luni, 9 august 2010

De la tara (I)

Pentru ca d'acolo m-am intors, pentru ca am niste povesti in episodul urmator, pentru ca astazi m-am uitat la televizor vreo ora si ceva.

Politics and political figures aside, am vazut vreo juma de ora discutii si imagini cu accidente rutiere in care diversi oameni cretini (been there) sau de-a dreptul nebuni distrug vieti si proprietati si mi-am adus aminte o intrebare mai veche - "de ce sunt romanii atat de indulgenti cu semenii lor care incalca regulile?". De unde aceasta pornire anarhica?

La televizor i-am vazut numiti teribilisti, ie purtati de pornirea de impresiona/obtine atentie sau doritori de adrenalina. Altii sunt alcoolici pentru ca asa au invatat acasa sau pentru ca sunt deprimati. Nici o vorba de responsabilitate sau intentie, desi vorbim despre adulti care si-au luat permis si masina mai sportiva asumandu-si riscul de a conduce imprudent sau pe valul unei emotii oarecare.

Vad deresponsabilizarea asta in fiecare zi, in egala masura cu responsabilizarea absurda si la gramada a unor persoane, colectivitati sau organizatii care par sa fie de vina pentru toate relele din tara asta. Pe a doua o inteleg, e usor si confortabil, si inteleg si fuga de responsabilitate individuala a propriei persoane. Nu inteleg insa indulgenta fata de ceilalti care gresesc, MAI ALES in conditiile unei societati in care normele sunt foarte rar respectate si aplicate. Bottom-line, de ce l-as scuza eu pe ala care imi fura portofelul, si, prin implicatie, de ce l-as scuza pe ala care fura portofelul altuia, mai ales atunci cand nu ma pot identifica direct cu hotul (adica nu-mi imaginez ca as putea face asta vreodata). N-am nici o idee de raspuns simplu.

Tot la tv l-am vazut in sfarsit pe S.M. Ionita spunand ceva simplu si frumos, care suna ceva de genul ---- institutiile nu pot exista fara reguli. Daca regula nu este aplicata consistent si coerent nu exista incredere in institutii. Daca nu exista incredere in institutii exista doar clanuri, loialitati, spaga si eventual arbitrariul violentei.

miercuri, 28 iulie 2010

Resolving to Resist

Sa zicem ca e despre importanta unei Constitutii care sa protejeze cetatenii de abuzurile puterilor in stat, in special de cele ale puterii executive - un principiu constitutional fundamental si mult mai democratic decat cele enuntate de autorii propunerii prezidentiale de modificare, de exemplu "absenta conflictului intre puteri" sau "demnitatea umana"...

**I'm bad for quoting whole passages but it's worth it**

Rule of law, misrule of men
Elaine Scarry
A Boston Review Book
the mit press
Copyright © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

When, shortly after September 11, the U.S.A. Patriot Act first arrived in our midst, its very title seemed to deliver an injury: “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” The names of the country (U.S.A.) and of those responsible for creating and sustaining it (patriots) had been turned into a Justice Department acronym. One might have thought that “United States of America” would be regarded as a sufficient referent for the letters U.S.A. and that no one would presume to bestow a new set of words on those letters—or attach a new meaning to the word patriot, with its heavy freight of history (Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, Emma Lazarus) and its always fresh aspiration (“O beautiful for patriot dream”).

In the two years since its passage by Congress, on October 25, 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act has become the locus of resistance against the unceasing injuries of the Bush-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft triumvirate, as first one community, then two, then eleven, then 27, then 238 passed resolutions against it, as have three state legislatures. Many more councils and legislatures have draft resolutions pending. The letters “U.S.A.” and the word “patriot” have gradually reacquired their earlier solidity and sufficiency, as local and state governments reanimate the practice of self-rule by opposing the Patriot Act’s assault on the personal privacy, free flow of information, and freedom of association that lie at the heart of democracy.
Each of the resolutions affirms a town’s obligation to uphold the Constitutional rights of all persons who live there, and many of the resolutions explicitly direct police and other residents to refrain from carrying out the provisions of the Patriot Act, even when approached by a federal officer and explicitly instructed to do so.


When the resistance was beginning in the winter of 2001–2002, it took five months for the first five resolutions to come into being; in the winter of 2003–2004, a new resolution comes into being almost every day. The resolutions come from towns ranging from small villages with populations under a thousand—such as Wendell, Massachusetts (986), Riverside, Washington (348), Gaston, Oregon (620), and tiny Crestone, Colorado (73)—to huge cities with populations of many hundreds of thousands—Philadelphia (1,517,550), Baltimore (651,000), Chicago (2,896,000), Detroit (951,000), Austin (656,500), San Francisco (777,000).2 Approximately one third of the resolutions come from towns and cities with populations between 20,000 and 200,000 people.

That the Patriot Act should became this locus of resistance may at first seem puzzling. True, its legislative history is sordid: it was rushed through Congress in several days; no hearings were held; it went largely unread; only a few of its many egregious provisions were modified. But at least it was passed by Congress; many other blows have been delivered to the people of the United States in the form of unmodified executive edicts, such as the formation of military tribunals and the nullification of attorney-client privilege.

+++

A Structural Injury

If many members of Congress failed to read the Patriot Act during its swift passage, it is in part because the law is almost unreadable. The Patriot Act is written as an extended sequence of additions to and deletions from previously existing statutes. In making these alterations, it often instructs the bewildered reader to insert three words into paragraph X of statute Y without ever providing the full sentence that is altered, either in its original or its amended form.

Only someone who had scores of earlier statutes open to the relevant pages could step painstakingly through the revisions. On the issue of electronic surveillance alone, the Patriot Act modifies the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Cable Act, the Federal Wiretap Statutes, and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Reading the Patriot Act is like being forced to spend the night on the steps outside the public library, trying to infer the sentences in the books inside by listening to hundreds of mice chewing away on the pages.

The hundreds of additions and deletions do, despite appearances, have a coherent and unitary direction: many of them increase the power of the Justice Department and decrease the rights of individual persons. The Constitutional rights abridged by the Patriot Act are enumerated in the town resolutions, which most often specify violations of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and assembly, the Fourth Amendment guarantee against search and seizure, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process, and (cited somewhat less often) the Sixth and Eighth Amendment guarantees of a speedy and public trial and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The unifying work of the Patriot Act is even clearer if, rather than summarizing it as an increase in the power of the Justice Department and a corresponding decrease in the rights of persons, it is understood concretely as making the population visible and the Justice Department invisible.

The Patriot Act inverts the Constitutional requirement that people’s lives be private and the work of government officials be public; it instead crafts a set of conditions in which our inner lives become transparent, and the workings of the government become opaque. Either one of these outcomes would imperil democracy; together they not only injure the country but also cut off the avenues of repair.
When we say that democracy requires that the people’s privacy be ensured, we do not mean that our lives remain secret; we mean instead that we individually control the degree to which, and the people to whom, our inner lives are revealed.7 From Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) to Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court has affirmed that privacy is a fundamental Constitutional value and located its roots in the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. In an elegant summary of the underlying theory, Constitutional scholar Kenneth Karst has argued that privacy has a three-part architecture. Privacy means first of all “informational privacy”—control over personal information and judgments. Such privacy is in turn the basis of a person’s capacity for friendship and intimacy. Lastly it is the foundation of moral autonomy and liberty, since freedom is premised on making important decisions based on independent judgment. Inhabitants of a country who lose the guarantee of privacy also eventually lose the capacity for making friends and the capacity for political freedom.9

As necessary to democracy as this non-transparency of persons is the transparency of government actions. Because we have, for the past three decades, focused so intensely on the Constitutional guarantee of personal privacy but not on the corresponding requirement of the non-privacy (or publicness, or publication) of the acts of governors, it is useful now to recall how many times the Constitution pauses to require the act of creating of an open record: “Each house [of Congress] shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same” with “the Yeas and Nays of the Members . . . entered on the Journal” (Article I, Section 5);10 a roll-call vote, recording not just numbers but names, is required when Congress overrides a presidential veto (I, 7); “a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time” (I, 9); presidential objections to a piece of legislation must be forwarded to the house in which the legislation originated and published in their journal (I, 7); every Congressional vote, with the exception of a vote on adjournment, “shall be presented to the President” (I, 7); the counting of the Electoral College votes must take place in the presence of the full Congress (II, 1; Amendment 12); the president is authorized to require the “opinion in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments” (II, 2); the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” (II, 3); treason proceedings will take place in “open Court” (III, 3) and criminal prosecutions in a “public trial” (Amendment 6).11 Unlike Article I (on the Congress) and Article II (on the presidency), Article III (on the courts) does not specify the keeping of records; but the assumption of open record-keeping is indicated by the opening clause of Article IV (on the states): “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other state.”

The obligation of each branch to make its actions public—to make them visible both to the population and to the other branches—is often construed as a right belonging to the population, the right of access to information or “freedom of information,” and is closely bound up with First Amendment protections of free speech. Though scholars and jurists disagree about the extent to which access to government information is guaranteed by the Constitution (as well as by subsequent legislative acts, particularly the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the later 1972–1978 statutes), it is hard to disagree with the stark argument—made with particular force by Alexander Meiklejohn and Cass Sunstein—that democratic deliberation is impossible without this access to information: “If information is kept secret, public deliberation cannot occur.” Secrecy, continues Sunstein, “is inconsistent with self-rule.” Or, as the local resolution of Astoria, Oregon, recently phrased it, “Secrecy . . . undermines established norms for civil discourse between government and those it would govern.” Sunstein identifies citizen deliberation as the primary benefit of open government, but he also identifies other benefits, including “checks and balances” (one branch cannot check the other if it does not know what the other is doing), “deterrence” (national security may actually be strengthened by revelation of the country’s resources), and “sunlight as disinfectant” (if deliberations are carried out in secret, “participants may be less careful to ensure their behavior is unaffected by illegitimate or irrelevant considerations”).

vineri, 23 aprilie 2010

No exit yet

Dupa "criza nu e treaba guvernului, economia noastra o sa isi revina dupa ce isi revin economiile dezvoltate", stupiditate contrazisa atat de exemplul polonez cat si de realitatea curenta, o noua perla strategic a Nenumitului, respectiv - "Cel mai bun raspuns al Romaniei la presiunea globalizarii este apartenenta la UE". Ultra-suficienta strategie economica deci, si partea buna este ca este deja 'mission accomplished'.

In acelasi timp, razboiul impotriva Parlamentului continua printr-o miscare simbolica surprinzatoare, respectiv daramarea gardului de beton, un fel de Zid al Berlinului care desparte Romania de adevarata democratie. Considerand soliditatea respectivei constructii as zice ca cea mai cea mai buna tehnologie pentru a realiza acest obiectiv cu maxim de zgomot este o bateri de tunuri anti-tanc. Fac si baietii exercitii, se obisnuieste si institutia cu ideea.

Cugetarea zilei - rich people are way better of in poor countries, pornind de la intrebarea "de ce oamenii astia care au tone de bani in Elvetia, furati din Romania, continua sa locuiasca aici?". Pentru ca aici stiu sa faca bani, pentru ca aici isi pot cumpara protectie politica si legala, pentru ca aici isi pot face legi pentru propriul benefit si, nu in ultimul rand, aici sunt mai presus de societate si cetatenii 'normali'.

miercuri, 23 decembrie 2009

Zilele Infamiei

vs. idle days cat se infig baietii si fetele in cascaval. Preluare integrala si neautorizata.

O Românie de inventat
22 Dec 2009 Cristian Pirvulescu

Cât de mult s-a schimbat România în cei douăzeci de ani de la căderea lui Ceauşescu? Un instantaneu de campanie, o simplă fotografie de familie (politică) în care s-au strecurat şi ceva securişti, sugerează unde am ajuns.

Căci, la douăzeci de ani după căderea comunismului, în plină campanie electorală pentru alegerile prezidenţiale, la Cetate, într-o comună situată în sudul Doljului, la Dunăre, aproape de Calafat, Mircea Dinescu, un fost opozant al regimului Ceauşescu, a fost ameninţat, de faţă cu fostul şi actualul preşedinte al României, cu surghiunul în Bulgaria. Iar acesta nu doar că nu a reacţionat, ci a şi aprobat mai mult decât tacit ameninţarea primarului Craiovei. Faptele par cunoscute. Însă în spatele candidatului se afla nu numai deja cunoscutul Gigi Neţoiu, fost ofiţer de Securitate care a avut sub supraveghere scriitori, în particular pe Dan Deşliu, care protestase public la adresa regimului ceauşist, dar şi alţi membri ai partidului prezidenţial cu funcţii în Securitate şi în aparatul de partid comunist.

De exemplu, primarul Bechetului, Costică Tulitu, fost ofiţer al aceleiaşi Securităţi, aflat la Braşov în perioada fierbinte dintre 1987 şi 1989, ori Vergică Şovăilă, primarul comunei Călăraşi, fost activist de partid şi preşedinte de CUASC în sudul Doljului până în 1989, care a migrat de la PSM la PSD pentru a se regăsi, după 2005, în PD.

O autentică falangă anticomunistă! Deşi campania s-a terminat între timp, aşa cum sună sloganul la modă acum, cei trei colaboraţionişti au rămas tot acolo. Iar tristul fapt că un fost disident a fost ameninţat, pe când securiştii şi activiştii fostului partid comunist sunt în continuare la cârmă, nu pare deloc o glumă răsuflată de campanie.

Tot după douăzeci de ani de la căderea „monarhiei de drept dialectic“, cum numea cu ironie şi mâhnire regimul comunist Bellu Zilber, noul mandat prezidenţial al lui Traian Băsescu a fost inaugurat sub semnul republicii de drept divin. Un ceremonial straniu, demn de un stat teocratic, în care preşedintele este unsul lui Dumnezeu, a fost pus în scenă pentru jurământul de învestitură. Şi, deşi la începutul acestui nou mandat Traian Băsescu aminteşte printre priorităţile sale democraţia şi consensul naţional, chiar din primul moment a preferat să pozeze în preşedintele ortodocşilor. Cât despre minorităţi, etnice, religioase sau filozofice, fără respectul şi susţinerea cărora democraţia nu poate exista, nu prea s-au auzit multe lucruri. Poate şi pentru că întregul discurs prezidenţial a fost concentrat pe reforma statului.

Un stat a cărui structură instituţională şi politică seamănă, cel puţin la suprafaţă, cu cea a „vechiului regim“. Concentrată în jurul parlamentului monocameral, viziunea prezidenţială privind modernizarea statului nu pare să iasă din capcana antiparlamentarismului. Să fie tot starea de campanie de vină?

Şi tot la douăzeci de ani de la căderea comunismului, în acelaşi discurs prezidenţial, dialogul cu opoziţia politică, socială sau civică nu şi-a găsit locul printre priorităţile preşedintelui. Legitimitatea acestora pare să depindă doar de asocierea la proiectul prezidenţial. Ca şi în atât de hulita epocă a lui Ion Iliescu, consensul nu pare să aibă sens decât dacă funcţionează în direcţia indicată naţiunii de preşedinte.

Herder credea că omul este mijloc pentru politică, dar scop pentru morală. Iar în cei douăzeci de ani politica nu a lăsat prea mult loc moralei. Cele trei ipostaze prezidenţiale prezentate mai sus vorbesc atât despre schimbare, cât şi despre continuitate în România postcomunistă. O Românie care se află încă la răscruce, fracturată între un trecut pe care nu îl poate ignora şi un viitor pe care nu reuşeşte să îl inventeze.

Divide et impera
08 Dec 2009 Cristian Pirvulescu

Nici nu a fost confirmat bine ca învingător al alegerilor prezidenţiale că preşedintele Traian Băsescu a şi început în forţă acţiunea de destructurare a sistemului politic existent.

Prin declaraţii şi conversaţii telefonice, Traian Băsescu a stârnit deja dihonia în partidele adverse. Dacă PSD-ului i-a indicat chiar capetele ce trebuie să cadă, Mircea Geoană şi Viorel Hrebenciuc, pentru PNL a utilizat tactica ofertei telefonice adresate lui Călin Popescu Tăriceanu. Poziţionat la „dreapta“, interesat de revenirea partidului la guvernare şi de „corectitudinea“ ideologică, fostul prim-ministru pare mai preocupat acum de recuperarea sprijinului organizaţiilor teritoriale ale partidului decât de viitorul regimului politic românesc. Dar viitorul regimului politic a fost atât în centrul dezbaterii de la alegerile prezidenţiale - căci ce altceva exprima referendumul antiparlamentar care trebuia să justifice introducerea unui regim prezidenţializat cu puternice accente personale? Iar participarea la guvernare fără garanţii sigure în privinţa regimului politic şi a democraţiei consociative nu ar însemna decât atragerea PNL pe traiectoria politică a lui Traian Băsescu şi, în cel mai bun caz, transformarea partidului într-o anexă a Cotroceniului.

După aceste alegeri, societatea românească e mai scindată ca oricând, dar discursul preşedintelui, deloc consensual („un fleac, i-am ciuruit!“), nu indică vreo schimbare de atitudine.

Iar „galeria“ îl încurajează să continue pe aceeaşi cale. După momentele de incertitudine de duminică seară de după anunţarea rezultatelor exit poll-urilor, curtea de la Cotroceni şi suporterii săi jubilează. Victoria îi stimulează. Şi chiar dacă au anunţat că vor fi îngăduitori atât cu cei „învinşi“, cât şi cu cei ce, grăbiţi să prindă un loc în vagonul cu orchestra, se grăbesc să declanşeze „marea răfuială“. Căci monarhia plebiscitară inaugurată de Traian Băsescu nu îi recunoaşte drept cetăţeni ai săi decât pe cei ce participă la ritualul sacralizării liderului şi votează cu acesta. Curteni, dar deloc curtenitori, aceştia se şi grăbesc să ceară socoteală celor ce nu au aderat la cultul personalităţii. Nu începuseră deja din campania electorală să ameninţe cu expulzarea indezirabililor (eventual în Bulgaria) şi dezvăluiri terifiante despre trecutul lor? Şi cum victoria la limită şi suspiciunile de fraudă minează noul mandat, relegitimarea prin forţă a liderului devine o opţiune valabilă.

În aceste condiţii, pentru ca „reforma“ să reuşească va fi nevoie ca România să rămână fără opoziţie politică sau civică. Căci un preşedinte-jucător nu are nevoie de cetăţeni prea critici şi uneori revoltaţi, ci de supuşi docili. Şi, cu un parlament unicameral docil şi un guvern personal, reforma statului va transforma România după chipul şi asemănarea conducătorului său.

Politica diviziunii naţionale nu va reuşi însă decât atunci când, redusă la un spectacol otevizat, politica nu va mai presupune şi participarea cetăţenilor la conducere. Divizaţi între cei „buni“ şi cei „răi“ în funcţie de votul sau de preferinţele lor politice, românii vor asista la permanentizarea crizei ca formă de guvernare. Doar astfel acest tip postmodern de autoritarism se va putea justifica.

marți, 8 decembrie 2009

Sa spunem nu furtului cu legea in spate

Un mare numar de cetateni romani, undeva intre 3.500.000 si 5.200.000 (I mean, who knows, macar la Geoana a iesit suma cu PNL-u de la primul tur:D in absenta asistentei sau tolerantei benevole a institutiilor statului), au votat de fapt pentru Guvernul Basescu vs. Guvernul Johannis (proiect de modernizare a Romaniei, diverse promisiuni de presedinte jucator vs. alianta politica pentru guvernare). In cazul asta pot sa fac si eu paranteza logica de a iesi temporar din teoria loviturii de stat, cu o ipoteza de lucru la fel de para-constitutionala.

Sa presupunem deci ca presedintele, relegitimat, decide sa faca un guvern cu o minoritate parlamentara. Sa adaugam si ideea ca mai multi parlamentari se hotarasc, din varii motive, sa contribuie la investirea guvernului propus. Inseamna asta ca Parlamentul se dezice in vreun fel de atributiile sale constitutionale? Nu, pentru ca atributiile puterii legislative sunt in primul rand legislative:D, alaturi de obligatia de a investi un guvern prin votul unei majoritati la momentul investirii. Pana la urma Nutii doreste doar ca sa existe un guvern legitim.

Singurul lucru "groaznic" in acest scenariu este ca diversii potentati romani care s-au facut guvern in ultimii 20 de ani s-au obisnuit sa fure cu legea in mana. Evident, e mult mai usor sa faci o incredintare directa prin OUG in loc de licitatie atunci cand ai o majoritate confortabila in spate. De fapt asta este si una din principalele probleme ale SISTEMULUI in Romania, cine are majoritate parlamentara face TOT ce isi doreste (inclusiv un guvern care ignora hotarari judecatoresti definitive fara ca asta sa fie motiv de motiune).

Sa presupunem ca avem un guvern normal... fara OUG, fara asumare de raspundere... cu drepturi normale de initiativa legislativa. Un guvern pentru care este direct, complet si unic responsabil executorul-sef proaspat ales. Un guvern care are la dispozitie toate mecanismele pentru a guverna conform legii.

In aceeasi ipoteza, avem si un parlament care are in sfarsit ocazia, fara a mai fi in conflict de interese, sa isi faca treaba pentru care este votat si platit, respectiv:
1. Sa se asigure ca puterea executiva respecta legea si hotararile judecatoresti.
2. Sa verifice activitatea guvernului si sa faca interpelari.
3. Sa controleze exact fiecare justificare a cheltuielilor bugetare, sa constranga la minimizarea deficitului bugetar si sa intervina activ pentru reducerea risipei banului public (acesta fiind si unicul punct in care isi si asuma o parte din responsabilitatea executivului)
4. Se descentralizeze si sa depolitizeze pe cat posibil administratia publica.

Bottom-line, in acest moment, raul cel mai mic si calea prin care se poate evita o bataie generalizata, este un Parlament care isi indeplineste exact si complet misiunea intentionata de constitutie si de principiile unei democratii reale. Sa fim deci optimisti, oricate abuzuri face puterea executiva exista o sansa pentru supravietuirea democratiei atata timp cat exista un parlament:). E o veste buna poate si pentru PDL, guvernul Boc-Solo a dovedit deja ca se poate fura, e drept cu ceva mai mult efort, si fara sustinerea unei majoritati parlamentare:P. Nu in ultimul rand, pe langa un Parlament in sfarsit util, e inca o veste buna si pentru cetateni, care in sfarsit vor putea vedea si vota, fara urma de indoiala, cat de bine traiesc in functie de competenta celor care si-au asumat puterea executiva.

vineri, 4 decembrie 2009

Pace lol

Poezioara trimisa de guvernul Boc:

A-ho, a-ho, copii si frati
E timpul sa v-adunati
Pe Geoana sa nu-l votati
Mogulii sa nu-i ascultati
Crinii sa nu-i mirositi,
Ca s-ar putea sa muriti
Alianta-nfaptuita,
E facuta sa va minta,
Sa fure ce n-au furat,
Atunci cand au guvernat.
Dar, nu-i va lasa BASESCU,
Sa le cante Iliescu!




Revolutia regimului impotriva opozitiei poate continua pe culmi nesperat de apocaliptice:)) Adica, cum se cheama cand oamenii presedintelui cheama niste oameni in piata publica sa faca ordine si sa apere natiunea de demoni? Hmmm, eu i-as spune MINERIADA lol, ca sa nu se mai zica despre istorie ca nu stie de gluma. Evident, asta doar daca le va si multumi dupa.

luni, 30 noiembrie 2009

Realitatea este o conspiratie

Am ignorat o vreme continutul comunicarii, in ideea ca in fantasy bond-ul intre followerii anxiosi si leaderul narcisic (postari anterioare) orice constructie ideologica merge, rationalizari individuale si colective adaugate in sprijinul unui obiectiv sau alegeri deja facute (si da, e adevarat ca toti facem asta, mai mult sau mai putin, dar parca avem in fata o oarecare extrema).

Nu este asa, pentru ca teoria conspiratiei este unul din mecanismele prin care cetatenii sunt infantilizati si redusi la 'popor', dependent de niste parinti care sa il protejeze de dusmani si sa ii asigure linistea sufleteasca, exprimandu-i frustrarile si mangaindu-l pe cap. Aceste mecanisme sunt usor de contra-argumentat punctual, dar schimbarea de paradigma dureaza sute de ani, at best (ex. razboiul rationalismului iluminist and the vengeful return of the Illuminati)

In alte cuvinte, constructia altei realitati, a papusarilor, utila propagandistic si catastrofica pentru buna functionare a unei societati (social capital anybody?), dezvoltare economica si sociala etc. Pentru argumente mai detaliate, la nivel de individ cel putin, intrebati un psiholog. Eu am mai gasit multe citate, dintr-o carte draguta care poate fi foarte usor gasita cu google and other.

Teaser quote: "Radical anti-Semitism rested on the belief that the Jews were a cohesive, politically active subject—that is, a group united on a global scale by racial bonds that transcended any allegiance to nation-states. In the Nazi view, this powerful and autonomous entity, international Jewry, controlled assorted stooges and accomplices who served its evil interests."

The JEWISH ENEMY NAZI PROPAGANDA DURING WORLD WAR II AND THE HOLOCAUST

Jeffrey Herf, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, ISBN 978-0-674-02738-1 (pbk.)

Why did European, especially German, anti-Semitism, which had never led to an effort to murder all of Europe’s Jews before, do so between 1941 and 1945 in the midst of World War II? What changed to make anti-Semitism a rationale for mass murder rather than for a continuation of centuries-old patterns of persecution? The answer lies in what Hitler and his leading propagandists and ideologists had to say about the “Jewish question” in the midst of the war and the Holocaust and in their efforts to shape the narrative of events through propaganda in the controlled press. Rather surprisingly, in view of the vast literature on the subject, The Jewish Enemy is the first book to examine in depth the Nazis’ paranoid anti-Semitic account of the world war. Their story of an innocent Germany besieged by international Jewry intent on its “extermination” served as both the public announcement of and the justification for the Final Solution.

In the jargon of historians, this is a work of modified intentionalism. That is, it examines the ideological intentions of key political actors in the historical conjuncture that was World War II. The Holocaust, however, was not the inevitable outcome of the continuities of German, or of European, history. The long tradition of elite and popular anti-Semitism created a climate of indifference in which the murderers could operate but did not per se inspire a policy of mass murder. The historians’ search for ideological origins has taken us toward but not to the Final Solution.

For it was only in the historically specific circumstances of the war that the most radical and paranoid current of European and especially German anti-Semitism, which Hitler had adopted from the beginning of his political activities, became the key to the German dictatorship’s explanation of ongoing events and thus a causal factor in the evolution of the Holocaust. Hitler and his associates had long believed that anti-Semitism offered the explanatory framework for world history. First in 1939, then still more in 1941, and on up through the last days of the Nazi regime, he and his leading propagandists argued that it was necessary to “exterminate” the Jews before they were able to exterminate Germany and the Germans.

What is characteristic of Nazi propaganda is less the lie than the imposition of a paranoiac pattern on world events. —E.H. Gombrich, Myth and Reality in German Wartime Broadcasts, London, 1969

A quarter century later, Gombrich wrote that Nazi propaganda had created a mythic world by “transforming the political universe into a conflict of persons and personifications” in which a virtuous young Germany fought manfully against evil schemers, above all the Jews. The Jews were the cement for this myth, first in the political battles within Germany and then on the international plane. It was “this gigantic persecution mania, this paranoiac myth that [held] the various strands of German propaganda together.” Gombrich concluded that what characterized Nazi propaganda was “less the lie than the imposition of a paranoiac pattern on world events.”3 During World War II, the propaganda of the Nazi regime repeatedly asserted that an actual political subject, an actor called Jewry or international Jewry, was “guilty” of starting and prolonging the war and that a Jewish international conspiracy was intent on exterminating Germany and the Germans. These statements rested on a paranoia inherent in the Nazis’ radical anti-Semitism. In the context of World War II, these beliefs transformed the centuries-old European anti-Semitism from a justification for traditional forms of persecution into what the historian Norman Cohn called a “warrant for genocide.”

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Faced with expressions of such views by Nazi Germany’s national political leaders, most contemporary Marxists, liberals, and conservatives of the time, as well as a good number of postwar scholars, were skeptical that the Nazis truly believed their own propaganda. And yet an examination of modern political culture draws attention to the causal significance of many irrational and illusory ideological perspectives. In the case of Nazi Germany, historians have amply documented what Saul Friedlander has called Hitler’s early “redemptive anti-Semitism,” which combined paranoid fantasy about an all-powerful international Jewry with promises of redeeming and saving Germany from that pernicious influence.5 Ian Kershaw notes “the all-devouring manic obsession with the Jews” that Hitler displayed in his beer hall tirades in Munich just after World War I.6 This obsession is evident in a speech to a Nazi party meeting of April 6, 1920, when Hitler said, “We don’t want to be emotional anti-Semites who seek to create a mood for pogroms. Rather, we are driven by a pitiless and fierce determination to attack the evil at its roots and to exterminate it root and branch. Every means is justified to reach our goal, even if it means we must make a pact with the devil.” Hitler was the central, decisive historical actor driving events toward the war and the Holocaust. Yet the propaganda of the Nazi party and Nazi regime presented Hitler and Germany as merely responding to the initiatives, injustices, and threats of others. It was a propaganda that trumpeted innocence and self-righteous indignation and turned the power relations between Germany and the Jews upside down: Germany was the innocent victim; Jewry was all powerful. From 1933 to 1939, the translation of anti-Semitic ideology into a policy of persecution was presented as a justified response to what the Jews had done to Germany and the Germans. On January 30, 1939, a distinct shift occurred, as Hitler depicted the war that he was preparing to launch as the last in a long series of acts of aggression by international Jewry against Germany. According to Hitler’s paranoid logic, the Jews had launched the war so that the Nazis would be compelled to wage a war of retaliation against the Jews of Europe. In his speech to the Reichstag on January 30, Hitler made his first unequivocal public threat to exterminate (that is, murder)—not merely to remove, deport, or defeat— “the Jewish race in Europe” in the event that “international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe” brought about a new world war. He publicly repeated the genocidal prophecy on at least six subsequent occasions between January 30, 1939, and February 24, 1943.16 In contrast to his public practice between 1919 and 1939, in the ensuing years Hitler spoke and wrote with unprecedented clarity, bluntness, and frequency about acting on his threats to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

He cast himself in the role of the prophet: the outbreak of World War II was further proof that international Jewry had indeed been out to destroy Germany and the Germans.

Hitler and his leading propagandists were able to entertain completely contradictory versions of events simultaneously, one rooted in the grandiose idea of a master race and world domination, the other in the self-pitying paranoia of the innocent, beleaguered victim.17 Grandiosity and paranoia were two poles of one fanatical ideology.18 The Nazis projected their own aggressive and murderous intentions and policies onto their victims, the Jews most of all. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno captured this aspect of Nazism when they wrote in 1944 that the “blind murderer has always seen his victim as a persecutor against whom he must defend himself.”19 From beginning to end, the narrative of paranoia displayed in the propaganda accompanied and justified the Nazi regime’s grandiose war of aggression and its genocidal policies.

The radical anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany’s wartime propaganda also constituted an interpretive prism through which Nazi leaders viewed and misconstrued events as they unfolded. Indeed, the misperceptions of reality deriving from the anti-Semitic agenda contributed to major blunders and eventually to the Allies’ ability to defeat the Nazis, albeit at horrendous cost. In The Jewish Enemy, I examine the process of translating anti-Semitic ideology into a narrative and tailoring the weekly and daily news to fit that narrative. Like other practitioners of paranoid politics before and after, the Nazis believed they had uncovered deep secrets of modern history and politics, secrets that the great mass of humanity, mired in events, failed to grasp. At the same time that they entered an utterly mythic world, they convinced themselves and millions of others that their Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda) was educating the masses about the people behind the scenes and the realities that were the driving force behind events. Within the “delirious discourse” of radical anti-Semitism, all riddles were solved, all historical contingency was eliminated, and everything became explicable.

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Radical anti-Semitism rested on the belief that the Jews were a cohesive, politically active subject—that is, a group united on a global scale by racial bonds that transcended any allegiance to nation-states. In the Nazi view, this powerful and autonomous entity, international Jewry, controlled assorted stooges and accomplices who served its evil interests. One way in which this view of a Jewish global conspiracy was distinct from less radical, and nongenocidal, forms of Jew hatred was the relative lack of importance it attached to Jews’ presumed physical appearance. Indeed, the Nazis claimed that the Jews were experts at camouflage and that as a result a massive effort at “public enlightenment” was needed to expose them and their aim of world domination. If not identified and destroyed, the Nazi propagandists feared, Jewry would annihilate the German people. As a result, Hitler and his associates publicly declared on numerous occasions that they would “exterminate” Jews before the Jews could exterminate the Germans. The idea of a Jewish a conspiracy was popularized by the mass publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the decades preceding the Nazis’ arrival in power. The accomplishment of the Nazi propagandists was to bring the idea of this conspiracy up to date and to flesh it out with the names and faces of recognizable prominent figures in mid-twentieth-century Europe and the United States. The theory of an international Jewish conspiracy supplied answers to such seemingly difficult questions as, Why did Britain fight on in 1940 rather than negotiate? Why was it likely that the Soviet regime would collapse like a house of cards following the German invasion of June 1941? Why did Franklin Roosevelt oppose Hitler? Why did the anti-Hitler coalition remain intact as the Red Army continued to push toward Central Europe after spring 1943? In the idea of a vastly powerful international Jewish conspiracy operating behind the scenes Nazi leaders believed they had found the answer to these and many other riddles of modern history.

When the Nazi leaders, in private conversations, office memos, or public statements, drew a connection between the Jews and World War II, they were referring to World War II and the Holocaust taken together as one apocalyptic battle. They did not limit the meaning of their war against what they called international Jewry to the Final Solution. Instead, they viewed the Final Solution, the details of which they never discussed in public, as a necessary campaign of retaliation in the context of a broader war of defense waged by Nazi Germany against international Jewry, world Jewry, and less frequently “the Jews.” In the minds and public assertions of the Nazi leaders, they were fighting a single war that pitted Germany and its allies against a colossal international conspiracy of nonequals driven by Jewish figures working behind the scenes, while their non-Jewish accomplices, primarily the Allies, were the enemy’s public facade. The Nazi narrative attributed enormous autonomy and power to the Jews, while denying those attributes to the nominal leaders of the most powerful nations in the world, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, whom it identified as the Jews’ puppets, accomplices, stooges, and servants.

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During the Weimar years, Nazi propagandists learned how to translate fundamental ideological postulates into a continuous narrative of events, a heavily slanted story of good and evil, easily accessible to mass audiences.

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Jews had made economic and social advances for which there were plausible commonsense explanations that had nothing to do with con-spiracy. The Nazis rejected the plausible in favor of the paranoid. As conspiracy theorists had done in blaming the Jews during the Weimar Republic, Nazis propagandists convinced themselves and their followers that commonsense explanations for developments were deceptive and illusory. The Jews’ small numbers, economic vulnerability, and lack of political influence were mere surface phenomena. The truth was that a small number of unseen conspirators controlled the course of national and international events from the shadows of the wings. The speed and ease with which the Nazis’ blizzard of anti-Semitic legislation destroyed the economic and social position of Jews in Germany did not change the Nazis’ view of Jewish power.75 By the end of 1933, 37,000 of the 525,000 Jews in Germany had already left the country.76 To anyone not imbued with Nazi ideology, it was obvious that the Nazi regime had launched a campaign of persecution against a small minority that had no access to the instruments necessary to wage “war” against Nazi Germany or any other nation-state.