are you kidding?

if it looks like a duck
if it quacks like a duck
well-intentioned program to "save the news." In fact, it is little different from the sort of limitation of free speech that is practiced in every totalitarian dictatorship.

Those who fear a government takeover of the media need only recall the name of Joseph Paul Goebbels. As Joachim C. Fest's 1973 biography of Adolf Hitler attests, it was Goebbels's manipulation of media that brought Hitler to power and secured his control over Germany right up to the end of the regime. It was Goebbels who organized the candlelight processions, mass meetings, national radio broadcasts (over the objection of independent station owners), and eventual seizure of all print and electronic media.

Like the proposals coming out of staff discussions at the FTC and FCC, Hitler's seizure of the media was carried out on the assumption that the news is a "public good." At the center of the Nazi appeal, Fest points out, was a "perverted moral energy" (Fest 391), and at every step, Hitler presented himself as a moral leader. Hitler did not impose his rule on Germany; rather, a majority of the German people willingly embraced fascism because it promised national revitalization. Following Germany's humiliating defeat in WWI and its punishment under the Versailles Treaty, Hitler portrayed national socialism as a moral imperative demanding the allegiance of every right-thinking citizen. Those who opposed his plans for "fixing" Germany were attacked as obstructionists.  

A crucial aspect of Hitler's rise to power was control of the media. During the run-up to the March 5, 1933 elections -- the last truly legitimate elections to be held until after the war -- Goebbels employed every means of propaganda to ensure Hitler's success. Mass meetings, prominently reported in the print media and dramatically broadcast on radio, were planned for maximum impact. As Fest writes: "The country was inundated with appeals, slogans, parades, displays of banners" (Fest 409). Goebbels also employed his own party newspaper -- Der Angriff ["The Attack"] -- to full effect.

I am not suggesting that Barack Obama is Adolf Hitler. I am suggesting that like Hitler -- and like Castro, Chávez, and many other radicals with grandiose ambitions -- Obama intends to exert control over the media to secure his own political power. Obama is out of touch with the public, yet determined to impose his brand of socialism on the country. To succeed in this evil and undemocratic program, he must silence his opponents. And to silence his opponents, he must control the media. Thus the process now underway at the FTC and FCC.

Posted via email from nanodoug's posterous