Last night, I told my husband that I thought all the TV programming devoted to remembering 9/11 each year (and particularly this year, for the tenth anniversary) is a systematic method of riling the American people into a falsely nationalistic frenzy so that we may be more easily controlled by government and corporate interests. He then implied that I was a little bit crazy.
However, today I started reading Jim Marrs's Rise of the Fourth Reich, and the more I read, the more correct I feel. Marrs argues that many of the characteristics of fascist Italy and National Socialistic (Nazi) Germany leading up to World War II can be observed in modern America. He also claims not to be pushing any political or conspiracy theorist agenda, but he writes about conspiracies for a living, so maybe take that with a grain of salt.
Still, some of his points are difficult to argue against. Fascism and National Socialism both gained momentum in those nations when the governments took over corporations. Marrs claims that in America, corporations have effectively taken over the government, and that the end result is exactly the same.
In both fascist Italy and particularly Nazi Germany, the government invested much time and money into creating a sense of rabid nationalism among its citizens, using intricate propaganda campaigns. Then, on a tide of false nationalism, they took preemptive, unnecessary military action against countries that had not actually done them any harm. This was, in essence, a strategy to gain power and wealth, and to inflate the corporations that now belonged to the government.
We have all heard theories about America's involvement in the Middle East being largely about oil and other economic interests. I'm sure that that is true, but I doubt it's the whole truth. I'm more concerned about increasing government involvement in our day-to-day lives, and the implications that has for the future.
The American government and large corporations know more now about what we do, think, and own than they ever have before. (The cataloging of people and their belongings was also rampant in Hitler's Germany.) This knowledge has, above all, provided corporations with easier, faster, more effective ways to advertise to us and push their agendas. It has given the government the ability to control more closely where our food comes from, what we build on our own land, and what firearms we own. This, in turn, provides corporations with better information and better ways to sell us stuff.
I shouldn't need to point out that these same corporations control television broadcasting. The same broadcasting that spends a week each year emphasizing how angry and vengeful and goddam AMERICAN we should feel, regardless of what our government is doing, because some guys, most of whom weren't from either of the countries we attacked, made some buildings fall down in New York.
9/11 was tragic. It was heartbreaking and it made us mad. But we need to move on. Because dwelling on it every year just makes us more susceptible to being bullshitted and pushed around by the American government and their corporate bosses.
And about 70% of me believes this is true.
About Me
- Julia P.
- New Orleans, La, United States
- I like to write about the things in this world that excite, anger, and inspire me.
