Libya and the Hitler mythology

By Alfredo Peppard

History rapidly becomes myth, and once myth replaces reality it propagates more nonsense until stupidity is passed off as wisdom. When the political discourse of an empire comes to this point, priesthoods arise that can seemingly explain events. The priests employ a method of thought that we find amusing when we read about its use in medieval times. They reason by analogy and employing a crushing reductionism wherein the mythic common knowledge is used as the ultimate authority and diverging from this authority can only invite disaster. Our myths are many, but one of the most popular is the WWII mythology.

Once you have your enemy pegged as a Hitler all facts are swept aside. The fact that the irrelevance and stupidity of this reasoning is not at anytime challenged on television or in the Congress demonstrates how much of our crucial political discourse has been reduced to mindless references to the WWII mythology. The paralysis of imagination that adherence to this mythology requires is nowhere more apparent than in the antics of that gang of clowns we call the Republican Party. And of course the best place to watch them perform is on television.

In the nineteen thirties and forties, George Orwell observed how Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill used radio and film to manipulate the masses. This did much to form the ideas he put forward in his major work, 1984. In this novel he projected a future in which television was the state’s main instrument for controlling the population. The State was always at war and as the war ground on, the Plebs willingly worked longer hours for less pay. The TV watched the watchers and controlled their very sex-lives. Lacking the intellectual equipment to question this arbitrary arrangement, their critical faculties having been aborted by the din emanating from the TV, the Plebs plodded on.

In 1984, Big Brother, the head of state, speaks for the God Ford He is both the ruler, protecting them from the slavering hordes of the east, and High Priest. He is on TV constantly explaining events in the language of New Speak in which anything he says is true because he said it, even though it might be the very opposite of reality. It’s much like what we encountered in the Bush era.

A few days before writing this, I was watching the TV news about Libya. Keep in mind that President Obama says we are not at war with that country; we are just bombarding their air defense system so that the unarmed civilians we are defending can get their tanks and missiles into the field. In fact it is such a piddling little humanitarian mission the White House saw no need to pester Congress about it. Nevertheless, here are the Republicans yapping at Obama’s heels demanding more vigorous action; with the leader of the pack, Senator John McCain, the Sage of Arizona, arguing that Kaddafi’s aggression had to be stopped, as he was another Hitler -- a serious threat to world peace.

My God, another Hitler! Never mind the fact that any state has the right to put down an armed uprising; the sacred mythology of WWII had been evoked. Thought is no longer appropriate; intervention is necessary to save the world. Yes, McCain in invoking scripture and promoting Kaddafi to Hitler had lifted the discussion out of the mundane ordinary affairs of state; the struggle was then elevated to an elemental conflict between good and evil. I couldn’t help noticing that as he referred to scripture he looked even more beady-eyed and stupid than usual.

Once we have wheeled Hitler onto the stage, the sacred mythology of WWII takes over. An entire series of conclusions comes into play. When on CNN Anderson Cooper of New Orleans fame openly sneers at a Libyan spokesman who claims that a group of 13 coffins are civilians killed by American missiles, Cooper demands proof that the bodies in the coffins are indeed civilians. When he is shown a devastated industrial plant, he points out to the increasingly agitated Libyan that this was a legitimate military target. As a highly popular priest, it is his role to determine legitimacy. After all he is dealing with the minions of a Hitler. And so Anderson Cooper, employing his “awe shucks home town kinda guy” good looks, explains the rights and wrongs of an attack upon a sovereign nation.

One more layer of obscurity is added to events when the intervention is taken over by NATO. Again reality is turned upside down; NATO, a creation and a tool of American military policy, is now in charge, not the US. The tool has become the hand and the hand the tool. Believe that if you will.

Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.” It worries me to think that so many Americans can say the same thing about TV.