One great mystery Americans almost universally fail to
comprehend is how ordinary Germans could have welcomed a monster like Adolf Hitler
with open arms. Looking back through the uncompromising lens of history it seems
impossible to mistake the nascent evil in the young Hitler, his eyes
frighteningly intense pools of virulent anti-Semitism and even deeper psychosis.
That mystery is especially hard to understand when Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, laid out his plans for
transforming German society into one based on “race” by means of genocide. But
how, we ask, how could the average German have possibly missed that message and
failed to recognize the danger they were in. Let’s take a closer look at exactly
how that happened.
If we examine several of Hitler’s most important actions we
can see how he relied on the complacency and indifference of the German public while
using fears over national security to consolidate what quickly became an
increasingly authoritarian regime. Hitler claimed the power to decide whether a
person would receive a trial in German federal court or in a military tribunal.
Hitler claimed the extrajudicial right to order the killing of any German citizen
considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism against the German state. Hitler
used legislation approved by the German parliament to order warrantless
surveillance, including a capability to force companies and organizations to
turn over information on German citizens’ finances, communications, and
associations, including a wide range of data from business transactions to
library records, even though those citizens were not formally accused of
crimes.
Hitler’s government routinely used secret evidence to detain
individuals and employed secret testimony in German federal and military
courts, allowing the government to claim secret legal arguments to support
secret proceedings using secret evidence in front of secret courts. Hitler’s government
also claimed the right to transfer both German citizens and noncitizens to
other countries for information-gathering purposes under a system that today is
known as extraordinary rendition. When Hitler’s administration was inundated by
petitions from other governments to prosecute the German intelligence agency
operatives responsible for torturing enemy suspects, Hitler refused to allow
those agents to be prosecuted or even investigated for illegal actions. Hitler’s
administration used surveillance devices to secretly monitor the movements of
targeted German citizens without court order or review or without the citizens
being charged with an offense, being suspected was sufficient justification. Hitler
also encouraged and signed into law legislation that allowed the indefinite
detention of German citizens without trial if they were suspected of involvement
in terrorist activities.
Now, take a brief moment to re-read the above two paragraphs.
But, as you do, I want you to substitute the words President Obama and American
for Hitler
and German because every single point made in those paragraphs is
about actions taken by President Barack Obama, his Administration, and Congress.
* *
*
Many people who reflect on the nature of politics realize
that democratic governments often contain powerful elements of authoritarianism
and may over time become even more authoritarian, blurring the distinction
between liberal democracies and procedural democracies — which are countries that lack or limit the more democratic
features that characterize liberal democracies, such as the freedoms of speech
and press, habeas corpus, the rule of law, and an independent judiciary. When
asked to identify authoritarian regimes, most Americans would not hesitate to
point to countries like China,
Myanmar, Syria, or Iran.
The reality is that authoritarian nations can be defined not
only by their use of repression to control their citizens but also by enacting
legal mechanisms that permit the use of those powers. If a president has the
legal right to deprive citizens of their freedom or their lives solely on his
own authority without the requirement of judicial review, all rights become subject
to the will of the executive branch because no greater right exists than that
of life itself. And that situation is exactly what we have today in the U.S., though
the far greater majority of Americans either do not know the details of their
country’s authoritarianism or would likely deny the implications even if they did
know. Remember the role complacency, indifference, and fear played in German
acceptance of Hitler? Make no mistake, I’m not trying to argue that Barack Obama
is anything like Adolf Hitler. I am, however, illustrating how authoritarianism
slowly and subtly becomes part of a nation’s legal system in response to
external and internal stress that is typically equated to national security
issues.
Of course, authoritarianism in the U.S. is not a
new challenge. Several examples are provided to illustrate that reality. First,
in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended
the writ of habeas corpus. Although the U.S. Circuit Court in Ex Parte Merryman ruled against Lincoln (the decision was led
by Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), the President ignored
the ruling, citing national security as his reason. Second, the infamous Palmer
Raids against political radicals were conducted in November 1919 and January
1920 by U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover for
national security considerations. Those raids involved more than 10,000 arrests
and seizures, a great many without valid search or arrest warrants and often involved
illegal entrapment by agent provocateurs and unlawful incommunicado detention. Of
the 10,000 people arrested in those raids, only slightly more than 500 foreign nationals
were deported by the U.S.
government, a success rate of five percent. Third, on February 19, 1942, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order
9066, authorizing the forcible relocation and internment more than 110,000 Japanese-American
citizens for national security reasons without a single shred of evidence that
those citizens were guilty of anything other than having Japanese heritage. And
fourth, few Americans are unaware of how Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House
Committee on Un-American Activities persecuted individuals for actions
protected by the U.S. Constitution because of concerns that the nation’s
security was in danger of being breached by American citizens who were political
radicals.
That America has moved to the anti-democratic right in institutionalizing
a culture of surveillance and control that has resulted in the loss of
individual freedom is undeniable, except by right-wing extremists or those blatantly
ignorant of American history. The “war” of terror is almost always the excuse
given for today’s excesses. For example, in April 2011, Senator Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.) told CBS's Bob Schieffer in an interview on Face the Nation that “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a
war.” Of course, that’s a “war” without a country as an opponent, which means
no entity exists to surrender and end this particular conflict. So, the legal
measures enacted to fight the “war” that curtail the rights of American
citizens have a better than decent chance of becoming part and parcel of the
American system, in this case an increasingly authoritarian system that
diminishes our democracy and our individual rights as citizens to be free from
an increasingly predatory government. Thanks to a man who is a Constitutional
scholar. And, no, I haven’t forgotten that George W. Bush initiated most of the
excesses and that the U.S. Congress voted those bills into legislation.
In reality, the typical citizen of nations that are liberal
democracies, like that of the U.S., is more concerned with getting on with her or
his life than in protesting what appear to be inconsequential and minor legal
changes that are difficult to see as overt abuses of individual freedom. After
all, those average citizens aren’t guilty of crimes so why should they oppose terrorists
being aggressively identified, caught, and punished by the government? Most
people view each individual authoritarian measure enacted in Washington as temporary and necessary. At
the most, those repressive measures are regarded as slight inconveniences in
which certain minor freedoms are temporarily exchanged for reassuring promises
of national security. But, as the “war” progresses and fear and uncertainty continue
and even increase, people are encouraged by heightened appeals to national
security by their leaders to accept increasing losses of personal freedom
without complaint or even notice.
That’s exactly where we are today, living in a country whose
government has intentionally curtailed the rights of citizens while actively
limiting the avenues for legal recourse by those citizens. At the same time, the
far greater majority of Americans are complaisant about and indifferent to their
loss of freedom. They sit back and refuse to even consider the significance of what
our government has done. If you look around, all you will see are the same good
citizens who were convinced Adolf Hitler was Germany’s salvation.
If you understand the roles complacency, indifference, and
fear of being attacked play with the general public, you will understand how America has
become an authoritarian, anti-democratic power. However, the road to modern authoritarianism
has been paved not with brown-shirted thugs marching in the streets waving
swastika flags and screaming despicable anti-Semitic slogans but with ordinary
Americans waving the Stars and Stripes while piously reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
with patriotic hands over hearts.
George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the Congress have
systematically used the “war” on terror to reduce the freedom of every American
and thus subvert democracy from within. To our shame, we have gone along with
it without more than a whimper of protest. Bush and Obama used their
presidential powers to build the increasingly authoritarian regime that is now
in place and our gutless Congress went along willingly. Despite its friendly, familiar
American face, the result is an authoritarian government grounded in the
general public’s fear of being attacked.
All Americans should be familiar with a chilling statement Reichsmarschall
Herman Göring made in 1946 during the Nuremberg War Crimes trials to Gustave
Gilbert, the U.S. Military’s Chief Psychologist.
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same way in any country.
What Obama, Bush, and the Congress have done
to the U.S.,
well-intentioned or not, is morally reprehensible and must be reversed. If we
want this country to actually be a Land of the Free, it’s time for all
Americans to wake up, recognize the dangers we face from within, and work hard to
implement substantive change. Being free requires sustained effort, not complacency
or indifference.
In
the past decade, dissent against authoritarian acts by the American government has
been increasingly coupled by conservatives with a lack of patriotism and even treason.
But being free requires sustained effort, not complacency or indifference. Being
free requires us to speak out against the actions of our leaders and governments
that we think are authoritarian and reduce our Constitutional freedoms. Dissenting
is our duty as citizens.
