By Blogdog
Contributor profile | More stories

Ever since the beginning of the era of nuclear deterrence, the US presidency has acquired a new power which exceeds all existing enumerated, implied, or inherent powers which previously existed. This overwhelming power is located in the presidential control of thermonuclear weapons, a power for which allows the president to exercise a de facto life or death decision over hundreds of millions of Americans. As we witness the absurd low comedy of the Republican presidential debates, and the stylized kabuki theater of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, we should recall that these figures are attempting to acquire life-and-death power over all of us. Has any of them shown even a glimmer of qualification to wield this awesome power? We think not.

In recent days, some historical insights have reminded us once again how dramatic this issue can become. One such historical revelation involves the active consideration of using nuclear weapons against Afghanistan by the Bush-Cheney administration in the days immediately after 9/11. The public had already learned that Cheney made a serious bid for the unilateral bombing of Syria in the summer of 2007, but was rebuffed in the secret counsels of the Bush administration. At that time, the network of warmongers for whom Cheney was a spokesman then appear to have fallen back on illegal secret government methods, specifically the rogue B-52 of late August and early September, 2007. Less than a year later, Cheney once again demanded actions tending towards general war, in this case involving US bombing of the southern end of the tunnel which was the main transportation route between Georgia and nearby parts of the Russian Federation. This was also rejected in the secret counsels of Bush 43. So this makes three separate occasions when the Bush 43 regime came close to pitching the United States into catastrophic war, without publicity and without any constitutional legal process.

Our new insights into this come from Michael Steiner, who during the time after 9/11 served as a top adviser to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Steiner recently gave an interview to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel in which he exposed the shocking fact that the US came close to first use nuclear aggression in 2001-2002. Steiner told Spiegel:

Urged on by the interviewers, Steiner became very explicit about the war crime Bush and Cheney came very close to committing:

Now let us imagine some sort of grave international crisis or even confrontation in the near future, and let us assume that Donald Trump is in the White House. We are already familiar with a number of Trump’s similarities to the Italian and German fascism of the interwar period.

Donald Trump

Trump follows German fascism in attempting to scapegoat ethnic minorities for the destructive effects of an economic crisis which Trump’s close associates on Wall Street were actually responsible for creating. Trump’s program amounts to a systematic harassment and persecution of the US Latino minority and would, if actually implemented, create an overall fascist police state dictatorship here in the United States.

Trump operates explicitly on the basis of the Nietzschean superman who scorns, reviles and rises above traditional morality, convention, legality, and institutions by sheer demonic force of will. The antinomian watchword for Nietzsche was “Alles ist erlaubt” – all crimes are permitted. Arthur Schopenhauer, another precursor of Nazism, wrote a book entitled The World As Will and Imagination (1818-1844); Trump could have given this same title to his own The Art of the Deal.

How to force Mexico to pay for the wall he wants to build? Obviously through the Triumph of the Will of this neo-Superman. How will Trump deliver on his promise to make China stop cheating the US? Clearly through yet another Triumph of the Will. How will Trump “police” the Iran nuclear accord? Here again, including a through the Triumph of the Will, so stop asking silly questions about who will pay, who will be expropriated, and who will die.

The Italian dictator Mussolini was once asked what his program was. He told a journalist that he did not have a program and did not want one, since they were already too many programs. Responding to a look of skepticism, he ranted on that fascist good government would be guaranteed not by programs, but rather by the superior qualities of the fascists themselves– their strength and their determination.

Benito Mussolini

Another convergence between Trump and fascism is seen in the targets of Trump’s reactionary revolution or counter-revolution. Trump says that the existing politicians or political class are simply stupid, and have to be replaced. This is similar to Mussolini and Hitler, who always spoke of their “revolutions” as the process of purging the bourgeois, petty bourgeois, peasant and pro-labor politicians who were then in power. The fascist revolution meant that fascists would take over the executives, legislatures, and judiciaries of the countries in question. Notice that the real ruling classes, namely the bankers and financiers, are let off the hook entirely. Trump is himself a creature of Wall Street. Without Wall Street bank loans, Trump’s fabled real estate empire could not exist. (Trump’s 1990 Vanity Fair interview notes that the Wall Street banks were “throwing money” at the Donald. So it is not surprising that The Donald has nothing to say about taxing Wall Street’s speculative turnover, nor about the need to seize and nationalize the Federal Reserve System to finance a US economic recovery.

And where did Trump get his staccato and gesticulating rhetorical style? Hitler may in fact have played a direct role in the way Trump developed his act. Business Insider recently called attention to some disclosures made by Trump’s ex-wife Ivana a quarter century ago:

“According to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump once told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that her husband, real-estate mogul Donald Trump, now a leading Republican presidential candidate, kept a book of Hitler’s speeches near his bed. “Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed … Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist,” Marie Brenner wrote. Hitler was one of history’s most prolific orators, building a genocidal Nazi regime with speeches that bewitched audiences….“When Brenner asked Trump about how he came to possess Hitler’s speeches, “Trump hesitated” and then said, “Who told you that?” “I don’t remember,” Brenner reportedly replied. Trump then recalled, “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” Brenner added that Davis did acknowledge that he gave Trump a book about Hitler. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf,” Davis reportedly said. “I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.” After Trump and Brenner changed topics, Trump returned to the subject and reportedly said, “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.” In the Vanity Fair article, Ivana Trump told a friend that her husband’s cousin, John Walter, “clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler,’ when visiting Trump’s office.”^[2] at the interview suggests that this cousin might have given the Donald his copy of Hitler’s speeches. Fred Trump, the tycoon’s father, reportedly had a strong ethnic identification as a German, which he concealed lest he be deserted by his many Jewish tenants. Here is a complex of issues which ought to be clarified before the presidential process goes much further.

For our purposes, the lesson is already clear: a megalomaniac like Trump must never be permitted to acquire control of the US nuclear deterrent. The same goes for every single one of the Republican presidential candidates, since each of them has pledged to put the United States on a path towards war by virtue of their rejection of diplomacy. The same strictures can be extended to Hillary Clinton, who is in fact a neocon. Bernie Sanders presents more blurred areas and gray areas, but the F-35 Senator has never really explained his plans for breaking the US addiction to aggression. Jim Webb does not look promising. Martin O’Malley requires more study.

The Tax Wall Street Party therefore concludes that the proper answer is none of the above. What then is the strategy? Stay tuned.

Comments

Your Comments