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by Летећи Полип Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:02 amDa vidimo šta kaže Umna Čifutkinja:
Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doc
trines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which
is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in
which, through sheer i magination, uprooted masses can feel at home and
are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal
to human beings and their expectations. The force possessed by totalitarian
propaganda-before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains
to prevent anyone's disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet
of an entirely i maginary world-lies in its ability to shut the masses off
from the real world. The only signs which the real world still offers to the
understanding of t he unintegrated and disintegrating masses-whom every
new stroke of ill luck makes more gullible-are, so to speak, its lacunae,
the questions it does not care to discuss publicly, or the rumors it does not
dare to contradict because they hit, although in an exaggerated and de
formed way, some sore spot.
From these sore spots the lies of totalitarian propaganda derive the ele
ment of truthfulness and real experience they need to bridge the gulf between
reality and fiction. Only terror could rely on mere fiction, and even the
terror-sustained lying fictions of totalitarian regimes have not yet become
entirely arbitrary, although they are usually cruder, more impudent, and, so
to speak, more original than those of the movements. ( It takes power, not
propaganda skill, to circulate a revised history of the Russian Revolution in
which no man by the name of Trotsky was ever commander-in-chief cf the
Red Army. ) The lies of the movements, on the other hand, arc much
subtler. They attach themselves to every aspect of social and political life
that is hidden from the public eye. They succeed best where the official
authorities have surrounded themselves with an atmosphere of secrecy. In
the eyes of the masses, they then acquire the reputation of superior "realism"
because they touch upon real conditions whose existence is being hidden.
Revelations of scandals in high society, of corruption of politicians, every
thing that belongs to yellow journalism, becomes in their hands a weapon
of more than sensational importance.
The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of a Jewish
world conspiracy. Concentration on antisemitic propaganda had been a
common device of demagogues ever since the end of the nineteenth century,
and was widespread in the Germany and Austria of the twenties. The more
consistently a discussion of the Jewish question was avoided by all parties
and organs of public opinion, the more convinced the mob became that
Jews were the true representatives of the powers that be, and that the Jew
ish issue was the symbol for the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the whole
system.
