Page:The Minority of One 1961-10.pdf/8

Times for Greatness

The other day a television producer called me up and invited me to be interviewed on his program about the Eichmann trial. After I expressed compliance, the man kept calling me rather frequently, each time inquiring, with the artificial sleekness of the professional salesman, into my personal views and opinions. I soon realized that I was being subjected to some kind of preliminary censorship to establish whether or not my convictions could be aired over a television network. Not heeding the impulse to conceal my true convictions just so as to be allowed to address an airwave audience, I quickly became “self-incriminating.” The producer’s inquiries were involved masterpieces of construction in which ten irrelevant questions concealed the inquisitor’s true point of concern. During the final prolonged telephone conversation, and after my interrogator was satisfied that there were no philosophical differences between us as to the weather and baseball, he asked the question: “Do you believe that it could happen here too?” “Certainly,” I answered, “in fact much of ‘it’ not only can happen here, but is already happening.” Our conversation lasted for another half an hour, although it was quite obvious that I was no longer going to appear on the television program. I had disqualified myself unequivocally and irrevocably. I had made the one statement the producer was most afraid to have said over “his” air.

Having lost the opportunity of addressing millions of television viewers, I put all my fervor into attempts to influence the thinking of this one man. I told him that his overriding concerns — not to shock his television audience, to flatter his listeners as incapable of wrongdoing, to say only what he conjectured they wanted to hear — was in itself a great part of “it,” “it” referring to the perverted frame of mind of the German generation that begot the Hitlerian nightmare. I referred to questions he had asked me during a previous conversation, and which had become stereotypes in analyzing the Nazi period: “Why did the German people comply with all of Hitler’s excesses?” “Why didn’t they rebel?” “Where were the dissenters?” “What happened to the opposition to the Nazis?” I told the television producer that if he took an objective, searching look at himself, he should have no difficulty understanding the Germans’ compliance with Hitler, since he himself was doing nothing but complying with and conforming to the prevailing official and accepted doctrines. If he thought our Government terribly wrong on some fateful issue, would he display the civil courage and responsibility to say so to his multi-million audience? “But this would put me out of business,” the man answered, unaware of the similarity between his motivations and those of the Germans who failed to raise their voices against Hitler — except that in Nazi Germany the gamble would have involved not only one’s business, but also social status, personal “freedom,” and one’s life.

I recount this conversation because it indicates how dated all speculations are as to whether fascism is or is not possible in America. To a great degree it already constitutes the American reality. If the elimination of individual thinking is the most fundamental prerequisite of fascist rule, then present day America is better prepared for fascist rule than was Germany in the early thirties and much better than Italy ever became under Mussolini.

Never before has any people been more indoctrinated to condone and support any foreign excesses and transgressions of their government as long as such transgressions are believed to be expedient. Never before has a people been so successfully taught to overcome all moral scruples that accompany benefits accruing from injury to others. To bring about this cruel, unscrupulous attitude, the public had to be indoctrinated in a fundamentally pessimistic view of man.

The “American philosophy” views man as a two-legged hyena, incapable of responding to anything but greed. This has been our ultimate argument against all radical reformers. Our “ideological” argument against communism and socialism of any variety has been that man is incapable of adapting to a system of human relations that, instead of being regulated by private incentives, would be based on “idealistic” justice. Former President Eisenhower has propagated this pessimistic view of man from the summit of his official pronouncements.

COERCERS OF MIND

The American Experience is unique in history. It has provided a social reality that cannot be measured or comprehended by any standards previously known to social and political science. The American system of domestic ruling has no parallel in the past history of mankind. Nor could it have evolved in any other place or era. It took the coincidence of relative geographic isolation from the rest of the world and a revolutionary development of domestic mass communication to make this unique system of power preservation possible. The American autocracy does not rule primarily through a self-serving system of laws, nor through the physical power of execution; it relies decisively and successfully on psychological means. Rulers of the past have known how to make their wishes prevail over contrary wishes; they have often perfected the means of eliminating centers of potential challenge to them. From Nero to Hitler they have known how to cope with their opponents, but they have never before developed an effective science of preventing the very birth of opposition. This has become the patent of the American plutocracy. It is primarily a psychological science or art. If America does not as yet have concentration camps in operation (some are in a passive state of readiness*); if we have “only” hundreds, and not millions, of political prisoners; if we need not yet shiver at each sight of a policeman, it is not because the American oligarchy finds such means more abhorrent than any oligarchy ever did, but because it has devised a more fundamental and effective method of making the populace comply with its interests. This is a system of ruling which uses as its chief instrument the destruction of the people’s mind. It is an Orwellian world, in which the elaborate field of power is mass psychology. To stupify man before he can conceivably become one’s challenger seems to be the formula. Those American psychiatrists and statisticians who put our ratio of mental cases at ten per cent, have “forgotten” to look for additional “cases” at least in one social stratum: amongst themselves. It is more than an exercise in dramatic presentation to contend that present day America is a continent-wide mental asylum. (There is an all-important difference between making such a statement out of bitterness and making it out of concern with the social tasks ahead.)

Hitler could not have launched his foreign adventures had he not first erected concentration camps and an elaborate police machinery that kept the populace in check. Stalin would never have established and preserved his dictatorship were it not for his bloody purges. But America has proved capable of eliminating all political representation except that of the ruling plutocracy, of depriving labor of all and any independent political role, of bringing about an amazing conformity of virtually the entire press, of overthrowing uncompliant foreign governments, of pushing the world towards disastrous military encounters without resorting to the open police state. This became unnecessary; mass psychology has been applied to bring about an even greater degree of compliance than traditional totalitarian tools can produce.

NON-CONTROVERSIAL CONTROVERSIES

Recently, I have listened to a radio discussion between Senator Barry Goldwater and one of his “liberal” senatorial colleagues. The two opponents were “fighting it out” in what appeared to be an extreme controversy. They were “attacking” each other and each other’s views, each talking with vehemence against his opponent. When I reviewed the scale of their varying opinions, I could not but be amazed at their basic similarity. Why did they argue, I asked myself. I then realized that the debate, and all similar controversies in our public forums, was a subterfuge, an Ersatz of a true public controversy. It is impossible to keep one hundred and eighty million people in one mood and frame of mind. To exercise control over the poles of disagreement, controversies are staged whose scope is limited in advance so as to prevent more radical dissension. It is a function of this deceptive method that political diversity, which is an unavoidable mark of democracy, is trapped in Amercia within the narrow confines of the Republican and the Democratic party, no one knowing quite the difference between them. In the absence of ideological differences, one may believe the two-party system to be replaceable by a one-party system. Nothing could be more erroneous. The moment the two ideologically identical parties would merge, a new opposition party would come into being. The danger, as viewed by the autocracy, would be that the new party would probably assume a more meaningful and radical political role. To avert this, a pretense of public controversies is staged, absorbing and neutralizing the natural tendency to challenge those in power. More candidly monolithic regimes have also resorted to similar devices for channeling and controlling unavoidable dissension. Their slates of candidates for public office usually include, in addition to the official representatives of the totalitarian party, candidates unaffiliated but friendly to the regime. When means are found for apparent diversity in the press, without the diversity actually being produced, this is a contribution to the American psycho-political system of ruling. All totalitarian regimes reduce the number of newspapers in their countries. They enforce a monolithic press by eliminating those organs that do not support them. Neither Hitler nor Stalin found ways of controlling the editorial policies of all the newspapers in Germany and Russia. They therefore closed down the ones they could not control. That’s why there were so few newspapers in Nazi Germany and why there are so few in the Soviet