The DNC Was Like a Nazi Rally
They might not be the exact same words, but the use of "joy" to cover up genocide is identical to propaganda tactics used by the Third Reich.
Using manufactured “joy” to cover up for genocide and malignant nationalism is nothing new. In 1933 at the behest of the Third Reich, the Labor Party started a propaganda campaign of “Strength Through Joy” which was devised to make available to the “acceptable” race (eg the one that was not being systematically slaughtered) the consumerist and entertainment pleasures enjoyed by the upper classes. This not only painted a benevolent picture of a sadistic governing body, but served as an irresistible distraction to those who had been suffering economic hardship. The program provided workers with film screenings, trips to the theatre and sporting events, and even holidays and cruises. Workers could have access to the automobile of the campaign, the Volkswagen or “Peoples’ Car,” manufactured in the same plant as munitions used against the Jews and in the buildup to World War II. Rallies were held in stadiums with labor and Nazi leaders spreading this gospel of “joy,” working crowds into a frenzy with utopian promises that were never to be, while the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps began operation. The “Strength Through Joy” campaign partitioned German society into those who were worthy of receiving government protection and could be part of the joyful masses and those who were sent to slaughter. Those cheering for their benefits and promised glories depicted on the smile-saturated propaganda imagery did not want to be reminded of the dehumanized scapegoats being shuttled to their torturous deaths in the same vehicles they would receive as a reward for their privileged status.
And no I’m not saying the Democratic Party is using the exact same slogan as the Nazis used. But they are indeed using the identical strategy in a very similar situation. So it’s fascinating to see “fact checkers” like Poltifact and USA Today rushing to clarify that the Harris campaign is not using the Nazi “Strength Through Joy” slogan literally, because it seems like they’re distracting to cover up for the fact that Democrats are indeed using are using the same strategy in utlizing emotional obfuscation of elation if not the same slogan. Democrats are consciously basing the Harris campaign on the notion of “joy,” and all the pundits are manufacturing consent around that same “joy” they tell us Democrats are so ubiquitously experiencing. The reality that all of these Democrats, including the parade of multi-millionaires and billionaires proclaiming their “joy,” a part of a cabal assigned to divert attention from their party’s fascist ideology in suppressing free speech in order to enable genocide. That is indeed what the Third Reich did with “Strength Through Joy.” Just because the Harris campaign is not consciously mimicking a Nazi propaganda movement doesn’t mean their consultants are not mercenary enough to think of a similar tact for a similar purpose. Appealing to xenophobia, nationalism and militarism is what state propaganda is all about, so it’s not a surprise that the use of manipulating other emotions in addition to fear would be part and parcel of neutering the horror of genocide.
<The three billion dollar woman Oprah Winfrey spouts her nonsense as she urges voters and delegates to choose “common sense over nonsense” before she screams a warbling, performative cry of “jooooooy.” For the record, in 2018 Oprah welcomed Saudi Arabia’s dictator Mohammed Bin Salman to the US for his goodwill tour, praising his cooperation with US business interests. Now that’s common sense.>
The rabid delirium of the “joyful warriors” who cheered and jeered at the DNC served as one of the most shocking examples of detachment from reality that one could imagine short of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. A political party campaigning on saving democracy presents itself as the party of “joy” and “strength” while anointing a candidate without so much as a vote from the people and isolating itself from the dissent inside and outside of the United Center. The Democratic Party not only forbade a Palestinian supporter of Harris’s from making a planned speech, but repeatedly proclaimed their unwavering loyalty and ironclad commitment to the rape-supporting and openly genocidal state of Israel, proclamations met with deafening cheers and chants of “USA.” There were repeated mentions of how “tirelessly” Harris was working on a cease-fire, which seems highly unlikely in light of her “tireless” campaigning, but no recognition that Harris has the power to end the genocide instantly with an arms embargo against Israel (which her campaign has already said she was not in favor of). Somehow nobody at the DNC seemed to be aware that the $50 billion in military aid we have sent to Israel is what they have been using to kill well over 100,000 Palestinians in less than a year. The crocodile tears all too briefly shed for Palestinian suffering over the four day convention were carefully constructed in the passive tense to avoid assigning blame for the atrocities, while speakers pined for a cease-fire as if they weren’t the ones sponsoring Israel’s genocide.
While “joy” was mentioned (or screamed as in billionaire Oprah’s bellowing and bizarre tirade) nearly 100 times over the four day charade, and Trump predictably over 400 times, climate change got a mere 11 mentions. But the overarching theme of the night which admixed in a chilling way with the compulsory joy was the fascist notion of American Exceptionalism and military dominance. Like one of his fellow Islamaphobes and desecraters of the Middle-East Hillary Clinton, a slurring Joe Biden invoked “the butcher” Henry Kissinger with his imperialist quote “Not since, not since Napoleon has Europe not looked over their shoulder at Russia with dread, until now. Until now.” Biden then went on with propaganda worthy of the Nazis in claiming “Putin thought he’d take Kyiv in three days. Three years later, Ukraine is still free.” Ukraine was supposed to have elections five months ago, but they were cancelled by Zelensky due to the war and a state of martial law. In December Zelensky signed a bill imposing sweeping regulations on the media, and since then he has been spying on and prosecuting journalists who are critical of him.
While Biden in his speech mentioned neo-Nazis in the context of Trump in June the Biden/Harris administration lifted a ban on weapons shipments to neo-Nazi brigades in Ukraine. Also in June, President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced Ukraine’s Joint Forces Commander Lt. General Yuriy Sodol with Brigadier General Andrii Hnatov at the behest of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Perhaps the most telling aspect of the “freedom” Biden refers to is the fact that Ukraine is selling off $50 million in state assets to the highest bidder, a push towards privatization and ownership of Ukraine by the US and Western allies. At least 100,000 Ukranians have died (although this “free” country refuses to release casualty numbers) and 35% of the country’s infrastructure destroyed in our hegemonic interest of weakening Putin. More than one US diplomat has boasted that the money we are spending in Ukraine is “the best we’ve ever spent” because Ukrainians are dying for the cause and not Americans. Biden certainly has a stake in this liberation of Ukranians from their cultural institutions, economic independence, homes and lives as he is the reason the war did not end in April of 2022. One needs only to consider the uproar created in the Democratic Party by a letter from the progressive caucus asking for “proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a cease fire.” Democrats forced the progressive caucus to retract the letter because it brought into question American support for Ukraine, condemning the letter in suggesting Democrats were “aligned with Republicans” and “unpatriotic.”
In today’s Democratic Party, one of the most ominous propaganda points straight out of the Nazi playbook is the conflation of militarism with patriotism. In her speech promoting the war profiteers and transnational corporations, Kamala Harris’s whipped her adoring audience into a frenzy by promising “I will ensure that America has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” This imperious and autocratic language is reminiscent of a promise that Hitler made in the buildup to World War II:
“We will take every step which strengthens our arms, which augments the number of our forces, and which increases the strength of our people. We confess further that we will dash anyone to pieces who should dare hinder us in this undertaking.”
Harris then went on to exaggerate the threats posed to the US by China, Iran, Russia and North Korea in what certainly sounded like a buildup to World War III, corroborated by a shocking lack of discussion of foreign policy at the DNC considering we are in a state of chronic war and the revelation by The New York Times that the Biden/Harris administration authorized “US forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.” The day that Obama spoke at the DNC, The New York Times reported that unbeknownst to the American people the Biden/Harris administration crafted a new nuclear strategy policy that will substantially expand the number of deployed US nuclear weapons. Combine that revelation with the authoritarian repression of the peace movement by the Democrats, the chants of “USA, USA, USA” echoing through the halls of the United Center as if it were a white supremacist revival meeting and the compliance of the liberal base in genocide and the stage is set for the madmen (and women) in places of power to do whatever it takes to extinguish the economic threat posed by a union of the nuclear-armed “axis of evil.”
It certainly appears that the Obama/Clinton/Biden/Harris base is now so rabid in their nationalism, McCarthyism, Zionism and militarism that they would believe the fearmongering and excuses of a propagandistic media that is overwhelmingly aligned with the American imperialist aggression of the Democratic Party. It is not only corporate media but what is purported to be progressive media largely avoiding the party’s genocidal actions and justifying the proxy war with Russia. Whether it’s Chicago’s Progressive Talk 820 AM, Robert Reich, Micheal Moore or Thom Hartmann the Red Scare Propaganda, American Exceptionalism, demonizing of protest and excusing away of genocide flow like Palestinian blood. For fear of a "loss of democracy” under Trump, they have moved to the right of George W Bush and Dick Cheney, rationalizing or ignoring genocide and regime change wars to protect their party’s candidate. It’s all out for Harris and Walz and any dissent signals someone who is unpatriotic, un-American, antisemitic and/or an agent of Putin. Such propaganda only convinces its believers that America is on the defense and not the offense, that we have to protect ourselves from threats borne of our own wanton military adventurism. The threat of Trump is the perfect opportunity to convince an amygdala-driven liberal base that dissent is dangerous as it could get him elected, as Kamala Harris stated openly in her “I’m speaking” show of girl boss authoritarianism. The brand of authoritarianism that liberals proudly sport on campaign T-Shirts and bumper stickers.
As Harris reveals opaque morsels of ostensibly progressive policy embedded within neoconservative talking points about immigration, foreign policy and “law and order,” she is unchallenged by multi-millionaire pundits like Dana Bash as to how she is going to pay for it. Because they know that while the warmongering is real the policy proposals are mere political expediency in light of the blood and treasure being invested in the world domination they support. Anytime Bernie Sanders would suggest a governmental program with social benefit, Bash was one of the chorus of anchors condescendingly asking “how are you going to pay for that.” No such scrutiny for Harris, who is unlikely to put any of those proposals into legislation or will find an excuse not to (like the Senate Parliamentarian and the $15 minimum wage under Biden). And even if they did come to fruition, they are so means tested, paltry and temporizing that they wouldn’t cost the ruling class nearly as much as Sanders’ sweeping proposals. Most importantly Harris is more than willing to gin up hawkish nationalist sentiment which a candidate like Sanders would most certainly not do, which is why she has a high likelihood of being elected president and why Sanders never did.
Last week Harris repeated the exact same line both Obama and Biden used in their campaigns proclaiming the US military to be “the greatest fighting force the world has ever known.” While it’s almost identical to Hitler’s language regarding German forces, that claim assumes that a governmental body with the objective of killing people is somehow “great,” when the fact is that very little of anything our military has done over the past 50 years has turned out “great” for anyone except military contractors, developers and media conglomerates. As we are witnessing despite Biden’s being hailed as the second coming of FDR, the Democratic Party’s penchant for chronic war is a war waged upon the working class and the poor. There is absolutely no way that Harris can accomplish anything with tangible long-term effects on crumbling American institutions and infrastructure while spending trillions on mass murder and additional trillions on expansion of the nuclear arsenal. Nibbling at the bait she sets of neoliberal “progressive” programs amidst fits of consultant-driven joy manifest in a gargoyle-like plastered-on smile is akin to the Germans being placated by Strength Through Joy. There is virtually no difference in her jingoistic propaganda from that of Hitler’s, transforming support for the military to support for genocide and expansion of aggression.
This brand of fascism might be more subtle than Trump’s, but if I wrote this piece as a faculty member or student at a university here in the US I would be fired or expelled. Should the bipartisan “Antisemitism Awareness Act” pass in the Senate my criticism could be a prosecutable offense. A Palestinian protestor is pressing charges against the DNC because she was beaten over the head by delegates for putting up a sign about stopping arms shipments to Israel. At the DNC itself, consider that a Palestinian was cancelled from speaking AND a Palestinian was beaten over the head (while Governor JB Pritzker looked on and then looked away). Seems to be a recurring theme here. Combine all of this with the arrest of several thousand students at pro-peace encampments over the past several months and the essential silencing of campus pro-Palestinian protests at the start of the 2024 fall sessions across the country and it becomes clear the state has merged with AIPAC and war profiteers to force institutions of higher learning to silence dissent. That is the very definition of fascism. A political campaign predicated upon “joy” and Walz and Harris’s role as “joyful warriors” seems a premeditated insult to those who are less than joyous in their helplessness against fascist political forces. And to those who rightly consider genocide and escalation towards World War III to be far greater offenses than anything Trump did while president.
The potential risks of another Trump presidency are all speculative. Everyone thinks they know what Trump will do, but he is completely unpredictable which in itself makes him dangerous. But the horror of genocide and warmongering is real and happening in front of our eyes. Being gaslit by political performing seals is frustrating enough. But to see the Democratic Party merging with lobbyists, pundits and foreign nations to suppress free speech, demonize protest and justify the mass slaughter and documented systemic rape and torture of innocents by convincing their base that the overwhelming “joy” that comes with the anointing of a presidential candidate who has a better chance of beating Trump than the failing also anointed candidate is the antidote for a guilty conscience and the threat ro democracy. For so many millions to look the other way and willingly spread the propaganda of an authoritarian political party whose American Exceptionalism is putting us on the brink of World War III there must be a threat worse than state-sanctioned genocide. Only what could be worse than genocide? What is worse than an entire political party dancing on the graves of the thousands of children blown apart by our bombs? Millionaires and billionaires sitting atop the United Center in their million dollar suites, royalty looking down upon the peasantry, a ruling class that bailed out Wall Street. expanded surveillance and the carceral state, destroyed nation after nation with their false wars, and shipped 30 million jobs overseas; a ruling class of neoliberals who spawned the scourge of Trumpism, laughing and joking and waxing poetic over materialism while they spread the joy of genocide. Only Islamaphobes, racists, rabid nationalists, or those numbed by state propaganda would participate in such depravity. Democracy could not be so morally bankrupt as to give us a choice between that and Trump.
Excellent read. Thanks for the thoughtful analysis (which you appear to have researched thoroughly). Barry J Kaufman is a brave truth teller ✌️
What a disingenuous rant. I don't remember ever reading as many false equivalent propositions of Nazi propagandists ideology as this piece of shit.
It seems to me that your Jewish brother's are the genocidal perpetrators who could end the Nazi like extermination of the Palestinian people today or tomorrow morning, but your focused obsession over your hatred for all things Democratic has overruled any semblance of common sense.
Your willingness to accept the position of the Russian propagandists and support the professed authoritarian candidate for one of the two political parties has defeated your argument for being a progressive and makes me question who is paying you to write this bull shit.
I would highly recommend that you defect back to your mother Russian and join the Wagner group for the liberation of Ukraine and the defeat of the Nazi Fascist who inhabitant your origin country.
Thanks for the FREE SUBSCRIPTION. I suppose that you don't need us to pay for your bile, as someone else has already paid for this propagandists bovine feces.
I would be honored to be blocked from your site but until you exercise your personal right to authoritarian dictatorships over your own postings, you can rest assured that I will continue to read between the lines of your intellectual word craft and call your bull shit, bull shit.