Putting the Proles in their Place: Proles Should Back Off, Trust the Honorable Leader to Achieve Total Victory

_{Image © Austin Cline
Original Poster: Soviet Propaganda
Click for full-sized Image}

There are a number of important implications in the concept of absolute power which we must be familiar with if we are to recognize it when we see it. Absolute power is, for example, accountable only to itself — and sometimes not even to that. There are no outside, independent institutions, beliefs, systems, or ideologies upon which absolute power is founded or to which absolute power is accountable. Absolute power is also independent of the many public rituals or symbols we normally associate with institutions or offices that exercise power over us. Police officers wear a badge as a symbol of their power; we stand when the judge enters the courtroom in a ritual to recognize their power. Absolute power has no need for such trappings, however, because there is no one to impress and no mediating traditions required.

Some of this was made evident recently by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he presumptuously told critics of the administration’s failed war in Iraq: “You ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult. Honorable people are working on these things together.” So, should the American people just trust the administration to get everything right and not raise complaints, criticisms, or suggestions? What in the administration’s record on anything, much less Iraq, should inspire such trust and complacency?

I think that what we are seeing is a denial that officials in the administration are really accountable to the American people whom they are supposed to be serving. Whatever rhetorical gestures they might make in the general direction of accountability, I see little hard evidence that the concept is taken seriously and enforced by this administration. On the contrary, I see instead a constant struggle to free the president and his minions from what few constraints his sycophantic Congress might try to impose.

I think that there is also more going on here between the lines. Rumsfeld’s statement, “Back off,” isn’t just an expression of his attitudes but also a command: he’s giving an order to the media and to critics to step away, stop criticizing, and go back to reporting on other, less weighty, matters. How this is related to the question of absolute power is explained by Wolfgang Sofsky in his seminal book The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp:

“Third, absolute power is graduated power. It sets up a cleverly devised system of collaboration by turning some victims into accomplices, outfitting the functionary elite with substantial authority. One of the pillars holding up the camp system was an auxiliary force of Kapos (prisoner-functionaries who supervised prisoner work squads, or Kommados) and “scribes” (Schreiber, record-keepers) who helped maintain everyday routines and relieved the burden on the SS personnel. Through their agency, absolute power became omnipresent. It filled almost every cranny, every niche in the camp. Without that delegation of power, the system of discipline would quickly have collapsed. The attendant rivalry for positions in supervision, administration, and supply provided the SS with a welcome opportunity to play the various factions among the prisoners’ elite against one another, keeping them dependent.”

I think that we can find many ways in which the media elite have been all too eager to serve as Bush’s Willing Kapos. NBC, for example, has apparently refused to air ads for the Dixie Chicks’ movie because it is “disparaging to President Bush.” Airing material critical of our political leadership is in the public interest which, in turn, is an obligation media companies have in exchange for access to the broadcast spectrum. The fact that these same corporations stand to make a lot of money from favorable regulation decisions and favorable laws made by the same political leadership they refuse to be critical of indicates that they are instead putting their corporate interests ahead of the public interest.

Many individual reporters and commentators go to great lengths to describe the actions of both Republicans and Democrats as if they were “equivalent” even when there is no truth to such a perspective. Thus both parties are described as engaging in widespread negative campaign advertising even when the Democrats are doing almost none. Reporters are forced to just make things up, like describing the Michael J. Fox ad on stem cells as “negative.” Much the same happens in reports about scandals — the fact that almost all involve Republicans is glossed over in an effort to create “balance” where none exists. The fact that same reporters and commentators rely heavily on the good will of the people in power for access to information, “leaks,” and invitations to good parties where the rich and powerful pretend to accept them as equals for an evening, suggests that they are putting their personal interests ahead of the public interests.

One consequence of all this dumbing-down of political reporting might be to turn us into something like the “proles” of George Orwell’s book 1984. This Wikipedia summary of who and what the proles were should explain how they fit in here:

“[P]roles were not considered to be human beings. They did not have the intellectual power to understand that they are exploited by the Party (as a source of cheap labor) and were unable to organize resistance. Their functions were simple: work and breed. They did not care much about anything else than taking care of home and family, quarreling with neighbors, watching some films and football, drinking beer, and above all buying the lottery tickets. They were not required to express their support to the Party. They were only required to show primitive patriotism. The Party created special meaningless songs, novels, even pornography for the proles.”

A similar disdain for “inferiors” is often exhibited by Christian Nationalists in America. Despite the many injunctions in the New Testament that followers of Jesus should serve rather than rule, there appears to be a prevalent attitude that Christians “contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus” and therefore should naturally rule by setting the laws. Parallels to this attitude existed in Nazi Germany and were expressed via the concept “Volksgenossen.” This can be translated as “national comrade,” but that hardly does the term justice and there is no exact translation.

It may be easiest to explain through example: Aryan Germans were Volksgenossen; Jews, Slavs, and other Untermenschen were not. Greater Germany, of course, was to be limited exclusively to Volksgenossen. In modern America, it might be possible to say that white conservative Christians are Volksgenossen; godless liberals and other traitors are not. I think that there was always the expectation among the Nazis that the categories of Party members and Volksgenossen would become indistinguishable. I suspect that there is an expectation among Christian Nationalists today that a similar process should occur: Republican Party members and American Volksgenossen should become one, which of course leaves everyone else out in the cold.

Or perhaps on the other side of that new fence they want to build.

The image itself is based on a Soviet recruitment poster from World War II. Don't forget to check out my own gallery of Christian Right Propaganda Posters. Two new posters were added this week. Don't miss my War on Christmas Propaganda Posters gallery as well.