlerian wars in Vietnam or Iraq? In the Vietnam War, the dividend to the American people was as mystical as much as immaterial: �Stopping Communism in Asia is vital for freedom in America.� In the Iraqi example, let us answer the question through James Baker, secretary of state under Bush I. In 1990, Baker stated that the war against Iraq, consequent to its invasion of Kuwait, was necessary because Saddam threatened American jobs without providing an explanation how this was so.

Generally, and in societies not restricted by dictatorships where �free will� is supposed to be a way of life, responsibility for Hitlerism as a mentality is inevitably a dialectical product of the social polity that is adopting it in that specific historical period. This however, does not mean that all sectors of that society share in the same ethical or political views, and regardless of the fact that other extremely limited sectors of the same society do obtain material benefits from war as an economic enterprise.

If Hitler found the conditions of Germany after WWI a fertile ground for his brand of nationalistic revival, there was no rationale in U.S. history to adopt a Hitlerian, fascist militarist, and/or interventionist foreign policy, especially after the U.S. became an impregnable empire. In the U.S. example, unlimited greed for global hegemony supported by a sense of national or racial superiority created a pertinent ideology that in turn created an unstoppable psychopathic impulse for wars and aggressions to aid in expansion, control, and conquests.

It is of interest to note that the U.S. construes its aggressive and hegemonic exploits as inevitable stages in its evolution, and as a requirement to keep the progenitor ideology of imperialism and its successive derivations alive and well. We can see this attitude clearly when American politicians and political analysts write essays on the �American Experience� such as, �Lessons from the Vietnam War,� �Lessons from the Balkans,� �Lessons on counter-insurgency,� and all that follows in the implementation of a fascist destructive learning experience with no end in sight.

This is a vicious cycle that America, so far, is not capable or willing to break free of, especially consequent to the capillary Zionization and Israelization of its foreign policy, institutions, and official culture, thus pushing it to a slow self-destruction in the process to satisfy the narrow agenda of some. Is self-destruction too big a term to use? Well, how can any one explain the descending of America in the morass of criminal lawlessness abroad, and totalitarianism at home where the primary elements of democracy are succumbing to practices similar to those of infamous police states? Most importantly, who can stop that descent, if the system is capable of self-perpetuation through advertisement, money, and aided by a corrupt two-party system with the same platform, manipulation, lies, and the unshakable apathy of large sectors of the American people?

Seeing how the U.S. projects its military power worldwide, the death and destruction it leaves behind, the ideological platforms that sustain its interventions, how it manipulates information, and considering some obliging secondary differences with classical fascism, the U.S. is, in effect, a fascist super-state with a mentality rooted in crafted ideology, racism, national superiority complex, and crude British-type colonialism. We called the mentality and philosophy of this super-state, �American Modified and Accepted Hitlerism� (AMAH) and that is regardless of the nature of American domestic institutions.

Before we define �AMAH,� we still need to discuss another element of substance: the role of mentality in shaping ideology. Historically, the United States has been practicing bigotry, racism, fascism and Hitlerism domestically and internationally under different guises and names uninterruptedly since its inception. In addition, while large scale domestic Hitlerism ended with the definitive and total submission of native Indians to white rule, large scale Hitlerism as projected outward continued unabated until the present.

If the Requierimento [6], and the enslaving and mass killing of Indians in the Carolinas and elsewhere in the initial American-British colonies was the spirit that guided the nucleus of American expansionism in the pre-independence period, Manifest Destiny was (and still is) the soul of the American Empire after independence. I am not sure if Hitler had read Manifest Destiny or if this had any influence on him, but by attentively studying Manifest Destiny, the conclusion that it was a declaration of Hitlerian-like ideology is undeniable. In a sense, Manifest Destiny was a prototype for Hitlerism. Manifest Destiny, on the other hand, just like the attitude of Nazism toward non-Arian nations, had no compunction whatsoever about its fundamental racism toward NATIVE PEOPLE, Africans slaves, and toward people of non-European descent characterized as savages and inferior beings who could not rule themselves. If we add the theological zeal of a superior race by divine will, the fascist pattern of mentality becomes evident.

Conclusively, racism is the fundamental pillar of Hitlerism. If we remove this pillar, Hitlerism as an ideology of racism will collapse. Emphatically, Hitlerism cannot exist without racism even if people from similar national extractions practice it against each other. According to this pattern, the willingness of a state to impose its will through violence is equivalent to Hitlerian racism. For example, when a state puts down a popular revolt by force, it discriminates against those who are revolting, and labels them with special epithets to degrade their essence and value, i.e., the state is adopting racism as a mechanism to subdue and defeat any opposition. .

Did Manifest Destiny and its derivations (Monroe-ism, McKinley-ism, Teddy Roosevelt-ism, Truman-ism, Nixon-ism, Kissinger-ism, Clinton-ism, Wolfowitz-ism, Bush-ism, etc) express or embrace Hitlerism as a mentality, and if it did, how did settlers or the federal government apply its guidelines and basic mentality?

Of course, Manifest Destiny expressed and embraced Hitlerism. When the federal government invaded Indian territories, or when racist settlers killed native people and seized their lands based on the idea of white superiority, and when they kept Africans, Indians, and mixed races, as slaves, there was no wide popular opposition to the killing of natives and to slavery. In other words, Hitlerism with American specifications was widespread and accepted. As for its application, there is no doubt, that mass killing of Indians, expropriation of, and deportation from their land, accompanied by public policy of annihilation starting from the president down to the lower echelon of power, made those policies appear normal as if it were a social habit. In other words, it was a manifestation of the prevailing mentality and culture.

The charge of Hitlerism vs. native Indians is valid because the passage from theoretical codification to practical application of racial policies was methodical, protracted, and consistent. At that juncture of history, the entire white settler population materially benefited from that equation of power. This, however, did not exclude that some dissension against slavery and the Indian Holocaust remained confined to random voices out of Christian piety and humanistic views of some, and because the system never managed to suppress entirely fervent political convictions about justice and humanism.

How does slavery fair in relation to Hitlerism? Slavery, an abhorrent side of humanity, is the soul of Hitlerism. How can you otherwise define a philosophy that posits the divine right of the superior race to own humans? Aside from being a primordial form of Hitlerism, slavery is also a form of organized Hitlerian fascism, because it combined ideology, mass killing, and racism as a paradigm. Incidentally, the contention that the Civil War was about slaves� emancipation is only limitedly true. That war happened mainly because of economic conditions of the South that chose to maintain and increase commercial ties with Britain at the expense of northern states advocating emancipation thus depressing their economy.

The reason for that is while slavery had become untenable for a variety of motives, the South decided to cling to its slaves. I tend to believe that had the southern states rejected slave emancipation, but maintained the stream of U.S. capitalism flowing between North and South, war might have not ensued. One note on Abraham Lincoln; although he reluctantly initiated the war in the name of abolishing slavery, Lincoln wanted to deport slaves to Africa and believed, just like Washington and Jefferson before him that �Negro� and �White� have separate paths of development. [7] In other words, he laid down the grounds for institutionalized segregation, and when this officially ended in the late 1960s, racism under many disguises followed as if by appointment with history.

The previous passage is important in light of what happened during the 20th century. Any serious study of the reaction of the American people in general to massacres and genocide by their government against many other nations, especially in South East Asia and in Iraq, would reveal indifference or apathy. In my research on the Korean War that killed over three million Koreans and over 50,000 Americans, I could not find any meaningful dissension that could have translated into an active opposition against it.

As for the Vietnam War, my conviction is that the active domestic opposition against it was due mainly to one of the following reasons. Either the American people matured politically consequent to the political and cultural turmoil of 1968 in Europe and the U.S., and became aware of the fraud of three presidents, thus effectively opposed a blatant war of aggression; or the news of dramatic rise in American fatalities pushed them to protest the war thus forcing Nixon to end it.

Although I do not minimize political awakenings and progressive opposition to war, my propensity is that had the number of fatalities and casualties been low, the American people might not have ever protested. I can support this view by noting that only when Daniel Ellsberg began divulging the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam that the American people started to raise loud questions and protested that imperialist war. After the U.S. ended its aggression against Vietnam, the imperialist system managed to cap political dissension, and people slipped into a monotonous mode of thinking and ceased to interfere in the foreign policy conduct of their government and its appointed officials who effectively design its entire agenda.

In part eight, we shall expressly define the concept of "American Modified and Accepted Hitlerism", expand our discussion on its tangible manifestations, and discuss how it works and how it gains willful acceptance by observing the conduct of the American people in relation to U.S. military interventions and wars.

Notes:

[1] Newsweek, November 10, 2003

[2] Theodore Roosevelt as quoted by Kathleen Dalton in The Strenuous Life

[3] John Fisk, The Beginning of New England

[4] Frederick Sweet, More Deadly Than Gas

[5] David M. Boje, Ph.D, Good Morning Iraq: Have you put your sperm in the bank?

[6] http://users.rcn.com/wovoka/aar99.htm

[7] Leron Bennett, Forced Glory: Abraham Lincoln�s White Dream

Next, Part 8: American Modified and Accepted Hitlerism