They are coming for the Muslims, and they will not stop there.
Registries exist and we have no problem with some of them. Sex offenders, known bad guys, that sort of thing. They really aren’t even registries, but records governed by due process.
Then there are some others that we allow in our post 9/11 world, but that never would have been allowed in a former, less frightened, less ignorant version of our society, such as the “No Fly List.” That list may actually be a good idea, but there is no known due process involved, so it ends up constituting one small step in the direction that Germany went in the 1930s. Until very recently, though, most people probably did not consider the possibility that that one small step meant much. But you know the old saying. The longest journey begins with a single step, and at the moment, we are moving along on that journey at a running pace.
Registries for normal categories of normal people … Jews, Japanese, Muslim … are the next step in the process of interment.
And no, that was not a grammatical error. It goes like this: Registries or labeling with yellow stars – Ghettoization or Internment – Elimination/holocaust – interment in mass graves. Racism left unchecked will inevitably follow this course because when push comes to shove, one always moves in that direction if … well, if that racism is left unchecked. It is the ugly side of the Malthusian process. You know this already.
Herr Trump is moving us steadily in that direction. Some don’t see it happening. Most people didn’t see most of the earlier holocausts happening. We can look to history to understand that. For me, I never saw the Rwandan Genocide happening, even though I was there, working along side Hutu and Tutsi people who were all getting along just fine. Then it happened.
There is a certain amount of mealy mouthed yammering disguised as debate about this. Ignore most of that and listen carefully to George Takei:
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The irony is that (I suspect) if Trump voters were placed in internment camps, most social ills in the USA would utterly vanish.
I would like to think that George Takei is right about this country being a country of laws and due process.
Then I see the news today that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is Trump’s nominee for Attorney General. Mr. Sessions was rejected in 1986 by the then-Republican-majority Senate for a Federal judge position because he was too racist.
And both the Trump campaign and Clinton campaign are now saying that FBI Director James Comey’s intervention eleven days before the election tipped the balance in Trump’s favor. There are strong arguments that this action violated the Hatch Act.
Guantánamo? Still open, as far as I know.
I would like to believe Mr. Takei on the subject of rule of law, but I am not seeing a lot of evidence to support that view.
We see again how easy it is to use hate and fear as a tool in politics and life. We use the example of Hitler but seldom look at the US’s past. Just in my life time we’ve had hate/fear of communism, gays, aides, and Muslims (I am sure there are many more).
Trump brings this country to brink; do we continue his fear and hate mongering or do find a better path.
In Bhutan they strive for Gross National Happiness (GNH). Under trump I fear the US will strive for GNH but in this case it would be Gross National Hate.
“Oh my god, is Trump an FDR?”
The difference, you ignorant piece of crap dodson, is that fdr is roundly and correctly condemned for what he did by members of both sides of the political spectrum. Bigots, racists, and low-lifes like you have no problem at all with trump’s plans.
Just now, Der Furor’s faithful minions are out there “Making America Hate Again”…
Dean, I’m not so much afraid of “Trump’s plans” (as he has damn few of them) as I am afraid of the demons in Congress who are rubbing their evil little hands together with glee at the prospect of getting Trump to rubber-stamp their bills to destroy American society and culture.
I don’t think Trump has plotted his course through life with any of these goals in mind, and I don’t think he ran for office with the intent to do what these congress-creatures seek.
They may be daily burning incense and sacrificing babies to their gods of the underworld, and smelling victory at last… My holdout hope is that they will find Trump to be, overall, a pragmatic narcissist who is too damn difficult to control and generally determined to do things “his way” — and will refuse to be anyone’s rubber stamp.
He didn’t destroy the GOP in the race to the White House only to stop there — or to rebuild it as it was. He wants to reform it to his own glorification. We’ll soon see what form that will take…
@Brainstorms:
It is interesting to see the gyrations Trump’s group is going through for appointments. The fact that he has selected a joke like Sessions any post is concerning – especially given Session’s comment some years ago that he saw no problem with the KKK, doesn’t like the voting rights act, and referred to an African American federal prosecutor as “boy”. It is even more concerning that when Sessions was nominated by President Reagan (who was, until now, the most unqualified and most racist person to serve as president) to be a federal judge REPUBLICANS held up the appointment because, in essence, of what a despicable person he was. He still is a terrible person, but integrity and morals no longer matter to the right.
I did get one laugh when I heard Romney will meet with Trump. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe for a second there is any way Romney will get offered any position in Trump’s world: this is more of a formality and a chance for Trump to send the “how do you like me now bitch?” message to Romney and his wing. (Not that I think that, in sane world, Romney would be a good choice for any position above dog catcher, but this isn’t a sane world, and given some of the loons with zero experience Trump is pushing, Romney would be some amount better.)
Um, watch his appointments. I hear pundits trying to find a common ideological thread in them and find none so far. I’d like to suggest that he rewards loyalists and after that loudmouth, ignorant blowhards, IOW the kinds of people with whom he identifies and feels comfortable; people who will kiss his but and help normalize in the public’s mind the extremist jackasses with whom he surrounds himself.
…call it a kind of crank magnetism…
Dear friends read: Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust, Three Rivers Press, 2001.
Everything what registration can do, beyond imagination, is in this book, and it happened by close cooperation of Nazi governments with IBM.
Ask jewish employees of IBM whether IBM has acknowledged this towards her jewish employees after the publication of Black’s study. You will be amazed.
America has a reputation on this field in the most horrible sense of the word.
There is only one solution: all people, in this case all people in the USA and abroad must refuse as one block to have them registered or brandmarked on belief or race, historic descent, etcetera. Don’t wear any label given out by the state or whatever organization. Netherlands, Laren NH, Friday, 18 November 2016, 20.50 PM Dutch time.
I give you the reviews of this book found on the WWW.
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM’s strategic alliance with
Nazi Germany – beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power
and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its
plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling
technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of
the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s. Only after Jews were identified – a
massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately – could they be
targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved
labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational
challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no
computer existed.
But IBM’s Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company’s
custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith svstems, Hitler was able to
automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at
the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate
European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully
assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything
in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in
censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of
railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by
one, anticipating the Reich’s needs. They did not merely sell the machines and
walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the
sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate
collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral
agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries — all undertaken as
the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century’s greatest minds,
IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of
profit.
Only with IBM’s technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the
staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of
the last great mysteries of Germany’s war against the Jews – how did Hitler get
the names?
What Reviewers Have Said About
IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST
“An explosive new book. . . . Backed by exhaustive research, Black’s case is
simple and stunning.” — Michael Hirsh, Newsweek
“Black’s book is most interesting when he is dealing with Watson’s stubborn and
unsuccessful determination to continue in control of IBM’s German operation
without appearing to be doing so. He was able to cut off direct relations between IBM in the U.S. and the Germans while continuing to deal with them indirectly. He was a master of subterfuge and made a fine art of being in a position to deny collaboration with the Nazis while operating through subsidiaries who were responsive to his every wish.
. . . And he never forbade them to supply IBM machines that were used in sending
people to camps, which they did.” — Gordon A. Craig, New York Review of Books
“Black establishes beyond dispute that IBM Hollerith machines significantly
advanced Nazi efforts to exterminate Jewry…. IBM and the Holocaust is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust.”
— Christopher Simpson, Washington Post Book World
“Black’s study . . . contains a wealth of unknown or little-known details.
The author convincingly shows the relendess efforts made by IBM to maximize profit by selling its machines and its punch cards to a country whose criminal record would soon be widely recognized.” — Saul Friedlander, Los Angeles Times
“IBM and the Holocaust is a disturbing book — all the more so because its author
doesn’t prescribe what should be done about sins committed more than half a century ago. It is left to readers to decide.” — Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune
“Black’s book is shocking. Its contents go against the grain of all that is dear to naive images of corporate America. . . . This book will be a case study in corporate ethics for years to come.” — Robert Urekew, Midstream
“IBM and the Holocaust is an ambitious book … an important contribution to Holocaust studies.” — John Friedman, The Nation
“The book adds much to our knowledge of the Holocaust and World War II. Black
convincingly demonstrates the extent to which it [IBM technology], was central to
the operation of the Third Reich.” — Terry W. Hartle, Christian Science Monitor
“Black makes a case that shames the IBM of the mid-20th century…. There will be no question … in the minds of readers that IBM officials had the ability to
understand the task their machines were performing. The book succeeds as a piece
of excruciatingly documented journalism.” — Karen Sandstrom, Cleveland Plain
Dealer
“Black’s book is so enlightening [because] it paints a richly textured picture of how a man [Watson], and an entire company, can ignore all sense of morality while not once transgressing the lines of business ethics. If nothing else, this book should be required reading for every first-year MBA student.” — Sam Jaffe, Businessweek.com
“Black’s argument that IBM made millions from its association with the Nazis seems
almost impossible to refute.” — John Mark Eberhart, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Black’s book … is an ugly story, hidden for years, told by a master craftsman
in a compelling way. More than just another Holocaust tale . . . it’s a chilling lesson.”
— Richard Pachter, Miami Herald
“More than 15 million people have visited the Holocaust Museum and seen the IBM
machine there. Surely some have raised the question: How could this prestigious
corporation possibly be linked to such a heinous stain on human history? With
empirical evidence, Edwin Black has supplied the answer. IBM and the Holocaust
makes an empirical statement. Edwin Black has made his case.” — Louisville Courier- Journal
“This damning chronicle of IBM’s collusion with the Nazis exposes, in horrific
detail, the corporation’s opportunistic ride on Hitler’s tail.”
— Charles Winecoff, Entertainment Weekly
“This is the stuff of corporate nightmare. IBM, one of the world’s richest
companies, is about to be confronted with evidence of a truly shameful history. Edwin Black reveals Big Blue’s vital role in the Holocaust.” — Sunday Times, Great
Britain “Black … shows, in compelling detail, that IBM, ‘the solutions company’ was also the company of the Final Solution…. It is a distinctive contribution to the history of the time. It wholly justifies Black’s years of toil. . . a terrible warning from this brilliantly excavated past.” — Peter Preston, The Guardian, Great Britain
“The computer group IBM is haunted by its past. Edwin Black’s book now reveals
the company’s involvement in the Holocaust. . . . Previously the Nazi past of ‘Big
Blue'” was hardly ever a topic. . . . But now IBM is in the dock. Black’s
meticulous research documents just how precisely IBM managers were kept informed about the whereabouts of their machines.” — Christian Habbe, Der Spiegel, Germany
“Black’s . . . book is the first to give the general public a detailed account of how an American corporation profited from intimate ties with the Nazis. It strips the veneer from the cherished myth of the purity and patriotism of American business.”
— Marilyn Henry, Jerusalem Post
“IBM and the Holocaust raises startling questions about the technology giant’s
involvement with Nazi government officials — and throws the company’s wartime ethics into serious doubt.” — Jessica Reaves, Time.com
“Black . . . documents IBM’s sins with chilling discipline…. IBM and the
Holocaust lays out in numbing detail the terrible deeds of bureaucrats and
business leaders In the end, thought this book has a subtler story to tell, one frighteningly relevant to our lives today. IBM and the Holocaust isn’t about evil men at a particularly bloody point in recent history so much as it’s about the dawn of the modern information age.”
— Douglas Perry, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Edwin Black has put together an impressive array of facts which result in a shocking conclusion never realized before: IBM collaborated with the Third Reich. This book should be read by everyone interested in the ‘under history’ of the Second World War.”
— Simon Wiesenthal, director, Jewish Documentation Center, Vienna
“Black’s great contribution is that he has tenaciously collected a lot of information and combined it in an original way. Few others have thought to place this
information in the same context, to see what inferences can be drawn. Black’s
history makes two chilling observations. The first is that the Holocaust was possible because the Nazis had access not only to guns and gas but also to cutting-edge census technology. The second is that the Nazis had access to this technology because IBM, in
its paranoid zeal, worked very hard to maintain its market dominance of the global market in data processing.” — Anthony Sebok, CNN.com
“A shocking account of IBM’s complicity with the Nazis is a reminder that people
bear moral responsibility for the actions of the corporation — a point that critics have failed to grasp.” — Jack Beatty, The Atlantic Online
“IBM and the Holocaust is a story that must be read if one is to understand how
Hitler and the Nazis were able to implement their Final Solution to exterminate European Jewry…. Once again, Edwin Black has hit the mark.”
— Abraham H. Foxman, national director, Anti-Defamation League
“A tremendous, timely work. Neglected for more than 50 years, the sordid records
disclosing IBM’s collaboration with the Nazi regime have now been exhumed by
Edwin Black.” — Robert Wolfe, former chief National Archives expert for
captured German records and Nuremberg documentation
“Leaves no room for deniability.” — Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman,
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
“Edwin Black’s groundbreaking book, IBM and the Holocaust, made a great impression on me. It documents, for the first time, that an American company, IBM, bears a good deal of the moral responsibility for the preparation of the persecution of the Nazi victims. IBM and the Holocaust confirms the belief that the Holocaust was not only a cruel, unprecedented crime, but also an enormous bureaucratic undertaking.
Franclszek Piper, historian, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Acknowledgments
This is what registration looks like
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e0/14/7d/e0147d1d892430e965725c8b6ce3b22c.jpg
Eric Lund – unfortunately the only penalty that comes with the Hatch Act is that of removal from office
https://hatchact.uslegal.com/penalties/
Completely off topic, but thank you Greg for introducing me to Nataniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. Saw them last night in Manchester (UK) and they had a packed house with them all the way. It was wonderful to be taken right out of our troubles for a night.
Not sure about the US, but in Australia this is neatly accomplished for the ethnicity and religions of all citizens by the national census.
And Gerrit Bogaers might be interested to know that the 2016 Australian census was (incompetently) managed by IBM.
Gerrit Bogaers – If you are interested in learning more about the complicity of American and International Business and industry with the Nazis during WWII, and assuming you haven’t read it already, Charles Higham’s “ Trading with the Enemy” is an eye opener.”
.
“Indeed, in the case of ITT, perhaps the most flagrant of the corporations in its outright dealings with the enemy, Hitler and his postmaster general, the venerable Wilhelm Ohnesorge, strove to impound the German end of the business. But even they were powerless in such a situation: the Gestapo leader of counterintelligence, Walter Schellenber, was a prominent director and share-holder of ITT by arrangement with New York- and even Hitler dared not cross the Gestapo.” Finding out about the surprising number of business relationships between General Motors, Ford, Shell, Chase Bank, and the Third Reich is astounding and sobering. Higham’s 1983 book doesn’t mention IBM, so I’m guessing that IBM had covered their tracks more carefully up to that point than the other corporations mentioned.
Did you know that GM received war reparations after the war from the US government, for German GM plants that were bombed by the allies in WWII… plants that I believe were ultimately used by the Germans to manufacture war munitions that were used against the allies… and plants that GM apparently received profits from during at least part of the war. .
So we have a lot of evidence of the ability of corporations to be inhuman monsters, and for them to aid and abet other inhuman monsters.
The question now is, what do we do with that information, assuming that it is accurate?
What does a member of a species do when that member realizes that it is living among other supposedly civilized members who actually have a tendency to express behaviors more suitable to T. Rex?
I have also a copy of ‘IBM and the Holocaust’ by Edwin Black and have read it twice since buying it over a decade ago and found it compelling
Another excellent source is ‘War is a Rackett’ by US Marine General Smedley Butler who courageously exposed the activities of a cabal of big business leaders trying to throw in their lot with pre WW2 Germany.
Then of course there is Prescott Bush who helped Hitler’s rise to power.
There were also forces at work in Britain, some with links to those implicated in the above.