Planning Ahead with Adolf Hitler

All quotes below were written by Adolf Hitler in 1924 and later published in Mein Kampf in 1933 in the section entitled "War Propaganda." The process he addressed was, of course, nothing new. It had been employed by the Greeks, Romans, English, and lesser lights in the quest for empire. It does, however, appear that Hitler's refinements brought the practice into the 20th century and that the United States government, in its current incarnation, is further modifying those principles in the latest bid for world domination. Here is Hitler on propaganda:

The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc.

The invention of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, where they did not exist, is a clear execution of this first principle as is the idea that the US is seeking to bring democracy to the region. The real reasons for the war—control of the flow of oil and giving fair warning to all oil producing nations in the region to do as they're told, would be too blatant an example of US imperialism at work. More Hitler:

But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be exerted in this direction.

Such is the blueprint shamelessly employed by the Bush administration to camouflage its actual agenda. By aligning itself with the fears and parochial superstitions of the uneducated majority through sloganeering and misinformation, it throws up a smokescreen to divert attention from and/or justify its behavior. "Support our troops," "These colors don't run," "America, love it or leave it," etc., and the prodding of such tender religious and social issues as abortion rights, homosexuality, gun laws, and the like are tactics that enable the following without constitutional oversight:

The looting of the treasury (the peoples' money) to further enrich themselves and their friends.

The dissolution of civil rights.

The conduct of an illegal and immoral war.

The imposition of US imperialism in every corner of the planet.

Hitler, again:

The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success in pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.

Hitler's dismissal of and disdain for intellectual opposition has a direct parallel in Bush's "good old boy" image and conservative media programming that indulges in what seems to be drunken bar talk among illiterates: wacko, pinko, flip flop, etc. Hitler goes on:

Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results: It is a mistake to make...