History repeating itself

The Characteristics of Cults: People are becoming shadow versions of themselves and they don’t even realize it.

The Germans Are Back! (23/11-20): “Unfortunately, once this kind of thing gets started, and reaches the stage we are currently experiencing, more often than not, it does not stop, not until cities lie in ruins or fields are littered with human skulls. It might take us ten or twelve years to get there, but, make no mistake, that’s where we’re headed, where totalitarianism is always headed … if you don’t believe me, just ask the Germans.”

Fascism Anyone? by Laurence W. Britt, followed by a critique by Chip Berlet

Micro-Chip Technology Resurrects Tattoo Identification + Medical Surveillance (4/3-20): This echoes trans-national corporation IBM and their business relationship with Nazi Germany’s Third Reich in the 1930s and their subsequent collaboration during World War II.

Investigative journalist and author Edwin Black explained how IBM’s technology helped facilitate Nazi genocide against Jews and other undesirables through the creation and tabulation of punch cards based upon national census data.

Aside from administrative and logistical support, IBM machines were used in concentration camps. Many prisoners had their details passed through the Labour Assignment Office and assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith machine number, 44673. This five-digit number in the punch card system was designed to track prisoners in the camps, most notably the slave labour camp at Auschwitz. The number was the precursor to the numerical tattoo stamped upon the arm of an individual and deemed more cost-effective and efficient.

IBM Hollerith Card Processing Machine used by the Nazis circa 1940s

There is no doubt that the targeted identification of Jews and other racial groupings for: “… asset confiscation, ghettoisation, deportation, and ultimately extermination” took place in a way that is logistically and insanely ambitious. The Nazis were able to kill as many as they did with the help of IBM’s pioneering computer work which required: “… generations of communal, church, and governmental records all across Germany—and later throughout Europe—[to be cross-indexed] a task so monumental, it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.” [8] That’s where IBM came in. And its legacy for number crunching computation has remained, the profits of its participation in the logistical side of the holocaust having kept it afloat for all these years.

So, what has IBM been up to recently?

No wonder the Milgram experiment has started to circulate again. This experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, and it found that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly. Unexpected? Devastating. And proven through history, unfortunately, the one we tend to repeat...

Circulation of Milgram experiment reminded some of us about Solomon Asch who was one of Milgram's professors. Asch became famous by conducting the conformity experiments which showed that individual behaviour can be influenced by group behaviour, with individuals conforming to group perspectives, even when choices made by the group are obviously incorrect.

And unfortunately, this has become blatantly obvious during this clusterfuck year. When will you/people have enough of conforming to the authoritarian dictatorships and their mandates all around the globe? Without reaching critical mass soon, we're doomed indeed.

The Minds of Men (2018), is a 3+ year investigation into the experimentation, art, and practice of social engineering and mind control during the Cold War — a mind-bending journey into the past that gives startling insight into the world we are living in today. You may watch it here.

More than 100 years of scientific and medical advances have done little to change how the world responds to a pandemic. Meanwhile, a new study looks at how the 1918 outbreak helped lead to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany - one example of the ways such a crisis can dramatically change humanity's trajectory: Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933

Kristian Blickle examined how the German political system reacted to the influenza pandemic that struck the world between 1918 and 1920. This paper uses several historical data-sets from Germany to show that influenza mortality in 1918-1920 was correlated with lower per-capita spending, especially on services consumed by the young, in the following decade and the share of votes received by extremist parties in 1932 and 1933. These results are robust when controlling for demographics, population changes, city-level wages, city-level exposure to hyperinflation in 1923, and regional unemployment, and when instrumenting influenza mortality.

"1931" is a fast-paced book on how the debt crisis and fiscal austerity supported the rise of the Nazis in early 1930s. It gets you thinking about how well-meaning people end up doing things that undermine democracy and international cooperation.

Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The German crisis also contributed decisively to the rise of Hitler. Soon after the crisis, the Nazi Party became the largest party of the country which paved the way for Hitler's eventual seizure of power in 1933.

The reason for the financial collapse was Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold currency which condemned the government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As the political resistance to this austerity policy grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default.

Hitler managed to profit from the crisis, because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate. Sadly enough, Germany's creditors hesitated too long to take the wind out of Hitler's sails by offering debt relief.

In 1931,Tobias Straumann reveals the story of the fatal crisis, demonstrating how a debt trap contributed to the rapid financial and political collapse of a European country, and to the rise of the Nazi Party.

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Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism, abridged Eco's list from his essay Ur-Fascism:

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Tyranny and Eugenics through Public Health, Bioterrorism, and Vaccines Series: Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5 — Part 6 — Part 7

Willie Lynch letter: The Making of a Slave

This speech was said to have been delivered by Willie Lynch on the bank of the James River in the colony of Virginia in 1712. Lynch was a British slave owner in the West Indies. He was invited to the colony of Virginia in 1712 to teach his methods to slave owners there.

The whole EU abstained "on procedural grounds"?!? Because Russia backed it up?!?EU abstains from UN vote on ‘Nazism’

Freedom From Choice (2014 ), powerful documentary about the loss of your personal freedoms.

Life is about choice. What we eat, what we read, who we elect; every day we make choices that determine how we want to live.

But what if these choices are just an illusion?

In an era where regulations and red tape rule every industry, where lobby groups and big business wield more influence than ever before, our daily choices have become increasingly limited. And with all our options so deliberately handpicked, are we really making a choice at all?

This documentary examines the current state of life and personal choice today. Experts from many different fields offer a frank and startling look at the hidden limitations in our daily lives. Focusing on key areas such as food, medicine, finance, and media, Freedom From Choice provides viewers with a glimpse at the myriad of ways their lives are being dictated, and tells us who stands to gain.