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Road to fascism?

Have you ever wondered how fascism became so powerful in Germany when less than 10 percent of the people were members of the Nazi Party? According to Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, there was a specific strategy to controlling the majority of people. It might be useful to review these strategies and see if any of these apply today.

One strategy was to delegitimize the democratic institutions. Today there’s disbelief in the FBI, CIA; on Presidential Daily Briefings; and the appointment of cabinet members that want to eliminate the very department they are in charge of.

Politicize the court system. Attacking an American Latino judge who is involved in a fraud suit against the president-elect; there will be violations of the U.S. Constitution by accepting gifts or money outside of paid salaries (Article III emoluments clause).

Repeat falsehoods until they are believed. According to Goebbels, this can only be effective if dissent is repressed; which means, the biggest enemy of the State is truth. Untruths: Millions of illegal voters voted in California; or, thousands celebrated 9-11 in New Jersey, or, global warming was invented by the Chinese.

Discredit the media so that your words are the only truth. Today the media is threatened, bypassed and limited. We hear ‘crooked media’ and journalists are made fun of, threatened with jail and physical harm, and sued.

Create symbols that are above criticism. Think “Make America Great” or “Drain the Swamp.” And claim a popular mandate that you don’t have. Your opponent received nearly 3 million more votes than you- the largest margin of popular votes while still losing.

Goebbels emphasized scapegoating all the problems of the country upon foreigners, people of color, or in his case, people of certain religions. We have scapegoated Muslim countries, Syrian refugees, and Mexicans who are portrayed as terrorists, rapists, drug dealers.

Claim you are the only one that can fix the country’s problems and hold rallies of adoration to increase the public persona of popularity and power.

Threaten to imprison political opponents and label supporters as patriots and opponents as traitors. Think “lock her up”. Implicit in Goebbels’ strategy is a powerful intelligence network to help control the masses. We have that now. This is how a minority people can control a country. If you add the addition of Wall Street billionaires and military generals to your administration, you then have what FDR describes in this quote: “...that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state. That, in its essence, is fascism...”

If Americans care about their country, with its freedoms and values, the strategies of a Nazi propagandist are worth knowing. We ignore them at our peril. —David R. James, Eureka

Disregard propaganda on public lands

Op-eds like the ones penned by Greg Zimmerman or Chris Saeger about control of our state’s public lands are short of facts and full of innuendo which skirts the true issue: Can the federal government take better care of our state’s public lands than the citizens of the state of Montana.

Frankly I am outraged by the arrogant attitude of these highly paid gunslingers funded by far-left out-of-state organizations like the Center of Western Priorities and the Western Values Project (both Colorado-based liberal propaganda machines) which, in essence, call all Montanans stupid. Really? That’s absurd!

Zimmerman cites polls taken to indicate support for his organization’s far-left opinions. Well, we know how accurate polls are. He then tries to assert President-elect Trump doesn’t support states’ rights, which is an absolute falsehood. After this he tries to paint our desire to manage our own resources as outside of mainstream thought, which is a conjecture contrary to the opinions of most Montanans in our forested counties.

Where would we get the money to take care of our forests and public lands? The same place we got it from before the time when the feds usurped management of our land from us in the mid-’70s—through proper management of our public lands by the people who know it best — Montanans. The facts blare out the truth — our state-managed public lands are much more productive, more accessible and in much better health than the diseased, overgrown and fire-prone forests managed by the feds. As for the fear of the state selling off our public lands, it just doesn’t happen.

Both of these opinions are pure propaganda emblematic of the rich, arrogant, out-of-state, liberal forces that care not a whit about our Montana’s average working person, hunters, our educational resources or our communities in general. It’s our land, not the federal government’s, as PILT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) confirms. That’s fact. But to imply Montanans are so stupid and incompetent that we can’t manage all of our public lands better than Washington, D.C.? That’s ridiculous! —Mark A. Agather, Kalispell

Anguish, anger need to give way to goodwill

As I write this in December, the passing of the solstice, the darkest day of the year, finds many in our country anguished and fearful. This election has caused greater divides in our country than any in recent memory. There are protests and protestations by both sides, and a sense of divide and unease blankets the country.

Full disclosure. I am a lifelong Democrat who supported that party’s candidate and who strongly believed the election of Donald Trump would be disastrous for our country on many levels. But the election is over, Donald Trump is our president-elect and we, as a people and as individuals on both sides, need to determine how we handle this reality. Not only for ourselves, but also for the benefit of our country.

A fundamental pillar of our system is the right to free speech. From Milton through Mill and Jefferson, our system has embraced a philosophy that we are best served by a market place of free ideas, the belief that truth will emerge through a competition of ideas in a free and transparent public discourse.

That concept is being tested by our current realities. We question whether such a marketplace can exist in the face of a 24-hour news cycle, hundreds of cable channels clamoring for content, fake news, politicians of every stripe pandering for their continuation in office rather than serving the public good, and a media that self-righteously reports everything on the basis that anything is news if it increases their audience. Both sides have been hoisted on that petard.

Martin Luther King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. While most of us hope and believe that this is true, our life experience has shown us that the arc does not move in a straight line. So what can each of us do from wherever we stand to move our country towards peace and justice?

We read of public demonstrations and counter demonstrations. Angry people lecture to both sides on television. Is this the best way to move America forward? Donald Trump is our president. Both sides need to disarm. Anger only begets anger, and hate gives power to those on the other side. We need to create change by remaining true to our principles and reaffirming them in our everyday lives.

By word and deed each of us needs to demonstrate to our children, grandchildren and all those around us that we believe in the principles that are the bedrock of our nation. Yet our politics should not define our people, and we should not stereotype those with whom we disagree as evil or somehow misbegotten. And all this can be done gracefully and without argument, if one simply tries. Tolerance must run both ways. The solstice has passed and the days are getting longer. Let us all try to grow in the light. —Steve Barrett, Bozeman, former chair of the state Board of Regents