|
Cheap Seats 2021How Tyranny Happens - 12/8 
By Rich Trzupek
Step One: Immerse yourself in a cause within which you can position yourself as a victim.
1919: A relatively young veteran who served honorably in the German Army during the Great War (i.e.: WW I) decides that he and his comrades were betrayed when the Germans agreed to an armistice in November 1918. He believed that the Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey) were on the verge of victory. He fervently believed that the Central Powers didn’t lose the war on the battlefield. His view, and that of many of Germans, was that Germany and its allies were “stabbed in the back” by racially-motivated evil leaders who agreed to the armistice.
2016: One of two major American political parties attempts to deal with the fact their candidate lost a Presidential Election. Unable or unwilling to concede that the electorate could make such a (in their judgement) horrible decision, the losing party advances a narrative that claims the only reason the opposition candidate won is because he was aided by a foreign power who effectively “stabbed the American voter” in the back.
Sidebar: I was both amazed and amused by the number of regular Cheap Seats critics who reacted to my “I Ain’t White Column” as though I was looking for sympathy for me personally and my fellow Slavs. How revealing! Those of you who get it understand that I was celebrating my culture and my ancestors as they dealt with the historical prejudices and obstacles that so many peoples have had to deal with throughout history. That’s a victory dance that so many other descendants of other cultures and colors should gleefully engage in today, understanding that path to enlightenment is always an uphill effort. Thus, my perspective on race is not that we should engage in victimhood contests, but rather we should be proud of our ancestors contributions to this marvelous melting pot.
Step Two: Control the means of communication.
1933: Fifteen years after the armistice was signed, the obscure, resentful veteran of the Great War has played his cards magnificently, garnering more and more public support and eventually gaining control of the German government. Having done so, he moves swiftly to ensure that his message is the only one that can be openly heard by German citizens. He seizes control of the means of communication – chiefly newspapers and radio in those days – in order to ensure that nothing but what he considers “truthful” messages are exchanged in the public forum.
2020: Having established control over advanced technological resources central to modern day communication, the technological governing establishment enforces rules of conduct that ensure that certain points of view cannot be heard on their platforms. They strive to achieve the goal of every tyrannical regime throughout history: protecting “virtuous” discussion by silencing heretics. They consciously advance their preferred narratives, utilizing supposedly unbiased techniques they describe as “fact checking” to silence or diminish opposition.
Step Three: Weaponize the opposition against their “oppressors.”
1935 – 1938: The ruling class had spent years identifying the problems that the nation faced on strictly racial terms. They told their citizens that the nation was fighting for its life. They said that the one race was inherently evil and was responsible for all of Germany’s woes. Left unchecked, this race would continue to use its unfair advantages to profit from the subjugation and exploitation of all other races. In order to ensure order and in order to address old grievances, the criminal race had to be suppressed. And suppressed they were. The “criminal race” was outlawed, their property stolen, their places of worship burnt to the ground. Their race, the leader of the nation said was irredeemable. Eventually, he would come up with a Final Solution to the problem this evil race represented.
2021: Critical Race Theory emerges in the United States.
Step Four: Respond to an “emergency.”
1933: The necessary precursor to steps two and three is invoking extraordinary powers that the tyrant says are required to respond to an extraordinary emergency. The tyrant declares there is no time for discussion. Action is needed and decisive action can only be effective if the power of the state is entrusted to one strong and visionary leader. That leader must be uniquely qualified to guide the nation through the crisis. It’s a theme we find repeated throughout history, from Lucius Sulla through Maximilien Robespierre. (Google them up kids).
The theme carries through history until we arrive at the obscure and deluded Austrian corporal who managed to bully and bluff his way to become the head of the German state. The “emergency” the Austrian corporal invented in 1933 was centered on Communist attempts to take over German government. Such efforts were certainly in play, but they weren’t all that effective. The genius of the Austrian corporal was to (briefly) provide the Communist threat with credibility.
He did so by using his thugs to set fire to the German seat of government, while blaming the “emergency” on his ideological opponents who had nothing to do with igniting the crisis. Yet, this spectacular attempt to incite “communist revolution” could not be ignored, especially in a nation as civilized and orderly as Germany in the 1930s. Extraordinary threats required extraordinary powers to respond in extraordinary ways, or so declared the Austrian corporal. The German people awarded the Austrian corporal those powers. The next twelve years would demonstrate how foolish a decision this great nation had made.
2021: We’ve now got another “emergency” that supposedly requires a portion of the ruling class to take control of society through extreme measures. That “emergency” – COVID-19 – is being used by progressive leaders to justify extreme measures under the cover of extraordinary authority that is supposedly necessary to avert some specter of disaster that the ruling class hopes will terrify us.
Relax.
The actual reality, to take just one example, is that kids today are more likely to die as a result of gang violence if they live in Chicago than they are do die of COVID-19, wherever they live in the entire expanse of America. Conflating those two risks is just another example of how the left has substituted propaganda for actual journalism.
The left, once again, is making a desperate grab for power by asserting that they – and they alone – can be entrusted with our future. Nothing to worry about. All we need to do is get with the program.
Yeah. Sure.
All that’s missing is the mustache.
Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com
|
