Totalitarianism and the Five Stages of Dehumanization

Article CAIRCO note: 
The Eleventh Commandment: Never be Indifferent
Article author: 
Christiaan W.J.M. Alting von Geusau
Article publisher: 
Burning Platform
Article date: 
21 November 2021
Article category: 
Our American Future
Medium
Article Body: 

Hannah Arendt’s seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism (1948) makes for sobering reading in the world we see developing around us in the year 2021. Indeed, we find ourselves in an impasse of epic proportions where the essence of what it means to be human is at stake....

... there is no doubt that we are faced with a global paradigm that brings forth steadily expanding totalitarian tendencies...

The totalitarian movement itself is driven by the aggressive and at times violent promotion of a certain dominant ideology, through relentless propaganda, censorship, and groupthink....

On the commercial side, we have all the aspects of tracking people’s behavior and preferences online, brilliantly explained in the documentary The Social Dilemma...

In modern society, where we see this dynamic very much at work, the use of science and technology play a decisive role in enabling totalitarian tendencies to take hold in ways that 20th century ideologues could only have dreamed of. Furthermore, accompanying totalitarianism in whatever stage, institutionalized dehumanization occurs and is the process by which the whole or part of the population is subjected to policies and practices that consistently violate the dignity and fundamental rights of the human being and that may ultimately lead to exclusion and social or, in the worst case, physical extermination....

For its establishment and durability totalitarianism depends as a first step on mass support obtained through playing into a sense of permanent crisis and fear in society. This then feeds the urge of the masses to have those in charge constantly take “measures” and show leadership to ward off the threat that has been identified as endangering the whole of society....

Corona political and media narratives are examples of such an ideological totalitarianism that wants to completely control how human beings think, speak and act in that area of life, whist keeping them in perpetual anxiety through well-planned regular dramatic news updates...

Also, as vaccine mandates are introduced around the globe for workers in many industries and settings, the majority is complying not because they themselves necessarily believe they need the Corona vaccine, but only because they want to reclaim their freedoms and keep their jobs so they can feed their families. The political elites imposing these mandates know this of course and make smart use of it...

Today we see this exacerbated, as I already mentioned above, through a fundamentally flawed understanding and use of science by the powers that be....

The five steps...

History gives us powerful guidance on how we can throw off the yoke of totalitarianism in whatever stage or form it presents itself; also the current ideological form that most do not even realize is happening. ...

Related

The Unvaccinated Are the New Jews - Don't Let the Left Tell You Otherwise (Video), by Amy Mek, RAIR Foundation USA, November 19, 2021:

... Thierry Baudet, leader of the Netherlands’ populist party, Forum-for-Democracy (FFD), caused outrage among the establishment when he compared his government’s discriminatory policies towards the unvaccinated to those of Jews during the Second World War.

In a social media post to Twitter on Sunday, Baudet stated, “The current situation can be compared with the 1930s and 1940s. The unvaccinated are the new Jews; the ignorant exclusions are the new Nazis and NSB [National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands] members. There, I said it.”...

Baudet compared the systematic exclusion of the unvaccinated with the exclusion of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. Shockingly, there is much similarity in how the Jews were treated during the years leading up to War. There is also this similarity in the “measures” taken. As early as April 1, 1933, the German state organized a boycott of Jewish entrepreneurs and professionals. In September 1935, the state passed comprehensive and restrictive legislation on nationality and citizenship. Jews were placed outside the “German people’s community” with these laws....

Austria and the Netherlands have recently implemented lockdowns for only the unvaccinated. Similarly, in the past, the Netherlands only had lockdowns for Jews....

People without a vaccine pass, or “Green Passport” (as it is called in much of Europe), are no longer allowed to travel by public transport. In Canada, the unvaccinated are not even allowed to leave their country anymore.

Austria tried imposing lockdown measures on about two million unvaccinated people. Now the state is mandating vaccinations for the entire population. Watch the following clips of Austrian Police officers monitoring compliance with the lockdown for the unvaccinated.

Austrian Police Officers Monitoring Compliance with the Lockdown for the Unvaccinated:

 

Early last year, 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski gave a speech during the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.... The survivor implored people to remain faithful to his Eleventh Commandment: Never be a bystander ["Never be indifferent"]. 

Warning From an Auschwitz Survivor: 'Recognize the Signs'

The Holocaust didn’t start with death camps. It began with propaganda, scaremongering, scapegoating, and segregation....

The following comment was posted to the above article. It is a statement by Marianne von Rosen:

November 20, 2021

GUEST COMMENT

CONTEMPORARY WITNESSES

Marianne is 91 years old. What she’s currently experiencing reminds her of times gone by.

She wrote this story down herself.

I, Marianne, am the senior citizen of the family, born in 1930, 91 years old.
What I am currently experiencing reminds me strongly of the times that I have already experienced twice.

I was born near Stralsund, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
My grandmother was Jewish, so I was quarter Jewish.
My mother was half-Jewish, but red-blonde.
You couldn’t look more German.
I was also sun-blond, with long hair and a braid that was up to 1 meter long.
We lived in a village with three liquor factories because the water there was particularly good.
My father was employed by the Raiffeisenbank in Stralsund.

From 1933 on, our life gradually changed.
My father lost his job at the bank because he did not want to part with his half-Jewish wife.
He was allowed to work in one of the liquor factories that belonged to a relative.
Many children were suddenly no longer allowed to play with me.
If I played with our pastors’ daughters and the children of one of the schnapps manufacturers came there too, then I had to go home because the parents of these children refused to have contact with non-Aryan children.

At school, my older sister and I got worse grades because we were non-Aryan.
We weren’t allowed to join the BdM, the Association of German Girls, so we weren’t given a uniform or a scarf with a knot. Later, when we went to the Girls’ Lyzeum in Stralsund, we were no longer allowed to sit with Aryan children on the train to Stralsund.
We needed our own 2nd class compartment, which of course had to be paid for by my parents.

We were not allowed to take part in many excursions.
One story is particularly schizophrenic.
Grand Admiral Dönitz, chief of the German Navy, visited the Stralsund naval base.
In an open car, like Adolf Hitler, he drove through the city, the streets lined with cheering spectators and a large contingent of the Hitler Youth in their uniforms.
On the main street I, the non-Aryan girl, was allowed to give him an eel.
Because I wasn’t afraid to say anything and I looked so Germanic with my blonde hair and long braid like no other girl at school.
In addition, I was given the appropriate BdM clothing (white blouse, black skirt, brown jacket with insignia, black scarf with knot).

After handing over the eel, I had to hand over the BdM insignia, scarf, knot and jacket.
In the evening a reception was given in the theater in honor of Dönitz.
There I was needed again as a particularly Germanic-looking girl.
I received the complete BdM clothing again, stepped on the stage, said: “Heil Hitler” and announced with “German greetings”: “The Stralsund young girls choir is now singing …”.
There were a total of 3 songs that I announced.
After the event, all of my clothes were removed from me because they were reserved for the Aryan girls.

The Gestapo carried out raids on our home several times.
But my father received a discreet tip in advance so that the family was never home during the raids.
I even went to Görlitz twice at the age of 13/14 with my 7-year-old brother from Stralsund because our paternal grandmother lived there.
The other grandmother died of cancer at the age of 32.

I particularly remember Christmas 1944.
My mother tearfully asked my father to shoot her so that all the terror could finally come to an end.
That was when I saw my father cry for the first time.
The next day he was picked up by the Gestapo.
It was really “heartbreaking” moments.
Later my father also had to go to a concentration camp because he did not want to get a divorce.
So we lived with great worries and were relieved when the war ended and the Russians moved in.

Life in the GDR dictatorship

Then the second part of my story began, life in the GDR dictatorship.
My father was always open, honest and steadfast.
That’s why he quickly came into conflict with the SED bigwigs.
He was repeatedly in GDR prisons because he was accused of sabotage and the like.

I myself always said what I thought was right.
I have seldom held back my criticism of the system.
I was only able to take the Abitur because I joined the FDJ (Free German Youth) at short notice.
Shortly after graduating from high school, I left the FDJ.
I started a teacher training course in which I entrusted my opinion on the political situation to an older, very friendly and helpful colleague.
Unfortunately it was an “IM”, an informal employee.
He immediately passed this information on to the “Stasi”.

I was walking through Stralsund one afternoon when I met a friend and said: “What, you are still here? You’re already being wanted. ”
I went home quickly (we lived in Stralsund after the end of the war) and saw two completely“ inconspicuous ”men walking back and forth in front of our house.
I called my parents from a friend.
That same night my father found me a way to escape to Berlin in a truck that was being used to smuggle car tires from West Berlin.

It was scary, but I arrived in East Berlin unmolested and took the subway to West Berlin.
There I was able to report to the refugee office and later also received recognition as a political refugee.
This is how my time in the second dictatorship, the GDR, ended.

The third dictatorship

Now I am witnessing the entry into the third dictatorship.
It started with the law of epidemic emergency.
This law is similar to the Enabling Act of the Hitler era.
Parliament is overturned and under the aspect of “epidemic emergency of national scope” a kind of emergency regime was started.

In 1933, not all anti-Jewish measures were passed immediately.
They came only little by little and got sharper over time.
Because of this, many Jews thought it was unnecessary to leave the country until it was too late and from 1941 onwards almost all of them were sent “into the gas”.
Now it’s starting exactly as it was in the thirties.
Mask mandate is exercised, although a large number of studies since 1974, i.e. long before the Corona period, have shown that these masks, including the surgical masks, do more harm than good.
Our decision-making elites are inaccessible to logic.

Before I wasn’t served for being a quarter Jew.
Today I am no longer served without a mask or am not even allowed to enter the shop.
Then the vaccination is propagated, so that many get vaccinated because of social and professional pressure, even though they do not like to do it voluntarily.
They hope that they will be able to participate in social life again.
You are not convinced, but just too weak to defend yourself against the vaccination pressure.
Gradually, 2G and 1G will be introduced.
Unvaccinated people are marginalized and basic rights, which are not called basic rights for nothing and which we have at birth, are converted by the rulers into privileges for vaccinated people.

Our political elite turns the so-called illness and death numbers exactly as they want.
Above all, Karl Lauterbach, SPD, stands out particularly strikingly.
What about the swindle with the corona deaths, with the intensive care beds, with the “epidemic emergency of national scope” that is being extended ever more?
A factual discussion is rejected, a critical paper from the Ministry of the Interior, which showed the damage caused by this policy very early on (April 2020), is dismissed as a private opinion and the official who drafted this opinion as head of disaster risk reduction is sent into early retirement.

Critics of the political and health-related measures are defamed, put under pressure, intimidated by raids and, in addition, brought into a “Nazi milieu” via the local press.
As in the 1930s, people are defamed and denounced, and the judicial system is largely brought into line (judges who have not adapted are put under pressure).
The children are persuaded that they could kill their grandparents with a corona infection.
They are required to wear masks in schools and in the school yard, although the number of children seriously ill with Covid 19 is extremely low.
Today children are no longer considered healthy from birth, but as a threat to their fellow human beings.

Mental damage

I get dizzy when I think of 1945 with the millions of deaths, the destruction, the unbelievable emotional damage, also in later generations.
Unbelievable emotional damage is being done again today.
The child psychiatric clinics are overcrowded.
Many children no longer like going to their schools because they are constantly forced to use masks and tests.
They can no longer see the faces of their teachers.
The facial expressions of their teachers are particularly important for the little ones.
We have seen that 10-year-olds could no longer run 50 m after a year without school sport because they got breathlessness. Many children have gotten fat in the past year and a half.
“Home schooling” as a miracle weapon is only of limited use.

There is so much that has gotten worse without there being an imperative to do so.
Many doctors, the official media, the churches, the government and many others are calling for total vaccination, of course “on a voluntary basis”.
The “unvaccinated” are allegedly inconsiderate, infectious and no longer socially compliant.
They should be marginalized and curtailed in their activities.
They suddenly pose a threat to the “vaccinated”, although the vaccination is supposed to offer protection against a new disease.
Officials are lying through their teeth.

The division of society into good = vaccinated and bad = unvaccinated is already well advanced.
Hatred is sown by the elite for those who disagree with government.
Many citizens agree to this and also begin with hate speeches against the “deviants”.
The number of informers has increased, also encouraged by the political elite.
We experienced it first hand here in Gersfeld.
If it continues like this, and there is much to be said for it, then the division in society and outbreaks of hatred will increase considerably.

I am currently experiencing the same thing that I have already experienced twice, in the Third Reich and in the GDR.
The opponents are silenced, possibly sent to prison (or later to a concentration camp), the compliant and the followers are rewarded and the whole dictatorship now starts over for the third time.
I never believed that I would have to experience such a development again.
But a large part of our population, especially in the western federal states, has learned very little from the history of the Third Reich and the GDR.
Almost everything is currently running as it was in the catastrophic years.
I hope it won’t end as terribly as 1945.
I’m still a living witness.
But in a few years I’ll be dead and my story forgotten.

The article first appeared in the printed Epoch Times weekly issue on November 13th.

 

And so it begins: Australian Army Puts Covid 19 ‘Close Contacts’ Into Quarantine Camps, by James Delingpole, Breitbart, November 24, 2021. Strikingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

UK School Asks Pupils to Wear ‘Yellow Badge’ to Show They Are Mask-Exempt - with many making a comparison to the yellow stars forced upon Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe, Breitbart Europe, November 25, 2021.

Jude