[The subject of HISTORY and the whitewashing of American textbooks was recently broached on my Facebook home thread, and I decided to respond. Needless to say, there went my morning… but I’ve decided to spare Facebook and my innocent friend, rightfully concerned about the expurgation of the Trail of Tears from an unnamed middle-school textbook. IOW, this diatribe is for you, faithful reader…]
If Americans had been taught HISTORY over the last several decades, Allen Dulles’ name would be a household word — and everyday Americans would know that Germany and Hitler lost WWII, but fascism won, hands down, with the Nazis’ best allies subverting FDR and Truman and launching the Cold War, because they adamantly refused to accept the Russian victory and the war’s end.
Eisenhower blamed Dulles for dominating his time in office, leaving him with “a legacy of ashes.” (No doubt: One fine speech about the tyranny he facilitated does not a good presidency make — and many CIA/deep state horrors were unleashed by the golfing, aloof, patrician Ike.)
Can most Americans name the last actual U.S. president — before the oligarchs and spooks took over, lock, stock, and barrel? His name was John F. Kennedy, and, whatever his imperfections and moral transgressions, the plain truth is he was assassinated for defying America’s unelected power establishment and seeking détente: an end to the rapacious, global neo-fascist agenda.
No holder of the office has disobeyed the corporatocracy since that bloody murder of a sitting president — and subsequent demonstration of impunity (with the murderers put in charge of the “investigation”).
No American institution or high elected official has meaningfully opposed America’s descent into neo-fascism since the 1960s, including: the blatant hijacking of our elections and campaign finance laws; the privatization of the commons; Washington’s endlessly genocidal actions targeting Arab Muslims, primarily (killing millions outright); the eradication of hundreds of vital regulations thanks to “trade” pacts and a deregulatory frenzy; the legalization of government propaganda aimed at citizens; the end of Posse Comitatus; the elimination of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights; the normalization of institutionally racist military/secret police; the normalization of torture, vacuum surveillance, and journalist/whistleblower persecution; the unimpeded destruction of the climate and natural world…
It’s horrifying, but true. In recent years, one book after another (critically acclaimed, mainstream books* by award winning authors and journalists) has convinced me of this reality: The Nazis and their ideological heirs have run the table — and the U.S. — since before WWII’s close.
Thanks to a bunch of untouchable Wall Street a-holes who hated and defied FDR at every turn — and generations of corrupt, careerist, and craven American leaders — they now administer history’s most powerful and destructive empire (fittingly, the one that has ushered in the Sixth Mass Extinction event and Western civilization’s collapse… taking who knows how much of humanity with it, by the time this cataclysm is over?).
* The Anatomy of Fascism (Robert O. Paxton); The Family (Jeff Sharlet); America’s Nazi Secret (John Loftus); The Nazis Next Door (Eric Lichtblau); The Devil’s Chessboard (David Talbot)
(This list is limited to books dealing specifically with the Nazi pedigree and ideology of our country’s core leadership and institutions. It’s fair to say that thousands of articles and dozens of other critically acclaimed, mainstream books about Washington’s fascist, lawless, mass-murdering actions — before and after 9/11 — have also informed my judgment. Fascists, after all, comport themselves in a certain way, as Robert O. Paxton has described — and Sheldon Wolin, too — in their essential books.)