8 Responses

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   Ernest A. Canning said on 1/20/2011 @ 5:10pm PT: [Permalink]

   I’m not sure I agree with you on this one, Brad.

   Cohen invoked Goebbels because the methodology of American hard right propaganda is strikingly similar to the techniques employed by Goebbels (“Big Lie”) or, for that matter, Mein Kampf, wherein Adolf Hitler argued:

   All effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand”¦Propaganda had to be continuous and unvarying in its message. It should never admit a glimmer of doubt in its own claims, or concede the tiniest element of right in the claims of the other side.

   That technique was exposed by Robert Greenwald, for example, when he demonstrated in Outfoxed how the Fox “News” anchors were given a daily memo which instructed on the message of the day.

   In one segment, a chorus of voices, one after another, sang “flip-flopper” to describe John Kerry. These voices included not only Fox anchors but members of the Bush administration.

   While, when viewed in succession in Outfoxed, the “flip-flopper” segment is amusing, there is nothing funny about the impact of simplistic messages spread over a 24/7 news cycle. Staying “on message” through repetition of simplistic slogans did not begin with the Bush regime or Fox “News” but with Mein Kamp.

   The problem is that bogus comparisons to Nazis are so common that we’ve reached the conclusion that every comparison is invalid and amounts to a per se stepping over the line.

   Not every comparison to the techniques employed by the Nazi regime invokes the Holocaust, though perhaps a more apt descriptor of 21st Republicans was provided by former VP Henry Wallace on 04/09/1944:

   The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money and more power.

   They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation.

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   Bruce said on 1/20/2011 @ 5:48pm PT: [Permalink]

   I’m new to this site….um, Brad, are you supporting Cohen on this or Fox’s critisism? Because I think the interviewer is making something out of nothing. All Cohen is saying is that Goebels used the same techniques of propaganda, not likening them to their atrosities. And that’s what the Republicans are good at…repeating a aimple lie until it sticks.

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   Ernest A. Canning said on 1/20/2011 @ 6:01pm PT: [Permalink]

   Actually, Bruce, it was CNN, not the Fox “News” network, but, for the reasons stated in my first comment, I concur that Cohen had made a valid comparison of the 21st Century Republican “Big Lie” technique to that employed by the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

   If there is a valid distinction between the propaganda methodology employed by today’s Republican Party and that employed by Goebbels, I’ve yet to here it.

   But then, perhaps we give Goebbels too much credit. According to Noam Chomsky, in Failed States, Goebbels acknowledged that his techniques were drawn from U.S. business propaganda.

   As Veblen pointed out long ago, one of the primary tasks of business propaganda is the ‘fabrication of consumers,’ a device that helps induce ‘all the classic symptoms of state-based totalitarianism: atomization, political apathy and irrationality, the hollowing and banalization of purportedly democratic political processes, mounting popular frustration”¦
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   Brad Friedman said on 1/20/2011 @ 7:53pm PT: [Permalink]

   Ernie (& Bruce) –

   I don’t believe I offered an opinion in the article itself, other than on the fact that it was a Democrat’s feet who were being held to the fire (correctly or otherwise).

   Perhaps my attempted irony was too clever by half there 🙂

   But yes, I tend to agree w/ both of you on the actual substance of the matter, and am glad to see that Cohen stood up for his legitimate — if uncomfortable for many — comparison

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   Brad Friedman said on 1/20/2011 @ 7:54pm PT: [Permalink]

   Oh! And, btw, welcome Bruce! Don’t be a stranger. I assure you the problem is that I usually use too many words, rather than too few! 🙂

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   NadePaulKuciGravMcKi said on 1/21/2011 @ 2:04am PT: [Permalink]

   Does the ‘Big Lie’ remind AIPAC of their official 9/11 fairytale?

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   mick said on 1/21/2011 @ 5:15pm PT: [Permalink]

   The “”Big Lie” technique” certainly worked for 911 …then add to it the purposely maligned term “conspiracy theorist” to quell inquiry …Mission Accomplished !

   apply,repeat,apply,repeat…

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   ken said on 1/26/2011 @ 6:26am PT: [Permalink]

   FYI, Former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Rollins admitted, on TV, that the Republican Party uses NAZI tactics on the premise that “if the tactics worked for the NAZI’S they will work for us, the Republicans, why wouldn’t we use them”. In the mid 1990’s I was watching a local TV program, from Greenville,S.C. in the middle of the day in the middle of the week when the TV announcer had an impromptu interview with Ed Rollins and asked Rollins why the Republican Party uses NAZI tactics in their public displays and Rollins, shockingly replied they do. The TV commentator was as shocked as I was. The whole interview lasted less than a minute. The interview was conducted at a Republican Party gathering. So the Congressman is absolutely right for being truthful.