The NY Times posted a piece entitled: "No, They're Not a 'Hitler' or a 'Stalin'" where we find all manner of open "secrets" about systems:
Communism has never once arisen — not in the U.S.S.R., not in China, not in Cambodia, not in Cuba, not in Vietnam, not in North Korea — as the cumulative result of social reforms. It was always brought by violent revolution carried out by a fanatical minority, usually during or right after war. Once in power, committed revolutionaries sought to transform agrarian countries such as Russia or China into modern industrial states by oppressing peasants and applying political terror.
Of course this particular author is fixated on Communism but lets be clear, the US "democracy" was founded on bloody revolution (two of them actually). The French democracy was founded on revolution as well. All of these revolutions were carried out by the people who had reached a point where their wish to be free of an unresponsive and oppressive government outweighed the risk of death at the hands of said government (or ruling class). In the case of China, Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam,etc. we have a clear case of rebellion against the White Supremacist "West" who had colonized their lands and/or greatly disrupted the normal activities of their people. Let's be clear about that. The "fanatical minority" were the most organized and most motivated of a mass of oppressed and marginalized people in those societies. But as is typical of self-serving "western" authors, these people are marginalized and maligned for political ends.
And while the author may gloat about how Russia and China oppressed peasants, he conveniently leaves out the oppressed peasants of America. The same oppressed peasants who were used to build the industrial base of America.
Continuing:
After World War II, wise Europeans and Americans supported social reforms precisely as a way to hinder the spread of Soviet power. The Red Army had brought communism to Eastern Europe; the question was how to prevent its further spread to the nations liberated by the Western powers.
One thing that we learn when studying governments, corporations and other organizational systems is that once they are created they operate with the primary objective of preserving themselves. The persons who run and work for these organizations have a vested interest in seeing them continue. Eventually those persons will do whatever they deem "necessary" to maintain and protect that system. Knowing this the above paragraph can (and perhaps ought to) be read as "Wise Europeans and Americans supported social reforms precisely as a way of protecting their own power against those who could be motivated to remove such power from them."
Continuing on:
In war-torn Western Europe, democratic politicians of the left and right agreed that the extension of state services was the best way to assure democracy and to prevent revolution.Their policies were backed and enabled by the farsighted American aid provided by the Marshall Plan. American statesmen understood that the best way to prevent radical politics was to create contented societies.
Ahh the co-option game. having established that most governments have been established by some sort of revolution. One of the first things these governments do is to enact laws about "treason" and about waging war against the government. I have always thought it highly ironic that any state established by the people who acted in their group interest to remove an oppressive government, to then turn around and criminalize the very same acts they committed in order to free themselves from oppression. The above quote underscores the idea that the state acts to pacify the masses in order to prevent them from being revolutionary.
I recall one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine. The head Vorta was discussing how to rule the quadrant. The worst thing would be outright and direct violence against the population. The best thing would be to convince the population that surrender and life under the new regime is in their own best interest. Save the violence for the most rebellious. This is essentially what the quoted text describes. by expanding social services, the people are unlikely to rebel because they will believe that the their best interests lie in the state. The state does not have to coerce obedience to it, it manipulates it's subjects into subjugating itself to the state interests. This is not to say that providing services is bad. It is to say that if a revolutionary group is arguing for a more equitable solution to whatever the population is bothered by, the powers that be will find some means of co-opting that idea to either implement in a way that serves them, or act to marginalize it.
Lastly:
Comparisons with Hitler are, if possible, even more far-fetched. The ideological foundation of the Nazi regime was racism. Hitler was a racist who believed that some Germans were real Germans and other Germans were not: the Jews, the handicapped, the long-term unemployed, the homosexuals, the Roma, the biracial. He thought that democratic politicians of the left should be placed in concentration camps. Hitler saw the outside world through the prism of a racial hierarchy, with Germans at the top and Jews and Slavs as racial enemies to be eliminated. He began the worst war in history to gain a colonial empire for the people he saw as a racial elite and killed millions of Jews and other Europeans along the way.
Racism as broadly defined by the general public may have been the foundation of Nazism, but to be sure the actual racist ideology of Nazism was White Supremacy. Nazism was in no way different than the common ideology surrounding the African before Nazism. Indeed Nazism is but a logical outgrowth of the White Mans' Burden. What was really different about the ideology of Hitler and the ideology of King Leopold as it regarded the Congo? Or that of the British in East Africa, or the French in West Africa? To be sure there weren't ovens, but the base ideology of the dominance of the white race (however defined) was and is clear.
in any case this piece is a good read for those who's eyes are open.
