The Power of Words (A Study in Fascist Speech in America)

Published at the Pragmatic Progressive http://thepragmaticprogressive.org/wp/2011/02/09/the-power-of-words-2/ and several other online places such as OpedNews.

The Power of Words

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Maureen Gill

It’s been said that the eyes are the window to soul. I doubt it.

I don’t doubt for a moment, however, that the words we speak or write convey the inner workings of our minds and hearts. There is no better way to know a person than to listen to that person speak, to know what they read or whom they admire: if you know these few things, you know everything that is truly important to know about that person.

Words, spoken and written, not only indicate whether a person is educated, cultured, kind or venal, they also demonstrate if thoughts are ordered and cognition is intact or impaired. The choice of words and their arrangement are used by physicians and other health experts to evaluate emotional as well as organic pathologies.

Throughout history words have had as much power as the sword. Words shape ideas and give them form; our ideas shape our deeds and give them meaning. Over two hundred years ago Edmund Burke wrote that words are an expression of our passions and have more power than any other art form. He believed words are the most powerful force on earth because they communicate ideas more effectively than any other form of expression.

Words have always been the kindling and the continued energy that fuel our actions. Revolutions have begun with words, men have been stirred to battle by words, and dictators have manipulated whole countries by words, creating the vilest justifications for the annihilation of millions. Words give testimony and sway juries and send people to their deaths.

We understand what it means to “give our word” and pledge on our honor (maybe our very souls) to speak the truth. We use words to convey our patriotism to our country and, of course, we worship our God with words, whether spoken publicly or whispered in our hearts. Words convey love and build trust. They also shape character and tender hearts; certainly we know our words shape our children and if we are wise we choose them carefully. We know our words offend and that is why we sometimes bite our tongues. We choose them well when we interview for jobs. People have been soothed and comforted by words and cautioned to exercise the angels of their better natures. Words have the power to mend and heal.

Words are so powerful that the US Supreme Court has even weighed in on their restriction — perhaps nowhere as famously as in the case of Schenck v. US when Chief Justice Holmes emphatically stated that no one has a right to cry fire in a crowded theatre and cause panic.

Words are the most valued commodity of our species, the hallmark of our humanity, the singularly most distinct difference between man and animals. It is absolutely indisputable that words possess immeasurable power to shape individuals as well as history.

And now the very people who have used words to ridicule, distort, misguide, discredit, and defame — the very people who have openly and gleefully demonized others, spoken freely about assassination as a political tool, even attacked the children of this country’s public servants and suggested that they be destroyed to end a tainted lineage, now speciously claim that words are harmless, they have no consequence.

Words, these arrogant and shameful people (and their pathetic followers) claim, are meaningless. It is with great indignation that they purport there is absolutely no possible nexus between the deeds of others and their own spoken words. They ask us to abandon the proofs of history, the dictates of civil societies, and even the wisdom of our own grandparents and believe instead that we should not hold them accountable or call them to task.

Indeed. How curious. How convenient. How utterly cowardly.

How I am so not surprised….

Their disclaimers beg the obvious question – if words mean nothing, if words do not influence people, then why do these people speak to us at all? Why do they have rallies and radio and television shows if not to influence people?

If words mean nothing, then why the hell are they always talking or writing articles and books?

Yes, indeed: why?

I love words; words intrigue me. They make me laugh and they move me to tears. They helped to educate me, and still do so. I am well aware that God has given me a talent for the written word, and to some extent the spoken one as well. I understand how to manipulate words to convey ideas and I absolutely understand the extent of my power over others because of this skill. I can paint many things many different hues. As a person trained in history I can shape perception, alter truth, and pass on falsehood under the guise of my credentials. If I choose, I can character assassinate someone and manipulate the gullible. And I can do so in such a way that it will all be very interesting to read, maybe even highly entertaining, and sound terribly credible.

Let me assure you that those people I call out today are at least as talented as I am and most likely far more so. They know exactly what they’ve done with their facility for language; make no mistake about it. All of us who have a mastery for language know this is absolutely so. We know it just as a surgeon knows the truths about another surgeon or a lawyer understands what the other lawyer is all about; we know it like cops understand cops and teachers know the power of their tools to teach. I understand the people who use language as a tool of their stock and trade and these public figures are no exception; they know just as well as I do the power the possess. Sarah Palin, for God’s sakes, actually claims to have a college degree in communications or a related field.

Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Phil Gramm and a painfully long list of others have profited commercially and politically by playing to the lowest common denominator in our national culture. Given the high road, they have chosen the low road. Given the truth, they have chosen distortion and deceit. Given an ability to calm and reassure, they have chosen to agitate and arouse. Given the merest hint of a political or other advantage, they have not been gracious in victory but savage in pursuing total annihilation.

This venality has been going on for a long time; let’s be clear about that. Here are but three of many quotes said during the Clinton presidency when two United States politicians and one the media’s most influential pundits declared it was open hunting season on a United States president and American citizens who happened to be Democrats and liberals:

“Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.” Representative James Hansen, Republican from Utah, referring to President Clinton

“We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.” Senator Phil Gramm, Republican from Texas, Mother Jones, 08-95

“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.” Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

The following excerpt, taken from an article in the National Review written by John Derbyshire (02-15-01), probably has no equal in United States history, at least not in mainline journalism. Derbyshire’s outrageous rant — which was published as legitimate journalism — mirrors in sickening measure the anti-Semitic tirades of Adolph Hitler and his Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. Most striking, however, is that it also resurrects the flawed science of eugenics upon which the Nazis built their organic vision of the state. In this passage Derbyshire is not advocating for the extermination of a group but rather the child of a United States president, Chelsea Clinton. After a long deranged tirade against Bill and Hillary Clinton, Derbyshire proudly states, “I hate Chelsea Clinton.” Incredibly, he admits it is not “easy to justify” his loathing and acknowledges it is not very rational. Nonetheless, he blithely continues to spew his hate, as follows:

"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past – I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble – recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.”

The National Review identifies itself as “America’s most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative commentary, and opinion” and that is true. So, please understand: this disgusting rant was published in a mainline publication and this is what goes for journalism in conservative circles. At the time this article was published, Chelsea Clinton was not quite twenty-one and still a college student.

Derbyshire was fifty-six.

Now go back a read it again. Then ask yourself how safe any of us are in an environment that could allow such a thing to be published in a nationally read magazine. We’re talking about a young white woman, a citizen, and the daughter of two of the most powerful people in the world.

How safe are you?

Let’s roll out from under the rocks a few more astonishing examples of right wing Republican rhetoric:

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.” Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.” Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

In a remark that is truly ironic, Limbaugh drew a comparison between President Obama and Adolph Hitler: “Obama’s got a health care logo that’s right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook … Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.” Rush Limbaugh, Aug. 6, 2009

And of course there’s the Mother of All Mouths, the right’s cultural icon of modern American motherhood, the one who likes to compare herself to animals instead of humans. (We should apologize to the animals.) Palin’s favorite metaphors are about hunting and putting people between the cross-hairs. Gabrielle Giffords, a duly elected Congresswoman married to a naval aviator and astronaut, was one of the people Palin offered up for target practice. You really have to ask yourself what the hell Palin or her handlers were thinking when they drew a map suggestive of guns, scopes, cross-hairs — yes, a well understood cultural image representing assassination.

Did Palin shoot the gun that maimed and killed in Tucson this past Saturday? Did Beck or Limbaugh or Derbyshire? Did Coulter or Gramm or the others?

No.

But does that really mean we can draw no connection to that very sad event?

Before you decide, think about this:

There is not one scintilla of physical evidence linking Hitler or Goebbels to the actual murder of anyone.

Neither man ever shot a Jew in cold blood or shoved one into a boxcar or shower. I don’t think either one of them ever visited Buchenwald or Dachau or the Warsaw ghetto. I can’t find any historical proof that either man was ever present when a homosexual, Communist, gypsy or political dissenter was tortured or killed. They weren’t riding in jeeps or Panzers when Germany invaded another country either.

No, they were just somewhere else talking about it.

Would you argue that there was absolutely no connection between their words and the deeds of millions of German citizens?

Would you?

Lessons from Hitler and Goebbels

Reposted from my post at the Pragmatic Progressive; 3 in my series on truth.

3. Taking a Propaganda Lesson from Hitler and Goebbels

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Maureen Gill

At the end of my article “Snip & Snails and Puppy Dog Tales” about Frick & Frack and their absurd lies, I said I wanted to look next at why people believe such s**t.
Social psychologists and behaviorists have produced extensive credible research showing why people believe what they believe but none of their studies resonate with me as much as what we’ve learned from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. Hitler understood why the best lies are the biggest lies and he explained it brilliantly in Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Goebbels expanded on Hitler’s understanding about why people believe the most absurd lies and incorporated Hitler’s theory into his own expanded theories about propaganda.

Hitler, unable to accept the bankruptcy of Germany’s war aims, that its leaders were fallible and even foolish, or the possibility that Germany wasn’t the equal of or better than the victors, looked elsewhere to explain Germany’s defeat in The Great World War (WWI). He found his answer in the Jews and Marxists but reserved his greatest vitriol for the Jews whom, he claimed, were responsible for the creation and circulation of a lie that said German Army officer Erich Ludendorff and his General Staff were responsible for Germany’s defeat. Hitler called this alleged lie (which he felt was truly heinous) the Grosse Lüge (Big Lie) and in his infamous work, Mein Kampf, he raged about his belief in the perpetual perfidy of the Jews and then explained why their Big Lie was so effective:

…in the big lie…the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Reading this now I’m struck by Hitler’s understanding that even if a lie is called out as such that it “always leaves traces behind it.” Hitler understood lies leave damaging residue. Even if you have to recall it and are called out as a liar, the lie has served its purpose.

The Big Lie and its equally infamous twin the “stabbed in the back” theory were thoroughly embraced by soldiers and civilians unable to accept the bitter truths about why Germany lost the war. The Draconian reparations imposed on Germany by the Versailles Peace Treaties added to Germany’s sense of victimization. Germany’s humiliation was so total, so unexpected and so seemingly sudden that the only way a defeated people who had been led to expect total victory could make sense of what happened was to conceptualize defeat as a vast conspiratorial sell-out. The people extolled their military leaders and the superiority of their Army and the possibility of their legitimate defeat was simply not congruent with those cherished beliefs. Blaming the Jews, the quintessential scapegoats in history, was an emotionally comfortable thought; it played on centuries of social, cultural, and religious prejudices.

Hitler’s brilliant and demonic propagandist, Goebbels, turned the Grosse Lüge into an art form. Goebbels knew how to kick it up a notch and said: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

The Big Lie is one thing and propaganda another, although the two often go hand in hand.

The Big Lie is a brazen fabrication that works exactly because it is so enormously preposterous that no one can believe it could actually have been fabricated. The absurdity of the lie serves as the engine that drives it forward; the more absurd, the more the lie is empowered. The Third Reich orchestrated brilliant and disastrous campaigns against Jews, homosexuals, socialists, intellectuals, gypsies, and others, and never balked at throwing out the most preposterous lies as justifications to attack other countries. Big Lies must fall on fertile ground in order to take root and grow – and this can’t be overstated. The belief that the Jews sold out Germany in WWI was a total fabrication; it had no basis in fact but it was a very successful falsehood because it meshed perfectly with existing core beliefs. Big Lies feed on pre-existing belief systems.

Propaganda is more often anchored to reality; it manipulates and exaggerates the reality but it nonetheless is connected to that reality. An example is the reality of a war. The German people certainly knew they were at war but propaganda distorted that reality. It lied about the reasons Germany was at war and to keep the people committed it demonized the opposition, sanctified the German position, and maintained a distorted level of fear about what would happen if the German people quit fighting.

During World War II Goebbels developed nineteen very sophisticated principals about how to wage a successful wartime propaganda campaign against the enemy as well as how to wage it at home in order to control and manipulate the German people.

Items 14, 16 and 18 speak to the basics about any form of fraudulent manipulation:

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans; (a) they must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses; (b) they must be capable of being easily learned; (c) they must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations; and (d) they must be boomerang-proof.
16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

All countries have used propaganda in wartime and the United States is no exception. Unless you hold that truth telling trumps all other virtues, it would be hard to argue that propaganda is always a very unethical and immoral form of communication or social control. I would want to weigh the reasons for the propaganda against the possible harms and outcomes with or without its use before I condemned outright the merit of its application.

When faced with many of the Big Lies that are so pervasive in American culture it is convenient to blame the Dumbing Down Effect but that is probably the least reason for their tenacious endurance.

My take on why so many Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim or a socialist or not even an American citizen has moved from a cynical belief in an overwhelming and pervasive cultural stupidity to a belief in the underlying human psychology that allows Big Lies to become so enduring. That psychology, as Hitler and Goebbels understood, rests on the fact that all Big Lies and successful propaganda must be compatible with other deep seated beliefs.

I’m fairly certain I understand the character of the people in America who create the Big Lies of our day; their agenda and lack of integrity seem clear. They don’t even bother me anymore (which is not to say I don’t want to expose them and end their war on truth and democracy). What concerns me more is the character of the millions who accept these Big Lies and embrace them as absolute truth.

What these millions of people tell me about the American character in this day and age is very scary indeed.

Next: Is it possible to change deep seated beliefs that are flawed?