“Propaganda helped us to power. Propaganda kept us in power. Propaganda will help us conquer the world.” -- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
“Our strategy is to destroy the enemy from within, to conquer him through himself.” -- Adolph Hitler
***
You’ll understand why Rachel Maddow titled her latest book Prequel once you read it.
It’s a fascinating look at a piece of history that, to be honest with you, I didn’t know anything about. It tells the story of the efforts of pro-Nazi Americans to spread German propaganda with the hopes of dividing our country to keep it out of World War II and to possibly soften it up for a future takeover by Adolph Hitler.
As Maddow wrote: “The Nazi game plan aimed to disunite the United States by tearing at the weakest political and cultural seams in American society: the divide between have and have-nots, fear and hatred of immigrants, white supremacist race hatred, and antisemitism.”
Stunningly, these shameful actions included members of the U.S. Congress, who used their positions to help the Nazi effort. Driven by antisemitism, militia groups organized behind all kind of violent ideas, including killing Jews or overturning the U.S. government.
If this sounds somewhat familiar it’s because we’re seeing a similar effort today, only instead of Germany and Hitler it involves Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. That’s how this book really hits home.
Admittedly, at this point we’re not seeing anything on the scale of what Maddow writes about, but we’re certainly leaning in the wrong direction, and who knows how far it could go considering the ongoing threat of domestic terrorism and Russia’s past efforts help their boy, Donald Trump.
In Trump we have a wannabe fascist who’s aligned with Putin and appears to have a fighting chance to return to the White House. We also have a good-sized chunk of MAGA voters, along with rich folks who benefit from Republican policies, who’re okay with that, and some GOP members of Congress who’ve slid into Putin’s corner, either in parroting Russian propaganda, attempting to block aid to Ukraine, which would assure that county’s defeat at the hands of Russia, or both.
Add to that the growing threat from domestic terrorists, and you’ll see it’s not such a giant leap from where we are now to the nightmare scenario reported on by Maddow.
What we’ve got to understand is that there’s an anti-American faction in this country. They may not be wearing t-shirts that read “I Hate America,” but they’re salivating at the thought of living under a fascist dictator who -- buoyed by a supportive GOP-controlled Congress – will take a blowtorch to our democracy and rule of law while paving the way for dictators throughout the globe by shrinking our country’s leadership in the world to just about zero.
I highly recommend this book. You’ll read about evil men and women you’ve never heard of who were willing to sell out our country to a foreign enemy, and you’ll read about equally unknown heroes we must emulate – men and women who fought against this menace even if it put their own careers or lives in danger.
Do we have enough of latter? We’ll find out in about seven months.
In the meantime, we must do everything we can to make sure Prequel doesn’t have a sequel.
***
Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.