A Historical Document worth Reading

There have always been those in the media who are prone to celebrity worship. It may be part of why some people become part of the media in the first place; the desire to get close to the famous or infamous or to have access to "the powerful" or "the influential." They may simply have a need to be perceived as being part of the "right crowd."

The reasons why some people feel such needs are varied and not really relevant to the end result. Of course there will always be real reporters and journalists in the media as well. The occassional muck-raker, uncovering tales of corruption and impropriety, may seem a personage of the past but is alive and well...more often being printed in books and on the internet than embraced by corporate media.

It's more common to find the sycophants and apologists posing as "hard ball" reporters while using labels, rhetoric, or simple volume, to delude themselves and their audience that they are not who they truly are. In reality, they gush praise and attribute absurd qualities to the subjects of their worship while pretending to be hard-nosed.

It's a historical reality that such sycophants are so easily swayed in their attempts to join in the limelight, that they often make extremely bad judgements as to those whom they worship. They are also quick to cover-up these errors in judgement or to even switch their positions...swearing they were never in camp...nevertheless a rabid camp follower. As soon as a celebrity, whom more clear headed people saw as a fraud all along, is uncovered, these same media vultures will turn and feign disgust with their fallen idol.

In the twentie's and the thirtie's a large number of westerners, both in the US and in Europe held authoritarian government in high regard. The Socialist movements in Europe, the most successful being the Fascistas in Italy and the National Socialists in Germany (the N.A.Z.I) were held up as models of progressive and innovative government.

In the US, the Progressive movement championed the National Socialists of Italy. Woodrow Wilson himself stated that he was the American Fascist as Mr. Mussolini was the Italian Progressive. He drew a direct comparison in his own efforts to control wages and prices in the US, in order to give government control over business, to Benito Mussolini's strong control of business in Italy. Of course, some fifteen years of those controls in the US led us into the Great Depression; a massive recession which strangled the American economy for more than a decade.

A majority of young people who hear me set up this historical background are prone to dismissive eye-rolling and wise-cracks about how history is "old stuff" with no bearing on their world. Such an attitude has always been about, and those of us who study history understand that human nature is not "old stuff"...in fact human nature never changes and never will. Only the names and places change...everything else just repeats over and over again in cycles.

A perfect example of all I just related: for years the western press gushed over Adolf Hitler...hard to believe now isn't it? But they did...and after the war a massive effort was made to erradicate all record of this slobbering love affair with a foreign dictator whom so many had viewed as the coming saviour of the world.

To be fair; though thousands of gushy praise pieces were printed about the German leader, there were also reporters and columnists who wrote of him in alarm...who sensed that there was something dangerous going on in the world. The number of such alarmists grew as Germany flexed her military might and began to subjugate her neighbors.

At that time media communicated through magazines, newspapers, and on the radio. Radio broadcasts were rarely taped and easily forgotten. Newsprint and magazines were normally tossed out or used as fuel...and the archives kept by publishers were purged diligently, after the war, of writings that could be "misconstrued" in their original intent.

This was a shame, of course, as this was history...and history is always valuable...even when embarrassing to certain parties. Very few of these stories survive today; an example being one praise piece on Herr Hitler discovered a few years back in a closet in Britain. It was a November, 1938, edition of a popular British magazine...and when discovered was immediately recognized for its historic importance.

The article on Hitler was immediately photographed and put onto the internet for the use of historians. Almost instantaneously media lawyers in Britain brought civil action to quash it's reproduction and to have the one remaining copy of the magazine returned to parties "owning the copyright." The publishers eventually backed off when the matter threatened to become too sensational to control.

But before that happened, the article was removed from the web, only to return off and on, removed again...jumped around the internet as believers in free-speech sought to keep it in the public domain, and is now once again available to be viewed by the public.

There is a great deal to learn about human nature and the nature of media by reading and comparing this puff-piece on Adolf Hitler with similar puff-pieces done of politicians today. There is a also a good deal to learn about media people by their reactions to the uncovering of this article.

In our nation, we have a constitution which guarantees freedom of speech to the individual...not to corporations and corporate media outlets...which seems to be a constant irritant to those outlets. Part of this is a natural dislike of any type of competition...particularly when the internet is taking over as a news source while newspapers are falling into bankruptcy. But part of this is also due to people in media realizing they are losing control of public opinion...making them as individuals less and less important.

Egos, once incredibly inflated, are being challenged...and the precious celebrities they once depended on to bolster their own images...are being shown in truer light than in the past. History tells us what happens when those individuals are no longer the "flavor of the month" and fall into disfavor. History also shows us, dramatically sometimes...as is the case in this magazine, what ends these folks can go to in order to maintain control of information flow.

To view and read this important historical magazine story yourself...go to:

http://wow.blogs.com/photos/hitler/

In addition to the article itself, there are a number of links to history and opinion regarding the attempted cover up of this article and its posting on the internet.