Artists summoned by Chancellery for national service

The “state run media” and liberal blogs were aghast a few weeks ago when Rush Limbaugh took the time to point out that the acronym NAZI is short for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus), a political and economic movement lead by Adolf Hitler; and that a head to head comparison of Nazi beliefs and actions matched best with the modern American Democrat Party. For years commentators and authors have alluded to the Nazi movement as “right wing“ and to the average American such allusions have taken firm hold so that we have none less than the Speaker of the House suggesting that those who oppose the Democrats’ agenda are Nazi fascists wearing “Swatsikas“ to town hall meetings.

In fact, as Limbaugh pointed out, the Nazis were anti-big business, irrational environmentalists, they were big on government work projects, they were anti-vivisectionists and anti-smokers, they were for abortion and euthanasia, they were opposed to citizens owning and keeping fire arms and they encouraged citizens to spy on their neigbors and report violations to the government authorities. We have seen clear examples of all these ideas either implemented or discussed by Obama and congressional Democrats. Yes, National Socialism and the modern Democratic Party have much in common, more so than the usual comparison to Republicans and those on the right. Once again, Rush was right and that makes the Left crazy.

Joseph Goebbels was the Reichsminister of Propaganda under Hitler and he was very good at his job—how else to mobilize 87 million otherwise sane and moral people to back one of the most murderous and diabolical men in history. Goebbels went to work in 1933 to spread the word of a new and powerful Germany that was going to bring lasting peace to all of Europe.

Goebbels knew the German psyche and exploited every avenue to turn the sentiments of the people toward a romantic notion of Teutonic Knights on a mission to save all Christendom; a return to the glory of a mostly mythological past that was so much more appealing than the future dictated by the Treaty of Versaille.

Goebbels turned to the arts community for help in his efforts in the earliest days of the Third Reich. He enlisted artists, musicians, actors and film makers to produce the hundreds of posters, songs and propaganda films such as Triumph des Willens produced by famed writer and director Leni Reifenstahl. That all this was effective is attested by the millions of lives lost and the destruction of large swaths of Europe between 1939 and 1945.

In the news today is yet another Obama initiative that harkens to the days of the Third Reich and Joseph Goebbels in particular. Drudge has a link to an article by Patrick Courrielche, titled “The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” in which he reports on a conference call that he participated in.
(All emphasis in quotes added by me.)

“On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August 10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include ‘a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!’”
[…]
“Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama’s call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were “health care” and “energy and environment.” The service was to be attached to the President’s United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans.

“It sounded, how should I phrase it…unusual, that the NEA would invite the art community to a meeting to discuss issues currently under vehement national debate. I decided to call in, and what I heard concerned me.”

The people organizing and directing the conference included Yosi Sergant, the Director of Communications for the National Endowment for the Arts; Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve.

“We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these “focus areas” as we had brought to Obama’s presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues.”

The National Endowments for the Arts, a mostly government funded program apparently has been instructed by the Obama administration to use its influence and by inference, its threat of de-funding, to encourage artists to join the Obama team as propagandists just as the Nazis had in the thirties. Americans should be alarmed by the fact that this administration is willing to put pressure on any and all organizations and agencies, regardless their stated mission, to advance their agenda, even when Americans have declared unequivocally that they are opposed.

Such tactics are the rule in Chicago as they were in Berlin under the Nazis but is this really America? Shall we accept such arrogance and lawlessness without protest? Such was the case in an earlier period and the course of history was changed for all time. We might have hoped that we had learned something since then.

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