Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Dawn has been fascinated to read I Will Bear Witness, a diary of 1933-1941 Germany written by Victor Klemperer, a Jewish professor living in Dresden, who survived-- barely-- the Hitlerian insanity. Klemperer defers comment on the news likely to be preserved by other sources, focussing instead on the day-to-day erosions of civil liberties and the incremental transformation of decent folk into fascist volk. He divined early on, for example, that the political situation was indeed dire when the layout of his Cat Fancy magazine was revamped with a swastika-festooned cover boasting of news on the care of the "German cat" (as opposed to "decadent" non-German kitties).

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Klemperer collected examples of the "Nazification" of language-- words and phrases later parodied by many, but dreadfully real to those first reading and hearing them.

As Dawn reflected on how the Nazis used language to obfuscate and mislead, it was impossible not to think about the present US administration's ham-handed-- but apparently effective-- propaganda attempts to distract the populace from its real agenda. The similarities are striking. (And Dawn isn't even counting John Stewart's assertion that Deputy Warmonger Paul Wolfowitz called the torture at Abu Ghraib prison "freedom tickling.")

The Nazis loved portentous abbreviations and acronyms (think "U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act) and slogans that lied (think Arbeit Macht Frei-- "freedom through work-- over concentration camp gates... or "Healthy Forests Initiative" on legislation drafted by the logging industry). The word "liberal" was demonized as equivalent to "communist." The number of newspapers declined sharply since people didn't need to be confused by competing viewpoints (think Disney-Time-Warner-CBS-AOL, or whatever the company that brings Amerika its news is now called). Military adventurism and occupation of foreign countries was undertaken-- always "for peace," of course-- to root out "terrorists" committing atrocities against Germans. Spiritualistic language replaced reason, intellectualism was mocked, and everywhere people were encouraged to indulge their patriotic fervor at the expense of actually thinking.

Of course, Dawn should make clear that today's Republicans aren't yesterdays Nazis. The Nazis were virulently anti-Semitic, looking to gas and burn Jews (and other untermenschen) immediately. Today's Republicans, on the other hand, controlled as they are by fundamentalist religious yahoos, still believe that Jews (and other untermenschen) merit torturous death, but they are kind enough to defer that pleasure until Jesus returns and can substitute fire and brimstone for crematoria and Zyklon-B.

For those interested in how language is corrupted in the service of nefarious politics, Dawn urges readers to rush out and buy Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness (and his later Language of the Third Reich)-- quick, before Disney orders all copies burnt...