("Quid coniuratio est?")
DAVE EMORY -- JULY 5, 1992
Observations on America's 216th Birthday
[...continued...]
DAVE EMORY [continues]:
Well indeed, that is all that is gonna be required of most people
to allow the things that are overtaking this country now to
continue. And that is to "go along with the program", keep up
with your neighbors, conform, don't protest. After all, things
are basically, on the surface at least, they appear the same --
if you can ignore all the homeless people and other obvious signs
of social disintegration. But the forms are all there, all re-
assuring.
And one of the things that the Nazis used very effectively was the human inclination to conform. One of the things that made it easy for them to round up entire ghetto areas of Jews and ship them to the concentration camps was that they rounded up the entire neighborhood at once. And people who had spent their entire lives "keeping up with the Joneses" so to speak, doing what their neighbors did, doing what their compatriots did, simply went along. Everybody was going onto the train, so they went too. And it was also, it's also worth noting, that in areas, Jewish areas of cities, the social conditions were allowed to deteriorate to an enormous extent: there was starvation, there was typhus. The situation got so bad that many of the ultimate victims of the Holocaust said to themselves, "Well..." (when they were told that they were being "relocated", perhaps to an area in the Ukraine or someplace else) they said, "Well... What can be worse than this?" So they got on the trains. Well, they found out soon enough.
But conformity is an absolutely deadly thing in the face of Fascism. And ultimately, those of us here in the United States are gonna have to stop conforming. Even though things may look O.K. on the surface -- all the forms are there. All very re- assuring. The houses, the cinemas...
I personally don't like the summertime. The country is silly enough from September through May. But June, July, and August, this country gets really, really "out to lunch". There's an enormous amount of "silly power" loose in the United States during the summertime, and this summer is no exception. People who perhaps weren't all that serious year round, begin paying attention to recreational activities exclusively. Certainly it's nice to enjoy the outdoors. Everyone needs a vacation. But things get seriously stupid in the United States during the summertime. And they're stupid enough all year round: we've got all the jive movies, you know, "Batman, Part 6" or "Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 27: Freddie does it in the road". And people really go "out to lunch" from June through the end of August. It is my fear that if, if George Bush counters his very, very sorry position in the polls by precipitating an incident which could result in partial or complete martial law, it will happen in the summertime when everybody is "out to lunch". {1}. And it is time, I think, for those of us who take our lives and this country seriously to stop conforming, to stop "going along with the Joneses". Because as I said, the only "Jones" you're gonna wind up keeping up with is the late "Reverend Jim" of the Peoples' Temple.
One of my personal role models, an individual who I admire a great deal both as an artist, as a human being, and also as a political animal, was the very famous playwright, George Bernard Shaw. I would note, incidentally, that George Bernard Shaw was very active as an anti-Fascist, one of the very first critics of the Mussolini regime in Italy. And his is an example that I think we could all profit by.
As I mentioned at the top of the broadcast, when people ask me to characterize myself politically, I refer to myself as an anti- Fascist. The vast majority of my political views would be seen as liberal/progressive. Some of them, such as my opposition to gun control or my support for the P.O.W./M.I.A. situation with Harry Martin, would be seen as traditionally conservative. Although actually, if you took a look at the CIA connection to the gun control movement, the contingency plans to establish martial law, and if you took a look at the apparent involvement of some covert operators in Southeast Asia, in the drug traffic there -- and it was as we've seen, as we have seen with the Kerry subcommittee's report, covert operations specialists were left behind in Viet Nam and Laos and Cambodia, and the government has deceived with this regard. So actually, I think if one were to examine my political views, they would all be seen as progressive.
But I take a lot of heat, both from the "right" and the "left". I have tremendous admiration for the struggle put up by the Soviet Union and the various partisan movements, such as the partisan movement in Yugoslavia. I have tremendous admiration for their resistance to Fascism -- that gets me in a lot of trouble with more conservative listeners. On the other hand, I've always viewed Marxism as unworkable, a 19th-century idealist system, and like all idealist systems, whether it's supply-side economics or Marxism, it was destined always, in my opinion, to fail. That alienates a lot of people on the "left".
The listenership to this program goes from the far "left" to the far "right". Organizations like the Revolutionary Communist Party on the "left", to the John Birch Society on the "right", all tune in. And I don't take any truck with either of those two extremes. But they all tune in. I guess, to me at least, that's a certain amount of indication for the hard documentary format that I use here. People want information and they will get it, they know, on this program. The constructions that the "right" and "left" put on what I have to say... The far "right" and the far "left" of course differ. But they all tune in.
But I take a lot of heat from people who are doctrinaire of the "right" or "left", because I am not an ideologue. I have always seen political ideology as a secularized form of religious dogma. And there is nothing more inimical to human understanding, in my opinion, than religious dogma.
And that is not something which a lot of people are willing to give up. There's an awful lot of ideologues around. And again, I take a lot of heat from the "right" or the "left"... "right" and "left", I should say. Harry Martin, who I think is arguably the most important journalist in this country right now, is a political conservative. We disagree strongly about many, many things. But we agree about the rule of law and the need for Constitutional authority. Plus, Harry has some excellent contacts within the national security establishment and is quite obviously working with elements that are opposed to George Bush and some of the martial law plans that are going down right now.
But I take a lot of heat over my alliance with Harry Martin. And Harry Martin, in turn, catches a lot of heat about his alliance with me. He works in Napa [, California], the driving force behind the Napa Sentinel. Napa's an extremely reactionary community. Harry is now running for Napa County Supervisor. He's being called a "card carrying, leftist liberal" because of his criticisms of the national security establishment.
So, if you're gonna be a free-thinker, if you're gonna do what you feel is right, then you're gonna catch a lot of hell from the ideologues of both the "right" and the "left". But I feel it's essential for people to break the pattern of conformity, if they are going to stem the rush towards Fascism which is going on in this country.
As I said, one of my role models has long been George Bernard Shaw, an anti-Fascist as well as a great artist. George Bernard Shaw had an interesting observation. He said that, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."
Well, I think that is an accurate statement. And an awful lot of us, I think, are gonna have to become "unreasonable people" in the not-too-distant future if we are going to survive.
And by way of underscoring George Bernard Shaw's political philosophy -- a very important political philosophy -- I'm going to play a section of a tape. I played this a few years ago, and I think there's some very, very profound insights into political, social, and intellectual reality, and I think those insights are vital for us to assimilate and to evaluate if we're going to survive personally as well as politically.
[...to be continued...]
-------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------- {1} Another time to be wary is around holidays, as William Cooper has noted. Clinton will be bringing back a Democratic, lame-duck Congress in December with the purpose of getting GATT through. Watch out for, "Hurry up, let's pass this thing so we can go home to our families for Christmas." (1) There will be pressure for these people to hurry up and pass GATT because many are about to be replaced by the newly-elected members, and added to that pressure will be the pressure of passing GATT so that Congress can adjourn in time for Christmas; (2) The public will itself be distracted by the Christmas holiday, and may therefore be less politically aware and active.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."