ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Ken Arromdee) (03/08/86)
Most people agree that the government of Nazi Germany was not a
very desirable one to have around. Therefore I have modified this article
by substituting it for Nicaragua and seeing if the arguments in it still
make sense.
----------------------------------------------------------
Our first step in overthrowing the Nazis in Germany is winning
the support of the American public and of Congressmen. Some solutions
are currently in place, but more must be done. The Administration
and others have convinced a great number that the Nazis must go.
We must take further steps to maintain and expand current support.
I congratulate the Administration and others for their successful efforts
to control the nature and scope of information available to the public.
They employ new techniques combined with traditional techniques to place
Nazis in a dim light. Information favorable to the Nazis is
quickly dispatched to obscurity, falsified, and overwhelmed.
The most valuable, tried-and-true technique is accusations of collaboration.
It works miracles on laymen and Congressmen. We successfully labeled the
Nazis as "fascists" who threaten our national security. This priceless
technique renders them evil. It justifies military action. Those who
speak favorably of the Nazis are automatically either collaborators or
fascists. People who know things that we don't want said are wary of
speaking up for fear of being fingered.
An admirable technique employed by the Administration is the press barrage.
When anything favorable to the Nazis comes out, the media are
barraged with an abundance of statements swamping and attacking the
validity of opposition information. This way, the media spend all of
their time covering White House and Pentagon statements while ignoring
the original story. A fine example of this is the barrage story of a
Nazi troop movement into Austria around the time of the vote for reunion with
Germany. We saw extensive coverage of this escalating threat with miniscule
coverage of the elections. The only aspect of the elections for which
the Media had time and space were official and unofficial statements
that the elections were a sham. Proof that the movement was an invasion and
that the elections were a sham was neither necessary nor existent. It's
the media coverage that counts; not the facts.
Another technique involves the use of language. Since we control the
language of the debate, we control the debate itself. The use of rhetorical
abstraction places the debate on our own ground where the opposition is
doomed to failure. We frame our turf with such language as Democratic,
Resistance, National Security, Threat, Nazi, Hitlerite, Fascist,
Totalitarian, Puppet, Dictatorship, Just War. The opposition cannot avoid
appearing apologetic, weak, and downright wrong.
These and other techniques have proven to be very effective in obtaining
support for US invaders in the past. At this point, we have lost much
support in Congress for funding. Also, we lack support for a
full-blown military action involving a large contingency of American troops.
We can always bypass Congressional funding hesitancy through alternative
channels such as our good friend Britain. The invasion, however, requires
strong support or it is doomed at the outset. This campaign demands a
greater effort on our part. We must also silence anyone who
speaks favorably of the Nazis without it back-firing on us. Solving
the latter solves the former because alternative sources of information
nullify support for military action.
The sources of information favorable to the Nazis are primarily
Americans who have visited and resided in Germany along with those
journalists who disagree with our goal of eradicating the Nazis.
To solve the information problem we must augment our discrediting
campaign with direct attacks on these sources of information.
The first, most obvious step is to ban all travel to Germany by American
citizens, recalling the great number who currently live there. We should
also step up our efforts to bar any foreigner known to speak favorably of
the Nazis from entering or remaining in the US. For those returning
Americans who speak well of the Nazis, we should conduct a campaign
of silencing and discrediting. We could use techniques such as accusing
and arresting them for drug possession, child abuse, treason. Violent
groups sympathetic with our cause will serve well to ransack opposition
offices, living quarters, and lives. We used this form of harassment
effectively on Japanese-Americans, many of whom are currently in prison
camps.
For those defiant Americans who remain in Germany and for opposition
journalists, we could train and finance death squads clad in German
military garb. This would serve to eradicate our opposition while
making the Nazis look worse. We could even use the killing of
Americans to rationalize the invasion. We have plenty of experience with
this avenue of action.
Considering our current efforts and an expansion thereof, we will succeed in
swaying public opinion sufficiently to overcome our reluctance to act.
Once we have tighter control over the information, we will tailor history
to suit our interests. We must succeed. We will succeed.
K. A. Arromdee
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I think that when stated in these terms, it's obvious what's wrong with
this argument. Statements (i.e. that the US finances death squads to kill
Americans because they stay in Nicaragua) are given without proof, and even
when there is some truth behind them they are distorted. Important items
are left out (in the original article, human rights abuses by the Sandinistas,
in my Nazi analogy, concentration camps) which make the Sandinistas (Nazis)
look better than they really are. It is also implied that the only reason
most people who oppose the Saidinistas (Nazis) do so is because of government
misinformation--anyone supporting the Sandinistas (Nazis) does so because
they've been to Nicaragua (Germany) or have a source who has, but anyone
opposing them does so because the US government controls their sources of
information.
--
"We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by iself. The bad thing
is that socialism, being a victim of its... Did I say socialism?" -Fidel Castro
Kenneth Arromdee
BITNET: G46I4701 at JHUVM and INS_AKAA at JHUVMS
CSNET: ins_akaa@jhunix.CSNET ARPA: ins_akaa%jhunix@hopkins.ARPA
UUCP: {allegra!hopkins, seismo!umcp-cs, ihnp4!whuxcc} !jhunix!ins_akaa