And just uploaded 11.25.13: “Miklos Nyiszli Lessons on ‘Class’” (pdf file) [As of 04.07.14: most recent update of the pdf for this page is through Ch. XXVI – 308 pages, 1.8 MB – and includes a transcipt for the April 6, 2014 show…]
* “The purpose of this discussion”
* Preface: Excerpt from “Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi”
Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class
This continues the conversations: “The ‘Global Awakening’?… or “The Great ‘Re-Set’”?” and Staying Focused on Designing A Future… On Not Getting Divided… and “Unpacking Robert Reich’s Baggage” and Karl Popper on Authentic Education for Youth…
(See also: Bentham's Strategic Verities and
You Know How I Know 'Localization'… or 'Democratic Economics'… Is A Con? and Conversation with Joel McIver)
010.19.13:
This page is being planned for Waking Up Radio Shows beginning in December, 2013.
Excerpts and audio files will follow.
For other audio files visit: Waking Up Radio Audio Conversations Page.
10.19.13: Sisters and brothers… Please read : “‘Global Awakening’?… or “Great ‘Re-Set’”?” and Karl Popper on Authentic Education for Youth
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* The purpose of this discussion…
The state serves at our pleasure… we don’t serve at its…
The U.S. Declaration of Independence has established that the people’s right to pursue happiness supercedes the ‘right’ of the state to exist. The state serves at our pleasure… we don’t serve at its. Once we understand that ‘politics’ is about consolidating and compelling human energy… then we can see… that we’re moving to a time beyond ‘politics’… beyond the ‘polity’… beyond ‘the state’… because ‘the state’ not just inhibits… but destroys… our humanity… and therefore our ability to make happiness our priority.
This past week I was listening to a call-in radio discussion of government surveillance and the Edward Snowden revelations about NSA spying… and a couple of different callers asked, “Was Snowden patriotic in revealing state secrets?” In response a subsequent listener said, “Why do people care whether Snowden was ‘patriotic’ or not? The German people under the Nazis were ‘patriotic’.”
And that’s a really important point – and perhaps the best way in to our discussion of ‘the state’… and the question of its ‘legitimacy.’ The example of Nazi Germany makes it clear that ‘patriotism’ is not our standard for being healthy humans… which – being healthy humans – I would argue… is about meeting our responsibility to each other and to the earth (irrespective of divisions manufactured by statesmen…) by furthering the health of both. And if ‘patriotism’ isn’t the standard by which we judge whether we are meeting this responsibility… what is? From whence the standards by which we withstand the pressure of false authority?… false standards – from whence the authentic standards that enable us to stand up to a state and call it by its name: “illegitimate” – if not the earth? What deserves our eternal allegiance… if not the earth… if not life… if not good fellowship with all our relations… and respect for each others’ inherent freedom… and for our devotion to ‘planting’ the tools that further it?
Another way into this discussion of “what legitimates authority?” is through the lens of ‘destination’… of ‘tendency’… of “what future do we want?”… as the practices we allow to accrue… build… over time… create lasting effects… seemingly independent of human action. De Tocqueville pointed this out while discussing the effect of establishing patterns of accumulation – or of impeding such patterns. We’ll be looking more closely at his words as we consider the experience of Auschwitz. I will be making the point that the global economy is accomplishing what Auschwitz set out to do (in its own mind): “identify (and milk) the so-called ‘best’… and destroy the rest…” either slowly or quickly… either way our lives become nullities in terms of self-creation… but this is true of all under class… even the intentionally ‘privileged’ ones.
Using Tesla’s analogy about Edison helps to clarify the comparison. Tesla wrote:
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. (Nikola Tesla)
‘Auschwitz’ is “sifting the haystack”… ‘the global economy’ reflects Tesla’s method… in taking De Tocqueville’s ‘advice’… his advice (essentially) to… as we were told ad nauseam in the trades: “work smarter, not harder.”
What does “pursue happiness” mean… if not “listen to our bodies”?… to their longing to be free… to breathe clean… to rest without worry or stress… because the problem of ‘necessity’ has been put to rest by the establishment of abundance… not just of food and shelter… but of time… of leisure… of access to our earth-given gifts… and to our capacities of leadership.
In thinking about Miklos’ greatness… his quality of courage that is also supremely graceful… I thought, “yes, but we are all great… we just need to know “what’s up”… what we’re faced with… in order to decide to use it… our greatness.”
We must do this… for humanity itself to exist.
The state is not more important than us… we have the right to pursue happiness.
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…this millennia-long haunt… only ends by being confronted… and with Nyiszli’s light… we’re much better equipped to try…
On the October 6, 2013 show we quoted an article (Richard Rosecrance, “Want World Domination? Size Matters,” The New York Times, July 28, 2013) that laid out an economic strategy for ‘attracting China’ “to the West’s economic core…” in order to create a ‘stable’ ‘global order’. “A balance of power leads to conflict,” said Mr. Rosecrance, “but an overbalance attracts others to its economic core.”
I suppose we could think of the strategy he recommends… as a ‘consignment’ given by China’s ‘weak oil’ – and therefore ‘weak fiscal’ – ‘position’… a boon for ‘power’s hopes to establish… a Plato-inspired set of ‘fixed class’ relations… and Plato is credited… as his ‘legacy’ lives… extant all around us… this vampire continues… to give…)
For decades to come, China will have to sell in the West to gain money and access to technologies that it doesn’t yet possess. The consolidation of a Euro-American economic unit will require China to join, too, as it becomes a more open, liberal and rule-governed polity. In the end, trade – not war – will attract others to the West’s economic core. (Richard Rosecrance, “Want World Domination? Size Matters,” The New York Times, July 28, 2013)
And I’ve been pondering the implication of this up-front… in-your-face admission… of a straight-forward… unapologetic… totalitarian ambition…
(…what’s being implied here is that ‘democracy’ is being extended… and that therefore by definition it’s not totalitarian. I disagree… and we’ll be talking more about that…)
…and given it’s placed to reach the middle ranks… it seems ‘power’-designed to woo them to its side… and to be wooed by ‘power’… is dangerous…
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October 19, 2013: Sisters and brothers…
Auschwitz was an invention… and in this space we will be both pondering its implications… and using it to stand for an entire plan to install a fixed class rule. It was – as is the wont of humans – imagined into existence… and it shows… perversely… both the force and failure of human will… at the buried end of human imagination. So it shows how quickly the unforeseen can overtake us… and what horrors generate… when clogged energy concentrates.
For a while now, I’ve wanted to thank Miklos Nyiszli… as well as to understand more fully his gift… but it’s been difficult to start… feeling unequal to the charge… to comprehending a grief of such immensity. But his gift is too precious and too needed to not… yet neglected it’s been… or buried. He shows us with an awful… fierce… resolve… that the legacy of Plato lives on… and that this millennia-long haunt… only ends by being confronted… and with Nyiszli’s light… we’re much better equipped to try….
His help is invaluable… because once we understand the insidious presence of Plato’s hand behind the pestilent persistence of class… we can start to make a conscious decision to move on.
In the November 24, 2013 show… we said that there was a logical trajectory of authentic thought… and a logical trajectory of ‘power’s thought…
…and the logical trajectory of ‘power’s thought leads to Auschwitz.
On this page together we’ll be reading and discussing Miklos Nyiszli‘s Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. But before we begin… let’s look at this horror… from a child’s perspective.
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* Preface: Excerpt from “Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi”
The news about that bomb plunged Father, Uncle ‘Ali, and my young cousins into deep despair…
Preface to the Reading and Discussion of Miklos Nyiszli‘s Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi… who was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco.
During the December 1, 2013 show we said, “…but now we are freeing ourselves of the thought of our Fathers (the state…)” and parents, I believe, bear a lot of responsibility in this… commensurate with our power of influence with our children… as you listen to Fatima at age five… notice how her mother’s dreams were passed along to her. Children carry our dreams forward… so it’s critical we don’t hobble them with falsehoods to untangle.
Excerpt from Chapter 10:
The problem with entertainment, fun, and foolishness at our house was that they could easily be missed. They were never planned in advance unless Cousin Chama or Aunt Habiba were in charge, and even then, they were subject to serious space constraints. Aunt Habiba’s story-telling and Chama’s theater plays had to take place upstairs. You could never really have fun for long in the courtyard; it was too public. Just as you were starting to have a good time, the men would come in with their own projects, which often involved a great deal of discussion, such as going over business matters, or listening to the radio and debating the news, or card playing, and then you would have to move elsewhere. Good entertainment needs concentration and silence in order for the masters of ceremony, the storytellers and the actors to create their magic. You could not create magic in the courtyard, where dozens of people were constantly crossing from one salon to the other, popping in and out of the corner staircases, or talking back and forth to one another from one floor to the next. And you certainly could not create magic when the men were talking politics, that is, listening to the radio on the loudspeakers, or reading the local and international press.
The men’s political discussions were always highly emotionally charged…. They talked about the Allemane, or Germans, a new breed of Christians who were giving a beating to the French [who were then occupying her country] and the British, and they talked about a bomb that the Americans across the sea had dropped on Japan, which was one of the Asian nations near China, thousands of kilometers east of Mecca. Not only had the bomb killed thousands and thousands of people and melted their bodies, it had shaved entire forests off the face of the earth as well. The news about that bomb plunged Father, Uncle ‘Ali, and my young cousins into deep despair, for if the Christians had thrown that bomb on the Asians who lived so far away, it was only a matter of time before they attacked the Arabs. “Sooner or later, “ Father said, “they will be tempted to burn the Arabs too.”…
Among the young cousins who frequented the salon were Samir’s three brothers, Zin, Jawad, and Chakib, and all the sons of the widowed and divorced aunts and relatives who lived with us. Most of them went to the nationalist schools, but a few of the brightest attended the very select College Musulman, located just a few meters from our house. The College was a French secondary school which prepared the sons of prominent families to fill key positions, and the students’ scholastic excellence was measured according to the degree to which they mastered both Arabic and French language and history. To beat the West, Arab youth needed mastery of at least two cultures.
Of all my male cousins, Zin was considered to be by far the most gifted…. Zin worked very hard at becoming the ideal modern nationalist, that is, one who possessed a vast knowledge of Arab history, legends, and poetry, as well as fluency in French, the language of our enemy, in order to decode the Christian press and uncover their plans. He succeeded beautifully….
Father and Uncle respected Zin as one of the new generation of Moroccans who was going to save the country. He led the procession to the Qaraouiyine Mosque on Fridays, when all the men of Fez, young and old, turned up in the traditional white djellaba and fine yellow leather slippers to go to public prayer.
Ostensibly, the reason for the Friday noon gathering at the mosque was religious, but everyone, including the French, knew that many important political decisions of the Majlis al-Baladi, or City Council, were in fact settled right there. Not only did all the members of the Council, like Uncle ‘Ali, attend that prayer service, but delegates from all the city’s interest groups, from the most prestigious to the most humble, were present as well. The mosque, which was open to everyone, compensated for the exclusive nature of the Council, which had been set up by the French, according to Uncle ‘Ali, as an assembly of dignitaries. “Although the French have dethroned their nobles and kings,” he said, “they still prefer to talk with men of rank alone, and it is up to us, the locals, to be responsible and communicate with the people. Any person who holds a political office ought to attend the Friday prayer regularly. That’s how you stay in touch with your constituency….
The only concession to tradition that the young men made in their Friday dress was that instead of keeping their heads uncovered, they wore the triangular felt cap that had become popular among the Egyptian nationalists. These felt caps could bring on trouble in times of agitation, when the French police got hysterical…
In any case, tradition and modernity existed harmoniously side by side, both in the young men’s dress and in our house during the men’s news sessions. First, everyone would listen to the young men reading and commenting on the written press. Tea would be served, and Samir and I were expected to listen without too much interruption. However, I would often press my head against Father’s shoulder and whisper, “Who are the Allemane (Germans)? Where did they come from, and why are they beating up the French? Where are they hiding, if the Spaniards are in the North and the French in the South?” Father always promised to explain it all to me later when we were by ourselves in our salon. And he did explain it many times, but I never got over my confusion, and neither did Samir, in spite of all our efforts to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Excerpt from Chapter 11:
One thing was for sure, the Jews had always lived with Arabs, since the beginning of time…
The Allemane (Germans) were Christians, that was for sure. They lived in the North like all the others, in what we call Blad Teldj, or the Snowland. Allah did not favor the Christians: their climate was harsh and cold, and that made them moody and, when the sun did not show up for months, nasty. To warm themselves up, they had to drink wine and other strong beverages, and then they got aggressive and started looking for trouble. They did drink tea sometimes though, just like everyone else, but even their tea was bitter and scalding and not at all like ours, which was always perfumed with mint or even absinthe or myrtle. Cousin Zin, who had visited England, said that the tea up there was so bitter, they mixed it with milk. So Samir and I poured some milk in our mint tea once, just to give it a try, and it was ugh! Awful! No wonder the Christians were always miserable and looking for fights.
Anyway, it seemed that the Allemane, the Germans, had been preparing a huge and secret army for a long time. No one knew about it, and then one day, they invaded France. They colonized Paris, the French capital, and started giving people orders, just as the French were doing to us in Fez. We were lucky though, because at least the French did not like our Medina, the city of our ancestors, and had built the Ville Nouvelle for themselves. I asked Samir what would have happened if the French had liked the Medina, and he said that they would have thrown us right out, and taken our houses.
The mysterious Allemane were not only after the French, however; they had also declared war on the Jews. The Allemane forced the Jews to wear something yellow whenever they stepped out into the streets, just as the Muslim men asked the women to wear a veil, so they could be spotted immediately. Why the Allemane were after Jews, no one in the courtyard was ever really able to say. Samir and I kept asking questions, running around from one embroidery team to another on quiet afternoons, but all we got was speculation. “It could be the same thing as with women here,” said Mother. “No one really knows why men force us to wear veils. Something to do with the difference maybe. Fear of the difference makes people behave in very strange ways. The Allemane must feel safer when they are by themselves, just like the men in the Medina who get nervous whenever women appear. If the Jews insist on their difference, that could unsettle the Allemane. Crazy world.”
In Fez, the Jews had their own district, called the Mellah. It took exactly half an hour to get there from our house, and the Jews looked just like everyone else, dressing in long robes similar to our djellabas. They wore hats instead of turbans, that’s all. They minded their own business and kept to their Mellah, making beautiful jewelry and pickling their vegetables in a most delicious way. Mother had tried to pickle zucchini, small cucumbers, and tiny eggplants the Mellah way, but she had never succeeded. “They must say some magic words,” she concluded.
Like us, the Jews had their own prayers, loved their God, and taught His book to their children. They had built a synagogue for Him, which was like our mosque, and we shared the same prophets, with the exception of our beloved Mohammed, Allah’s Prayer and Peace Upon Him. (I never went too far in listing the prophets, because it got complicated and I was afraid of making a mistake. My teacher Lalla Tam said that making mistakes in religious matters could send a person to hell. It was called tashif, or blasphemy, and as I already had decided that I was going to paradise, I tried to stay away from mistakes.) One thing was for sure, the Jews had always lived with Arabs, since the beginning of time, and the Prophet Mohammed had liked them when he first started preaching Islam. But then they did something nasty, and he decided, that if the two religions were to co-exist in the same city, they would have to live in separate quarters. Jews were well organized and had a strong sense of community, much stronger than ours. In the Mellah, the poor were always taken care of and all the children went to highly disciplined Alliance Israelite schools.
What I could not understand was, what were the Jews doing in the country of the Allemane? How did they get there, into Snowland? I thought that Jews, like Arabs, preferred warm climates and steered away from snow. They had lived in the city of Medina, in the middle of the Arabian Desert, during the Prophet’s time, fourteen centuries ago, right? And before that, they had lived in Egypt, not that far from Mecca, and in Syria. At any rate, the Jews had always hung around with the Arabs. During the Arab conquest of Spain, when the Arab Omayyad Dynasty of Damascus turned Andalusia into a shady garden, and built palaces in Cordoba and Seville, the Jews went right alongside. Lalla Tam had told us all about that, although she had talked so much about it that I had gotten confused, and thought it was mentioned in the Koran, our holy book….
Anyway, to get back to the point, the Arabs conquered Spain almost one century after the Prophet’s death, in the year 91 of the Hejira. Therefore, the conquest is not mentioned anywhere in the holy book. “So, why does Lalla Tam keep talking about it?” I asked. Father said that that was probably because her family had come from Spain. Her last name was Sabata, a derivation of Zapata, and her father still had the key to their house in Seville. “She is just homesick,” Father said, “Queen Isabella massacred most of her family.”
He went on to explain that the Jews and the Arabs had lived in Andalusia for seven hundred years, from the second to the eighth centuries of the Hejira (A.D. eighth to fifteenth centuries). Both peoples had gone to Spain when the Omayyad Dynasty had conquered the Christians and established an empire with Cordoba as its capital. Or was Granada the capital? Or was it Seville? Lalla Tam never mentioned one city without mentioning the others, so maybe the people had a choice among the three capitals, although normally, you were not allowed more than one. But nothing was normal about Spain, which the Omayyad re-named Al-Andalous.
The Omayyad caliphs were a merry bunch who had a lot of fun building a fabulous palace, the Alhambra, and tower, the Giralda. Then, wanting to show off to the rest of the world how enormous their empire was, they built an identical tower in Marrakech, and named it the Koutoubiya. As far as they were concerned, there was no frontier between Europe and Africa. “Everyone is fond of mixing the two continents up,” said Father. “Otherwise, why are the French camping right outside our door at this very moment?”
But that still does not explain how the Jews ended up in the land of the Allemane, does it?…
So the Arabs and the Jews lounged around up there in Andalusia for seven hundred years, enjoying themselves as they recited poetry and looked up at the stars from the middle of their lovely jasmine and orange gardens, which they watered through an innovative and complicated irrigation system. We forgot all about them down here in Fez until one day, the city woke up to see hundreds of them streaming down into Morocco, screaming with fright, their house keys in their hand. A ferocious Christian queen named Isabella the Catholic had emerged from the snow and was after them. She had given them one hell of a beating and said, “Either you pray like us, or we’ll throw you into the sea.” But in fact, she never game them time to answer, and her soldiers pushed everyone into the Mediterranean. Muslims and Jews together swam to Tangier and Ceuta (unless they were among the lucky ones who found boats) and then ran to Fez to hide. That had happened five hundred years ago, and that was why we had a huge Andalusian community right in the heart of the Medina, near the Qaraouiyine Mosque, and the big Mellah, or Jewish quarter, a few hundred meters away.
But that still does not explain how the Jews ended up in the land of the Allemane, does it? Samir and I talked about this and decided that maybe, when Isabella the Catholic started screaming, some of the Jews walked the wrong way, heading north instead of south, and found themselves in the heart of Snowland. Then, since the Allemane were Christians, like Isabella the Catholic, they chased the Jews away because they did not pray alike. But Aunt Habiba said that this explanation did not sound right, because the Allemane were also fighting the French, who were Christians too and worshipped the same God. So that put an end to that theory. Religion could not explain the war going on in Christendom.
I was about to suggest to Samir that we let the mysterious Jewish question sit until the following year, when we would be much older and wiser, when Cousin Malika came up with a sensible but terrifying explanation. The war had to do with hair color! The blond-haired tribes were fighting the brown-haired people! Crazy! The Allemane, in this case, were the blonds, tall and pale, while the French were the brunettes, smaller and darker. The poor Jews, who had simply gone the wrong way when Isabella chased everyone from Spain, were trapped between the two. They just happened to be in the war zone, and they just happened to have brown hair. They were not part of any camp!
So, the mighty Allemane were after anyone with dark hair and dark eyes. Samir and I were terrified. We checked what Malika had said with Cousin Zin, and he said that she was absolutely right. Hi-Hitler – that was the name of the king of the Allemane – hated dark hair and dark eyes and was throwing bombs from planes wherever a dark-haired population was spotted. Jumping into the water would not do any good either, because he would send submarines to fish you out. Looking up at his older brother, Samir put his hands over his sleek jet-black hair, as if to hide it, and said, “But do you think that once the Allemane have knocked out the French and the Jews, they’ll push south and come down to Fez?” Zin’s answer was vague; he said that the newspapers did not mention anything about the Allemane’s long-term plan.
That night, Samir begged his mother to promise to put henna in his hair, in order to redden it, the next time we went to the hammam (public baths), and I ran around with one of my mother’s scarves securely tied around my head, until she noticed it and forced me to take it off. “Don’t you ever cover your head!” Mother shouted. “Do you understand me? Never! I am fighting against the veil, and you are putting one on?! What is this nonsense?” I explained to her about the Jews and the Allemane, the bombs and the submarines, but she was not impressed. “Even if Hi-Hitler, the Almighty King of the Allemane, is after you,” she said, “you ought to face him with your hair uncovered. Covering your head and hiding will not help. Hiding does not solve a woman’s problems. It just identifies her as an easy victim. Your Grandmother and I have suffered enough of this head-covering business. We know it does not work. I want my daughters to stand up with their heads erect, and walk on Allah’s planet with their eyes on the stars.” With that, she snatched off the scarf, and left me totally defenseless, facing an invisible army that was running after people with dark hair.
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We must never forget the lessons Miklos brought us… bought with such unfathomable hardship…
From the New York Times Book Review, May 8, 1955, by Richard Seaver:
In mid-March of 1944 the Germans invaded Hungary. All Jews were immediately consigned to house-arrest; deportations began soon afterwards. In April, together with all the Jews of his city, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was shipped to Auschwitz.
Separated from his wife and daughter upon arrival, Dr. Nyiszli was chosen by the evil master mind of the Auschwitz crematoriums…
[…just as today we see book deals made… to place exclusive blame for the overthrow of the elected governments of Iran and Guatemala on (we are encouraged to believe…) rogue loose-cannons… ‘power’ is ever-attendant… upon the need to periodically scrub its image… and likes to pin its most hideous crimes… on conveniently-dead – or otherwise effectively silenced – fall-guys…– PS]
… Dr. Nyiszli was chosen by… Oberstrumfuhrer Dr. Mengele, to take charge of all the pathological work carried on in the camp. As such, Dr. Nyiszli became a member of the Sonderkommando, the specially qualified and privileged group of prisoners who worked exclusively inside the crematoriums. This Sonderkommando, also known as the “kommando of the living dead,” consisted of some 860 male prisoners chosen for their professional abilities, their strength and good constitution…
(From the review of Miklos Nyiszli‘s Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, New York Times Book Review, May 8, 1955, by Richard Seaver)
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[…‘power’s most debased acts it determines to hide…
…secrecy is key to their goal being realized…
…a goal of such extreme elitism…
…is wrecked by the simple means of our seeing it…
…all of their illusions depend –
…their dream of the Republic…
…their carefully crafted image of supremacy…
– on the majority remaining asleep….
So it’s imperative that we start thinking…
…and listen to the lessons Miklos is bringing…
…consider what it means…
…that ‘power’ moved so suddenly…
…to overwhelm with such well-trained ‘authority’….
And while we can’t be tricked onto trains…
…it’s certain they’ve devised other ways…
…of unseating our ability to plan…
…by shrouding it with what ‘can’t be imagined’…
We must never forget the lessons Miklos brought us…
…bought with such unfathomable hardship….
Brothers and sisters…
…why wait for the inevitable end of a very clear ‘tend’…
…daily the disparities extend…
…we can see their dream hasn’t left them…
…moreover… the growth of our humanity depends…
…on leaving behind… the class system.… – PS]
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“Chapter I”:
Inside each of the locked cattle cars ninety people were jammed… (Part 1)
May, 1944. Inside each of the locked cattle cars ninety people were jammed. The stench of the urinal buckets, which were so full they overflowed, made the air unbreathable.
The train of the deportees. For four days, forty identical cars had been rolling endlessly on, first across Slovakia, then across the territory of the Central Government, bearing us towards an unknown destination. We were part of the first group of over a million Hungarian Jews condemned to death.
Leaving Tatra behind us, we passed the stations of Lublin and Krakau. During the war these two cities were used as regroupment camps – or, more exactly, as extermination camps – for here all the anti-Nazis of Europe were herded and sorted out for extermination.
Scarcely an hour out of Krakau the train ground to a halt before a station of some importance. Signs in Gothic letters announced it as “Auschwitz,” a place which meant nothing to us, for we had never heard of it.
Peering through a crack in the side of the car, I noticed an unusual bustle taking place about the train. The SS troops who had accompanied us till now were replaced by others. The trainmen left the train. From chance snatches of conversation overheard I gathered we were nearing the end of our journey.
The line of cars began to move again, and some twenty minutes later stopped with a prolonged, strident whistle of the locomotive.
Through the crack I saw a desert-like terrain: the earth was a yellowish clay, similar to that of Eastern Silesia, broken here and there by a green thicket of trees. Concrete pylons stretched in even rows to the horizon, with barbed wire strung between them from top to bottom. Signs warned us that the wires were electrically charged with high tension current. Inside the enormous squares bounded by the pylons stood hundreds of barracks, covered with green tar-paper and arranged to form a long, rectangular network of streets as far as the eye could see.
Tattered figures, dressed in the striped burlap of prisoners, moved about inside the camp. Some were carrying planks, others were wielding picks and shovels, and, farther on, still others were hoisting fat trunks onto the backs of waiting trucks.
The barbed wire enclosure was interrupted every thirty or forty yards by elevated watch towers, in each of which an SS guard stood leaning against a machine gun mounted on a tripod. This then was the Auschwitz concentration camp, or, according to the Germans, who delight in abbreviating everything, the KZ, pronounced “Katzet.” Not a very encouraging sight to say the least, but for the moment our awakened curiosity got the better of our fear.
…this tactic of barking orders at us when we’re tired and disoriented is very effective if we haven’t prepared ourselves for it… (Part 2)
I glanced around the car at my companions. Our group consisted of some twenty-six doctors, six pharmacists, six women, our children, and some elderly people, both men and women, our parents and relatives. Seated on their baggage or on the floor of the car, they looked both tired and apathetic, their faces betraying a sort of foreboding that even the excitement of our arrival was unable to dispel. Several of the children were asleep. Others sat munching the few scraps of food we had left. And the rest, finding nothing to eat, were vainly trying to wet their desiccated lips with dry tongues.
Heavy footsteps crunched on the sand. The shout of orders broke the monotony of the wait. The seals on the cars were broken. The door slid slowly open and we could already hear them giving us orders.
[…this tactic of barking orders at us when we’re tired and disoriented is very effective if we haven’t prepared ourselves for it…. Just today (10.22.13 Democracy Now!) I heard a mother describe how when ordered to stay behind by police (who had arrived in response to her call to 911 with a medical concern for her son…) because they wanted no witnesses when they confronted her son… she obeyed because they were both authoritative and reassuring (when they said, “don’t worry, ma’am, everything will be alright…” they were pulling a well-worn leaf from the book of totalitarian tactics.
And while I’m on this subject, I have to say that I would have appreciated some numbers on this issue of police killing and injuring of low-income… generally brown and black of skin…. Because it seems to me what we’re seeing is a global acceleration (i.e. part of a plan… i.e. calculated…) and that… bringing on the particular ‘expert’ she did… suggested that these incidents were part of a class-old problem of bad judgment in fear-laden situations….– PS]
“Everyone get out and bring his hand baggage with him. Leave all heavy baggage in the cars.”
We jumped to the ground, then turned to take our wives and children in our arms and help them down, for the level of the cars was over four and a half feet from the ground. The guards had us line up along the tracks. Before us stood a young SS officer, impeccable in his uniform, a gold rosette gracing his lapel, his boots smartly polished. Though unfamiliar with the various SS ranks, I surmised from his arm band that he was a doctor. Later I learned that he was the head of the SS group, that his name was Dr. Mengele, and that he was chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. As the “medical selector” for the camp, he was present at the arrival of every train.
In the moments that followed we experienced certain phases of what, at Auschwitz, was called “selection.” As for the subsequent phases, everyone lived through them according to his particular fate.
The left-hand column included the aged, the crippled, the feeble, and women with children under fourteen. The right-hand column consisted entirely of able-bodied men and women: those able to work… (Part 3)
To start, the SS quickly divided us according to sex, leaving all children under fourteen with their mothers. So our once united group was straightway split in two. A feeling of dread overwhelmed us. But the guards replied to our anxious questions in a paternal, almost good-natured manner. It was nothing to be concerned about. They were being taken off for a bath and to be disinfected, as was the custom. Afterwards we would all be reunited with our families.
While they sorted us out for transportation I had a chance to look around. In the light of the dying sun the image glimpsed earlier through the crack in the box car seemed to have changed, grown more eery and menacing. One object immediately caught my eye: an immense square chimney, built of red bricks, tapering towards the summit. It towered above a two-story building and looked like a strange factory chimney. I was especially struck by the enormous tongues of flame rising between the lightning rods, which were set at angles on the square tops of the chimney. I tried to imagine what hellish cooking would require such a tremendous fire. Suddenly I realized that we were in Germany, the land of the crematory ovens. I had spent ten years in this country, first as a student, later as a doctor, and knew that even the smallest city had its crematorium.
So the “factory” was a crematorium. A little farther on I saw a second building with its chimney; then, almost hidden in a thicket, a third, whose chimneys were spewing the same flames. A faint wind brought the smoke towards me. My nose, then my throat, were filled with the nauseating odor of burning flesh and scorched hair. – Plenty of food for thought there. But meanwhile the second phase of selection had begun. In single file, men, women, children, the aged, had to pass before the selection committee.
Dr. Mengele, the medical “selector,” made a sign. They lined up again in two groups. The left-hand column included the aged, the crippled, the feeble, and women with children under fourteen. The right-hand column consisted entirely of able-bodied men and women: those able to work. In this latter group I noticed my wife and fourteen-year-old daughter. We no longer had any way of speaking to each other; all we could do was make signs.
[…if his daughter had been thirteen… if his wife and child had perished right then… would this record have been? – PS]
Those too sick to walk, the aged and insane, were loaded into Red Cross vans. Some of the elderly doctors in my group asked if they could also get into the vans. The trucks departed, then the left-hand group, five abreast, flanked by SS guards, moved off in its turn. In a few minutes they were out of sight, cut off from view by a thicket of trees.
The right-hand column had not moved. Dr. Mengele ordered all doctors to step forward; he then approached the new group, composed of some fifty doctors, and asked those who had studied in a German university, who had a thorough knowledge of pathology and had practiced forensic medicine, to step forward.
“Be very careful,” he added, “You must be equal to the task; for if you’re not…” and his menacing gesture left little to the imagination. I glanced at my companions. Perhaps they were intimidated. What did it matter! My mind was already made up.
I broke ranks and presented myself. Dr. Mengele questioned me at length, asking me where I had studied, the names of my pathology professors, how I had acquired a knowledge of forensic medicine, how long I had practiced, etc. Apparently my answers were satisfactory, for he immediately separated me from the others and ordered my colleagues to return to their places. For the moment they were spared. Because I must now state a truth of which I then was ignorant, namely, that the left-hand group, and those who went off in cars, passed a few moments later through the doors of the crematorium. From which no one ever returned.
–––
I fell to thinking about… Germany, where I had spent some of the happiest years of my life… (Part 4)
Standing alone, a little apart from the others, I fell to thinking about the strange and devious ways of fate, and, more precisely, about Germany, where I had spent some of the happiest years of my life.
Now, above my head, the sky was bright with stars, and the soft evening breeze would have been refreshing if, from time to time, it had not borne with it the odor of bodies burning in the Third Reich’s crematoriums.
Hundreds of searchlights strung on top of the concrete pillars shone with a dazzling brilliance. And yet, behind the chain of lights, it seemed as though the air had grown heavier, enveloping the camp in a thick veil, through which only the blurred silhouettes of the barracks showed.
By now the cars were empty. Some men, dressed in prison garb, arrived and unloaded the heavy baggage we had left behind, then loaded it onto waiting trucks. In the gathering darkness the forty box cars slowly faded, till at last they melted completely into the surrounding countryside.
Dr. Mengele, having issued his final instructions to the SS troups, crossed to his car, climbed in behind the wheel and motioned for me to join him. I got into the back seat beside an SS junior officer and we started off. The car bounced crazily along the clay roads of the camp, which were rutted and filled with potholes from the spring rains. The bright searchlights flew past us, faster and faster, and in a short while we stopped before an armored gate. From his post an SS sentry came running up to let the familiar car through. We drove a few hundred yards farther along the main road of the camp, which was bounded on either side by barracks, then stopped again in front of a building which was in better shape than the others. A sign beside the entrance informed me that this was the “Camp Office.”
–––
“Make sure your seedling has really good light, so it will develop good roots and stalk…”
[December 24, 2013:
During the November 10, 2013 show… in a discussion of how we are ‘the state’… and of the ‘myopath con’ – meaning… ‘power’ continuously encouraging us to look short… to not look at the big picture – I said that the point of the drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan was to take a people with heart… and turn them into us… dispassionate and callous…
…well, this week the radio waves brought a good illustration of this process… delivered in a warm, jovial voice… laughingly relating a not-merry tale of how ‘Daddy’ gave brother “a few taps”: “Now I know some folks may think Daddy was a little hard on my brother, but we believed what the Bible says about “spare the rod, spoil the child”, and I see a lot of spoiled children out there. I thank God Daddy loved us enough not to spoil us. It was tradition!” she said, ending her non-apologia on a triumphant note. If she had any more happy tales to tell I can’t say… because I fled her voice like the plague… spun the dial and landed in a conversation… about germination – germinating seeds, more precisely –:
“Make sure your seedling has really good light, so it will develop good roots and stalk, or you’ll end up with terribly spindly seedlings. If it doesn’t get good light, it’s not going to make for a real vital, healthy plant…” said the new voice.
I’m going to ask us to consider, brothers and sisters, whether ‘power’ has an interest in our not being healthy and vital…
…and to consider further… why it is we hear this “spare the rod” opinion bleated often… but not… its opposite: that children are here to teach us… how to re-connect with our human-ness.
–––
For others it’s easier to imagine ocean-death… than a world in which we’re out of harness – this should show us the depths of our disengagement from our own bodies…
The Global Awakening is accelerating…
(…and while that’s true… I feel a lot of grief for the backlash we’re seeing that ‘power’ is unleashing on powerful people globally… and I have to say that I suspect… that where this happens… whether in Syria… Egypt… Gaza… Haiti… New Orleans… or urban cores in the U.S. generally… we can also see… in addition to the intent to break spirits… land ‘power’ covets…. And I believe that we have to start talking authentically on the Left about this – that ‘The Backlash’ ‘power’ whips us with is endless. ‘Power’ can manufacture turmoil at the drop of a hat… and that… our response has been for the most part reactive. And now that the Internet means we communicate instantaneously we can… and must… change that…)
…brothers and sisters globally are holding high a standard of courage that challenges us to push on… push further… vision ourselves into a different future… by weaving our acts of courage together…. Thank you brothers and sisters in South Korea… calling for a General Strike on December 28th – yesterday… which I heard not a word about – and thanks as well to folks braving the cold in Ukraine… who are helping us all see the need to end the practice of capturing and commodifying life… so we can begin truly living.
Listening this week to a couple guys hawking their book about so-called ‘Big Data’ – propagandists busily telling us what our future will be… (i.e. it will supposedly be the living installation of the film Minority Report…) because… apparently… ‘science’ so decrees – I found myself feeling nostalgic for a long-gone-for-reasons-unknown radio program called “Ask Mr. Science” (I find reason to miss it daily… daily we’re bombarded with the ‘science-says-so’ con… A few days ago I heard it reported that ‘science’ has ‘proven’ that “laughter is bad for you…” and just today a pundit was proclaiming that the responsibility for earth-raping lay not with ‘power’ but with our ‘over-population.’ For this pundit it was literally easier to imagine a world in which there were no people [he’d written a book on the subject] than a world in which the people are free… have full ownership of our bodies… and can sit around and think like he. For others it’s easier to imagine ocean-death… than a world in which we’re out of harness – this should show us the depths of our disengagement from our own bodies. ‘Power’ is working “science-says-so” hard… it may not be the best play in their propaganda playbook… but it sure seems they find it to be the most needed one – along with homophobia… and religion… and the wage divide itself… tied to ‘merit-rises’.) Anyway these ‘Big Data’ guys were quite energetically bludgeoning our hope… and – as is usually the case with propagandists – taking that ‘Managers’ Stance’… saying stuff like… “the moral challenge will be figuring out what we will do with folks who we know are disposed to commit crimes…” while the host nodded sanguinely… eagerly going along… with the con – sad display. So… whether the subject is controlling our supposed ‘bad genes’ or our fertility… ‘we’… must be ‘managed.’
It is this ‘Managers’ Stance’ that is used to woo youth… the ‘Big Seduction’ placed to lure them into complicity with ‘power’… it’s the street-wise… low-budget-size… ‘philosopher-statesmen’ – that Plato-play effective then… effective today… because ‘class’ is ‘class’ is ‘class’…
…which means that both ‘the economy’ and ‘the polity’ are… at base… about marshalling (and controlling…) human energy.
–––
How much do we want to be free?… as the end of class means the end of ranking… of all privilege…. It’s when we accept the privileges the state extends that we most manifest the state. So these and other questions we must face in order to “found and realize a test site…”
But the ancestors, the earth, and each other… our sisters and brothers… have other plans for us… and are dropping us breadcrumbs… and leading us home.
Brothers and sisters, once we have hopefully absorbed every word Miklos at such tremendous cost brought us… we will be turning to… full-facing… our future freedom… attempting to make concrete in our minds its broad outlines… in order to keep it in view as we steadily move to it.
These are my initial thoughts… which I’ll transfer over to a page I’m calling: Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness… :
In this space we’ll probably include a number of thought-experiments like: “a lot of wars were fought over spices… so people must really like them… how then will we get them… in our freedom?”… and then take other contentious things… like energy… and ask: “how do we do self- (not ‘statesmen’) –created ‘village self-sufficiency’ – as a global humanity?”
And we’ll be asking our brothers who want to control women’s energy: “how much do you want to be free?” Because the end of class means the end of all ranking… depends on the end of ‘privilege’… on the end of ‘the difference’ as Fatima’s mother put it… on the end of “‘in’ and ‘out’”… of “the two worlds”… as Virginia put it…. So, again… “how much do we want to be free?” is the question we must broach with each other… which is acknowledging that it is when we accept the privilege the state extends – parental privilege… education privilege… income privilege… gender and sexual orientation privilege… religious privilege – that we most manifest the state. States extend these privileges for obvious reasons.
Pure Happenstance
…both painting clearly our needed picture of ‘democracy’… and showing the seeds of which the U.S. was founded…
In Blog 50: “Wading Into The Muck Of State”, I noted that our under-siege-but-yet-surviving communal legacy called ‘The Library’ had unfailingly provided the ‘breakthrough breadcrumbs’ leading me home… brought the ancestors needed… the missing pieces… to fit into the puzzle of our containment under class. The pieces all seemed custom-fit for… the particular place (questions) I was stuck in.
Well… a few weeks ago it gave me such a gift… I’m still pondering it… and will be for a while yet… so precisely fit for where we are now in our process.
It gave me De Tocqueville’s Democracy In America, Vol. 1 – which is both painting clearly our needed picture of ‘democracy’ itself… and showing the seeds of which the U.S. was founded.
…Continuing with Chapter 2… “Camp Office” – PS]
So I, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, had ceased to exist; henceforth I would be, merely, KZ prisoner Number A 8450.… (Part 5)
Inside several people, with deep, intelligent eyes and refined faces, wearing the uniform of prisoners, sat working at their desks. They immediately rose and came to attention. Dr. Mengele crossed to one of them, a man of about fifty, whose head was shaved clean. Since I was standing a few steps behind the Obersturmfuhrer, it was impossible for me to hear what they were saying. Dr. Sentkeller, a prisoner, and, as I later learned, the F Camp doctor, nodded his head in assent. At his request, I approached another prisoner’s desk. The clerk rummaged for some file cards, then asked me a number of questions about myself, recorded the answers both on the card and in a large book, and handed the card to an SS guard. Then we left the room. As I passed in front of Dr. Mengele I bowed slightly. Observing this, Dr. Sentkeller could not refrain from raising his voice and remarking, ironically rather than with intended malice, that such civilities were not the custom here, and that one would do well not to play the man of the world in the KZ.
A guard took me to another barracks, on the entrance to which was written: “Baths & Disinfection,” where I and my card were turned over to still another guard. A prisoner approached me and took my medical bag, then searched me and told me to undress. A barber came over and shaved first my head, then the rest of my body, and sent me to the showers. They rubbed my head with a solution of calcium chloride, which burnt my eyes so badly that for several minutes I could not open them again.
In another room my clothes were exchanged for a heavy, almost new jacket, and a pair of striped trousers. They gave me back my shoes after having dipped them in a tank containing the same solution of calcium chloride. I tried on my new clothes and found they fitted me quite well. (I wondered what poor wretch had worn them before me.) Before I could reflect any further, however, another prisoner pulled up my left sleeve and, checking the number on my card, began skillfully to make a series of little tattoo marks on my arm, using an instrument filled with a blue ink. A number of small, bluish spots appeared almost immediately.
“Your arm will swell a little,” he reassured me, “but in a week that will disappear and the number will stand out quite clearly.”
So I, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, had ceased to exist; henceforth I would be, merely, KZ prisoner Number A 8450.
Suddenly I recalled another scene; fifteen years before the Rector of the Medical School of Frederick Wilhelm University in Breslau shook my hand and wished me a brilliant future as he handed me my diploma, “with the congratulations of the jury.”
–––
“Chapter III”:
Then began the most inhumane part of the KZ program: roll call.… This sport continued for several hours. (Part 6)
For the moment my situation was tolerable. Dr. Mengele expected me to perform the work of a physician. I would probably be sent to some German city as a replacement for a German doctor who had been drafted into military service, and whose functions had included pathology and forensic medicine. Moreover, I was filled with hope by the fact that, by Dr. Mengele’s orders, I had not been issued a prisoner’s burlap, but an excellent suit of civilian clothes.
It was already past midnight, but my curiosity kept me from feeling tired. I listened carefully to the barracks chief’s every word. He knew the complete organization of the KZ, the names of the SS commanders in each camp section, as well as those of the prisoners who occupied important posts. I learned that the Auschwitz KZ was not a work camp, but the largest extermination camp in the Third Reich. He also told me of the “selections” that were made daily in the hospitals and the barracks. Hundreds of prisoners were loaded every day onto trucks and transported to the crematoriums, only a few hundred yards away.
[…at what point will it dawn that his purpose is to bear witness? Quite early on, I suspect… and not just to justify collaboration in exchange for his wife’s and daughter’s lives. – PS]
From his tales I learned of life in the barracks. Eight hundred to a thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man’s feet on another’s head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all human dignity they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches’ space on which to sleep a little more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep: reveille sounded at three in the morning. Then guards, armed with rubber clubs, drove the prisoners from their “beds.” Still half asleep, they poured from the barracks, elbowing and shoving, and immediately lined up outside. Then began the most inhumane part of the KZ program: roll call. The prisoners were standing in rows of five. Those in charge arranged them in order. The barracks clerk lined them up by height, the taller ones in front and the shorter behind. Then another guard arrived, the day’s duty guard for the section, and he, lashing out with his fists as he went, pushed the taller men back and had the short men brought up front. Then, finally, the barracks leader arrived, well dressed and well fed. He too was dressed in prison garb, but his uniform was clean and neatly pressed. He paused and haughtily scanned the ranks to see if everything was in order. Naturally it was not, so he began swinging with closed fists at those in the front rank who were wearing glasses, and drove them into the back rank. Why? Nobody knew. In fact you did not even think about it, for this was the KZ, and no one would even think of hunting for a reasonable explanation for such acts.
[…but is not this unquestioning obedience to authority in the face of the ‘irrational’ exactly what we all do every day?– PS]
This sport continued for several hours. They counted the rows of men more than fifteen times, from front to back and back to front and in every other possible direction they could devise. If a row was not straight the entire barracks remained squatting for an hour, their hands raised above their heads, their legs trembling with fatigue and cold. For even in summer the Auschwitz dawns were cold, and the prisoners’ light burlap served as scant protection against the rain and cold. But, winter and summer, roll call began at 3:00 A.M. and ended at 7:00, when the SS officers arrived.
If there were any dead in the barracks… they too had to be present for the inspection… (Part 7)
The barracks leader, an obsequious servant of the SS, was invariably a common law criminal, whose green insignia distinguished him from the other prisoners. He snapped to attention and made his report, giving muster of those men under his command. Next it was the turn of the SS to inspect the ranks: they counted the columns and inscribed the numbers in their notebooks. If there were any dead in the barracks – and there were generally five or six a day, sometimes as many as ten – they too had to be present for the inspection. And not only present in name, but physically present, standing, stark naked, supported by two living prisoners until the muster was over. For, living or dead, the prescribed number of prisoners had to be present and accounted for. It sometimes happened that when they were overworked, the kommando whose job is was to transport the dead in wheelbarrows failed to pass by for several days. Then the dead had to be brought to each inspection until the transportation kommando finally arrived to take charge of them. Only then were their names crossed off the muster list.
After all I had learned, I was not sorry to have acted boldly and tried to better my lot. By having been chosen, the very first day, to work as a doctor, I had been able to escape the fate of being lost in the mass and drowned in the filth of the quarantine camp.
Thanks to my civilian clothes, I had managed to maintain a human appearance, and this evening I would sleep in the medical room bed of the twelfth “hospital” barracks.
–––
…they practiced their profession with complete devotion… young French or Greek doctors… their wives, their children, their relatives and friends had been liquidated upon arrival. Or rather, burned. (Part 8)
At seven in the morning: reveille. The doctors in my section, as well as the personnel of the hospital, lined up in front of the barracks to be counted. That took about two or three minutes. They also counted the bed-ridden, as well as the previous night’s dead. Here too the dead were stretched out beside the living.
During breakfast, which we took in our rooms, I met my colleagues. The head doctor of barracks-hospital number 12 was Dr. Levy, professor at the University of Strasbourg; his associate was Dr. Gras, professor at the University of Zagreb; both were excellent practitioners, known throughout Europe for their skill.
With practically no medicines, working with defective instruments and in surroundings where the most elementary aseptics and antiseptics were lacking, unmindful of their personal tragedy, unconscious of fatigue and danger, they did their best to care for the sick and ease the sufferings of their fellow men.
In the Auschwitz KZ the healthiest individual was given three or four weeks to collapse from hunger, filth, blows and inhuman labor. How can one describe the state of those who were already organically ill when they reached the camp? In circumstances where it was difficult to forget that one was a human being, and a doctor besides, they practiced their profession with complete devotion. Their example was faithfully followed by the subaltern medical corps, which was composed of six doctors. They were all young French or Greek doctors. For three years they had been eating the KZ bread made from wild chestnuts sprinkled with sawdust. Their wives, their children, their relatives and friends had been liquidated upon arrival. Or rather, burned. If by chance they had been directed to the right-hand column they had been unable to stand up under the ordeal for more than two or three months and, as the “chosen,” had disappeared into the flames.
Overcome by despair, resigned, apathetic, they nevertheless attempted, with the utmost devotion, to help the living-dead whose fate was in their hands. For the prisoners of that hospital were the living-dead. One had to be seriously ill before being admitted to the KZ hospital. For the most part they were living skeletons: dehydrated, emaciated, their lips were cracked, their faces swollen, and they had incurable dysentery. Their bodies were covered with enormous and repulsive running sores and suppurating ulcers. Such were the KZ’s sick. Such were those one had to care for and comfort.
–––
“Chapter IV”:
This was the famous “Gypsy Camp.” The Third Reich’s ethnological experts had classified gypsies as an inferior race. Accordingly, they had been rounded up… throughout the occupied countries… (Part 9)
I still had no clearly defined job. During a visit around the camp in the company of a French doctor, I noticed a sort of annex jutting out from one side of a KZ barracks. From the outside it looked like a toolshed. Inside, however, I saw a table about as high as a man’s head, built of unplaned, rather thick boards; a chair, a box of dissecting instruments; and, in one corner, a pail. I asked my colleague what it was used for.
“That’s the KZ’s only dissecting room,” he said, “It hasn’t been used for some time. As a matter of fact, I don’t know of any specialist in the camp who’s qualified to perform dissections, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that your presence here is tied in with Dr. Mengele’s plans for reactivating it.
The very thought dampened my spirits, for I had pictured myself working in a modern dissecting room, not in this camp shed. In the course of my entire medical career I had never had to work with such defective instruments as these, or in a room so primitively equipped. Even when I had been called into the provinces on cases of murder and suicide, where the autopsy had had to be performed on the spot, I had been better equipped and installed.
Nevertheless I resigned myself to the inevitable, and accepted even this eventuality, for in the KZ this was still a favored position. And yet I still could not understand why I had been given almost new civilian clothes if I were slated to work in a dirty shed. It didn’t make sense. But I decided not to waste my time worrying about such apparent contradictions.
Still in the company of my French colleague, I gazed out across the barbed wire enclosures. Naked dark-skinned children were running and playing. Women with Creole-like faces and gaily colored clothes, and half-naked men, seated on the ground in groups, chatted as they watched the children play. This was the famous “Gypsy Camp.” The Third Reich’s ethnological experts had classified gypsies as an inferior race. Accordingly, they had been rounded up, not only in Germany itself, but throughout the occupied countries, and herded here. Because they were Catholics, they were allowed the privilege of remaining in family groups.
There were about 4,500 of them in all. They did no work, but were assigned the job of policing the neighboring Jewish camps and barracks, where they exercised their authority with unimaginable cruelty.
The Gypsy Camp offered one curiosity: the experimental barracks. The director of the Research Laboratory was Dr. Epstein, professor at the University of Prague, a pediatrician of world renown, a KZ prisoner since 1940. His assistant was Dr. Bendel, of the University of Paris Medical School.
Three categories of experiments were performed here: the first consisted of research into the origin and causes of dual births, a study which the birth of the Dionne quintuplets ten years before had caused to be pursued with renewed interest. The second was the search to discover the biological and pathological causes for the birth of dwarfs and giants. And the third was the study of the causes and treatments of a disease commonly called “dry gangrene of the face.”
This terrible disease is exceptionally rare; in ordinary practice you scarcely ever come across it. But here in the Gypsy Camp it was fairly common among both children and adolescents. And so, because of its prevalence, research had been greatly facilitated and considerable progress made towards finding an effective method of treating it.
According to established medical concepts, “dry gangrene of the face” generally appears in conjunction with measles, scarlet fever and typhoid fever. But these diseases, plus the camp’s deplorable sanitary conditions, seemed only to be the factors that favored its development, since it also existed in the Czech, Polish and Jewish camps. But it was especially prevalent among gypsy children, and from this it had been deduced that its presence must be directly related to hereditary syphilis, for the syphilis rate in the Gypsy Camp was extremely high.
From these observations a new treatment, consisting of a combination of malaria injections and doses of a drug whose trade name is “Novarsenobenzol,” had been developed, with most promising results.
Dr. Mengele paid daily visits to the experimental barracks and participated actively in all phases of the research. He worked in collaboration with two prisoners-doctors and a painter named Dina, whose artistic skill was a great asset to the enterprise. Dina was a native of Prague, and had been a KZ prisoner for three years. As Dr. Mengele’s assistant she was granted certain privileges that ordinary prisoners never enjoyed.
[…just as there is a certain equivalency between lust for what one has (or is) not… and (soul) death… as the ancients pointed our attention to in making ‘wealth’ and ‘death’ the same word… so likewise… as Shakespeare called our attention to… there exists a certain equivalence between any object used to stuff into the Abyss (the maw of ‘power’ – … bottomless hunger… lust for possession… for ownership of everything…) including ‘Knowledge Infinite’… the illusion of ‘Supreme Knowledge’– so that they can feel superior. And this is the object of totalitarianism… the longing of ‘power’ to command all the ‘knowledge resources’ of the world… never knowing that ‘knowledge’ is earth’s gift to each of us (at least in potential… to those who grant themselves the time to listen…) at birth…. – PS]
“Chapter V”:
…expelled from some fair-sized city: the prisoners’ clothes were smartly tailored… they had managed to create for themselves a pleasant, cultured way of life. And that was the cardinal sin for which they were now paying so dearly. (Part 10)
Dr. Mengele was indefatigable in the exercise of his functions. He spent long hours in his laboratories, then hurried to the unloading platform, where the daily arrival of four or five trainloads of Hungarian deportees kept his busy half the day.
Unceasingly the new convoys marched off in columns of five, flanked by SS guards. I watched one come in and line up. Although my vantage point was at some distance from the tracks and my view obstructed by the maze of barbed wire fences, I could still see that this convoy had been expelled from some fair-sized city: the prisoners’ clothes were smartly tailored, many were wearing new poplin raincoats, and the suitcases they carried were of expensive leather. In that city, wherever it was, they had managed to create for themselves a pleasant, cultured way of life. And that was the cardinal sin for which they were now paying so dearly.
[…in Waking Up we asked, “why do they want to steal our happiness?” – PS]
Despite his numerous functions, Dr. Mengele even found time for me. A cart, drawn by prisoners, drew up before the dissecting room door.
[…we shall have to take some time with… in some future radio show… Lucian’s “Lucius, The Ass”…. Strange though it may sound (as “Lucius, The Ass” is a folk tale), it seems to me there are some not insignificant commonalities between these two records… despite Lucian’s being fiction and Miklos’ being only too real… they are both catalogues of horrors… both count up the way humans under class torture and kill their brothers and sisters… – PS]
I suddenly realized that I was about to take an examination, and that this was the jury before me, a highly important and dangerous jury. (Part 11)
…The transportation group unloaded two corpses. On their chests the letters Z and S (Zur Sektion), marked with a special chalk, indicated that they were to be dissected. The chief of Barracks 12 assigned an intelligent prisoner to assist me. Together we placed one of the bodies on the dissection table. I noticed a thick black line across his neck. Either he had hanged himself, or been hanged. Taking a quick look at the second body, I saw that death had here been caused by electrocution. That much could be deduced from the small superficial skin burns and the yellowish-red coloration around them. I wondered whether he had thrown himself against the high-tension wires, or whether he had been pushed. Both were common in the KZ.
The formalities were the same, whether it was a case of suicide or murder. In the evening, at roll call, the names of the deceased would be scratched from the muster list, and their bodies loaded onto “hearses” for transportation to the camp morgue. There another truck would pick them up, at the rate of forty to fifty a day, and bear them to the crematorium.
The two bodies Dr. Mengele had sent me were the first I had been given to examine. The day before, he had warned me to work on them carefully and do a good job. I planned to carry out his orders to the best of my ability.
A car pulled up. In the barracks the command “Attention” rang out. Dr. Mengele and two senior SS officers had just arrived. They listened as the barracks leader and doctor made their reports, then headed straight for the dissecting room, followed by the F Camp prisoner-doctors. They arranged themselves in a circle around the room, as though this were a pathology class in some important medical center and the case at hand a particularly interesting one. I suddenly realized that I was about to take an examination, and that this was the jury before me, a highly important and dangerous jury. I also knew that my fellow prisoner-doctors were keeping their fingers crossed for me.
No one present knew that I had spent three years at the Boroslo Institute of Forensic Medicine, where I had had a chance to study every possible form of suicide under the supervision of Professor Strasseman. I realized that, as prisoner-doctor A 8450, I had better remember now all that Dr. Miklos Nyiszli had formerly known.
I began the dissection. I proceeded to open first the skull, then the thorax and finally the abdominal cavity. I extracted all the organs, noted everything that was abnormal, and replied without hesitation to all the numerous questions they fired at me. Their faces showed that their curiosity had been satisfied, and from their approving nods and glances I surmised that I had passed the examination. After the second dissection Dr. Mengele ordered me to prepare the statement of my findings. Somebody would stop by to pick it up on the following day. After the SS doctors had left I conversed a while with my fellow prisoners.
On the following day three more bodies arrived for dissection. The same public appeared, but this time the atmosphere was less tense, for they knew me and had seen my work. Those present took a more lively interest, made a number of astute and provocative comments, and on certain points the discussion grew quite animated.
After the departure of the SS doctors, several French and Greek doctors paid me a call and asked if I would instruct them in the technique of lumbar punctures. They also requested me to grant them authorization to try the operation on some of the bodies given me, a request I readily granted. I was deeply moved to find that, even inside the barbed wire fences, they continued to manifest such an interest in their profession. They attempted the puncture and after six or seven tries at last succeeded, then withdrew, quite pleased with their afternoon’s work.
[…our capacity – once stripped of our earth-connected self-definitions – to accept insanity is almost boundless… which is why it is so critically important that we regain our leadership capacities… and therefore become the ones who determine the conditions of our lives…. Until we put ourselves in charge of ourselves… the fantasy of an elite to install a constructed ‘perfect’ ‘reality’ will lurk ‘in germinus’… or ‘insubstantialis’… or ‘in manifestus’… around us. – PS]
…the pathology is the class system itself… there is a single mindset behind Auschwitz and that of the larger society: the mindset of ‘class’… (Part 12)
“Chapter VI”:
For the next three days I had nothing to do. I was still drawing the supplementary rations issued to doctors, but I spent most of my time either stretched out on my bed or seated on the bleachers of the stadium, which was located not far from F. Camp. Yes, even Auschwitz had its stadium. But it was reserved exclusively for the use of the German prisoners of the Third Reich, who acted as clerks in various camp sections….
The following was discussed during the November 3, 2010 edition of Waking Up radio. See “Reclaiming Our Stolen Gifts… Our Leadership… To Establish A Future Based On Distributed Generation” for the transcript and audio of this discussion.]
[…just as Miklos will eventually start counting the ways people are murdered… I’m tempted to start counting the ways people are ranked in the city of Auschwitz. So far he has shown us an elaborate ranking of both captors and captives… a scheme that mirrors the larger society… with which we are all unfortunately all too familiar… and comfortable. This morning (10.31.13) I listened to an interview with a man, Jack El-Hai, who has written a book called The Nazi and the Psychiatrist… about the life of a man sent by the U.S. military in 1945 to evaluate the captured Nazi leadership – to determine their mental fitness for standing trial. What surprised me most about the interview was the apparent belief of the interviewer that their must have been some common pathology that the leadership suffered from… he kept digging to find out what it was: “So did the psychiatrist [Douglas M. Kelley] ever find that trait?” he asked near the end of the interview… when… had we been discussing it… had we been discussing Alice Miller… Miklos Nyiszli… Karl Popper…it would have been obvious… for all of us… that the pathology is the class system itself.
As Miklos bears witness… he constantly calls attention to the fact – by his frequent use of the word ‘work’ (and related words… like ‘task’ and ‘function’) – that there is a single mindset behind Auschwitz and that of the larger society: the mindset of ‘class.’
There is a total absence of logic in the way ‘work’ is discussed across the political spectrum (again… this speaks to the reality that the class system is totalitarian….) The obvious truth that we are captives within the coerced work system (whether it’s the ‘money-illusion’ or the illusion of ‘our betters’ that coerces us…) – is never spoken. So… on the one hand… while it’s perfectly obvious to us all that we are not independent actors while “on the job”… but rather puppets… this obvious truth is never spoken… while the discourse of the pundits all implies that we are independent actors. (What specifically led me to write this was hearing criticism of Janet Napolitano [this morning, 10.31.13] because of acts this current university functionary committed as a functionary of government.) The anger of pundits leveled against folks who “did their job” – i.e. heinous acts they were paid to do… acts compelled by the system … never broadens in its scope to embrace the class system itself. There is this insane assumption – insane because it flies against all of our own personal experience… it flies against truth – that captives are not captives. It strikes me that these attacks must be for the benefit of young people with little experience with the coerced work system… but no interviewer ever calls them on it… no radio host ever states the obvious. To live under such patent insanity does violence to what we are as living things… undermines our humanity.
Homans’ [in English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century] observations that each generation lives according to ‘convenient’ (for ‘power’) myths that it treats as real [see “Occupying Our Commons” for a Homans excerpt (there is a list of contents on the right…)] imply that this is inevitably (and almost necessarily) so. But he wrote well before the Internet and without Nikola’s deep consideration of the matter. Nikola Tesla knew that this time we are approaching would come… a time when we will no longer have to fight our way to the truth… but rather live our lives by the light of truth… and that all of us (because it takes all of us to do it) will regain our humanity. – PS]
…On Sundays the stadium was the excited hub of sports activity, but on weekdays the vast field lay quiet and empty. Only a barbed wire fence separated the stadium from number one crematorium. I wanted very much to know just what went on in the shadow of the immense stack, which never ceased spewing tongues of flame. From where I was sitting there was not much one could see. And to approach the barbed wire was unwise, for the watchtower machine guns sprayed the area without warning to frighten away anyone who happened to wander into this No-Man’s-Land.
Nevertheless, I saw that a group of men in civilian clothes was lining up in the crematorium courtyard, directly in front of the red-brick building: there wee about 200 in all, with an SS guard in front. It looked to me like a roll call, and I assumed that this was the night watch being relieved by the oncoming day watch. For the crematoriums ran on a twenty-four-hour schedule, as I learned from a fellow prisoner, who also informed me that the crematorium personnel were known as the Sonderkommando, which means, merely, kommandos assigned to special work. They were well fed and given civilian clothes. They were never permitted to leave the grounds of the crematorium, and every four months, when they had learned too much about the place for their own good, they were liquidated. Till now such had been the fate of every Sonderkommando since the founding of the KZ; this explains why no one had ever escaped to tell the world what had been taking place inside these grim walls for the past several years.
I returned to Barracks 12 just in time for Dr. Mengele’s arrival. He drove up and was received by the barracks guard, then sent for me and asked me to join him in his car. This time there was no guard with us. We were gone before I even had time to say good-bye to my colleagues. He stopped in front of the Camp Office and asked Dr. Sentkeller to get my card, then started off again along the bumpy road.
For about twelve minutes we drove through the labyrinth of barbed wire and entered well-guarded gates, thus passing from one section to another. Only then did I realize how vast the KZ was. Few people had the possibility of verifying that fact, because the majority died at the very place to which they were sent when they first arrived. Later I learned that the Auschwitz KZ had, at certain periods, held more that 100,000 people within its enclosure of electrified barbed wire. [A Translator’s note reads: “Hoess, the camp commander, testified at Nuremberg that the camp held 140,000 prisoners when filled to capacity.”]
Dr. Mengele suddenly interrupted my meditations. Without turning, he said: “The place I’m taking you to is no sanatorium, but you’ll find that conditions there are not too bad.”
We left the camp and skirted the Jewish unloading ramp for about 300 yards. A large armored gate in the barbed wire opened behind the guard. We went in: before us lay a spacious courtyard, covered with green grass. The gravel paths and the shade of the pine trees would have made the place quite pleasant had there not been, at the end of the courtyard, an enormous red brick building and a chimney spitting flame. We were in one of the crematoriums. We stayed in the car. An SS ran up and saluted Dr. Mengele. Then we got out, crossed the courtyard and went through a large door into the crematorium.
“Is the room ready?” Dr. Mengele asked the guard.
“Yes, sir,” the man replied.
We headed towards it, Dr. Mengele leading the way.
The room in question was freshly whitewashed and well lighted by a large window, which, however, was barred. The furnishings, after those of the barracks, surprised me: a white bed; a closet, also white; a large table and some chairs. On the table, a red velvet tablecloth. The concrete floor was covered with handsome rugs. I had the impression I was expected. The Sonderkommando men had painted the room and outfitted it with objects that the preceding convoys had left behind. We then passed through a dark corridor until we reached another room, a very bright, completely modern dissecting room, with two windows. The floor was of red concrete; in the center of the room, mounted on a concrete base, stood a dissecting table of polished marble, equipped with several drainage channels. At the edge of the table a basin with nickel taps had been installed; against the wall, three porcelain sinks. The walls were painted a light-green, and large barred windows were covered with green metal screens to keep out flies and mosquitoes.
We left the dissecting room for the next room: the work room. Here there were fancy chairs and paintings; in the middle of the room, a large table covered with a green cloth; all about, comfortable armchairs. I counted three microscopes on the table. In one corner there was a well-stocked library, which contained the most recent editions. In another corner a closet, in which were stowed white smocks, aprons, towels and rubber gloves. In short, the exact replica of any large city’s institute of pathology.
I took it all in, paralyzed with fright. As soon as I had come through the main gate I had realized that I was on death’s path. A slow death, opening its maddening depths before me. I felt I was lost.
Now I understood why I had been given civilian clothes. This was the uniform of the Sonderkommando – the kommando of the living-dead.
My chief was preparing to leave; he informed the SS guard that as far as “service” was concerned I depended exclusively on him. The crematorium’s SS personnel had no jurisdiction over me. The SS kitchen had to provide my food; I could get my linen and supplementary clothing at the SS warehouse. For shaves and haircuts, I had the right to use the SS barbershop in the building. I would not have to be present for the evening or morning roll call.
Besides my laboratory and anatomical work, I was also responsible for the medical care of all the crematorium’s SS personnel – about 120 men – as well as the Sonderkommando – about 860 prisoners. Medicines, medical instruments, dressings, all in sufficient quantity, were at my disposal. So that they should receive suitable medical attention, I had to visit all those sick in the crematorium once a day, and sometimes even twice. I could circulate among the four crematoriums without a pass from 7:00 A.M. till 7:00 P.M. I would have to make out a daily report to the SS commandant and to the Sonderkommando Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld, listing the number of ill, bed-ridden and ambulatory patients.
I listened, almost paralyzed, to the enumeration of my rights and duties. Under such conditions, I should be the KZ’s most important figure, were I not in the Sonderkommando and were all this not taking place in the “Number one Krema.”
Dr. Mengele left without a word. Never did an SS, no matter how low in rank, greet a KZ prisoner. I locked the door to the dissecting room; from now on it was my responsibility.
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[This WUR Show of January 5, 2014 did not either air or stream over the Internet. BLR has not transmitted over the air for almost the entire time this show has existed, but for the last few days the server that carries our signal to our transmitter has been down. We don’t know why.]
…once we are stuck in that box… called ‘the job’… or called ‘our service to the state’… we find ourselves with a pricetag on our heads… because the box is a way to… in theory… quantify our so-called ‘worth’…
January 2, 2014… Brothers and Sisters:
In attempting to think through [in the page Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness…] the key qualities of ‘governance in freedom’ that would distinguish it from the existing forms under class… I kept running up against the fact that there are key conversations that we need to be having… which is why I stress so much the propagandistic role the punditry plays – necessarily… because they depend on the wage – because they collaborate with ‘power’s determination to exclude these conversations from the public discourse. It’s a strategy of containment that works because of our atomization. We have no reality-check for our own thought-process except the official voices that ‘power’ permits (sanctions) – until, that is, we struggle against this pressure of sanctioned thought and create the alternative for ourselves.
The challenge is to develop this alternative way of looking at the conventions of class in the absence of a clear picture of an alternative (to class) future… as… the clamps on our thought is ‘total’. So how to find a way in… to an authentic thought process… one which would then allow us to see the approved discourse as propaganda?
And how to begin to develop the alternative vision of freedom when we have not thoroughly examined and rejected the thought ‘power’ sanctions?
Without the ‘certainty’ that tested discussion brings… it’s very difficult to see clearly the degree to which we’re being squeezed… to see the degree to which we aren’t free.
So… being able to see the propaganda depends on our having a picture of freedom… and a picture of freedom is deepened by seeing our ‘unfreedom’… by our recognizing how pervasive the chains… how tight the ‘thought-vise’ ‘power’ applies… and all the more so as the propaganda shows such craft. Here’s some examples I heard this week… all of which illustrate Bentham’s emphasis on controlling the lexicon… the definitions:
• ‘Happiness’ was linked with ‘well-being’ as an individual mental state completely disconnected from our common political dilemma of containment – the state’s requirement that we be subjects – in direct opposition to the reality that we are… each one… powerful humans. “A little tweak to our story can change how happy we are…” the pundit said… absolving the state of all responsibility for our inability to pursue happiness…
It’s a small step from jumping for a star on your forehead… to jumping for a job… and then… Auschwitz is but a nudge away.
• Kindergartners are being subjected to an intense training in ‘obedience’: “The Good Behavior Game”… conflating… hideously… ‘play’ with ‘service to the state.’ I guess you could call ‘wage-slavery’ a ‘game’… it’s a game to see how much you can increase the price on your head over the course of a life-time. And we all play that game… until we get some little nudge from the earth… some little ‘coat-pulling’… to remind us that the ‘rulers’ are conning us. The ‘game’ works for them… strokes their egos. It’s a good feeling to feel ‘supreme’… and they have that hold over us by saying, “we can give you a little taste of that as long as you obey us.” And that’s not only a con… it’s a con we no longer have to be trapped in… we can start talking to each other and change the terms… and say, “we don’t want to play games anymore… we want to use our gifts unbent… uninfluenced by secret agendas that are never put out there on the table. We don’t need to be told what to do by states. We need to work together and develop ourselves… unforced.
Anyway… this so-called “Good Behavior Game”… so-called ‘game’… so-called ‘good’… definitely obedience training… was slyly reframed as a life-saving intervention in their lives… dressed up and sugar-coated as a smoking-prevention effort. “They don’t get a star if they daydream,” said the ‘teacher’. I would argue that if they don’t daydream they can’t be stars.
This is a particularly disturbing instance of a partnership between government and business… multiply making use of our children. It’s a small step from jumping for a star on your forehead… to jumping for a job… and then… Auschwitz is but a nudge away.
• ‘Scarcity mindset’ as a concept was firmly grabbed… with an effort to plant it in our minds… once again… as an individual feeling… that we ‘underprivileged’ particularly need help with. So… we’re told… it’s an ‘individual challenge’ rather than the key underpinning of class… the key requirement for ‘power’ to exist… and so systematically crafted.
The only way we can begin seeing all the cons… is if we start asking of ourselves some necessary questions:
…‘power’ wants to control the so-called ‘knowledge work’ of the world… which means they have to control the so-called ‘grunt work’ of the world…
• Is there material scarcity in reality… or is it crafted by means of policy? This is critical for us to get clear on because belief in ‘scarcity’ prevents from the outset an openness even to the possibility of achieving ‘consensus authority’…
• Do we need a ‘regulating force’ (i.e. the state) to work together? Do we need ‘keepers’?… and if you think so… why? Crime?… violence?… bullyishness? Aren’t they all an expression of the state’s imposition of ‘less-and-less’… the scarcity-mindset… as the broad condition for all of our lives… because none of us… have ‘enough time’… a.k.a. own our own lives.
• What’s the goal? ‘Jobs’… or ‘leisure’? What does your body say? Do we, as a global society, have the means to… not just let our bodies speak… but be honored… attended to… followed?
• Do we want a society in which the wage… or the state…
[…as I’m sure they’re planning to replace the notion of ‘the wage’ with ‘service’ cuz “we gotta save the planet….” We don’t need their help with that… because… instantly… if we were all free the planet would start healing… the class system… ‘power’… the few who want to be ‘philosopher-statesmen’… that… they… are the problem. We don’t need their ‘help’… we need to be free. So do we want a society in which we are compelled to share our gifts… either by the wage or by the state directly?]
…compels us… a society premised on scarcity and obedience? Auschwitz shows us where that leads us. This is important to get clear on too because the notion of attaching a ‘value’ to life… our human-ness… quantifying it with a measured remuneration… tied to the ‘degree’ of our service to… complicity with… the state… likewise sets us on the road to Auschwitz.
• And regardless of whether our particular ‘regulating force’ (the state) employs us… are we willing to turn our backs on our brothers and sisters globally?
[We’ve been talking about this too. A lot of folks in this country are not pushing forward the conversation: “What does ‘hierarchy’ mean?” Some folks on the Left who talk about the nation-state system being divided into ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ even acknowledge that the ‘cores’ are created as ‘cores’… reproduced as ‘cores’… and the so-called ‘peripheries’ are created as ‘peripheries’… reproduced as ‘peripheries’… that’s just hierarchy… that’s what keeps us all jumping cuz we don’t want to be on the bottom. So the fact that we… here in a more privileged spot – because ‘power’ has to have ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ for the whole ideology of ‘class’ to have legitimacy – and then you develop some other legitimizing ideologies like: “It’s about ‘merit’… it’s about ‘training’… it’s about ‘talent’… it’s about ‘skill’… it’s about ‘education’ – we are born powerful and we all have unique gifts… which… once ‘power’ is off our backs and we start sharing them… that will show that ‘abundance’ means ‘being free’… and abundance then lets us develop those gifts even further… once we are allowed to create it. We’re a creative species. We give our gifts freely. That’s what we want to do. That’s what our bodies want to do.
So… I want to emphasize that again. I don’t want to lose track of that notion of… even if we [in the U.S.]… because we’re intentionally privileged… are allowed to create seemingly self-determining villages – and this again goes back to why I want us to talk about De Tocqueville being used by ‘power’ for help with this moment… because… he is lauding the civic involvement of the citizenry of early 19th century New England… and attributing that to the fact that they could create their own village. So… yes… they gave tribute… they gave taxes to the state… but all of their creativeness… their gifts and skills… they could devote to creating their local village. Well I think ‘power’ is trying to go back to that… for the United States… because obviously if we start doing that globally it would end ‘power’… and they’re not going to allow that… as… in their way of thinking… “who’s going to grow the food?… who’s going to dig out the minerals… who’s going to load it on trucks… who’s going to do all the ‘grunt work’?”… because they want to control the so-called ‘knowledge resources’ of the world… which means they have to control the so-called ‘grunt work’ of the world. They deeply believe you can’t have one – the pursuit of ‘Knowledge-Infinite’ – without the other – dedicated ‘slaves’ – and we have to start the conversation: “Is that true?” I hope we don’t even have to have that conversation… we don’t want to turn our backs on our brothers and sisters.]
• As the nation-state is an invention… can we not even more readily ‘invent’ what our bodies want to do naturally?… once we start testing these unconscious assumptions that we’re born into and get reinforced systematically throughout the course of our lives… and across every aspect of our lives?
As long as we-the-people are stuck simply surviving…
[…and this is key… again pointing to the reality that we’re living in a totalitarian system… because De Grazia pointed this out fifty years ago… that if we-the-people are stuck surviving… we cannot begin to grow our gifts… it’s just obvious. And he said, “Why are we putting ourselves through this? There’s abundance. Let’s move on.” And then, of course, his work never gets discussed. I’m sure there was an initial set of positive reviews. This is ‘power’s general M.O. in handling dangerous (for it) discourse: give it a positive review so you can have plausible deniability if accused of suppressing critical information – “See… we gave it a review. It wasn’t ignored. It wasn’t buried…” – and then just turn your back on it. And the subsequent generations are born never hearing about it. That’s what Bentham taught them to do. And it takes a lot of effort on our part to excavate and recover what we should have… held close… and treasured… and shared… and developed. And we’re going to have to start doing that… and the Internet allows us to now.]
…we cannot truly become authors of our own lives… or live in transparent inter-connection as is our birthright… globally. So the obvious question we must push forward on the Left is:
• How could “Leisure For All” happen? Because if it’s possible… our responsibility to ourselves, to each other, and to life itself… is to begin working to make it happen… and… trust… that’s a goal we can all find the energy for.
So let’s ensure that in the coming year we start having these necessary conversations.
This is not just life-saving knowledge that we need to start sharing with each other… but humanity-saving knowledge. And while I’m on this subject, I’ll go ahead and ask this of the universe. We have $30,000 left on our mortgage, so like everyone else we’re slaves to debt… but if there are folks who believe in this project… spreading this knowledge… and can help… we’ll make our home a school for the Nascence… assuming there’s folks willing to work with us on it. It will take a lot of collaborative energy beyond money. We need to make the most of being in the ‘core’ and not in the ‘periphery’. Our counterparts in Egypt are in prison right now. So if you can help, I’ll match it… with every cent I have… and every fiber of my being.
Continuing with Chapter VI of Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – PS]
…for even if she were ordered into the right-hand column, she would surely beg, on bended knee, for permission to go with our mother. So they would let her go, and she, with tears in her eyes, would shower them with thanks… (Part 14)
I returned to my room and sat down, wanting to collect my thoughts. It was not easy. I went back to the beginning. The image of my abandoned home came back to me. I could see the neat little house, with its sunny terraces and pleasant rooms, rooms in which I had spent so many long and trying hours with my patients, but with the satisfaction of knowing I had given them comfort and strength. The same house in which I had spent so many hours of happiness with my family.
We had already been separated for a week. Where could they be, lost in this enormous mass, anonymous, like all those swallowed by this gigantic prison? Had my daughter been able to stay with her mother, or had they already been separated? What had happened to my aged parents, whose last years I had tried to make more pleasant? What had become of my beloved younger sister, whom I had raised practically as my own child after our father had fallen ill? It had been such a pleasure to love and help them. I had no doubt about their fate. They were certainly en route to one of the forty-car trains that would bring them here to the Jewish ramp of the Auschwitz extermination camp. With one mechanical wave of his hand Dr. Mengele would direct my parents into the left-hand column. And my sister would also join that column, for even if she were ordered into the right-hand column, she would surely beg, on bended knee, for permission to go with our mother. So they would let her go, and she, with tears in her eyes, would shower them with thanks.
[…is this when the plan first begins to form?… “self-esteem begins… with a workable plan…” – PS]
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The news of my arrival had spread like wildfire throughout the crematorium. (Part 15)
The news of my arrival had spread like wildfire throughout the crematorium. Both the SS personnel assigned here and the Sonderkommando came to call on me. The door was first opened by an SS noncom. Two extremely tall, militant looking Schaarfuhrer entered. I knew that the attitude I then assumed would determine their conduct towards me in the future. I recalled Dr. Mengele’s order: I was responsible only to him. Consequently I considered this visit merely as a private act of courtesy, and remained seated instead of rising and standing at attention. I greeted them and asked them to sit down.
They stopped in the middle of the room and looked me over. I felt the full importance of this moment: it was the first impression that counted. It seemed to me that my manner was the best one to have adopted, for their rigid face muscles relaxed slightly and, with a gesture of careless indifference, they sat down.
The scope of our conversation was extremely limited. How was my trip? What was I doing in the KZ? These were questions they could not ask, for the answers would embarrass them. Whereas politics, the war, and conditions in the KZ were subjects I could not broach. Still, this did not bother me, for the years I had spent in pre-war Germany furnished plenty of material for discussion. They were much impressed by the fact that I spoke their own language better, or at least in a more cultured manner, than they did. I soon realized that there were even certain expressions they did not understand, although they carefully refrained from letting me know it. I knew their country well, was fully informed about life in their cities and their homes, and about their religious and moral concepts. So conversation was not overly difficult for me. I had a feeling that this examination had also been a success, for they left smiling.
More visitors arrived, men in civilian clothes, clean-shaven and smartly dressed. The Kapo-in chief…
[The translator’s note reads: “Kapo is the abbreviation of Kamaradschafts Polizei. The Kapo-in-chief was generally a German prisoner serving a sentence for some non-political crime. A few of them tried to ease the lot of their fellow sufferers, but most were the faithful servants of the SS.”]
…The Kapo-in-chief and two of his men entered my room. This too was a courtesy call. I learned that they were the ones who had had my room prepared. They had heard of my arrival and invited me to dine with them and meet the other prisoners.
I learned the history of the crematoriums. Tens of thousands of prisoners had built them of stone and concrete, finishing them in the middle of an extremely rigorous winter. Every stone was stained with their blood. They had worked day and night, often without food or drink, dressed in mere tatters, so that these infernal death-factories, whose first victims they became, might be finished in time. (Part 16)
As a matter of fact it was almost dinner time. I followed them up the stairs to the second story of the crematorium where the prisoners lived: an enormous room, with comfortable bunks lining both walls. The bunks were made of unpainted wood, but on each one silk coverlets and embroidered pillows shone. This colorful, expensive bedding was completely out of keeping with the atmosphere of the place. It had not been made here, but left by members of earlier convoys who had brought it with them into captivity. The Sonderkommando was allowed to draw it from the storerooms and use it.
The whole room was bathed in a dazzling light, for here they did not economize on electricity as they did in the barracks. Our way led between the long row of bunks. Only half the kommando was present; the other half, about a hundred men, was on the night shift. Some of those here were already in bed asleep, while others were reading. There were plenty of books to be had, for we Jews are a people who like to read. Each prisoner had brought some books with him, the number and type depending upon his level of intelligence and education. To have books and be able to read was yet another privilege granted to the Sonderkommando. In the KZ anyone caught reading was punished with twenty days’ solitary confinement, in a sort of sentry box just large enough to stand up in. Unless, of course, the blows dealt him beforehand had already killed him.
The table awaiting us was covered with a heavy silk brocade tablecloth; fine initialed porcelain dishes; and place settings of silver: more objects that had once belonged to the deportees. The table was piled high with choice and varied dishes, everything a deported people could carry with them into the uncertain future: all sorts of preserves, bacon, jellies, several kinds of salami, cakes and chocolate. From the labels I noticed that some of the food had belonged to Hungarian deportees. All perishable foods automatically became property of the legal heirs, of those who were still alive, that is, the Sonderkommando.
Seated around the table were the Kapo-in chief, the engineer, the head chauffeur, the kommando leader, the “tooth pullers” and the head of the gold smelters. Their welcome was most cordial. They offered me all they had, and there was an abundance of everything, for the Hungarian convoys continued to arrive at an ever-increasing rate and they brought a great deal of food with them.
[…It’s very familiar, isn’t it?… this ability of class-conditioned humans to normalize insanity…” – PS]
I found it difficult to swallow, however, I could not help thinking of my fellow-sufferers who, before starting on their exodus, had gathered and prepared their provisions. They had been hungry, but had refrained from eating during the entire trip in order to save their meager rations for their parents, their children and the more difficult times ahead. Only the more difficult times had never come: in the lobby of the crematorium the food had remained untouched.
I drank some tea spiked with rum. After a few glasses I managed to relax. My mind cleared and freed itself of the unpleasant thoughts that had been plaguing it. A pleasant warmth penetrated me: the voluptuous effects of the alcohol, comforting as the caress of a mother’s hand.
The cigarettes we were smoking had also been “Imported from Hungary.” In the camp proper a single cigarette was worth a ration of bread: here on the table lay hundreds of packages.
Our conversation grew more and more spirited. Poland, France, Greece, Germany and Italy were represented around the table. Since most of us understood German it served as our common language. From the conversation I learned the history of the crematoriums. Tens of thousands of prisoners had built them of stone and concrete, finishing them in the middle of an extremely rigorous winter. Every stone was stained with their blood. They had worked day and night, often without food or drink, dressed in mere tatters, so that these infernal death-factories, whose first victims they became, might be finished in time.
Since then four years had passed. Countless thousands had since climbed down from the box cars and crossed the thresholds of the crematoriums. The present Sonderkommando was the twelfth to bear the name. I learned the history of each preceding Sonderkommando, when it “reigned” and who its heroes were, and I was reminded of a fact I already knew: that the Sonderkommando’s life span was only a few months at the most.
Whoever among them practiced the Jewish faith could thus begin, on the day of his arrival, the purification ceremony in preparation for death. For death would come to him as surely as it come to every member of all the preceding Sonderkommandos.
It was almost midnight. The company assembled around the table was weary from the day’s work and the evening’s consumption of alcohol. Our conversation grew more and more listless. An SS making his rounds stopped to remind us that it was high time we were in bed. I took leave of my new companions and returned to my room. Thanks to the rum I had drunk and my tired nerves, I spent a relatively quiet first night.
…if we can see Auschwitz… living and feeding on us… settling itself in us… we will rouse ourselves to stop it… (Part 17)
The strident whistle of a train was heard coming from the direction of the unloading platform. It was still very early. I approached my window, from which I had a direct view onto the tracks, and saw a very long train. A few seconds later the doors slid open and the box cars spilled out thousands upon thousands of the chosen people of Israel. Line up and selection took scarcely half an hour. The left-hand column moved slowly away.
Orders rang out, and the sound of rapid footsteps reached my room. The sounds came from the furnace rooms of the crematorium: they were preparing to welcome the new convoy. The throb of motors began. They had just set the enormous ventilators going to fan the flames, in order to obtain the desired degree in the ovens. Fifteen ventilators were going simultaneously, one beside each oven. The incineration room was about 500 feet long: it was a bright, whitewashed room with a concrete floor and barred windows. Each of these fifteen ovens was housed in a red brink structure. Immense iron doors, well-polished and gleaming, ominously lined the length of the wall. In five or six minutes the convoy reached the gate, whose swing-doors opened inwards. Five abreast, the group entered the courtyard; it was the moment about which the outside world knew nothing, for anyone who might have known something about it, after having traveled the path of his destiny – the 300 yards separating that spot from the ramp – had never returned to tell the tale. It was one of the crematoriums which awaited those who had been selected for the left-hand column. And not, as the German lie had made the right-hand column suppose in order to allay their anxiety, a camp for the sick and children, where the infirm cared for the little ones.
[…‘power’s most debased acts it determines to hide…
…secrecy is key to their goal being realized…
…a goal of such extreme elitism…
…is wrecked by the simple means of our seeing it…
(…because if we can see Auschwitz…
…living and feeding on us…
…deepening around us…
…settling itself in us…
…we will rouse ourselves to stop it…
…to save our future from it…
…and ourselves…)
…all of their illusions depend –
…their dream of the Republic…
…their carefully crafted image of supremacy…
– on the majority remaining asleep….
So it’s imperative that we start thinking…
…and listen to the lessons Miklos is bringing…
…consider what it means…
…that ‘power’ moved so suddenly…
…to overwhelm with such well-trained ‘authority’….
And while we can’t be tricked onto trains…
…it’s certain they’ve devised other ways…
…of unseating our ability to plan…
…by shrouding it with what ‘can’t be imagined’…
We must never forget the lessons Miklos brought us…
…bought with such unfathomable hardship….
Brothers and sisters…
…why wait for the inevitable end of a very clear ‘tend’…
…daily the disparities extend…
…we can see their dream hasn’t left them…
…moreover… the growth of our humanity depends…
…on leaving behind… the class system.… – PS]
…Modest women and girls looked at each other questioningly. Perhaps they had not exactly understood the German words.… (Part 18)
They advanced with slow, weary steps. The children’s eyes were heavy with sleep and they clung to their mothers’ clothes. For the most part the babies were carried in their fathers’ arms, or else wheeled in their carriages. The SS guards remained before the crematorium doors, where a poster announced: “Entrance is Strictly Forbidden to All Who Have No Business Here, Including SS.”
The deportees were quick to notice the water faucets, used for sprinkling the grass, that were arranged about the courtyard. They began to take pots and pans from their luggage, and broke ranks, pushing and shoving in an effort to get near the faucets and fill their containers. That they were impatient was not astonishing: for the past five days they had had nothing to drink. If ever they had found a little water, it had been stagnant and had not quenched their thirst. The SS guards who received the convoys were used to the scene. They waited patiently till each had quenched his thirst and filled his container. In any case, the guards knew that as long as they had not drunk there would be no getting them back into line. Slowly they began to re-form their ranks. Then they advanced for about 100 yards along a cinder path edged with green grass to an iron ramp, from which 10 or 12 concrete steps led underground to an enormous room dominated by a large sign in German, French, Greek, and Hungarian: “Baths and Disinfecting Room.” The sign was reassuring, and allayed the misgivings or fears of even the most suspicious among them. They went down the stairs almost gaily.
The room into which the convoy proceeded was about 200 yards long: its walls were whitewashed and it was brightly lit. In the middle of the room, rows of columns. Around the columns, as well as along the walls, benches. Above the benches, numbered coat hangers. Numerous signs in several languages drew everyone’s attention to the necessity of tying his clothes and shoes together. Especially that he not forget the number of his coat hanger, in order to avoid all useless confusion upon his return from the bath.
“That’s really a German order,” commented those who had long been inclined to admire the Germans.
They were right. As a matter of fact, it was for the sake of order that these measures had been taken, so that the thousands of pairs of good shoes sorely needed by the Third Reich would not get mixed up. The same for the clothes, so that the population of bombed cities could easily make use of them.
There were 3,000 people in the room: men, women and children. Some of the soldiers arrived and announced that everyone must be completely undressed within ten minutes. The aged, grandfathers and grandmothers; the children; wives and husbands; all were struck dumb with surprise. Modest women and girls looked at each other questioningly. Perhaps they had not exactly understood the German words. They did not have long to think about it, however, for the order resounded again, this time in a louder, more menacing tone. They were uneasy; their dignity rebelled; but, with the resignation peculiar to their race, having learned that anything went as far as they were concerned, they slowly began to undress. The aged, the paralyzed, the mad were helped by a Sonderkommando squad sent for that purpose. In ten minutes all were completely naked, their clothes hung on the pegs, their shoes attached together by the laces. As for the number of each clothes hanger, it had been carefully noted.
[Emile Zola describes the French miners in Germinal in very similar terms… referring to “…the traditional resignation of their race…” This is the reason… in essence… for the scarcity-mindset… keeping us trapped in mere surviving doesn’t give us time… to think… – PS]
Making his way through the crowd, an SS opened the swing-doors of the large oaken gate at the end of the room. The crowd flowed through it into another, equally well-lighted room. The second room was the same size as the first, but neither benches nor pegs were to be seen. In the center of the rooms, at thirty-yard intervals, columns arose from the concrete floor to the ceiling. They were not supporting columns, but square sheet-iron pipes, the sides of which contained numerous perforations, like a wire lattice.
Everyone was inside. A hoarse command rang out: “SS and Sonderkommando leave the room.” They obeyed and counted off. The doors swung shut and from without the lights were switched off.
At that very instant the sound of a car was heard: a deluxe model, furnished by the International Red Cross. An SS officer and a SDG (Sanitatsdienstgefreiter: Deputy Health Service Officer) stepped out of the car. The Deputy Health Officer held four green sheet-iron canisters. He advanced across the grass, where, every thirty yards, short concrete pipes jutted up from the ground. Having donned his gas mask, he lifted the lid of the pipe, which was also made of concrete. He opened one of the cans and poured the contents – a mauve granulated material – into the opening. The granulated substance fell in a lump to the bottom. The gas it produced escaped through the perforations, and within a few seconds filled the room in which the deportees were stacked. Within five minutes everybody was dead.
For every convoy it was the same story. Red Cross cars brought the gas from the outside. There was never a stock of it in the crematorium. The precaution was scandalous, but still more scandalous was the fact that the gas was brought in a car bearing the insignia of the International Red Cross.
In order to be certain of their business the two gas-butchers waited another five minutes. Then they lighted cigarettes and drove off in their car. They had just killed 3,000 innocents.
…– a job the Sonderkommando carried out by a voluntary act of impersonalization and in a state of profound distress –… (Part 19)
Twenty minutes later the electric ventilators were set going in order to evacuate the gas. The doors opened, the trucks arrived, and a Sonderkommando squad loaded the clothing and the shoes separately. They were going to disinfect them. This time it was a case of real disinfection. Later they would transport them by rail to various parts of the country.
The ventilators, patented “Exhator” system, quickly evacuated the gas from the room, but in the crannies between the dead and the cracks of the doors small pockets of it always remained. Even two hours later it caused a suffocating cough. For that reason the Sonderkommando group which first moved into the room was equipped with gas masks. Once again the room was powerfully lighted, revealing a horrible spectacle.
The bodies were not lying here and there throughout the room, but piled in a mass to the ceiling. The reason for this was that the gas first inundated the lower layers of air and rose but slowly towards the ceiling. This forced the victims to trample one another in a frantic effort to escape the gas. Yet a few feet higher up the gas reached them. What a struggle for life there must have been! Nevertheless it was merely a matter of two or three minutes’ respite. If they had been able to think about what they were doing, they would have realized they were trampling their own children, their wives, their relatives. But they couldn’t think. Their gestures were no more than the reflexes of the instinct of self-preservation. I noticed that the bodies of the women, the children, and the aged were at the bottom of the pile; at the top, the strongest. Their bodies, which were covered with scratches and bruises from the struggle which had set them against each other, were often interlaced. Blood oozed from their noses and mouths; their faces, bloated and blue, were so deformed as to be almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless some of the Sonderkommando often did recognize their kin. The encounter was not easy, and I dreaded it for myself. I had no reason to be here, and yet I had come down among the dead. I felt it my duty to my people and to the entire world to be able to give an accurate account of what I had seen if ever, by some miraculous whim of fate, I should escape.
The Sonderkommando squad, outfitted with large rubber boots, lined up around the hill of bodies and flooded it with powerful jets of water. This was necessary because the final act of those who die by drowning or by gas is an involuntary defecation. Each body was befouled, and had to be washed. Once the “bathing” of the dead was finished – a job the Sonderkommando carried out by a voluntary act of impersonalization and in a state of profound distress – the separation of the welter of bodies began. It was a difficult job. They knotted thongs around the wrists, which were clenched in a vise-like grip, and with these thongs they dragged the slippery bodies to the elevators in the next room. Four good-sized elevators were functioning. They loaded twenty to twenty-five corpses to an elevator. The ring of a bell was the signal that the load was ready to ascend. The elevator stopped at the crematorium’s incineration room, where large sliding doors opened automatically. The kommando who operated the trailers was ready and waiting. Again straps were fixed to the wrists of the dead, and they were dragged onto specially constructed chutes which unloaded them in front of the furnaces.
The bodies lay in close ranks: the old, the young, the children. Blood oozed from their noses and mouths, as well as from their skin – abraded by the rubbing – and mixed with the water running in the gutters set in the concrete floor.
–––
The notion ‘citizen-barbarian’ is inherent in all of the ideologies of class… not just ‘fascism’…
January 8th, 2014: Sisters and brothers…
Pondering… particularly the words from last week’s show: “‘power’ wants to control the so-called ‘knowledge resources’ of the world… which means they must control the so-called ‘grunt work’ of the world…” – the reality that there can’t be exclusive ‘thinkers’ without debased exclusive ‘grunts’… and Auschwitz shows us that this is what they want…
…Auschwitz by other means… with its media-manipulating enforced silence about ‘weather machines’… and wave-warping… haarp-stringing… technology wet-dreaming…
…when we consider the aims of Auschwitz…
…the stronger the sense…
…that we are living…
…‘Auschwitz - high-tech’…
…Auschwitz by other means….
(…with its media-manipulating enforced silence about ‘weather machines’… and wave-warping… haarp-stringing… technology wet-dreaming means of distancing themselves from their own misanthropic impulses… their need to rid the earth of all challenge to its authority…. And can we please… or rather… speaking to the Left punditry… please stop doing the propaganda-disseminating for ‘power’… megaphoning the ‘bad-cop’ supposed ‘climate-change deniers’… [try to recall that these guys hide… and work behind scenes… so the bombast they put out is designed to serve their larger dramatic (ideological) purposes… which feature… most prominently… conning us into seeing austerity as a patriotic… as well as earth-treasuring… duty…] and instead at least consider [out loud] the possibility that climate-change provides them… and their demonic devices… with plausible deniability.)
…If the goal is to be ‘the best’… and the state is the driver of that process… then… …it must be the driver of us…
It’s search… obsession… with ‘Perfection’ is precisely what all states profess…
…putting screws to ‘their’ people in order to…
…supposedly… or so the story goes…
…identify… and privilege… ‘the best’…
If the goal is to be ‘the best’…
…and the state is the driver of that process…
…then…
…it must be the driver of us….
Is this what we want? To establish on earth… ‘Mind’-Reified?… the pure distillate itself?… or… rather… all of us pretending that such a thing exists… and that ‘states’ make it?
…we must conceive and execute an education campaign to plan a different future for humanity globally… leading to a one-day General Strike…
And listening to an interview with a man from the Workers Rights Consortium this week, describing the painful price the Cambodian state is exacting from Cambodians demanding more from life than ‘beat-down-status’… brought this:
…as we ponder the Third Reich’s voracious appetite for the clothes and shoes ‘manufactured’ in its extermination camps… in order to ‘feed’ ‘its’ people… using them to intentionally privilege ‘its’ people… – they were… just like the Cambodian ‘statesmen’ “keeping ‘production costs’ at an absolute minimum…” just as the largest retailers (The Gap and Wal-Mart) demand of Cambodia… –
(…which… they [‘power’] will argue… was much easier to do on the ‘work standard’ than the ‘gold standard’… and we mustn’t deceive ourselves into imagining that ‘power’ doesn’t still think this…)
…let’s ponder too… what to do…
…when the spokesman from Workers Rights Consortium was asked: “Do you think this will galvanize a mass movement in Cambodia for a more democratic government?”… his reply was dismaying: “…unfortunately, change in Cambodia may come with spasms of violence… but people in the U.S. should put pressure on the Cambodian government by joining organizations and applying consumer pressure by not purchasing from the irresponsible industry players.”
This is not the answer we need to hear.
It’s absolutely true that the Cambodian people… or the people in Syria… or Sudan… or Egypt… or Venezuela… or Somalia… or China… or South Korea…
…cannot do this on their own.
What stopped this representative from answering: “We in the non-profit sector in the U.S. who care to see the end of such extreme exploitation perpetrated on our brothers and sisters of other lands… must conceive and execute an education campaign to plan a different future for humanity globally… leading to a one-day General Strike… followed by others until our planning agenda is established broadly…”?
–––
What would be different in the physical structure of society if ‘scarcity’ (manufactured) didn’t exist?… if we could design it ourselves?
And so… towards an authentic education let us go…
If ‘scarcity’ (manufactured) is the necessary underpinning of class… how can we see its force and effects around us?
What would be different in the physical structure of society if it didn’t exist?
“Founding & Realizing A Test Site” is beginning to address this:
‘The state’ as a notion is an amalgam of certain founding assumptions… and its several related ideologies exist but to legitimate it – this amalgam. So, within each of the supporting ideologies – like ‘democracy’ – we should see those (untested – and this is the point of our actions right now… to test them…) those untested founding assumptions. The first and most basic: “the individual is nothing and the state is all…” “the single vote may seem to mean nothing… but it is in the aggregate that ‘the people’ ‘rule’…” followed by “…the division between intellectual and manual labor is necessary…” and “…the state exists to drive us all to ‘perfection’… to ‘improvement’…” and then “…the statesmen are the best judges of what that is.” These notions are drenched in ‘power’-worship… and the earth denies them utterly… and shows us repeatedly… that it is fully-developing-individualities who advance the species.
…and of coure they’re gonna fight tooth and nail our developing a test site… so it’s about numbers… and it’s about we in the privileged sectors of the world using that privilege to stand with our brothers and sisters globally…
Is it clear that training our children to be ‘obedient’ sets them up to be used by the state? (Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness…)
…once we start the conversations… they will snowball into the future…
Another key piece of our authentic education would be: de-legitimizing ‘division’ (‘the other’)… putting ourselves in ‘the other’s body (practicing empathy) – and there’s no better way to get to know each other – and seeing how division serves the state… but not us.
…so all divisions of class are at base expressions… of the so-called ‘citizen’-‘barbarian’ division… which is the ‘intellectual’-‘manual’ divide… as if our freely living our gifts is not going to result in the most mind-blowing explosion of creativity that we can’t even imagine now…
And all divisions are at base expressions…
…of the so-called ‘citizen’-‘barbarian’ division…
…which is the ‘intellectual’-‘manual’ divide….
And if you listen to your body and not the state…
…you’ll find yourself reviled and defamed…
…and made…
…the subject of its targeting….
As the earth is the source of all knowledge… and the state seeks to supplant it in our minds… so it skews what it calls ‘education’… to suppress the authentic knowledge the earth provides.
Continuing with Chapter VII of Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account… – PS]
–––
So our communally-created knowledge endowment… that could support universal leisure… in the hands of an infinitesimal few… would be used to oppose it… (Part 20)
Then a new phase of the exploitation and utilization of Jewish bodies took place. The Third Reich had already taken their clothes and shoes. Hair was also a precious material, due to the fact that it expands and contracts uniformly, no matter what the humidity of the air. Human hair was often used in delayed action bombs, where its particular qualities made it highly useful for detonating purposes. So they shaved the dead.
[Miklos will… sacramentally… register… note… the ways they kill… and the ways they ‘utilize’… ‘make use of’… their alienated brothers… and sisters… and children… – or… as Alice Miller might say… “their alienated young-child-selves… the alienated, despised, weak children that they were… ” are… – PS]
But that was not all. According to the slogans the Germans paraded and shouted to everyone at home and abroad, the Third Reich was not based on the “gold standard,” but on the “work standard.” Maybe they meant they had to work harder to get their gold than most countries did. At any rate, the dead were next sent to the “tooth-pulling” kommando, which was stationed in front of the ovens….
[The logic of ‘commodification’ is a specie of “the logic of ‘rule’….” Illuminated in the faux-logic that “‘perfection’ exists…” and may be “scientifically quantified…” and that “only ‘the best,’ of course, should ‘rule’…”
“The Third Reich was not based on the ‘gold standard,’ but on the ‘work standard…” – as evidence of how ‘statesmen’ think… this instance of “the logic of ‘rule’” should not only trouble us… it should long since have spurred us to question… and challenge… the legitimacy of ‘rank’… the legitimacy of ‘rule by statesmen’.
‘Auschwitz’ as a preserved goal is easily inferable from indications we see around us today – if we allow Reason and not convention to guide us – as Jeremy Bentham advised. Miklos shows (and the book Red Inc. – which, as we said during the April 14 show, Red Inc. is documenting a massive silence... – reveals many like-instances of this thinking in Chinese ‘rulers’…) There are obvious conclusions for we commoners to begin drawing as we consider the consequences of resource-wars and global economic collapse… as the resources available for ‘power’ to absorb into its ‘privatization project’ – requiring our hands – shrink… and the technologies which don’t – increase…
(Recently – and this additional bit I’m writing on 01.11.14 – I heard a pundit say that all ‘jobs’ that solely involve transfers or flows of information… will… go… so… we see… there will be… only a tiny few (proportionally…) for whom ‘power’ has use… in its misguided striving for ‘Knowledge-Infinite’.
So our communally-created knowledge endowment… created… I would argue… to free us all… that could support universal leisure… in the hands of an infinitesimal few… would be used to oppose it… for the most pathetic and ignoble of reasons… it would mean they would not be ‘special’… no matter that we would all be as stars to each other… Crazy… that this… they are determined to resist.)
The ‘work standard’ – slavery – has ever been the constant of class… consider the constant pressure it puts on ‘hand’ labor to ensure for it a state of continuous worry and stress… and in that pressure can we not see that the goal is Auschwitz?
…if our abused Grandmother’s (the earth’s) hide cannot be squeezed further… and if she, on the contrary, is experiencing ecosystem collapses… which means costs are mounting – costs to attempt to restore compromised systems… rebuild crumbling infrastructure… the work to be done is enormous – but the ‘wealth’ to be extracted (which in theory could be used to pay for this work…) is… not…. You do the math. If your obsession is ‘rule’… what would you do? Print money? When there’s no earth to back it… printing money can get ‘rule’ only so far… and then… it must dissolve into the ‘work-standard-straight-up’ – for we low-slotted-slaves… because the illusion of a ‘free market’ can no longer stand.
The ‘work standard’ – slavery – has ever been the constant of class… so in this SS slogan speaks the honest (Göring) voice of arrogant ‘power’. Consider the constant pressure it puts on ‘hand’ labor to ensure its utter material insecurity… to ensure for it a state of continuous worry and stress… and in that pressure can we not see that the goal is Auschwitz? Auschwitz… the dream they will never relinquish… but, on the contrary, hope to extend globally… in ‘modern’ form… using the pressure of the global economy (and their depraved… hidden… devices…) to accomplish what before required overt force.
The behavior of the big banks toward Greece… toward any country in default… demanding that it take from ‘the people’ what little they have left… is the modern equivalent of the SS telling its captives to strip…. We hear the words and doubt our ears… we look at each other and wonder… “did we hear right?…”
The ‘work standard’ never went away… but ‘power’ is moving apace… to try to cement in place… our compliance with the new terms of our enslavement… so that… it can remove its masks… and stride… no longer hiding craven… but striding with an-open-SS-arrogance… to ruthlessly exact our obedience.
The coercion of ‘the market’… of the tactic of ‘privatizing’ all means for we-the-people to exist independently of ‘power… was much more sophisticated that ‘the hammer’ – but the effect… with the possible exception of our visceral reaction to it (the coercion)… is the same. – PS]
Trucks took the ashes to the Vistula, a mile away, and dumped them into the raging waters of the river. (Part 21)
…Consisting of eight men, this kommando [the ‘tooth-pullers’] equipped its members with two tools, or, if you like, two instruments. In one hand a lever, and in the other a pair of pliers for extracting the teeth. The dead lay on their backs’ the kommando pried open the contracted jaw with his lever; then, with his pliers, he extracted, or broke off, all gold teeth, as well as any gold bridgework and fillings. All members of the kommando were fine stomatologists and dental surgeons. When Dr. Mengele had called for candidates capable of performing the delicate work of stomatology and dental surgery, they had volunteered in good faith, firmly believing they would be allowed to exercise their profession in the camp. Exactly as I had done.
[Recently (11.27.13 I believe) I heard a BBC ‘world economic news’ report… which described the difficult conditions Bulgarian doctors faced practicing medicine in their country. One said, “to get ahead in Bulgaria, you have to perform a lot of unnecessary operations. There’s a lot of corruption.” But… once he becomes more experienced (valuable)… he can “work anywhere in the E.U.”
What Auschwitz imposed by force – the determination of ‘power’ to ‘own’ (control… have at its disposal… its ‘beck and call’…) ‘the best’ of ‘the professions’… the global economy accomplishes effortlessly. It draws ‘the best’… the ‘talent’… to the ‘cores’… and lets the ‘peripheries’ – or rather the people in them – rot… they value the real estate… as the SS ‘valued’ our hair and shoes… but not our physical existence. – PS]
The gold teeth were collected in buckets filled with an acid which burned off all pieces of bone and flesh. Other valuables worn by the dead, such as necklaces, pearls, wedding bands and rings, were taken and dropped through a slot in the lid of a strongbox. Gold is a heavy metal, and I would judge that from 18 to 20 pounds of it were collected daily in each crematorium. It varied, to be sure, from one convoy to the next, for some convoys were comparatively wealthy, while others, from rural districts, were naturally poorer.
The Hungarian convoys arrived already stripped. But the Dutch, Czech, and Polish convoys, even after several years in the ghettos, had managed to keep and bring their jewelry, their gold and their dollars with them. In this way the Germans amassed considerable treasures.
When the last gold tooth had been removed, the bodies went to the incineration kommando. There they were laid by threes on a kind of pushcart made of sheet metal. The heavy doors of the ovens opened automatically; the pushcart moved into a furnace heated to incandescence.
The bodies were cremated in twenty minutes. Each crematorium worked with fifteen ovens, and there were four crematoriums. This meant that several thousand people could be cremated in a single day. Thus for weeks and months – even years – several thousand people passed each day through the gas chambers and from there to the incineration ovens. Nothing but a pile of ashes remained in the crematory ovens. Trucks took the ashes to the Vistula, a mile away, and dumped them into the raging waters of the river.
After so much suffering and horror there was still no peace, even for the dead.
–––
Despite high-tech sabotage… the earth… she is vast… she is generous… she is us… and that… if we talk with each other… come out of our boxes… that new world is right within our reach…
It is the story in which ‘division’ is placed that is critical… This dog just seems a’sleeping. … given cover by the media…
January 15th, 2014: Sisters and brothers… just heard a ‘news’ report that ‘power’ uses radio wave technology to plant surveillance software on computers globally… and if we don’t think they’re also using that technology as a weapon – using Nikola Tesla’s research on the effects of very low frequencies on the circulatory system – we’re deluding ourselves. I mean, when did they ever pass on a potential weapon? And here in the U.S…. they don’t have to install transmitters… they have ‘smart meters’. Miklos counted up the ways they kill us… why aren’t we? Or… better yet… why don’t we say, “Enough… let’s start planning an alternative….”
…
If you would know the full adult… De Tocqueville tells us… you must watch the infant in his mother’s arms… and if you would know the nation… you must examine its infancy as well, he says.
But let’s go deeper and say… that if we really want to understand the nation’s prejudices and biases… we must look at its ‘genetic predisposition’… class….
Class is the root of the horrors we cope with… and when the sown divisions between us are given center stage by the media…
(…this came up for me because I’m hearing it all the time… this attempt to pull us back in from confronting global ‘power’ globally… to: “but don’t you want to ‘heal’ first? Look at all that crap you gotta clean up in your psyches!… all the racism and sexism and homophobia…. You gotta heal from that before you start talking about confronting ‘power’…” no, no, no…)
… when the sown divisions between us have been receiving prominence lately for a reason… called ‘resource-shortages’… called ‘internet means we can move on’… means this is an enormous threat, this moment, for ‘power’. So they are pulling every trick out of their bag-of-tricks in order to deal with it.
So when it’s given center stage by the media… we must remember whose behind them… when we stand visibly with our brothers and sisters… targeted by the state… whether its gays and lesbians in Nigeria or Russia… or the people’s militias in Mexico… fighting the drug cartels.
It is the story in which ‘division’ is placed that is critical. And if people don’t place that ‘division’ in the story: “‘power’ is doing this and we gotta deal with it… and as we deal with it… as we come together across these false divisions… we heal remarkably quick… once we have our power back….” Because that’s the root of the false divisions: ‘scarcity’… the illusion of it… the illusion that we gotta scramble against each other for a little bit of attention… and notice… and ‘status’… and, of course, physical existence.
(…and never forget: ‘power’ will shine its garish light of wrong on sycophantic outrage…
…and… there’s a reason they get those book deals…
…and film deals… I believe we have to view their boosts of division front and center before our eyes…
(…and as an aside… what distinguishes Miklos’ account is that it’s not about divisions sown by ‘power’… but about ‘power’ itself… unmasked… striding open and unapologetic… and as Göring told us… is they had ‘won’ they would have been bowed down to… they would not have had to go back into hiding…. And every time their devious and demented works are exposed… whether intentionally infecting us with syphilis… or sterilizing us in prison… the media steps in and tells us… that it’s ‘us’-misguided… or ‘us’-our-dark-side…
…and so… ‘power’ hides… they don’t go away…. This dog just seems a’sleeping. They still exist… they just call themselves something else (as… most likely… The Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research at Berlin-Dahlem – that Miklos references – did… that received all of Mengele’s ‘research findings’.
And… brothers and sisters… though they hide they never cease… moving forward relentlessly toward their dream… until we reclaim our bodies… and deny their use for ‘power’s ‘research’… and put them to use, rather, growing our gifts… and learning from the planet…)
I believe we have to view their boosts of division front and center before our eyes from the perspective of the practical requirements of ‘rule’… of ‘power’ at the particular moment at which we them (and a start in this would be acknowledging that ‘power’ exists…) and consider the effect on our unity of these offerings…. Our betrayal of each other is always at the behest of ‘power’… if a film or a ‘training’ focuses on us as the source of the problem… while the malevolence behind scenes it ignores… it’s part of ‘power’s plan… pure and simple. They want our eyes off them… which we must never do for an instant… knowing their intentions for us are malevolent… not for an instant… except… we replace their plan with one of our own invention… re-invention… return… reverse… – to freedom…)
To stack the deck… rig the game… and then delight in ‘winning’… is a child’s play… …no… an abandoned-child’s play…
Class is the root of the horrors we cope with… if a pundit tells us his ‘solution’ is a ‘new’ way to make the best of it… we must ask… “why?… why should we settle?…” (this is what my recent blog “Ten Questions for Richard Wolff” boil down to…) and not stop until we have our answers…
…because if pressed that pundit will ultimately say… “‘we’ (meaning he and ‘power’…) ‘we’ require you to work so that we can continue our ‘research’… ‘Thought’ requires the brutalization of humanity… is what this answer says… for centuries and centuries under the regime of class… we’ve worked… and worked… and worked…
– because you asked us to… and we are a cooperative species… “but look!,” we must say to ‘power’, “look where your unending appetite for our bodies leads… look!… what hustled and overworked and overwhelmed silence has meant… not just to our issuance… but to all existence….”
Brothers and sisters… this demented and irreverent system of rank… of boxes… of rating us according to our use to the state… of false quantification and division… must end…
…and it’s time for us to refuse to go along for the ride…
…it’s time for us to reclaim responsibility for our own lives.
And as another aside… I must say… that for centuries… with their increased level of organization and conscious global planning… these sad children – ‘power’ – have deluded themselves into thinking that the mere fact that they know what’s going on – because the malevolent devices being implemented are of their invention – and we don’t… means they’re ‘smarter’… and this delusion is fed daily as they find amusement in our confusion….
To stack the deck… rig the game… and then delight in ‘winning’…
…is a child’s play…
…no… an abandoned-child’s play… – PS
Continuing with Miklos Nyzisli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account.
The laboratory of pathology was set up at the instigation of my superior, Dr. Mengele, and was destined to satisfy his ambitions in the area of medical research.
[Substitute ‘power’ for ‘Dr. Mengele’… and ‘scientific’ for ‘medical’… and it strikes me we have a pretty good short description of the system we’re stuck in… that it is a “laboratory of pathology” … their pathology. And the central problem for us in this… is that it’s endless… it has no bottom… and their dragging us into their Abyss is relentless…
…so… we must resist…
Who will say this?
For them we are but fodder for ‘proving’ they’re ‘smarter’:
“The racial State is not… to maintain one social class in the possession of the predominant influence which it has exercised hitherto; its task is to search for the best brains amongst the members of the community and to confer on them employment and dignities…” says Hitler…. ‘Totalitarianism’… ‘class’… understands perfectly our longing for recognition… and particularly recognition of our gifts… and fully exploits it… strokes the egos of the most vulnerable: our children.
The ‘best brains’? Really?
To this Karl Popper replies:
“And, indeed, our intellectual as well as our ethical education is corrupt. It is perverted by the admiration of brilliance, of the way things are said, which takes the place of a critical appreciation of the things that are said (and the things that are done). It is perverted by the romantic idea of the splendour of the stage of History on which we are the actors. We are educated to act with an eye to the gallery.
The whole problem of educating man to a sane appreciation of his own importance relative to that of other individuals is thoroughly muddled by these ethics of fame and fate, by a morality which perpetuates an educational system that is still based upon the classics with their romantic view of the history of power and their romantic tribal morality which goes back to Heraclitus; a system whose ultimate basis is the worship of power.
It is under the influence of such romantic ideas that individualism is still identified with egoism, as it was by Plato, and altruism with collectivism…” says Karl Popper
[You can read the longer Karl Popper quote inserted in the Diana Spearman excerpt on the page Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness….]
So… we must resist…
Who will say this?… or, more particularly… who will say that the only meaningful resistance is to offer our brothers and sisters an alternative… a clear and practical vision… based in reverence… of our own invention… in which we have no keepers.
“God grant I never prove so fond (foolish)… as to trust ‘power’ on its own bond… or a dog that seems a’sleeping… or a keeper with my freedom…”
All my words boil down to his… Shakespeare’s.
So when ‘power’ puts out news stories informing us that the population around transit hubs in urban cores will increase many-several-fold… we must plug this into “they don’t need us…” the reality that from ‘power’s perspective there’s ‘too many of us’… plug that into ‘weather machines’ (to which the DARPA whistleblower Leuren Moret [see our November 17, 2013 show] credited the Haiti under-ocean earthquake…) plug that into Miklos’ lessons to us: “never… never… allow yourselves to get herded onto trains….” And when ‘power’ pushes its propaganda it shows us the tracks… and it’s up to us to push back… to refuse.
Brothers and sisters… to allow ourselves to get packed into urban centers like sardines the way the Nazi’s packed what it considered ‘its’ ‘excess European populations’ onto trains… is trusting our freedom with a keeper… which we neither want or need to do… at this point in our human story. And never forget… we need the earth to be self-sufficient and cooperative… i.e… to have empathy… to be a human being.… Continuing with Miklos… – PS]
…who will say that the only meaningful resistance is to offer our brothers and sisters an alternative… a clear and practical vision… based in reverence… of our own invention… in which we have no keepers… (Part 22)
It had been completed only a few days before. All that was needed for it to start functioning was a doctor capable of taking charge.
The confines of the KZ offered vast possibilities for research, first in the field of forensic medicine, because of the high suicide rate, and also in the field of pathology, because of the relatively high percentage of dwarfs, giants and other abnormal types of human beings. The abundance – unequaled elsewhere in the world – of corpses, and the fact that one could dispose of them freely for purposes of research, opened even wider horizons.
[…is it clear that the opposite of this is ‘reverence for life’?… – PS]
The experiments, in medical language called in vivo… This phenomenon was unique in world medical science history… They had to die together, and in good health. (Part 23)
I knew from experience that, whereas the clinics in most major cities of the world managed to furnish their institutes of forensic medicine with from 100 to 150 bodies for purposes of research, the Auschwitz KZ was capable of furnishing literally millions. Any person who had entered the gates of KZ was a candidate for death. He whose destiny had directed him into the left-hand column was transformed by the gas chambers into a corpse within an hour after his arrival. Less fortunate was he whom adversity had singled out for the right-hand column. He was still a candidate for death, but with this difference, that for three or four months, or as long as he could endure, he had to submit to all the horrors the KZ had to offer, till he dropped from utter exhaustion. He bled from a thousand wounds. His belly was contorted with hunger, his eyes were haggard, and he moaned like one demented. He dragged his body across the fields of snow till he could go no farther. Trained dogs snapped at his wretched, fleshless frame, and when even the lice forsook his desiccated body, then the hour of deliverance, the hour of redeeming death was close at hand. Who then – of our parents, brothers, children – was more fortunate, he who went to the left or he who went to the right?
–––
When the convoys arrived, soldiers scouted the ranks lined up before the box cars, hunting for twins and dwarfs. Mothers, hoping for special treatment for their twin children, readily gave them up to the scouts. Adult twins, knowing that they were of interest from a scientific point of view, voluntarily presented themselves, in the hope of better treatment. The same for dwarfs.
They were separated from the rest and herded to the right. They were allowed to keep their civilian clothes; guards accompanied them to specially designed barracks, where they were treated with a certain regard. Their food was good, their bunks were comfortable, and possibilities for hygiene were provided.
They were housed in Barracks 14 of Camp F. From there they were taken by their guards to the experimentation barracks of the Gypsy Camp, and exposed to every medical examination that can be performed on human beings: blood tests, lumbar punctures, exchanges of blood between twin brothers, as well as numerous other examinations, all fatiguing and depressing. Dina, the painter from Prague, made the comparative studies of the structure of the twins’ skulls, ears, noses, mouths, hands and feet. Each drawing was classified in a file set up for that express purpose, complete with all individual characteristics; into this file would also go the final results of this research. The procedure was the same for the dwarfs.
The experiments, in medical language called in vivo, i.e., experiments performed on live human beings, were far from exhausting the research possibilities in the study of twins. Full of lacunae [gaps], they offered no better than partial results. The in vivo experiments were succeeded by the most important phase of twin-study: the comparative examination from the viewpoints of anatomy and pathology. Here it was a question of comparing the twins’ healthy organs with those functioning abnormally, or of comparing their illnesses. For that study, as for all studies of a pathological nature, corpses were needed. Since it was necessary to perform a dissection of the simultaneous evaluation of anomalies, the twins had to die at the same time. So it was that they met their death in the B section of one of Auschwitz’s KZ barracks, at the hand of Dr. Mengele.
This phenomenon was unique in world medical science history. Twin brothers died together, and it was possible to perform autopsies on both. Where, under normal circumstances, can one find twin brothers who die at the same place and at the same time? For twins, like everyone else, are separated by life’s varying circumstances. They live far from each other and almost never die simultaneously. One may die at the age of ten, the other at fifty. Under such conditions comparative dissection is impossible. In the Auschwitz camp, however, there were several hundred sets of twins, and therefore as many possibilities of dissection. That was why, on the arrival platform, Dr. Mengele separated twins and dwarfs from the other prisoners. That was why both special groups were directed to the right-hand column, and thence to the barracks of the spared. That was why they had good food and hygienic living conditions, so that they didn’t contaminate each other and die one before the other. They had to die together, and in good health.
–––
…whose tiny bodies had to resolve the secret of the reproductions of the race. To advance one step in the search to unlock the secret of multiplying the race of superior beings destined to rule. (Part 24)
The Sonderkommando chief came hunting for me and announced that an SS soldier was waiting for me at the door of the crematorium with a crew of corpse-transporting kommandos. I went in search of them, for they were forbidden to enter the courtyard. I took the documents concerning the corpses from the hands of the SS. They contained files on two little twin brothers. The kommando crew, made up entirely of women, set the covered coffin down in front of me. I lifted the lid. Inside lay a set of two-year-old twins. I ordered two of my men to take the corpses and place them on the dissecting table.
I opened the file and glanced through it. Very detailed clinical examinations, accompanied by X-rays, descriptions, and artists’ drawings, indicated from the scientific viewpoint the different aspects of these two little beings’ “twinhood.” Only the pathological report was missing. It was my job to supply it. The twins had died at the same time and were now lying beside each other on the big dissecting table. It was they who had to – or whose tiny bodies had to – resolve the secret of the reproductions of the race. To advance one step in the search to unlock the secret of multiplying the race of superior beings destined to rule was a “noble goal.”
[…and do we really think all the research into cloning is not related to this?… – PS]
If only it were possible, in the future, to have each German mother bear as many twins as possible! The project, conceived by the demented theorists of the Third Reich, was utterly mad. And it was to Dr. Mengele, chief physician of the Auschwitz KZ, the notorious “criminal doctor,” that these experiments had been entrusted.
Among the malefactors and criminals, the most dangerous type is the “criminal doctor,” especially when he is armed with powers such as those granted to Dr. Mengele. He sent millions of people to death merely because, according to a racial theory, they were inferior beings and therefore detrimental to mankind. This same criminal doctor spent long hours beside me, either at his microscopes, his disinfecting ovens and his test tubes or, standing with equal patience near the dissecting table, his smock befouled with blood, his bloody hands examining and experimenting like one possessed. The immediate objective was the increased reproduction of the German race. The final objective was the production of pure Germans in numbers sufficient to replace the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, all of whom were condemned to be destroyed, but who for the moment were living on those territories declared vital to the Third Reich.
[The comparison with the “final objective”… unsaid but obvious… of the Israeli ‘statesmen’ for the Palestinians… seems… necessary – by which I mean… inherent in the dynamics of ‘power’… of ‘rule’… once you succumb to it. – PS]
…Thus I learned that the experiments performed here were checked by the highest medical authorities at one of the most famous scientific institutes in the world. (Part 25)
I finished the dissection of the little twins and wrote out a regulation report of the dissection. I did my job well and my chief appeared to be satisfied with me. But he had some trouble reading my handwriting, for all my letters were capitals, a habit I had picked up in America….
[A translator’s note at the bottom reads: “Dr. Nyiszli came to the United States in the summer of 1939, and remained until February of 1940, as a member of the Rumanian delegation to the World’s Fair. He had intended to bring his family over and settle in America. But during his stay war broke out and he returned to his family. Once back, it was impossible for him to leave the country again. As a result, Auschwitz.”]
…And so I told him that if he wanted clear clean copy, he would have to supply me with a typewriter, since I was accustomed to work with one in my own practice.
“What make typewriter are you used to?” he asked.
“Olympia Elite,” I said.
“Very well, I’ll send you one. You’ll have it tomorrow. I want clean copy, because these reports will be forwarded to the Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research at Berlin-Dahlem.”
Thus I learned that the experiments performed here were checked by the highest medical authorities at one of the most famous scientific institutes in the world.
–––
If Dr. Mengele had any idea that I had discovered the secret of his injections he would send ten doctors, in the name of the political SS, to attest to my death. (Part 26)
The following day an SS soldier brought me an “Olympia” typewriter. Still more corpses of twins were sent to me. They delivered me four pairs from the Gypsy Camp; all four were under ten years old.
I began the dissection of one set of twins and recorded each phase of my work. I removed the brain pan. Together with the cerebellum I extracted the brain and examined them. Then followed the opening of the thorax and the removal of the sternum. Next I separated the tongue by means of an incision made beneath the chin. With the tongue came the esophagus, with the respiratory tracts came both lungs. I washed the organs in order to examine them more thoroughly. The tiniest spot or the slightest difference in color could furnish valuable information. I made a transverse incision across the pericardium and removed the fluid. Next I took out the heart and washed it. I turned it over and over in my hand to examine it.
In the exterior coat of the left ventricle was a small pale red spot caused by a hypodermic injection, which scarcely differed from the color of the tissue around it. There could be no mistake. The injection had been given with a very small needle. Without a doubt a hypodermic needle. For what purpose had he received the injection? Injections into the heart can be administered in extremely serious cases, when the heart begins to fail. I would soon know. I opened the heart, starting with the ventricle. Normally the blood contained in the left ventricle is taken out and weighed. This method could not be employed in the present case, because the blood was coagulated into a compact mass. I extracted the coagulum with the forceps and brought it to my nose. I was struck by the characteristic odor of chloroform. The victim had received an injection of chloroform in the heart, so that the blood of the ventricle, in coagulating, would deposit on the valves and cause instantaneous death by heart failure.
My discovery of the most monstrous secret of the Third Reich’s medical science made my knees tremble. Not only did they kill with gas, but also with injections of chloroform into the heart. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Luckily I was alone. If others had been present it would have been difficult for me to conceal my excitement. I finished the dissection, noted the differences found, and recorded them. But the chloroform, the blood coagulated in the left ventricle, the puncture visible in the external coat of the heart, did not figure among my findings. It was a useful precaution on my part. Dr. Mengele’s records on the subject of twins were in my hands. They contained the exact examinations, X-rays, the artist’s sketches already mentioned, but neither the circumstances nor causes of death. Nor did I fill out that column of the dissection report. It was not a good idea to exceed the authorized bounds of knowledge or to relate all one had witnessed. And here still less than anywhere else. I was not timorous by nature and my nerves were good. During my medical practice I had often brought to light the causes of death. I had seen the bodies of people assassinated for motives of revenge, jealousy, or material gain, as well as those of suicides and natural deaths. I was used to the study of well-hidden causes of death. On several occasions I had been shocked by my discoveries, but now a shudder of fear ran through me. If Dr. Mengele had any idea that I had discovered the secret of his injections he would send ten doctors, in the name of the political SS, to attest to my death.
[…and he knew… none better… that ‘power’ would attempt to discredit this eyewitness account… and he made certain… with the depth of medical knowledge shown and with the careful attention to detail… that they would not be successful – words fail in trying to describe such courage… and steadiness of will. That he was placed in Auschwitz… for us… to bear witness… is a gift we had no reason to hope for… – PS]
The directors of the Berlin-Dahlem Institute always warmly thanked Dr. Mengele for this rare and precious material… In all three instances the cause of death was the same: an injection of chloroform into the heart. (Part 27)
In accordance with orders received I returned the corpses to the prisoners whose duty it was to burn them. They performed their job without delay. I had to keep any organs of possible scientific interest, so that Dr. Mengele could examine them. Those which might interest the Anthropological Institute at Berlin-Dahlem were preserved in alcohol. These parts were specially packed to be sent through the mails. Stamped “War Material – Urgent,” they were given top priority in transit. In the course of my work at the crematorium I dispatched an impressive number of such packages. I received, in reply, either precise scientific observations or instructions. In order to classify this correspondence I had to set up special files. The directors of the Berlin-Dahlem Institute always warmly thanked Dr. Mengele for this rare and precious material.
I finished dissecting the three other pairs of twins and duly recorded the anomalies found. In all three instances the cause of death was the same: an injection of chloroform into the heart.
Of the four sets of twins, three had ocular globes of different colors. One eye was brown, the other blue. This is a phenomenon found fairly frequently in non-twins. But in the present case I noticed that it had occurred in six out of the eight twins. An extremely interesting collection of anomalies. Medical science calls them heterochromes, which means, merely, different-colored. I cut out the eyes and put them in a solution of formaldehyde, noting their characteristics exactly in order not to mix them up. During my examination of the four sets of twins, I discovered still another curious phenomenon: while removing the skin from the neck I noticed, just above the upper extremity of the sternum, a tumor about the size of a small nut. Pressing on it with my forceps I found it to be filled with a thick pus. This rare manifestation, well known to medical science, indicates the presence of hereditary syphilis and is called DuBois’ tumor. Looking farther, I found that it existed in all eight twins. I cut out the tumor, leaving it surrounded by healthy tissue, and placed it in another jar of formaldehyde. In two sets of twins I also discovered evidence of active, cavernous tuberculosis. I recorded my findings on the dissection report, but left the heading “Cause of Death” blank.
–––
…I have to go to my car to write and read…
The man forced open my busted car door…
(…and this happened this past Friday afternoon, January 24th – in the afternoon because I have to write and read in my car – and I suspect intention here… though… again… ‘power’ depends on staying hidden – I suspect it hopes to so damage my car that I can’t use it… knowing that my mobility has been life-saving. Two different Mercedes have hit it recently… and of course there have been four separate instances of tire-slashing… one with multiple tires…)
All we’re asking for is a choice… and the power to choose… between being subjects or free…
The man forced open my busted car door… thrust in his head and shoulders… (and whether the man was sheepdog… paid… or authentic… is irrelevant…) and with his face close to mine screamed, “I’d like to kill you all… all of you vagrants…” And the rant against vagrants seemingly worked… because the officer who came seemed more concerned… that I’d parked against a recycle bin at the curb… than that before us stood a man who said he wanted to kill all of us ‘vagrants’. That’s the mindset – feigned or no – that gave us Auschwitz… both the officer’s and this man’s (whether real… or postured… and… never doubt for a minute… while statesmen ‘rule’ (and whether ‘out’ or shadow… does not matter…) … that on-going all around us lives… The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s very insidious. Who’s real? Who isn’t? We need a world in which truth lives.
Brothers and sisters: All we’re asking for is a choice… and the power to choose… we are the streets of Kiev… of Caracas… of Suiz… trying to rise above… vicious state (and shadow state…) repression – and ‘patronage’ (we neither want or need ‘Daddies’.) I heard one woman put it succinctly: “We want to choose our own destiny… we want dignity…” We want a choice… and there’s a deeper longing she’s tapping into… that’s not about a choice between Moscow or EU… but rather a choice between being subjects or free… Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness… is saying… just as she is… “Why can’t we have a choice? We don’t want to be railroaded – herded – anymore. We want to choose our own destiny.”
The U.S. State gifted 7% of ‘its’ land to the railroads… straight-up gift… gratis…. Why are we less important?… when we’re designing a whole new society… one fit for life… that exists beyond manufactured ‘scarcity’.
…‘power’ hides by giving us the very thoughts we think – silencing the soul… As ‘creatures of illusion’ (as Virginia Woolf so aptly termed us…) atomization is all that is required… …
January 23, 2014: Sisters and Brothers…
Auschwitz… an aberration? Really? Then how is it Charlotte could castigate it so clearly?
Oh, lovers of power! Oh, mitred aspirants for this world’s kingdoms! an hour will come, even to you, when it will be well for your hearts – pausing faint at each broken beat – that there is a Mercy beyond human compassions, a Love stronger than this strong death which even you must face, and before it, fall; a Charity more potent than any sin, even yours; a Pity which redeems worlds – nay, absolves priests. (Charlotte Bronte, Villette)
…and… need we add: “and philosopher-king-statesmen…?”
…who also see themselves as ‘priests’… ‘interpreters of justice’…
And how is it Popper could trace its roots to Plato (at least as its most conscious propagandist…) and yet we… so determinedly it seems… continue unable to see it (as a broad generality)? What does this tell us about our ‘education’… our training… if not that its central objective is to prevent our questioning ‘class’? …and how deeply in our psyches it plants the false sense that it is legitimate?
The page Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness… is attempting to elucidate this… to explain how the terms (we are given) themselves constrain… control… construct… us… and therefore how it is that we are brought to see as ‘normal’… patent insanity.
The society of Auschwitz is an exact replica of this one we are living this moment… in which certain people’s deaths… and a certain number of deaths… are accepted… the difference being that the murderer’s hand is kept hidden… and so we can’t even begin to count his methods… as Miklos did. ‘Power’ hides by physically atomizing us (think of the successive layers of fragmentation attendant on our domiciling…) ‘power’ hides by fragmenting us into ‘functions’… ‘power’ hides by giving us the very thoughts we think – media control silencing the soul by these means – propaganda piped in… and whether by the ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative’ media is irrelevant… for the fundamental terms of our containment are not questioned.
As ‘creatures of illusion’ (as Virginia Woolf termed us…) atomization is all that is required… so long as the propaganda gets piped in… and we’re denied the earth for reference… then alternatives simply never occur to us…
…we’re dreaming their dreams… and never given the time to think about our own…
So by atomizing us… and piping in the propaganda… and keeping the earth out of our unmediated hands – everything we want to do is mediated by state or market – so alternatives simply never occur to us… because of the atomization.
We are effectively controlled by being kept dreaming the dreams of those in ‘authority’…
…we say ‘we’ when we mean ‘the state’ because we have no self-determined ‘we’… and we are a social species… and so we need some ‘we’… to keep our sanity….
‘Power’ knows this… and can create and sequentially provide our ‘we’s… our state-sanctioned boxes for ameliorating the isolation… in which we are marched through life until our appointed hour arrives….
If we don’t see the piles of bodies… then… they hardly exist, do they?… and can’t upset the illusions piped-in.
The terms… the rules… the law… dictate… and we adjust to their ‘requirements’… and never peer beneath the skirts… behind the scenes… to see the hidden hand… we can’t even acknowledge among ourselves that it exists… as Miklos and his fellow captives can. Our noses are bent to our carrots.
The pretense of normalcy when we have no ability to speak the truth… or hear it spoken… destroys our humanity… for our bodies know ‘performance’ is not truth… and if truth is not honored… then… it must be irrelevant… and so nothing matters… nothing has meaning… and we fall asleep….
…Invasion of the Body Snatchers… Prisoners of Childhood… shows… how one of her patients had ceremoniously buried his soul… his authentic self… at age three years old… turned away from its loss… into performance – conformance – … and did what he was told.
When we are prevented from using our self-directed Reason… we are made structurally unable to help each other… as any significant attempt at a spiritual exchange must be mediated by the state… and any significant attempt at a material exchange must be mediated by the market. This compartmentalization and fragmentation of human-social-wholeness into functions determined by ‘power’ means we are as structurally powerless to help each other… as the kommandos and other prisoners of Auschwitz. And for pundits to claim to be mystified by our alleged myopia… while they pretend they don’t see the loops of chain encircling our knees… is a depraved capitulation to ‘power’.
(Today [01.24.14] I heard one seem to be amazed that a man she attempted to shame for helping to make cruise missiles could say, “I’m making money…” i.e. “are you going to provide for me and my family, lady?” Once pundits begin to stand shoulder to shoulder with us… by designing… with us… the alternative to this mess… she may encounter a different reaction. She will at the very least stimulate some necessary thoughts… that break chains down.)
By fragmenting us into functions they accomplish Plato’s goal for the state: ‘no change’… because no forward-motion is possible… only a circular treading-in-place. Inter-dependent action… self-directed… required to accomplish anything… is effectively thwarted.
Miklos says that the worst of the criminals of ‘power’ are the ‘criminal doctors’… but… in essence… he’s saying ‘brains-for-hire’ are the worst criminals… the willingness to sell our reasoning capacities to the highest bidder… and… moreover… our willingness to hold our reason in check… at the starting gate… awaiting payment… and the track on which to run…. But on reflection… it seems to me he’s right in this… doctors – or ‘men and women of science’ – tell ‘power’ how to kill us… and that is the most clear-cut corruption.
Recently I spent time with a child – a friend of my grandchild’s… his age – who I hadn’t seen for some time… and the transformation from authenticity to performance had already started… in that moment from age two… to three…. It startled and saddened me… and then suddenly… I thought of that Donald Sutherland film – Invasion of the Body Snatchers – and in a whole new light… and I recalled the story Alice Miller told in Prisoners of Childhood… of how one of her patients had ceremoniously buried his soul… his authentic self… at age three years old… turned away from its loss… into performance – conformance – … and did what he was told.
Continuing with Miklos Nyzisli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account.
Was it conceivable that Dr. Mengele, or the Berlin-Dahlem Institute, would ever allow me to leave this place alive? (Part 28)
During the afternoon Dr. Mengele paid me a visit. I gave him a detailed account of my morning’s work and handed him my report. He sat down and began to read each case carefully. He was greatly interested by the heterochromatic condition of the eyes, but even more so by the discovery of DuBois’ tumor. He gave me instructions to have the organs mailed and told me to include my report in the package. He also instructed me to fill out the “Cause of Death” column hitherto left blank. The choice of causes was left to my own judgment and discretion; the only stipulation was that each cause be different. Almost apologetically he remarked that, as I could see for myself, these children were syphilitic and tubercular, and consequently would not have lived in any case… He said no more about it. With that he had said enough. He had explained the reason for these children’s death. I had refrained from making any comment. But I had learned that here tuberculosis and syphilis were not treated with medicines and drugs, but with chloroform injections.
I shuddered to think of all I had learned during my short stay here, and of all I should yet have to witness without protesting, until my own appointed hour arrived. The minute I entered this place I had the feeling I was already one of the living-dead. But now, in possession of all these fantastic secrets, I was certain I would never get out alive. Was it conceivable that Dr. Mengele, or the Berlin-Dahlem Institute, would ever allow me to leave this place alive?
–––
I suddenly realized that, besides death by gas and chloroform injections, there was a third way of killing here… The Sonderkommando brought out a football. The teams lined up on the field. “SS versus SK.” Sonorous laughter filled the courtyard. Stupefied, I made that mental note as well. (Part 29)
It was already late, and growing dark. Dr. Mengele had left and I was alone with my thoughts. Mechanically I arranged the instruments used for the autopsy and, after washing my hands, went into the work room and lighted a cigarette, hoping to find a minute’s peace. Suddenly I heard a scream that sent chills up and down my spine. Then, immediately afterwards, a thud that sounded like a falling body. I listened, my nerves taut, for what the following minutes would bring. Before another minute had passed I heard another scream, clicks, thuds. Heavy footsteps retreated and all grew quiet.
The scene of the bloody tragedy that had just been enacted was the room adjoining the dissecting room. The hall led directly into it. It was a half-darkened place, with a concrete floor and barred windows that looked out onto the back courtyard. I used it as a storeroom for corpses, keeping them there till it was their turn for dissection, then returning them there after the autopsy till they were sent to be burned. Used, dirty women’s clothes; battered wooden shoes; glasses; pieces of stale bread – the normal run of KZ women’s articles – lay piled before the entrance to the room. After what I had heard I was prepared for something extraordinary. I entered the room and glanced quickly around. A terrifying scene gradually unfolded: before me were sprawled the naked bodies of seventy women; curled up, bathed in their own blood and in the blood of their neighbors, they lay in utter disarray about the room.
As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light I discovered to my horror that not all the victims were dead. Some were still breathing, moving their arms or legs slowly; with glazed eyes, they tried to raise their bloody heads. I lifted two, three heads of those still alive, and suddenly realized that, besides death by gas and chloroform injections, there was a third way of killing here: a bullet in the back of the neck. The wound revealed that a six-millimeter bullet had been used: there was no exit hole. From these cursory observations, I concluded that it had been a soft lead bullet, because only this type bullet will imbed itself in the skull structure. Unfortunately I knew something of such matters and was able to size up the situation quickly in all its horror. There was nothing surprising in the fact that these small-caliber bullets did not cause instantaneous death in all cases, although they were fired – the powder burns on the skin proved it – from a distance of only an inch or two, right into the spinal medulla. It appeared that in some instances the bullet had deviated slightly from its path; thus death had not always been instantaneous.
I took note of that as well, but meditated no further; I was afraid of going mad. Stepping out into the courtyard I asked a member of the Sonderkommando where the women had come from.
“They were taken from C Section,” he said. “Every evening a truck brings seventy of them. They all get a bullet in the back of the neck.”
My head spinning, struck dumb with horror, I walked along the gravel path which divided the well-kept lawn of the crematorium courtyard. My gaze wandered to the evening muster of Sonderkommando. This evening there was no change of guard. Number one crematorium was not working today. I glanced in the direction of numbers two, three and four: their chimneys were spewing flame and smoke. Business as usual.
It was too early for dinner. The Sonderkommando brought out a football. The teams lined up on the field. “SS versus SK.” On one side of the field the crematorium’s SS guards; on the other, the Sonderkommando. They put the ball into play. Sonorous laughter filled the courtyard. The spectators became excited and shouted encouragement at the players, as if this were the playing field of some peaceful town. Stupefied, I made that mental note as well. Without waiting for the end of the match, I returned to my room. After supper I swallowed two sleeping tablets of ten centigrams each and fell asleep. A badly needed sleep, for I felt my nerves stretched to the breaking point. In such cases, sleeping tablets were the best remedy.
–––
The first job of every Sonderkommando crew was the cremation of its predecessor. (Part 30)
In the morning I awoke with a hangover. I crossed to the shower which had been set up in a neighboring room and let the icy waters of the Vistula splash over me for half an hour. It refreshed my tired nerves and chased the heaviness caused by the sleeping pills.
How well the Germans cared for us! They had built a beautiful ten-man shower, made of gleaming tile, for the exclusive use of the Sonderkommando members. Those who worked with corpses had to wash frequently, so showers were mandatory twice a day, a regulation to which we all gladly submitted.
I checked the contents of my medical bag. It had been brought to me from the storeroom by a Sonderman and had probably belonged to one of my medical colleagues, who had checked it with his clothes in the cloakroom before entering the gas chamber. In it I found a stethoscope, an apparatus for taking blood pressure, some good syringes, a number of other essential instruments and drugs, and several ampoules for emergency injections. I was happy to have it, for I knew that it would come in handy during my “visits.” Here, in the Sonderkommando, “visits” meant making the rounds of the four crematoriums.
I began with my own building. First I stopped at the SS living quarters, planning to examine anyone who showed up, for there were always a few. In the crematoriums everyone feigned illness from time to time in order to get a short respite from his exhausting and nerve-racking labors. There were also more serious cases upon occasion, but we had no trouble taking care of them: as for medical supplies, we could have vied with the best-stocked drugstore in Berlin.
A special kommando was given the job of inspecting the luggage left in the gas chamber lobbies and recouping all medicines before the clothes and shoes were shipped away. These medicines were then turned over to me to be arranged and classified according to their type and purpose. It was no easy job, for people were brought to Auschwitz from all over Europe, and the medicines they brought with them were naturally labeled in the language of the country of origin. So I found labels written in Greek, Polish, Czech and Dutch, all of which I had to decipher. I might mention in passing that the majority of medicines found on those who had been brought to the KZ belonged to one of several kinds of sedatives. Sedatives to quiet the nerves of Europe’s persecuted Jews.
Following my visit to the SS, I proceeded upstairs to the Sonderkommando’s living quarters. While I was there I treated a few cuts and bruises, common among chauffeurs. The Sonderkommando men seldom had any organic illnesses, for their clothes were clean, their beds were provided with fresh linen, and their food was good, sometimes even excellent. Besides they were all young men, hand-picked for their strength and good physical constitution. They did have, however a general tendency to nervous disorders, for it was a tremendous strain on them to know that their brothers, their wives, their parents – their entire race – were perishing here. Day after day they took thousands of corpses and dragged them to the crematory ovens, where they loaded them with their own hands into the incineration cases. The result was acute nervous depression, and often neurasthenia. Everybody here had a past which he looked back on with sorrow, and a future he contemplated with despair. The Sonderkommando’s future was tightly circumscribed by time. Four years’ painful experience had shown that its life span was four months. At the end of that period a company of SS appeared. The entire kommando was herded into the crematorium’s rear courtyard. A machine-gun blast. Half an hour later a new Sonderkommando squad arrived. They undressed their dead companions. An hour later only a heap of ashes remained. The first job of every Sonderkommando crew was the cremation of its predecessor. During my visits there was always someone who took me aside and begged me to give him a swift, sure poison. I invariably refused. Today I am sorry I did. They are all dead. Their death was swift and sure all right – not self-administered as they would have preferred, but at the hands of the Nazi butchers.
–––
To be condemned to death and yet forced to perform jobs such as we had to perform day after day was enough to break the body and soul of the strongest among us… (Part 31)
My next visit took me to number two crematorium, which was separated from number one by a path through some fields and by the Jewish unloading platform along the railroad tracks. It was built according to the same plans as number one. The only difference I noticed was that the space corresponding to the dissection room in number one was here used as a gold foundry. Otherwise the layout of the undressing room, the gas chamber, the incineration room and the living quarters of the SS and the Sonderkommando was exactly the same.
It was to the foundry that all the gold teeth and bridgework collected in the four crematoriums were brought, all the jewelry and gold coins, the precious stones and platinum objects, the watches, the gold cigarette cases and any other precious metal found in the trunks, the suitcases, the clothes, or on the bodies of the dead. Three goldsmiths were employed here. First they disinfected the jewelry, then sorted and classified it. They removed the precious stones and sent the settings to the foundry. The gold teeth and jewelry supplied each day by the four crematoriums produced, once smelted, between 65 and 75 pounds of pure gold.
The smelting took place in a graphite crucible about two inches in diameter. The weight of the gold cylinder was 140 grams. I knew that figure to be exact because I had weighed more than one on an accurate scale in the dissecting room.
The doctors who removed the teeth from the bodies prior to cremation did not throw all the precious metal into the bucket filled with acid, for a portion – sometimes a fair amount, sometimes only a little – went into the pockets of the SS guards when these morbid treasures were being collected. It was the same for the jewelry and gems sewed into the linings of the clothes, and the gold coins left in the undressing room. In the latter instance, however, it was the Sonderkommando entrusted with the job of going through the luggage who profited. An exceedingly dangerous game, though, for the SS guards were ubiquitous, and they kept a close watch on this newly acquired property, which henceforth belonged to the Third Reich. Needless to say, they kept an especially close watch on the gold and jewelry.
At first I did not understand how, from a judicial or moral point of view, the Sonderkommando could bring themselves to pocket the gold. But a few days later, once I had a better grasp of the situation, I was inclined to agree that it was indeed the Sonderkommando who should – if anybody should – be considered the sole heirs and legal proprietors of the treasures which fortune had brought their way.
The men of the Sonderkommando also turned their gold over to be smelted. Despite the strictest supervision there were always ways of getting it to the goldsmiths and of retrieving it in the form of 140 gram “coins.” But putting this gold to work, that is, exchanging it for useful goods, was a more difficult job. No one dreamed of hoarding the gold, for he knew that in four months’ time he would be dead. But for us four months was a very long time. To be condemned to death and yet forced to perform jobs such as we had to perform day after day was enough to break the body and soul of the strongest among us, and to drive many to the brink of insanity. It was thus necessary to make life easier, more bearable, even for a few weeks’ time. With gold you could do that, even in the crematoriums.
Thus was born, in the days of the first Sonderkommando, a unit of exchange: the 140 gram cylinder.
[…I feel flooded as I type this… attempting to take in… the indomitable human spirit… and to contemplate… our power and grace… and that any could… consider us… ‘waste’… – PS]
…they’ve been inordinately successful given their numbers… this tiny few. It shows the power of a plan… of having a vision and working systematically towards it. This tiny few… who desperately want to believe that they are superior beings… and therefore that it’s a legitimate hierarchy… (Part 32)
This same unit was still being used by the twelfth Sonderkommando. The goldsmiths did not have any crucible of a smaller diameter, so there was no way for them to make a smaller “coin.”
In the crematoriums an object had no “value” in the ordinary sense of the term. Anyone who paid for something with gold had already paid with his life the day he entered here. But the person who gave something in exchange for gold doubly risked his neck, once when he brought the articles that were hard to come by, even on the outside, through the SS barricades and check points, and again on his return trip carrying the gold he had received in payment. For both coming in and leaving one was always searched.
On its way out the gold was carried in a Sonderkommando man’s pocket as far as the crematorium gate. There it changed hands. The man carrying the gold approached the SS guard on duty and exchanged a few words with him. The latter turned and sauntered away from the gate. On the section of railway track that passed in front of the “Krema” a team of from 20 to 25 Poles was working. At a sign from the Sonderkommando man, their work boss arrived with a folded sack and took the gold, which was wrapped in paper. So the sack containing the desired articles was safely inside the crematorium.
The Sonderkommando man entered the guardhouse, which was near the gate. He took about a hundred cigarettes and a bottle of brandy from the sack. The SS trooper entered and quickly pocketed both the bottle and cigarettes. He was of course extremely pleased, for the SS received only two cigarettes a day and no alcohol at all. And yet both were indispensable here. The SS guards drank and smoked heavily; so did the Sonderkommando.
[…this juncture where we sit… calls for us to admit… that ‘hierarchy’ necessarily leads to this… a focus narrowly on function for those pushed down ‘low’… while in those placed ‘above’…is placed the illusion of ‘chosenness’… of ‘superior intelligence’… an illusion-spun arrogance that’s cruel and distant… and our tendency to geniality as humans cannot comprehend… this mindset of the children of abandonment…
…and they take this as a sign of our ‘weakness’… and as a rationale for why we need to be mistreated… because in their minds we are ‘inferior beings’… we must be ‘stupid’ to be so easily ‘duped’… we must be ‘stupid’ to care about each other… because no one is supposed to care about anybody else – nobody cared about them… except when they performed to perfection and we-commoners obviously can’t do that… we’re obviously deeply flawed… we don’t even realize we’re being duped! Thus the rationale goes. Thus the lies they tell themselves flow.
This mindset of the children of abandonment see us as but qualities of service to them… they… the ‘superior beings’.
You know it’s interesting. Growing up… we’re never encouraged to read Mein Kampf – just the opposite. But after reading excerpts from it in Diana Spearman’s Modern Dictatorship… really it’s no different from reading Plato’s Republic – “‘the best’ should ‘rule’!” We need to understand this. We need to understand that this isn’t some mindset from the past… it’s living all around us right now. And because its adherents have been planning and have amassed such enormous resources… they’ve been inordinately successful given their numbers… this tiny few. It shows the power of a plan… of having a vision and working systematically towards it. This tiny few… who desperately want to believe that they are superior beings… and therefore that it’s a legitimate hierarchy… and that our most appropriate use is to serve them… and then… once you convert ‘hierarchy’ into some ‘necessary’ for ‘progress’… atomization does the rest.
If we had a legitimate process of education we would be scrutinizing a mindset called ‘hierarchy’ that obviously divides and hurts us. It could not be clearer that we’re being trained… not ‘educated’.… – PS]
The Sonderkommando was an elite group… Fully aware of this unbalanced situation, the Sonderkommando distributed food and clothing to their less fortunate comrades whenever they could. (Part 33)
Other necessary items, such as butter, eggs, ham and onions, were smuggled in by this same method. Nothing of this sort arrived with the deportees. Since the gold was procured through a collective effort, the distribution of the merchandise received in exchange was made on this same basis. Thus both the crematorium personnel and the SS non-coms received an ample supply of food, liquor and cigarettes….
[…I guess ‘power’ could make a case… that the ‘work’-standard… is a ‘wealth’-generator… – PS]
…Everyone shut his eyes to this traffic, for it was to everyone’s advantage that it continue. Taken individually, any SS guard in the crematorium could be bought. They distrusted only themselves, knowing that the Sonderkommando had never betrayed anyone and never would. That was why the food, liquor and cigarettes were turned over to one SS guard by one “confidence man” from the kommando.
[…“Taken individually…” i.e. dissociated from ‘the state’… truth can begin to exert some influence… – PS]
By this same underground route the official organ of the Third Reich, the Volkischer Beobachter was brought every day to the crematorium by a different railroad worker. A monthly subscription cost one 140 gram gold cylinder. Anyone who risked his neck thirty times a month bringing his newspaper to a KZ prisoner deserved the sum he received.
Since my arrival in the crematorium I had been the first one to receive this smuggled copy. I read it in a safe hiding place, then related the day’s events to one of the prisoner-clerks, who in turn passed on the news to his companions. Within a few minutes everyone had heard the latest news.
–––
The Sonderkommando was an elite group; its advantages and privileges have already been noted. In contrast to the prisoners in the camp proper, who writhed in lice-filled boxes, who, mad with hunger, battled furiously for a scrap of bread or a piece of potato, its lot was indeed good. Fully aware of this unbalanced situation, the Sonderkommando distributed food and clothing to their less fortunate comrades whenever they could.
For the past several days a woman’s kommando of about 500 road workers had been busy not far from the crematorium gate. They were guarded by two SS and four police dogs. Their job consisted of carrying rocks to be used in the construction of a road. Several men from the Sonderkommando, with the permission of their own guards, approached the two SS guarding the women and slipped them each a pack of cigarettes. With that the deal was concluded. Then three or four women, loaded with stones, walked over to our gate, as if their work had brought them there, and immediately gathered up all the clothing that had been prepared for them. They also got some bread, bacon and cigarettes. In turn, they were replaced by others in the kommando, till each had received her share. There was never any favoritism shown by the Sonderkommando, for none of us knew any of the women personally. Overjoyed with their “presents,” they returned to their work. The next day a different group replaced them and the same scene was re-enacted….
The crematoriums’ enormous storeroom contained great quantities of clothes and shoes awaiting shipment, and I would estimate that several thousand women prisoners were aided in this manner by the Sonderkommando. I also tried to do my bit: loading my pockets with vitamin pills, sulfa tablets, bottles of iodine, bandages and anything else I thought might be useful, I handed them out as the women passed. When my stock was depleted, I returned to my room and refilled my pockets; for those who received them, these medicines often meant the difference between life and death. At least for a little while.
…that if we can see how we’re merely tail-chasing when we pursue the goal of ‘improving “democracy”’… that we can begin to step off that track… and take ‘the future’ back.… and end ‘power’-worship once and for all…
There is a land uncharted… known to so-called ‘artists’ (‘so-called’ because we are all artists…)
…that so-called ‘artists’ know of… show of… but seldom if ever speak of…
…and they need to… we all do…
…called our bodies…
…that they know… we all do…
…‘power’ stakes a claim to… burns in its ‘citizen’ brand…
…pounded in the earth our bodies… are its stakes…
…that proclaim… we serve its aims…
…and though… all so-called artists know…
…that for their art to flow at all… those stakes must go…
…they don’t – or at least I’ve never heard them say –
…that every human being has the right to live that way…
…unbranded and unstaked.
This land is our land… to grow without the fire-brand glow of states… burning in our flesh…
This land is our land… to grow in freedom with our fellows… unfettered and unbent.
This body’s my land… your body’s your land…
…an earth-oasis… we live in freely…
We’re born for freedom… there’s no stakes in us…
This land is Shared Humanity.
Brothers and Sisters… Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account is an account of what happens when a whole society “does what it is told.” But that level of conformity is what we’re seeing when we arise… and when we close our eyes.
[…with this is mind… we’re going to look at the work of two guys… slickening the trap… that they hope will hold our Global Awakening back… in a new page I’m calling “‘Digital Athens’? Or Last-Ditch Drama”… which I’m incorporating in this show …]
The people of Germany under the Nazis are no different from us… accepting our clothes and our shoes without asking questions… never demanding the slaughter’s dismantlement.
A virtual-child-on-the-loose in Boston was the excuse… to test how far along we have advanced… in our training in passive obedience… how deeply our bow to authority… and I think the results for ‘power’ have been pleasing.
“How do we regain our leadership capacities?” is the same question as “How do we reclaim our own reasoning capacities?” is the same question as “How do we regain our humanity?”
In Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness… I’m trying to show how the circular trap of official state ideology works… in the case of ‘democracy’ (noting that it works the same with other state-legitimating ideologies…) hoping that if we can see that the only ‘progress’ being made… is toward tighter and tighter containment (although we are – with our ancestors’ help – peeling away the layers of the illusion…) that if we can see how we’re merely tail-chasing when we pursue the goal of ‘improving “democracy”’… that we can begin to step off that track… and take ‘the future’ back.
All of us are kept focused on the narrow tasks before us – whether we’re on the street… making a building… in a comfortable ‘analyst’ seat… or in a laboratory… or in a legislature making policy… we’re all encouraged to make our ‘check-lists’… but the future we continue to leave to the ‘statesmen’ (and ‘shadow’ more so, we’ll see… than those in the limelight-glow…) who set our courses behind-scenes (always pushing to the forefront… the ‘scientists’… always telling us ad nauseum they’re ‘smarter’ than us….)
Until we refuse this narrowing of our thinking – the boxes – the hierarchy… the dehumanizing focus on function merely…
(…we’re not made for that Brothers and Sisters… it’s not our nature to be narrow… just the opposite… we want to encompass the ‘all-of-it’… But we can’t do this in harness… we must end once and for all… ‘power’-worship… which exists behind the state’s existence… it is the ‘cause-generative’…)
Getting off the ‘Class Train’… defining a new destination… is the challenge of the moment.
…and reclaim responsibility for the goal… reclaim exclusive focus on determining the goal… focus on it… and only on it… until we got it… then… they got us. The folks who brought this effort from MIT discussed in “‘Digital Athens’? Or Last-Ditch Drama?” are just the latest installment of an on-going (since ‘class’ began…) effort to lock down our containment.
Getting off the ‘Class Train’… defining a new destination… is the challenge of the moment.
We must start talking about this… state-legitimating-ideologies cannot be ‘fixed’… they are designed to work us out of the whole ‘calculus’… of determining what world we want… of what the world is that we will live in….
These ‘statesmen’ are rapists. They want us to surrender our bodies without complaint… never raise our vision above what they give us… steal our vitality and answer us with, “sit down!… shut up!… don’t interfere with grown-up business!”
The result: Auschwitz.
Here are some quotes from that interview I heard today (January 27th, 2014) which inspired these words. In some instances I paraphrase:
“In the ‘First Machine Age’ we overcame the limits of our bodies.” [Our bodies have no limits… we are infinite… in truth… – P.S.] “The ‘Second Machine Age’, for us, is to overcome the limits of our minds. This is going to be as big a deal for humanity as the ‘First Machine Age’…” [Our future will certainly be about overcoming limits… but it is the limits imposed by ‘power’ that we’re finally overcoming… by turning away from narrow function… and to a willingness to accept, honor, and grow… what the earth has given us… not his masters… – P.S.]
“The Stock Market doesn’t provide the best metrics [for determining productivity…] we have to reinvent the metrics… Wikipedia adds zero to GDP. The same is true of YouTube and many applications…. As goods and services become cheaper or free, it’s missed by the current measures.”
“The ‘Second Machine Age’ is about the astonishing advance of technology… a difference of degree resulting from an increase in quantity… first, we are walking around with devices in our pocket with a lot more computing power… second, there’s a lot more data to feed to the machines… third, there’s an army of geeks around the world… a people-resource that’s bigger and smarter…. ”
We have to be able to say that how this ‘society’ got this way was through a massive mistake. This is discussed in John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children…
“There’s an interconnectivity of billions of brains out there… able to contribute to [this ‘New Machine Age’…]” [‘Power’ is tripping over itself to own and fetter this capacity… – P.S.]
“Routine information-entering tasks [jobs] are on the chopping block.”
“65% of Americans do basic information-processing work. More and more processes are being digitized. It’s hard to think of an industry that’s not affected…”
“For example, tax-preparers are a microcosm of what’s happening across the board. They’re just following rules…”
“The boundary between routine and non-routine information-processing is getting fuzzy…”
“Breast-cancer diagnosis is a good example. Diagnosticians have identified seven different categories of skin cancer, and computers are able to identify all of them, and on its own identified an eighth category. Computers are going beyond routine processing and discovering new knowledge…” [I have to interject here that this is not ‘knowledge’… this in data-filtering… computers are filtering tools – high-tech sieves. Finding new patterns in mountains of data is but producing more highly-refined data. ‘Knowledge’ is not about executing functions… but revealing essential truth… grasping with our understanding the forces of life… – P.S.]
“This is a huge change from prior mimicking of us; a much more intensive data-computation approach. It’s not programming in a conventional sense…”
[When asked, “how do we distribute (this socially-derived) value if the work of most people is made obsolete?…
(…and I have to add that that’s a really interesting way of putting it… which made this interview far and away more useful for getting to the essence of the propaganda… and shedding light on reality… than the other pap-interviews I’ve since read. The way the interviewer put it… essentially… was to acknowledge that ‘value’ is our communal inheritance… because that’s how we came by it… just as Miklos said about the production of the 140 gram gold coin used in the underground economy of the KZ: “Since the gold was procured through a collective effort, the distribution of the merchandise received in exchange was made on this same basis.” That is how we do it when we aren’t coerced by ‘power’… like all of nature we’re big on ‘balance’. It’s these would-be ‘philosopher-king-statesmen’ who want to upset ‘balance’… and we’ll be talking more about this… this… I don’t want to call it ‘the psychological rationale underlying their obsession’ because it has a material basis… in their being… turned out of the house… on a massive scale… in Europe… in Antiquity… through the Middle Ages. This was a deep pattern among the wealthy… the elites… which we don’t hear discussion of. And we have to push conversations like this forward as we work our way to ‘claiming the right to define the world we want.’ We have to be able to say that how this ‘society’ got this way was through a massive mistake. This is discussed in John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe From Late Antiquity Through the Renaissance. These are very important discussions… which require as well Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato… which traces this injunction back to Plato.
It is truly… there are no words to describe the awfulness of the fact that so much massive wrong can be laid at the feet of one man.
And this is not to say that if he had not existed someone else would not have done what he did… and not to deny the reality that ‘power’ looks around for what it needs to perpetuate its rule… it’s legitimacy… its sense of self-legitimacy… but… nonetheless… as Popper says there was a vigorous anti-slavery… humanitarian… equalitarian movement that Plato was writing to defeat. So it may very well be that we legitimately can lay the whole of this mess at one man’s feet. It’s mind-boggling to say the least.)
As always… ‘class’… ‘power’… hides in these conversations… is hidden… passes unexamined. They need us to do what we’re told – this is called ‘education’ – and they protect for their tribe the prerogative of control…
…the reply was what we’d expect from bullies: “we don’t care…” anymore than the Nazis cared that the value they procured was taken unfairly. And how is the theft justified? Then and now by saying that it serves a ‘higher goal.’
So when they say: – “There are still useful things for people to do. We’re not automating everything. We’re not at a post-work economy yet. There’s a lot to be done to keep our system working in a healthy way. We have three chapters in our book that describe what people can do to find ways to contribute and do valuable work…” [Can you feel my blood rising… across the electrons?… – …the Nazis would answer the same… “there’s still some things you can do to ‘contribute’… your teeth… your hair… the clothes you wear… these have ‘value’… but not you.” – P.S.]
[The interviewer said, “we’re seeing record-setting levels of inequality… everything you’re describing heightens these trends…”] In reply the interviewees said: “In the ‘First Machine Age’ there were disruptions and dislocations too. Farm workers had to be retrained in the ‘First Machine Age’ too. We have to upgrade the education system… [quoting] ‘progress is a race between technology and education.’ We haven’t been re-inventing education that way. Rote learning and following instructions is not enough today.” [And here I have to say that when he says this, he’s talking about and to ‘the common hoard’… me and you… as it goes unsaid… that this was never the ‘rulers’ education. As always… ‘class’… ‘power’… hides in these conversations… is hidden… passes unexamined. They need us to do what we’re told – this is called ‘education’ – and they protect for their tribe the prerogative of control… – P.S.]
How many more atrocities must we wait for them to commit?… before we’re ready to take that first step… talking about it… allow in the thought that we must… begin again… this time as global humans… not ‘citizens’…
“We need more creativity…” […“‘we’… is not squeezing enough out of you ‘worker-bees’ of what ‘we’ need… to create the machines that allow us to finally be free of you ‘low-level’, imperfect, no-value-adding… ‘worker-bees’…” is what he means… – P.S.].
[When asked about ‘curriculum’ one of them said:] “We need a ‘Grand Bargain’: higher teacher pay, but more accountability [i.e. more top-down control… – P.S.]. The bottom 20% don’t add value and we have to remove them.” [That’s Auschwitz… he’s describing Auschwitz… – P.S.].
“We need more technology in education that captures the best techniques [of educating] and digitizes them. A data-driven approach to education will get us to a higher level of education.”
“We’re sticking students in desks and teaching the three ‘R’s, but we need less rote-instruction, less teaching kids to do what computers are good at, and focus more on what they’re not good at… like ‘negotiation’…”
“We want to create a mechanism that continuously creates and learns. Digital education will identify which teaching techniques improve the technology.”
“Imagine pushing a button that would satisfy our needs? That’s the world we want, a ‘Digital Athens’ in which not slaves but machines provide for our needs. But we can’t get to that point until we address some of the issues.” [i.e., us… the people… locking-in our enslavement… – P.S.].
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“No one else can tell you what work you’re here to do.” “Be free! Be free!”
The ancestors have been telling us that since ‘class’ first stalked and claimed our humanity.
‘Power’ hopes to turn us into functionaries of ‘the machine’… ‘the mechanism’… ‘the system’… ‘tenders’ merely… of their ‘system’… their ‘Athens’. We are being told what future we’re supposed to want….
Disconnect from the propaganda Brothers and Sisters… please… let’s turn to each other… and the rich, deep thinking of the earth and the ancestors… the knowledge we’re given at birth. (Sisters and brothers: haven’t these worshippers of ‘power’… these children of Abandonment… done enough? How many more atrocities must we wait for them to commit?… before we’re ready to take that first step… talking about it… allow in the thought that we must… begin again… this time as global humans… not ‘citizens’…. Our ancestors of heart are calling for this…. Let’s start.)
There’s absolutely nothing new about this vision at all. It’s a vision of total control of us… by calculus… by means of reducing us to predictable functions – and with our help(!)… no less. They need our ‘creativity’ (as they themselves… trained so linearly – are ill-equipped for this…) to make machines that render people… absolutely irrelevant.
Our ancestors have long seen… that this is where the so-called ‘best’ lead… the ‘philosopher-kings’ wet-dream… ‘Brain-in-a-Bottle’ George Orwell called it I think… this Plato-Fascist fantasy… “Identify ‘the best’ and coerce the rest to serve them…” so the ‘rulers’ can possess ‘Knowledge-Infinite’.
“We’re a long way off from a work-less world,” they say… “but… just trust us…” (and what did Shakespeare tell us… about trusting our freedom with a keeper?…) “just trust us… as to that destination… trust us… with the ‘ultimate’ vision… and get busy helping us realize it! And we’ll give you a future in which you just have to push a button… and your feeding-tube will be inserted… automatically!”
That’s your vision? Truly? You don’t want a world in which babies are treasured?… the earth unfettered?… unbounded communion with our earth and ancestors? Don’t you want these things for our future?
These things are gifts from the earth… not your masters… they’re within our reach now… this minute… once we decide we will no longer serve them.
Our future is not about having masters… but… love… only.
Continuing with Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account.
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…the victims spilled to their death with maniacal fury. Horrified, I noted with what order and robot-like precision the murders were perpetuated… If by chance I ever get out of this place alive, I thought, and have a chance to relate all I’ve seen and lived through, who will believe me? (Part 34)
After finishing in number two, I visited number three and number four crematoriums. In number three, besides the Greek and Polish members who made up the majority of the kommando, I noticed that there were already about a hundred Hungarian deportees. In number four the kommando consisted largely of Poles and Frenchmen.
In all these death factories work was in full swing. From the Jewish unloading platform, which was divided into four large finger-like projections, similar to the delta of some flooded river, the victims spilled to their death with maniacal fury. Horrified, I noted with what order and robot-like precision the murders were perpetuated, as if these factories were here for all eternity.
If by chance I ever get out of this place alive, I thought, and have a chance to relate all I’ve seen and lived through, who will believe me? Words, descriptions are quite incapable of furnishing anyone with an accurate picture of what goes on here. So my efforts to photograph in my mind all I see and engrave it in my memory are, after all, completely useless.
With this discouraging thought running through my mind, I completed my first day’s tour of the four crematoriums.
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Thus I became, with this one autopsy, the coroner for the KZ in charge of all matters pertaining to forensic medicine in the Gleiwitz district. (Part 35)
I had managed to lay my hands on a copy of the French dictionary, Petit Larousse. With the help of the maps it contained I tried to situate the names of the various localities mentioned in the newspaper reports. Alone in my room, I studied the military situation along the southern and eastern fronts. Heavy footsteps resounded in the hallway. I quickly flipped the pages and looked impatiently towards the door. The crematorium commander came in to inform me that an important commission was arriving at 2:00 P.M. and that I should have the dissecting room ready to receive them.
Before the commission arrived a hearse pulled up, completely closed and draped with black. Inside lay the body of an SS captain. I had it placed on the dissecting table, still dressed, just as it had been delivered to me.
The commission, consisting of high-ranking, impeccably dressed officers, arrived punctually: an SS Medical Corps Colonel, a judge advocate, two Gestapo officers and a court-martial recorder. A few minutes later Dr. Mengele appeared. I offered them seats. They proceeded to hold a short conference, during which the Gestapo officers related in some detail the circumstances of their colleague’s death.
His wounds, caused by a firearm, pointed to either murder or assassination. Suicide was ruled out: the captain’s revolver had still been in his holster at the time his body had been discovered. As for the hypothesis that he had been murdered, the crime, they believed, might well have been committed by a fellow officer, or perhaps some subordinate who had had a grievance against him. But assassination seemed even more likely: it was a fairly common occurrence in the Polish city of Gleiwitz and the surrounding area, where groups of partisans were active.
The purpose of the autopsy was to determine whether the shot had been fired from in front or behind, what the caliber and characteristics of the murder weapon were, and from what approximate distance the crime had been committed. At that time there was no doctor at Gleiwitz qualified as a coroner; that was why the body had been brought to Auschwitz for an autopsy, for Gleiwitz was only 40 kilometers away, and Auschwitz was consequently the nearest spot where an autopsy could be performed under satisfactory conditions.
In my role of observer, I stood at a respectful distance from the group while this discussion was taking place, and waited, with the mute patience expected from all KZ prisoners, for Dr. Mengele’s instructions.
I had never thought that I, a Jewish prisoner of the KZ, would be allowed to sully – by my contact – the body of an SS officer. As for my performing the autopsy, I would never even have dreamed of it, especially since, even when I had been a so-called “free citizen,” racial laws had invariably kept me from giving medical attention to Christians, or, more exactly, to Aryans. So I was quite surprised when Dr. Mengele turned to me and asked me to get on with the dissection.
The first job, far from a simple one, was to undress the body. Two men would be needed to remove his boots alone. I therefore requested permission to call in a couple of assistants. While the body was being undressed, the members of the commission became involved in a heated discussion and paid hardly any attention to me and my helpers.
As I made the initial incision I found myself fighting off an attack of stage fright and a feeling of inferiority. I cut the skin of the skull and, with a quick, precise movement, turned half the skin down over the face and the other half over the back of the neck. The following step was more difficult: it consisted of sawing the skull and removing the brainpan. Almost mechanically I followed, in due order, the prescribed steps.
It was now time to examine the two wounds caused by the bullet. If it had gone all the way through the body there would of course be two holes, one at the point of entrance, the other at the point of exit. In the majority of cases the physician has no trouble telling which is which: the place where the bullet enters the body is always smaller than the point where it emerges. But in the present case there were two holes, exactly the same size, one below the left nipple and the other close to the upper edge of the shoulder blade.
The matter was far from clear, and therefore all the more interesting. What could have caused the uniformity of the two wounds? Dr. Mengele was of the opinion that there might well have been two bullets fired, one from in front and the other from behind. This could easily have been the case if the officer had fallen after the first shot and been hit by the second while he was lying on the ground. Neither bullet went all the way through the body, thus explaining the two identical wounds. This theory sounded plausible enough, but remained to be verified. To do this I had to study the path of the bullet, or bullets. In doing so, I found that the bullet which entered the body below the left nipple pierced the heart, then grazed the left extremity of the spinal column and continued upward at an angle of 35 degrees till it reached the upper edge of the shoulder blade, a tiny portion of which it had crushed before leaving the body. There could be no doubt about it; only one bullet had been fired, and that from in front of the victim, for the path of the bullet moved upward and from front to back at the aforementioned angle of 35 degrees. The reason the two holes were the same size was that the bullet had grazed the spinal column and chipped off a section of the shoulder blade; considerably slowed by these obstacles, it had left the body after most of its energy had been expended. Besides, it is doubtful that anyone would aim downward at an angle of 35 degrees when shooting. To do so would require the murderer to raise his arm well above his head. So it seemed obvious to me that the bullet had been fired from in front, that the weapon had been pointed upward from the horizontal at the time of firing, that the shot had been made at close quarters and that, in all probability, the killer had been prevented by some intervening obstacle from raising his gun any higher. But this was a matter for the inquest to decide.
I saw that my remarks satisfied the members of the commission, for they announced that in the future all cases requiring an autopsy would be sent here. They found this a very satisfactory arrangement. Thus I became, with this one autopsy, the coroner for the KZ in charge of all matters pertaining to forensic medicine in the Gleiwitz district.
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It was here that the “surplus” from the “Jewish ramp” was sent, that is, those for whom there was no room in the four crematoriums. The worst kind of death awaited them. (Part 36)
Early one morning I received a phone call ordering me to report immediately to the “pyre” for the purpose of bringing back to number one crematorium all the medicines and eyeglasses that had been collected there. After being sorted and classified they would be shipped to various parts of Germany.
The pyre was located about five or six hundred yards from number four crematorium, directly behind the little birch forest of Birkenau, in a clearing surrounded by pines. It lay outside the KZ’s electric barbed wire fence, between the first and second line of guards. Since I was not authorized to venture so far from the actual confines of the camp, I requested some sort of written permission from the office. They issued me a safe conduct good for three persons, for I planned on taking two men with me to help carry the material back to the crematorium.
We set off in the direction of the thick twisting spiral of smoke. All those unfortunate enough to be brought here saw this column of smoke, which was visible from any point in the KZ, from the moment they first descended from the box cars and lined up for selection. It was visible at every hour of the day and night. By day it covered the sky above Birkenau with a thick cloud; by night it lighted the area with a hellish glow.
Our path took us past the crematoriums. After showing the SS guards our safe conduct, we passed through an opening cut in the barbed wire and reached an open road. The surrounding countryside – a patchwork of bright green, grassy clearing – seemed peaceful. But soon my watchful eyes discerned, about a hundred yards away, the guards of the second line, either lounging on the grass or sitting beside their machine guns and police dogs.
We crossed a clearing and came to a small pine forest. Once again we found our way blocked by a fence and gate strung with barbed wire. A large sign, similar to those on the crematorium gates, was posted here:
ENTRANCE IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE NO BUSINESS HERE, INCLUDING SS PERSONNEL NOT ASSIGNED TO THIS COMMAND.
In spite of this sign, we entered without the guards even asking us for our pass. The reason was simple: the SS guards on duty here were from the crematoriums, and the 60 Sonderkommando men who worked at the pyre were also crematorium personnel from number two. At present the day shift was on. They worked from seven in the morning till seven in the evening, when they were replaced by the night watch, which also consisted of 60 men, taken from number four.
Passing through the gate, we reached an open place which resembled a courtyard, in the middle of which stood a thatched-roof house whose plaster was peeling off. Its style was that of a typical German country house, and its small windows were covered with planks. As a matter of fact, it no doubt had been a country house for at least 150 years, to judge by its thatched roof, which had long since turned black, and its often replastered, flaking walls.
The German State had expropriated the entire village of Birkenau near Auschwitz, in order to establish the KZ there. All the houses, with the exception of this one, had been demolished, and the population evacuated.
What, in fact, must this house have been used for? Had it been meant to be lived in? In that case partitions must have divided the interior into rooms. Or had it originally been one large room, without partitions, meant to be used as a hangar or storeroom? I asked myself these questions, but was unable to supply the answers. In any case, it was now used as an undressing room for those on their way to the pyre. It was here that they deposited their shabby clothes, their glasses, and their shoes.
It was here that the “surplus” from the “Jewish ramp” was sent, that is, those for whom there was no room in the four crematoriums. The worst kind of death awaited them. Here there were no faucets to slake the thirst of several days’ voyage, no fallacious signs to allay their misgivings, no gas chamber which they could pretend was a disinfecting room. Merely a peasant house, once painted yellow and covered with thatch, whose windows had been replaced by planks.
Behind the house enormous columns of smoke rose skyward, diffusing the odor of broiled flesh and burning hair. In the courtyard a terrified crowd of about 5,000 souls; on all sides thick cordons of SS, holding leashed police dogs. The prisoners were led, three or four hundred at a time, into the undressing room. There, hustled by a rain of truncheon blows, they spread out their clothes and left by the door at the opposite side of the house, yielding their places to those who were to follow. Once out the door, they had no time even to glance around them or to realize the horror of their situation. A Sonderkommando immediately seized their arms and steered them between the double row of SS who lined the twisting path, which, flanked on either side by woods, ran for 50 yards to the pyre, which till now had been hidden by the trees.
The pyre was a ditch 50 yards long, six yards wide and three yards deep, a welter of burning bodies. (Part 37)
The pyre was a ditch 50 yards long, six yards wide and three yards deep, a welter of burning bodies. SS soldiers, stationed at five-yard intervals along the pathway side of the ditch, awaited their victims. They were holding small caliber arms – six millimeters – used in the KZ for administering a bullet in the back of the neck. At the end of the pathway two Sonderkommando men seized the victims by the arms and dragged them for 15 or 20 yards into position before the SS. Their cries of terror covered the sound of the shots. A shot, then, immediately afterwards, even before he was dead, the victim was hurled into the flames. Fifty yards farther on a scene similar in all respects was being enacted. Oberschaarfuhrer Molle was in charge of these butchers. As a doctor, and as an eye-witness, I swear that he was the Third Reich’s most abject, diabolic and hardened assassin. Even Dr. Mengele showed from time to time that he was human. During the selections at the unloading ramp, when he noticed a healthy young woman who above all wanted to join her mother in the left-hand column, he snarled at her coarsely, but ordered her to regain the right-hand group. Even the ace shot of the number one crematorium, Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld, fired a second shot into anyone whom the first shot had not killed outright. Oberschaarfuhrer Molle wasted no time over such trifles. Here the majority of the men were thrown alive into the flames. Woe to any Sonderkommando by whose action the living chain, which extended from cloakroom to pyre, was broken, with the result that one of the members of the firing squad was forced to wait for a few seconds before receiving his new victim.
Molle was everywhere at once. He made his way tirelessly from one pyre to the next, to the cloakroom and back again. Most of the time the deportees allowed themselves to be led without resistance. So paralyzed were they with fright and terror that they no longer realized what was about to happen to them. The majority of the elderly and the children reacted in this way. There were, however, a goodly number of adolescents among those brought here, who instinctively tried to resist, with a strength born of despair. If Molle happened to witness such a scene, he took his gun from his holster. A shot, a bullet often fired from a distance of 40 to 50 yards, and the struggling person fell dead in the arms of the Sonderkommando who was dragging him towards the pyre. Molle was an ace shot. His bullets often pierced the arms of the Sonderkommando men from one side to the other when he was dissatisfied with their work. In such cases he inevitably aimed for the arms, without otherwise manifesting his dissatisfaction, but also without giving any previous warning.
When the two pyres were operating simultaneously, the output varied from five to six thousand dead a day. Slightly better than the crematoriums, but here death was a thousand times more terrible, for here one died twice, first by the bullet in the back of the neck, then by fire.
After death by gas, by chloroform injections, and a bullet in the back of the neck, I had now made my acquaintance with this fourth “combined” method.
I gathered up the medicines and glasses left behind by the victims. Dazed, my knees still trembling with emotion, I started for home, that is, for number one crematorium, which, to quote Dr. Mengele himself, “was no sanatorium, but a place where one could live in a pretty decent way.” After having seen the pyres, I was inclined to agree with him.
Once home, I entered the room, but instead of arranging the medicines and spectacles, I took a sedative and went to bed. Today’s dose was 30 centigrams, sufficient, I hoped, to counteract the effects of funeral pyre sickness.
[…each one so precious…
…each one so precious…
…think of the people in our lives…
…‘power’ would look at our supposedly defining boxes…
…Bob… a construction ‘worker’ at a job site…
…me… the same… and a Black woman besides…
…and into the fire we would go…
…and yet… for my individual story…
…and for you… for yours…
…it is the same…
…Bob… and T… and Nanji…
…are sine qua nons for me…
…for you… and yours… the same… .
How dare these guys pretend they see…
…the ‘all’ of you…
…the ‘all’ of me…
…when we… each one…
…are infinite.
…
They want it to be them… this is something I’m seeing more clearly now… with Miklos’ and Karl Popper’s help… as I’m typing up Chapter XVIII of Auschwitz…. It was a contradiction I noted in Waking Up when I asked, “how can a way of seeing the world based on ‘mind-worship’ be so determined to dumb us down?”
They want it to be them… they want to be proclaimed not just the ‘winners’… but ‘the smart ones’… as Jim Weaknecht did… when they beat him to the ground and took his business… like children so… no… like the abandoned child they are they stack the deck… they rig the rules… and stride about with chests out-thrust… these sad… sick… children… of Abandonment. – PS]
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February 3rd, 2014: Sisters and brothers…
The role of ‘art’ in ending ‘power’-worship: on Philip Seymour Hoffman… (Part 1)
When we hear of public people with resources and heart who die before their time… there’s always that question that lodges in our mind (yet another reason to leave ‘power’ behind… truth watches sullen from the skies when such bullies stride about…) – I’m thinking in this instance of Philip Seymour Hoffman… but I have to say I thought the same of Tony Scott… who brought us such a powerful metaphorical romp as Enemy of the State – knowing the evil ways and ruthlessness of ‘power’…
…knowing this… prudence suggests… if we would do their heart and humanity justice… those who model vulnerability in a world that would have us be robots…
(…and if everyone’s a robot Plato’s Tribesmen can be the only ones with any seeming personality… so to woo… dupe… and subdue us all the better… we subject people…)
…we should take a look at what that project was that they were working on… and boost it up into the light… we owe them this… in case… there was more hiding in the shadow than what we’re told… and either way… we’re giving thanks to those who shared uncommon much of what we need to see… to recall our stolen humanity. And… who knows?… what from this boosting-up might come?… what may emerge… and thereby justice serve.
With the passing of Pete Seeger the airwaves have brought much discussion about whether… or to what degree… ‘art’ can lead to (put in what I consider more authentic terms…) ending ‘power’… or… even more helpfully… ending ‘power worship’. I think putting it this way is more accurate… and therefore generates more useful discussion (i.e. reflecting a clarity of thought… based in seeing reality…) as it opens the door to recognizing that we also manifest ‘the system’… and to thereby taking greater responsibility for creating a truly different world… as opposed to handing to those next-in-line for this wild ride called ‘life’ (in this hideous ‘power’-worship iteration…) just re-packaged class relations.
So what might be a realistic sense of what ‘art’ can accomplish? Absent its necessary conjunct – on-going discussion… on-going breaking out of our atomization (upon which ‘power’ depends to exist…) – it proceeds in this ‘power’-ending project too slowly. That we’re seeing ever more (and escalating) resource-wars and ever-growing earth-crises means… we’d best set ‘art’ up for success… and pair it with a vision and a plan… and on-going discussion.
Recall it’s all about the imperative to keep the people sleeping… it’s all about the people never thinking… The role of ‘art’ in ending ‘power’-worship: on Philip Seymour Hoffman… (Part 2)
And do ‘artists’ (designated such as part of the propaganda of class… to reinforce class hierarchies…) have any greater responsibility for accomplishing the task at hand… i.e. ending ‘power’-worship?
What’s been coming up for me are several things I’m pondering… and please bear with me as I take Philip Seymour Hoffman to illustrate.
There’s a luminescence and an intimacy to his portrayals that seemed to pull me into a circle of light… his light, of course… his sharing of himself… and which now I see as a huge empathy.
Does not that empathy… and this is what I’m pondering… under conditions in which a very few want to control not just what we think… but the capacity to think itself…
…does it not put such an artist… at tremendous risk?
It’s the time one has… potentially (i.e. potentially the owning of one’s life…) while seeking the authentic… which one must do… to take the calling seriously… that… necessarily, it seems to me… leads a true ‘artist’… a true human being… into ‘power’s crosshairs.
For what is ‘art’ (if ‘art’ is self-defined… and not regurgitation…) if not a dedicated pursuit of truth?
And what is an ‘artist’ (if self-defined…) if not a very fine instrument for getting to it? By which I mean ‘empathy’… trusting one’s body… and following where it leads… getting to the underlying motive-force of things….
To attempt to do this… if one has clawed one’s way out of The Matrix… is a very dangerous project. (And… trust… there will be Iagos a-plenty around such a person… and around the people who know this person… planting seeds of doubt… insinuating… trying to blot out from within our beacon… who brought us so much light. And I would be very interested to know… whether any of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s friends have experienced such Iagos.)
‘Art’… like all of ‘power’s boxes… is an artificial construct it gives for us to stand in (if we’re willing to play the ‘artist’ role…) and this box is particularly tight-crafted under ‘power’s steady eye… as it could… in theory… bring to charismatic figures large numbers… in both senses… both currencies… that ‘power’ monitors and traffics in: money… and the ability to capture our (we-the-people’s) allegiance – and so present to ‘power’ a competing interest… which ‘power’ won’t allow.
Entertainers (and by this word I mean ‘public figures’…) are court-jesters and people-pacifiers for ‘power’ (and by this I mean no offence… as obviously I don’t mean by the artist’s intent… but rather how the so-called ‘rulers’ look at it – when you understand ‘power’s way of seeing… it’s like a key… that opens up the door… on all their misanthropy….) Should any of them not understand their role… and venture out beyond those bounds… and towards ‘the people’… while possessing sufficient magnetic draw… that others in large number venture with them… I can’t imagine ‘power’ not giving them its full attention.
Recall it’s all about the imperative to keep the people sleeping… it’s all about the people never thinking…. So when entertainers who do inspire us to think die unexpectedly – and… trust… ‘power’ would not venture to this tactic unless it had a reasonably viable back story to plug into our questions (here’s another good reason to get focused on our future freedom… and leave self-destructive practices behind… and state publicly, loud and often what it is on which we’re aiming… and not admit dalliances with distraction of any kind…)
– so when public figures who possess the unlikely combination of heart and resources die unexpectedly… please examine their current projects… please help them… bring them home.
Continuing with Miklos Nyzisli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account.
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Chapter XIV:
…faced with a serious shortage of food… their remedy had been both drastic and efficient… (Part 38)
The following morning I awoke wondering what revelation the new day would bring. For here each new day had its revelation, one more horrible than anything a normal person could ever have dreamed of.
I learned from the Sonder who invariably managed to have all the latest information, that the KZ was in strict quarantine. This meant that no one could leave the barracks. SS soldiers and their police dogs were out in full force. Today they were going to liquidate the Czech Camp.
The Czech Camp consisted of about 15,000 deportees brought from the Theresienstadt ghetto. Like the Gypsy Camp, it had a family air about it. The deportees had not been “selected” upon arrival, but sent intact to their quarters. All, no matter what their age or physical condition, had been allowed to keep their clean clothes and live together. Their lot was hard, but not unbearable. Unlike the other sections, they did not work.
Thus they had lived for two years, till the hour for their extermination arrived, as sooner or later it arrived for everybody in the KZ. At Auschwitz it was never a question of whether you would live or die, but merely a question of time, of when you would die. No one escaped. The trainloads of Hungarian deportees, or, to use the expression current in the KZ, the “freight,” arrived in a steady flow, sometimes two trainloads at a time, and disgorged their passengers. For them the ubiquitous Dr. Mengele dispensed with the customary formality of selection. He stood there like a statue, his arm always pointing in the same direction: to the Left. Thus whole trainloads were expedited to the gas chambers and pyres.
The quarantine camp, C Camp, D Camp and the F section were terribly overcrowded, despite the quotas which were filled daily for shipment to more distant camps. In the Czech Camp both the children and aged had been greatly weakened by their two-year ordeal: the children’s bodies were mere skin and bones, and the elderly prisoners were so weak they could scarcely walk. Both had to relinquish their places to new arrivals who were still strong enough to work.
During the preceding weeks their situation had steadily worsened. When the first Hungarian convoys had begun arriving their rations had been sharply reduced. Then, a few weeks later, when the stream of new deportees had swelled to flood proportions, the camp authorities had found themselves faced with a serious shortage of food. As usual, their remedy had been both drastic and efficient: they had practically suppressed the Czech Camp rations altogether.
Hunger had reduced the prisoners to raving, moaning maniacs. Within a few days their already weakened organisms had disintegrated entirely. Diarrhea, dysentery and typhus had begun their deadly work. Fifty or sixty deaths a day was normal. Their last days were spent in indescribable suffering, till at last death came and set them free.
The closing of all barracks was ordered early in the morning. Several hundred SS soldiers surrounded the Czech area and ordered the inmates to assemble. Their cries of terror as they were loaded onto the waiting vans were terrible to hear, for after two years in the KZ they no longer had any illusions about what lay in store for them. “Liquidation Day” found some 12,000 prisoners left in the Czech Camp. From among that number 1,500 able-bodied men and women were chosen, along with eight physicians. The rest were sent to number two and number three crematoriums. On the following day the Czech Camp was silent and deserted. I saw a truck loaded with ashes leave the crematorium and head towards the Vistula.
Thus the Auschwitz muster rolls were reduced by more than 12,000 “units,” and one more bloody page was added to the Auschwitz archives. That page contained only the following brief inscription: “The Czech section of the Auschwitz concentration camp was liquidated this date due to a prevalence of typhus among the prisoners. Signed: Dr. Mengele, Hauptsturmfuhrer I Lagerazt.”
The eight physicians from the Czech Camp who, thanks to Dr. Epstein’s intervention, had been spared, were sent to the F Camp’s hospital barracks, either because they were physically and mentally exhausted after their superhuman efforts in caring for their fellow-prisoners, or because they were infected with typhus.
On the day following the liquidation of the Czech Camp I paid an official visit to F Camp. There I met the eight doctors who had escaped death and had a chance to talk with them, and in particular with Dr. Heller, whose name was well known in medical circles. From his lips I learned the full story of the suffering and death of Czechoslovakia’s Jewish elite. Since then, all eight have perished. They were true doctors. I hold their memory in deep esteem.
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I am not one usually given to pause and weigh the pro and con before acting. I decide quickly and act quickly, especially when it is a question of an important decision. The results are not always brilliant. The fact that I had ended up here in the crematoriums was the result of a snap decision… (Part 39)
The C Camp, which was situated near the Czech Camp, was composed of Hungarian Jewish women, often as many as 60,000 at a time, in spite of the daily shipments to distant camps. It was in this heavily overpopulated camp that the doctors one day discovered among the inmates of one of the barracks the symptoms of scarlet fever. By Dr. Mengele’s order that barracks, as well as those on either side of it, was quarantined. The quarantine lasted only a short time: from morning till evening, hardly twelve hours. At dusk trucks arrived to embark the inmates of these three barracks to the crematoriums. Such were the efficacious methods employed by Dr. Mengele to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.
The Czech Camp and C Camp had already felt the effects of Dr. Mengele’s battle against the outbreak of epidemics. Fortunately, the doctors assigned to these barracks quickly sized up Dr. Mengele’s method for stemming contagion. And from then on they were careful not to reveal any cases of infectious diseases to the SS medical authorities. As often as was possible they went so far as to conceal the sick person in a corner of the barracks, and cared for him as best they could with the meager resources at their disposal. They avoided at all costs sending the sick to the hospital, since the SS doctors checked all patients there and the appearance of a contagious disease meant the liquidation both of the barracks where the disease had originated and of the neighboring barracks as well. SS medical language called this method “the intensive battle against the spread of infection.” The results of that struggle were always one or two truckloads of ashes….
After such precedents, the bodies of two women were brought to me from the B Camp hospital. Dr. Mengele had sent them to me for autopsy. As usual, I received files at the same time which contained detailed medical information on the deceased. In the column headed “diagnosis” I noticed, respectively, the terms “typhoid fever” and “heart failure.” The two mentions were followed by question marks.
I am not one usually given to pause and weigh the pro and con before acting. I decide quickly and act quickly, especially when it is a question of an important decision. The results are not always brilliant. The fact that I had ended up here in the crematoriums was the result of a snap decision.
Once again I made up my mind quickly. I could not send Dr. Mengele, in the report on my autopsy, a diagnosis of typhoid fever. The description of the victim’s illness was full of loopholes. The diagnosis was accompanied by a question mark. The doctor was obviously unsure of himself in the matter. The autopsy would determine whether or not his judgment had been correct. That was why the two bodies had been sent to me.
I performed the autopsy. The small intestine in both bodies was in an ulcerous state characteristic of three-week-old typhoid. The spleen was also swollen. Beyond all shadow of a doubt, both cases were victims of typhoid fever.
Dr. Mengele arrived as usual about five o’clock in the afternoon. He was in a good humor. He came over and questioned me, full of curiosity as to the results of my autopsies. The two bodies were lying open on the table. The large and small intestines, as well as the spleens from both bodies, were washed and placed in a container, ready to be examined.
I gave him my diagnosis: inflammation of the small intestine with extensive ulceration. I expounded for Dr. Mengele’s benefit the ulcerated state of the small intestine during the third week of typhoid fever, and compared it to the ulcerations which arise during the inflammation of the same organ. I drew his attention to the fact that the swelling of the spleen often accompanied inflammation of the intestine, and that as a consequence it was not a question of typhoid fever, but a serious inflammation of the small intestine, probably caused by meat poisoning.
…‘power’ ensures that the hurt we do to each other happens structurally… automatically…. With all his concern about climate change I noticed he failed to blame himself for taking money from Bill Gates… who funds ‘solar radiation management’ … (Part 40)
Dr. Mengele was a race biologist and not a pathologist. So it was not difficult to convince him that my diagnosis was correct. However, to be mistaken annoyed him. Turning to me he said: “If you want my opinion, doctors who are guilty of such crass errors would be more useful to the KZ as road workers than as physicians. Poor diagnoses like these could cause any number of unnecessary deaths.”
He took the affidavits and files, but before putting them in his briefcase, added a note in the margin. “Make the women doctors responsible,” I read over his shoulder. I sincerely regretted having so wronged my innocent female colleagues, for their diagnosis was excellent. Perhaps they would now lose their jobs and end up performing heavy labor; if Dr. Mengele carried out his threat, I would have been the cause of it.
According to the medical customs as practiced outside the barbed wire I had certainly acted unethically, and was fully conscious of my guilt. I had wronged two or three innocent people. But to what lengths might Dr. Mengele have gone in his fight against epidemics, and what might have been the number of victims, if I had acted differently?
The next day, however, I received comforting news concerning the fate of my colleagues. Dr. Mengele had reprimanded them, but had let it go at that. The women doctors stayed on their jobs. Subsequently many bodies were sent to me, with their medical records, but the diagnosis column was never filled out. I preferred it that way. Dr. Mengele’s indignation concerning the supposed error in diagnosis nevertheless continued to prey on my mind for several days. To find so much cynicism mixed with so much evil in a doctor surprised me, even in the KZ. He was no ordinary doctor, but a criminal, or rather, a “criminal doctor.”
[But what does ‘criminal’ mean… when you do your criminality… at the behest of the state?… if not that it is the state itself that is the criminal?
Let me give an illustration. It’s raining here in the Bay Area. And I just want to note by way of preface that for the last few months – straight – if not longer… my eyes have been itchy… sinuses swollen… nose running profusely – all after I’ve been outside for any length of time (and I’m outside more than most… given my situation… and my body tends to be a good barometer in such matters….) Can there be any doubt they’ve been ‘cloud-seeding’? (a euphemism for flooding our lungs with particulates…
(…The scientists testimonies lay out possible “future” geoengineering techniques including the SRM Aerosol Program. This is described as being administered by military jets, high in the atmosphere, laying down particles of sulfur dioxide which effectively haze the sky and dim the sun. Other candidates include hydrogen sulfide and soot. “A broad range of materials might be used as stratospheric scatterers,” says Lee Lane. ”Potential types of particles for injection include sulfur dioxide, aluminum-oxide dust, or even designer self-levitating aerosols” (CFR Unilateral Geoengineering workshop, May 2008). [See “Solar Radiation Management: Dr. Strangelove’s Fix for Global Warming”.])
…and forcing us to… once again… be their guinea pigs… so they can expand their ‘knowledge of torture’… of both the earth overall and we class-bound humans…) and after all… they gave us ‘fair’ warning… and we… apparently… were too ‘weak’ to stop them so we must be inferior beings… and deserve whatever slop they drop onto our plates.
And the media-play… the propaganda they pump steadily… that tells us what to think… so we can robotically repeat it… in voices of assurance that bear no scrutiny… all say, “we sure need that rain….” Really? Well so do our brothers and sisters in Africa… Asia… and the Middle East.
Meanwhile… for PR purposes… and purposes of pacification… the media brings another story sedative-laden: “…food-aid charity is being to sent to all the suffering folks in Africa…” and the drug slips quietly into our minds… and we murmur, “Oh well…” and turn over in our soft, warm beds….
This is the world they plan… this is the world we have…
…but we’re not pets, brothers and sisters. Let’s get out of bed. We want to help each other… we want it so bad (but the drugs have such a lulling effect that we’ve forgotten…) and yet… if we step back… and view from the vantage of the whole (the vantage from which we plan…) we see clearly… that we’re doing just the opposite: we’re hurting each other.
And we have to start discussing loudly… that ‘power’ sets it up this way… we’re divided from each other structurally… to ensure that we can do naught else but hurt each other… ensure that the hurt we do happens structurally… that the hurt we do happens ‘automatically’… as a result of the efficient functioning… the proper operation… of ‘the system’ – this machine-like and machine-torture and killing of states…
…and shadow-states…. I heard Bill McKibben on the February 8th 2014 Bill Moyers radio program blame ‘climate change’ for causing drought and famine in Africa. I noticed he failed to blame himself for taking money from Bill Gates… who’s providing some of the funding for ‘solar radiation management’… and… trust… this guy’s (Gates)… this guy’s a shadow-statesman… this guy’s a member or devotee of Plato’s Tribe.
And this… as with all things to do with ending ‘power’… gets us back to the imperative of seeing reality as we proceed….
Yesterday (02.05.14)… in one of the many Pete Seeger tributes that have been playing… I heard a snippet of an interview with him… in which he said (half-facetiously) that he wished… when called before the House Un-American Affairs Committee during the ‘McCarthy Era’ that he had been as bold as Paul Robeson and rose to his feet and said, “You are the Un-Patriots!”… meaning, I suppose, that his accusers had betrayed the ideals on which this country – according to the ideology – was founded…. And… still… this is the dominant perspective that gets publicly professed… as it is the state itself that trains us.
But… what if… discussion was launched from the understanding that ‘the state’ exists to compel our obedience… so that it can pursue its greater glory in the global arena… would Paul Robeson have been outraged? And could then… his off-the-charts phenomenal gifts… all that energy attendant on them… been better spent… to help free us?… i.e. to help start the necessary conversations?… and dissolve the mental chains that keep us trodding on that wine-press… – P.S.]
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Everywhere I looked I saw nothing but a vast network of barbed wire… The KZ was nothing but barbed wire; the whole of Germany was encompassed by barbed wire, itself an enormous KZ.… There was no denying it, the name “Dr. Mengele”… had made a strong impression on the SS slave.… (Part 41)
One morning Dr. Mengele sent for me to report immediately to the F Camp commander. I was happy enough to go, for it would give me a chance to get away from the depressing atmosphere of the crematoriums for a few hours. I knew that the walk would do me good too, for I had little opportunity to exercise. And after the smell of the dissecting room and crematoriums I looked forward to getting a bit of fresh air. Besides, this visit would give me a chance to converse with my F Camp colleagues, who had welcomed me so warmly when I first arrived in the KZ. I prepared for the trip by filling my pockets with precious medicines and several packages of cigarettes. I did not want to return empty-handed to my former “home,” i.e., to hospital-barracks 12.
I left by the iron gate of the crematorium, where the guards noted my number, then headed in the direction of F Camp, without hurrying, the better to enjoy even this short walk. I passed beside the barbed wire fences of the women’s camp, the “FKL,” where thousands upon thousands of women prisoners were walking to and fro among the flimsy shacks that passed for barracks. All the women looked alike, and all, with their shaved heads and tattered clothes, were repulsive. I thought of my wife and daughter, of their long curly hair, of their stylish clothes and tasteful manner of dressing, of the long hours they used to spend discussing these all-important, feminine problems. Three months had already passed since our separation on the unloading platform. What had become of them? Were they still alive? Together? Were they still in the women’s section of the Auschwitz KZ, or had they perhaps been sent to one of the Third Reich’s more distant camps? Three months is a long time. But three months in the KZ was longer still. Nevertheless, I had a feeling they were still at Auschwitz. But where? In this complicated labyrinth of barbed wire, which fence was theirs? Everywhere I looked I saw nothing but a vast network of barbed wire, concrete pillars, and signs forbidding entrance or exit. The KZ was nothing but barbed wire; the whole of Germany was encompassed by barbed wire, itself an enormous KZ.
I reached the F Camp gate. The entrance was guarded by the Blockfuhrerstube. A soldier and an SS noncom with the face of a brute were on duty. I proceeded to the guardhouse window, pulled up the sleeve of my suitcoat and, in accordance with prescribed procedure, announced my number: A 8450. As I pulled back my sleeve, the wristwatch Dr. Mengele had given me authorization to wear, since I needed it for my work, became visible. To keep such an object was one of the KZ’s most heinous offences. With the speed and fury of a famished tiger the SS noncom jumped to his feet and came running from the guardhouse.
“Who in the devil do you think you are, wearing a wristwatch!” he shouted in a raucous voice. “And what business do you have coming here to F Camp?”
A three months’ stay in the crematoriums was a school that left its mark. Without losing my temper, without even batting an eyelash, I answered him in a quiet voice.
“I am here because Dr. Mengele sent for me,” I said. “But if it’s impossible for me to get into F Camp, then I’d better return to the crematorium and let Dr. Mengele know by telephone.”
The name “Dr. Mengele” worked like magic. Just hearing it uttered was enough to make most people tremble. My noncom grew tame in less time than it takes to tell. In an almost fawning manner he asked me just how long I intended staying inside the camp.
“You see, I have to record the information,” he added apologetically. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock. “I shall stay until 2:00 P.M.,” I said. “By then my business with Dr. Mengele will certainly be finished.” To punctuate my sentence I took a package of cigarettes from my pocket and handed him a few. Obviously pleased with the gift, he spoke to me in an almost friendly manner, and even went so far as to intimate that he would be most happy to see me on my next visit.
There was no denying it, the name “Dr. Mengele,” the mention of the crematorium, and the ostentatious display of cigarettes had made a strong impression on the SS slave. Now I was certain of being able to spend at least an hour or two with my former friends. But first to find out why Dr. Mengele had sent for me.
I began to see the light. Dr. Wolff was also engaged in research. In the midst of the stench and smoke of the crematoriums, he too wished to profit from the hundreds of thousands of human guinea pigs available in the KZ… (Part 42)
I entered the camp commander’s barracks and waited in the outer lobby till the clerk asked me my business. I told him. He pointed to a door at the opposite end of the room. I crossed to it and entered a well-furnished study. The walls were covered with graphs and charts which showed what the population and composition of the camp had been during various periods of its existence. Prominently displayed in an ornate frame I noticed an enormous photo-portrait of Himmler, with his pince-nez set delicately on the bridge of his nose.
Three people were seated in the room: Dr. Mengele; Hauptsturmfuhrer Dr. Thilo, head surgeon of the KZ; and Obersturmfuhrer Dr. Wolff, director of the General Medical Service. Dr. Mengele informed Dr. Wolff, whom I had not previously met, that it was I who performed the autopsies in the crematoriums.
“Most interesting,” Dr. Wolff said, stroking his chin. “Dr. Mengele has told me of your work. I am especially interested in pathology, Doctor, and would already have looked in on some of your more delicate cases if lack of time had not prevented me.”
I waited for what was to follow.
“At the present time,” he continued, “I am engaged in a scientific study of some importance. But to round it out I will need your help. That is why I asked Dr. Mengele to have you come over here today.” He paused and then went on: “As you know, diarrhea is extremely common in the camp, and 90% of the cases prove fatal. I know all there is to know about the prognosis and evolution of the disease, for I have made thousands of examinations and kept very accurate notes. But my work is imperfect, for, besides clinical observations, a scientific study requires a pathological report on a sufficient number of dysentery cases to be conclusive.”
I began to see the light. Dr. Wolff was also engaged in research. In the midst of the stench and smoke of the crematoriums, he too wished to profit from the hundreds of thousands of human guinea pigs available in the KZ, many of whom had been reduced by dysentery to an unbelievable 60 or 65 pounds. Through the dissection of a large number of bodies he hoped to discover the internal manifestations of dysentery still unknown to medical science.
Dr. Mengele wanted to solve the problem of the multiplication of the race by studying the human material – or rather, the twin material – that he was free to employ as he saw fit. Dr. Wolff was searching for the causes of dysentery. Actually, its causes are not difficult to determine; even the layman knows them. Dysentery is caused by applying the following formula: take any individual – man, woman, or innocent child – snatch him away from his home, stack him with a hundred others in a sealed box car, in which a bucket of water has first been thoughtfully placed, then pack them off, after they have spent six preliminary weeks in a ghetto, to Auschwitz. There pile them by the thousands into barracks unfit to serve as stables. For food, give them a ration of mouldy bread made from wild chestnuts, a sort of margarine of which the basic ingredient in lignite [“a soft brownish coal showing traces of plant structure” – P.S.], thirty grams of sausage made from the flesh of mangy horses, the whole not to exceed 700 calories. To wash this ration down, a half liter of soup made from nettles and weeds, containing nothing fatty, no flour, no salt. In four weeks, dysentery will invariable appear. Then, three or four weeks later, the patient will be “cured,” for he will die in spite of any belated treatment he may receive from the camp doctors.
According to Dr. Wolff, at least 150 bodies would be needed for the chapter of his study devoted to the pathological aspect of the question. Dr. Mengele interrupted the conversation.
“By performing seven autopsies a day,” he said, “you should be able to finish the required number in approximately three weeks.”
I did not agree. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” I said, “but if you want the job to be accurate and well done – of which I have no doubt – then I can perform only three autopsies a day.” After some discussion we finally agreed on this point and, with a cursory nod, I was dismissed.
“…self-esteem begins with a workable plan…” – and by ‘workable plan’ I mean one that is the result of our process of reasoning… of an analysis that proceeds from point ‘A’ through ‘E’… identifying the steps in-between… that realistically lead… to an absolute challenge to the insanity… (Part 43)
I paid a call on my colleagues stationed in barracks-hospital number 12. They were overjoyed to receive the medicines I had brought, and contentedly smoked the cigarettes I handed around. Their faces and words betrayed symptoms of fatigue and discouragement. The Czech Camp’s sudden and tragic end had had a strong effect on them. Little by little the hopelessness of their situation was overwhelming them, as it had overwhelmed me, but with this difference: my realization had not come little by little, but all at once – the moment I had stepped across the threshold into the crematorium.
I did my best, however, to encourage them, exhorting them to persevere. I described the military situation to them in some detail, and showed how, day by day, it was evolving more and more favorably for us all. Since I read the paper every day I was able to back up my statements with concrete facts.
[Exactly… a realistic sense of hope… which we share with our brothers and sisters… to counter the enormous propagandistic effect of the physical infrastructure itself… – P.S.]
…We parted with a round of warm handshakes. In the KZ, the expression “To take leave of a friend is to die a little” took on an added meaning.
In any event I left them feeling that I could say, without fear of boasting, that I have a strong character, for in my own impossible situation I still managed to encourage others to persevere….
[“…self-esteem begins with a workable plan…” because while the will to resist may exist without it – and by ‘workable plan’ I mean one that is the result of our process of reasoning… of an analysis that proceeds from point ‘A’ through ‘E’… identifying the steps in-between… that realistically lead… to an absolute challenge to the insanity – and while the will to resist may exist without it (note… in this regard… with what force our animal friends insist on their freedom…) – that ‘instinctive refusal’ that Marcuse spoke of – in the absence of that shift from ‘passive’ to ‘realistic active’… an ‘active’ based in seeing reality… resistance thins out pretty quick…
…and as to Miklos’ strength… isn’t it obvious to us all by now… he’s given to understatement? The combination of his nerves of steel… powers of analysis… being a master strategist… all knitted with a love unlimited… and grace supreme… this quality of strength and love… we don’t often get a glimpse of… – P.S.]
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Obersturmfuhrer Wolff’s former patients, all dead of dysentery, passed in succession beneath the scalpel. (Part 44)
Obersturmfuhrer Wolff’s former patients, all dead of dysentery, passed in succession beneath the scalpel. I had already finished the first thirty autopsies and was recording the results of my observations. In each case the mucous of the stomach was inflamed, which resulted in a burning, or rather a complete withering of the glands that secrete chloric acid in the stomach. A lack of gastric juices renders digestion impossible, but increases fermentation proportionally.
My second observation concerned the inflamed condition of the small intestine, which was accompanied by a thinning of the intestinal walls. My third observation related to the most important digestive juice of the small intestine, the bile, which is indispensable to the proper assimilation of fats. Opening the liver, I found, instead of a greenish-yellow secretion, an almost colorless liquid which scarcely affected the material still in the intestine and which, in any case, was quite incapable of performing its digestive function.
My fourth observation had to do with the inflammation of the large intestine, which had resulted in a withering, a thinning and an excessive fragility of the intestinal walls, which were about as thick and as strong as cigarette paper. In fact, they were no longer digestive tubes but sewers, through which everything flowed, from one end to the other, in the space of a few minutes.
Such, in outline form, and reduced to a language any layman can understand, are the principal conclusions of my autopsies. The job I had been assigned was in reality monotonous, devoid of any interest whatever. The bacteriological tests were probably being conducted in the village of Risgau, situated about three kilometers from the crematoriums, in the “SS Army’s Institute of Hygiene and Bacteriology.” There, the renowned Professor Mansfeld, who held the chair of Bacteriology at Pecs Medical School, was in charge of the work.
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WUR of February 16th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
So what does this mean… in terms of strategy… for ‘power’… for us… that our thought is shepherded?
February 12th, 2014: Brothers and sisters…
Last week, Miklos made a really important point… about strategy… for those of us who want to end ‘power’… or… rather… want to end ‘power’-worship. He said… in essence… that it is the feeling we are left with… after our discussions… that is key in setting a movement up for success… key for ensuring that a movement can begin to build momentum and substance… because for anything that’s alive to live… it needs energy… and so with energy we must feed it. And by this I’m not thinking of quick-burning and soon-spent empty calories – the pap that dissolves to nothing that we hear over the airwaves – but neither do I mean craftily-twisting made-up ‘systems of thought’… – ‘thought’-for-‘thought’s sake (or… in truth… ‘for-‘power’s sake… and here the philosopher Hegel comes readily to mind) – designed to twist thought up in knots such that we never find our way out (this is also Fromm’s distinction between ‘using one’s intelligence’… and ‘using one’s reason’… which is also… necessarily… trusting one’s body… because the ‘mind’ – ‘body’ distinction is a false division…)
…but rather food rich in nutrients… requiring slow digestion… but which leads to solid structure… and lasting understanding – i.e. it helps unravel more and more of the mysteries of ‘modern’ human relations… because they are all but varieties of one: class.
But how do you tell the difference?… in the messages we’re given… particularly over the course of our youth (that key pass that ‘power’ is determined to ‘shepherd’ us through…) that’s one question… particularly as there’s an ‘oblique’ that tumbles you toward truth… and an ‘oblique’ that’s really a leash, fashioned stiffly. We’ve looked at this issue before… and it bears continuous examination.
(And perhaps I should explain my use of the word ‘oblique’ here… I use it because ‘oblique’ makes us think… which as humans we want to do… an ability we take pride in, in fact… and… as Plato said… for ‘power’ this capacity… proclivity… fondness… is dangerous. I hope no one requires ‘proof’ of this… but trusts what our bodies tell us: that we resent being ‘shepherded’… and yet… clearly… objectively… this assumed role – ‘shepherds’ – is definitive of ‘power’… “organized ‘power’” means to seize and shape our collective reality. On this, at least, can we agree?… and also therefore that… to allow our reasoning process to be the result of a self-determined process… will pose a challenge to those who hope to shape us?
So what does this mean… in terms of strategy?… for ‘power’?… for us? If not that it is critical for ‘power’ that our thought be shepherded… and for us… that we see how this con is done… in order to embark on an authentic process of thought’s development.)
So what’s also been coming up for me this week – as a subset of the broader question of distinguishing authentic probing to uncover what lies hidden… from propaganda… in order to release human energy from the constraints of ‘rule’… ‘power’… the ‘philosopher-king-statesmen’ – is the particular question of dissent on the Left…
…and the necessity for ‘power’ of intercepting it…
…and why we never hear this (or the broader… related… question of strategy overall…) discussed on the Left…
…and… when you stop and ponder it… it’s really quite odd (try to imagine ‘power’… if you can… not devoting its every conscious moment to it…)
…particularly as we’re by nature problem-solvers… and if we give ourselves authentic questions we will solve them (and this is no less true for ‘power’ than it is for us…)
…and particularly as… once we embark down the path of authentic thought… the whole of truth unfolds pretty quickly.
So… thinking of this… I’ve been looking afresh…at the issue of propaganda… and the reality that ‘power’ needs… a really good story. Because the ‘best’ (most effective) propaganda is not about outright lies… but selection… selection amongst the vast array of ‘facts’ from which one can systematically craft a story.
Now the Nazis… and ‘power’ generally… created the ‘facts’… the ‘evidence’… with which to con the people… but to know which ‘facts’ you need… you first have to have… your story….
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Which means… that ‘power’ knows much more precisely than we every could… given our atomization (and until we start overcoming it…) to what degree we are already… more and more uniform in our thinking… we are more and more of one opinion when it comes to ‘rulers’… that we don’t want them… and that this is a global phenomenon.
Today (02.14.14) I listened to a portion of a radio show by economist Richard Wolff in which he was commenting on a recent CNN poll which found, he said, that two-thirds of U.S. citizens “want government to make the distribution of wealth and income in the U.S. less unequal….” He then said that:
“…these were the same numbers collected in 1983 under Ronald Reagan…. From 1983, until last month, the distribution of wealth has become more unequal, and yet the same two-thirds are displeased as were displeased in 1983, and with greater inequality now. Republicans bear some responsibility for not doing what the people want done… but Democrats also have failed… both have presided, the last 30 years, over an exact opposite of what the people want. What lesson do we draw from this? Republicans and Democrats share common responsibility for not doing what Americans clearly wanted, but neither party delivered. Both parties are disconnected from what a clear majority want. Growing inequality must serve the interests of somebody. Those who favor increased inequality obviously are the big corporations and the wealthy – the one percent. Their interests have been served.”
Now… I call this propaganda – and we’re going to hear from Noam Chomsky [below] twenty years ago saying the same thing… that for 30 years the state has delivered exactly the opposite of what the people want – so… these words of Richard Wolff I call propaganda… yet most folks on the Left would not… and the needed energy will elude us… the necessary forward-thrusting momentum… unless we push forward some necessary discussions (‘necessary’… at least… by my reasoning… and once submitted to your scrutiny… I hope you will agree…) for a critical mass that is on the same page to seed.
You see… I draw a very different lesson from the stasis of those numbers… but I’ve not heard any pundit express that perspective… while Wolff’s we hear ad infinitum… and not just for thirty years… but for centuries… what does this tell us about strategy?
Hearing Wolff today particularly struck me because I’ve been quite literally pondering the very thing he’s calling our attention to all week… because I’d found a book from 1996 that had a ‘Forward’ from Noam Chomsky in it. And at the end of that ‘Forward’ it says: “excerpted and adapted from Z Magazine, June 1966, and from the transcript of the Cleveland-Marshall Fund Lecture, Cleveland State College of Law, March 1996.” Here are its first two paragraphs:
Public attitudes shed interesting light on what is happening in the corridors of power. More than 80 percent of the public feels that the government is “run for the benefit of the few and the special interests, not the people,” up from a steady 50 percent for a similarly worded question in earlier years. The same percentages feel that the economic system is “inherently unfair,” and that working people have too little say in what is going on in the country. More than 70 percent felt that “Business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life” and “has benefited more than consumers from government deregulation.” Two-thirds say that he “American dream” has become “harder to achieve” since the 1980s. And by what Business Week calls “a stunning 95 percent-to-5 percent majority,” the public believes that corporations “should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities.
Such attitudes, novel only in scale, suggest some conclusions about how the population perceives the workings of power. But these are not the conclusions that have regularly been drawn, for example, by the journal that reported in 1992 that 83% of the public think that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the economic system is “inherently unfair.” From these facts, we are to conclude that people are angry at “their well-paid politicians” and want “more power to the people,” not “more power to the government.” That is an intriguing interpretation of the facts reported, though it makes some sense on two essential principles that the doctrinal system has labored to implant in “the public mind”: first, government cannot be responsive to public interests; and second, private power does not exist, even though the Fortune 500 control almost two-thirds of the domestic economy and much of the international economy, with an enormous impact throughout the political and ideological institutions, and the society and culture generally. (Noam Chomsky, “Debunking the Corporate Agenda,” Forward to Corporations Are Gonna Get Your Mama, edited by Kevin Danaher, 1996.)
So ‘private power’ he establishes at the outset as ‘corporate’… the villain we are to gnash our teeth at is… ‘capitalism’. I call that mis-direction.
Now… first sentence aside… this could have been written today, right? And his point (that will be reiterated in the further quote below…) that there is a “gap between public preferences and public policy…” is the same point I heard Richard Wolff making today (and the reference at the end states that portions of this ‘Forward’ came from a 1966 article.) And while pundits on the Left all want us to “fix government”… to make it “more responsive…” what we never hear discussed is the pundits role in this constant reproduction of stasis.
But the Left pundits constant focus on polls (along with that Chomsky first sentence) got me thinking. I’ve been so used to viewing polls as primarily propaganda tools trotted out at decisive moments… generally involving voting… that I overlooked the obvious: that ‘power’ is obsessed with knowing what we are actually thinking… not just what they’re trying to manipulate us into thinking. Which means… that they know much more precisely than we every could… given our atomization (and until we start overcoming it…) to what degree we are already… more and more uniform in our thinking… we are more and more of one opinion when it comes to ‘rulers’… that we don’t want them… and that this is a global phenomenon.
You gotta have a goal to get there, right?
Now… imagine yourself as one of this ‘power’-Tribe… what would you do… to keep your dream of the Republic alive? Would you not want to hook we-fish… with bait crafted to suit our tastes? (Especially as these guys fancy themselves surgeons… or fine craftsmen… or subtle pilots of the ship of state. Would not such guys likewise try to fine-tune the limits of acceptable dissent… always… always… as dictated by the goal… the gold… for which they’ve reached consistently… century after century. Which is why that first sentence struck my eye: “Public attitudes shed interesting light on what is happening in the corridors of power…” because… given its placement as intro to polls… it’s very suggestive… of a heightened awareness… and resulting activity… of ‘think-tanks’ being cranked-up… and organization being stepped up.
Left pundits insist that the goal is to make the state more ‘democratic’… yet never define how that leads to us getting free – put that out there as the objective… you’ll start generating energy…
Noam Chomsky had been for me in every way a puzzle: a ‘socialist’ and “fellow traveler” in the anarchist tradition drawn to ‘powerful’ institutions; someone interested in language… but not… apparently… because he delights in words, but because he must be rigidly in control of them… or… perhaps… master their manipulation… often resulting in a convoluted construction about which the reader is left uncertain…
(…for example, in this sentence: “As unthinkable as the idea that pleas to the autocracy to be more benevolent may not reach the outer limits of extremism is the truism that corporate America has always insisted on the traditional version of free market doctrine: for thee, but not for me, except for temporary advantage.” …while we get his drift… and want to agree with the gist of it… such impenetrability… in a linguist… must be intended…. )
Now it’s difficult to know the heart of any class-bound human… but I have to say… I find so many contradictions in his apparent opinions… e.g. on the one hand telling us that all states require that the people submit… which is obviously true… but then tells us that the problem is not those states requiring our submission… but states not having sufficiently reined-in corporations… the drumbeat of all Left pundits. (These guys have learned to use ‘the economy’ for cover… so at this point perhaps we should re-write to make more clear… those “ways to see the propagandist in the pundit: they push forward ‘the economy’ for ‘power’ as ‘cover’ [this is the effect… let’s set aside intent…]; they insist the state must be made more ‘democratic’ yet never define how that leads to us getting free – put that out there as the objective… you’ll start generating energy; the ‘solution’… they tell youth… is to help their fathers “fix the state”; and attention is deflected away from the state as the “manufacturer of consent.” They never advance a clear alternative… and a plan for how to get there. Which… strategically… is key… as… when we give ourselves the right problems to work on… we solve them…)
The official version of reality [and by this he means the money-driven ‘propaganda system’…] portrays a conflict between the government, which is necessarily the enemy, and the people, who are living the American dream: the sober working man, his loyal wife… – all a model of harmony… and un-Americans such as union organizers and other riffraff… (“Forward” to Danaher book)
The enormous public relations industry, from its origins early in this century, has been dedicated to the “control of the public mind,” as business leaders described the task…
With a proper understanding of the concept of “consent,” then, we may conclude that implementation of the business agenda over the objections of the general public is” “with the consent of the governed,” a form of “consent without consent.” And in the same sense, “society has consented” to grant to “leadership and propaganda” the authority to “mold the mind of the masses” so that they will perform their duties in our free society as do soldiers in a properly disciplined army. It is the hard and demanding task of the responsible men to present a suitable version of this to the “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” particularly when the public is called upon to carry out its periodic task of “aligning itself as the partisan” of one or another of those who understand “the higher interest.” Within the political system, that is; not in the governance of the economy, which must remain securely in the hands of virtually unaccountable power systems.
There has often been a gap between public preferences and public policy. In recent years, the gap has become substantial, as changes in the international economy have rendered superfluous the gestures of the benevolent aristocracy towards “welfare capitalism,” or so it was believed until ominous signs of a “second front in the class war” were detected in early 1996. (“Consent without Consent: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Democracy”, 1996)
Where’s Bentham? Where’s Hegel? It’s what he carefully omits that’s most instructive… Bentham on the state as manager of the people… who helps us see the two ends of totalitarianism… that meet most clearly in Fascism… but which are inherent in ‘the state’ in all its cases… whatever its legitimating ideology: protection of and allegiance to ‘the Father’… the ‘unique’ ‘national personality’ (Hegel) which the leaders best manifest (commandeering the heart…) and the requirement that obedience be instilled in the majority (wielding the hammer.)
And while he seems by his tone… to not believe in the notion of ‘the rabble’… his acts and their effects belie this… his very presentation reinforces the opposite myth… that… if we would align with he… a pure distillate of ‘intellectuality’… be part of the Tribe of Mind Reified… we must necessarily embrace and deepen the divide… because that’s just the nature of ‘the beast’… the ‘cattle’ cannot fathom… all the ‘complexity’ that must be mastered. To stand with ‘the really smart ones’… you must not romanticize ‘the people.’
When we look at the effects of the pundit and ask… does he leave us feeling stronger… with more inner light to shine on ‘power’s deep deceptions… or does he leave us feeling less adequate to face those challenges… and more hopeless? (and more wanting to align ourselves with the powerful state….)
Because it’s time for us to admit… in considering the propped-up pundits… that the feeling they leave us with… is their purpose….
And for hope to live… we need prescription.
…it’s not about new ‘institutions… but creating ourselves anew… (and…) If you (‘power’) must hide to survive… and you are the tiny few… far out-numbered by the billions of minds (potentially) devoted to the problem of how to get rid of you… i.e. the ‘role’ of ‘ruler’… how do you stay hidden?… except by systematic… continuous… misdirection…
With Chomsky… and all Left pundits… we aren’t encouraged to go for… start planning… move toward… anything dramatically different… and so there’s no reason to get excited… his tone… his delivery… his message – both overt and hidden – all say… “stay the course”… “fix democracy”… no matter to submit means soul-death… and to coerce our submission is the purpose of states… and if that is so… and this he tells us he knows… then whence comes our hope? It’s as if Miklos would believe himself encouraging of his brothers and sisters if he said, “we’ll soon get to choose the SS murder methods!”
With Chomsky… and all Left pundits… there is no analysis beyond the obvious: the masters want to rule and the subjects push for ever more room to maneuver… and the middle ranks must choose which side they’re on… and try to ‘help’. But that the ‘responsible men’ are in fact sociopaths… and that relinquishing our future to them… the ‘statesmen’… is a prescription for continuous insanity… and that it’s not about new ‘institutions’ (corrupted by the same old hierarchy… as ‘rank’ has been planted deep by ‘power’…) but creating ourselves anew… and that this we can only do by sitting down together… on-goingly… to begin designing together a new vision for humanity… a test-site we can see before us… the seed for a different future… globally… which Chomsky could get rolling easily – these things he will not say.
So the ‘story’… at base… that Left pundits are telling is as old as ‘class’… it’s called “the class struggle.”
This is the obvious story… the only story… for youth on the Left to latch upon… as it’s the truth….
And the issue before you… if you’re ‘power’… is how to insert your ‘piper’ in that story – and… recall… the ‘piper’ used to catch rats… but the people betrayed him… and so he decided to ply his trade with a different master.
But let’s pause for a moment and ask: does this make sense – inserting a ‘piper’ – … if we’re wearing our vampire hat?
(…and that’s a really good metaphor by the way…
…light… exposure… is what they’re most afraid of… it’s extraordinary how apt the vampire metaphor is… for ‘power’. It surpasses the ‘Mr. Smith Virus’ in this [addressing / explaining ‘power’s need to stay hidden… i.e. its fear of the truth… but also I suppose in its seductiveness…] which shouldn’t surprise us… as it was millennia in the shaping… to fit… ‘we-the-people’s dilemma… in attempting to wrestle with ‘power’…)
Because if it’s the right strategic move – inserting a ‘piper’ – … based on an accurate analysis… and you have bottomless resources with which to do it… ‘prove’ it… and centuries piled high of experience doing it….
If you must hide to survive… and you are the tiny few… far out-numbered by the billions of minds (potentially) devoted to the problem of how to get rid of you… i.e. the ‘role’ of ‘ruler’… how do you stay hidden?… except by systematic… continuous… misdirection (after of course you’ve established atomization… which defeats thought’s continuous growth…)? The thoughts you enforce on ‘the people’ must systematically and uniformly point away from you. Is this not obviously what ‘power’ must do?
And… as ‘power’ can’t defeat truth… and clearly they’ve tried… Fascism… Miklos shows us… was their most strenuous (because compressed within such a short time…) attempt at this…
– and by ‘defeat truth’ I mean in this instance ‘defeat the story “the class struggle”’… replace the reality that “there are a tiny few who want to rule over the rest…” with “there are a tiny few who are ‘the best’.”
‘Power’ has given its every waking breath to establish that Plato-driven myth in enough of our heads. It will never abandon it… it’s too core to their world-view and plans… but…
…as they see themselves as being masters of strategy… and with mountains of money… and think-tanks a’plenty… and bought-brains to fill them… we’d be foolish indeed to think they have no ‘Plan B’. (This too… is from Plato… who advised ‘power’: always temper the ideal… with the possible….)
And if mis-direction is key to keep the people from seeing you… you must give them a villain… prop it up as a target… to absorb all the world’s willingness to wrestle with wrong… to draw and expend… direct down useless efforts… and pass the uselessness on in the bargain… down… down… down the road… to subsequent generations… on and on flows confusion… ad infinitum…
…or so you hope.
Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
…So I had been given competent, qualified collaborators, who would share my burdens. For me this was an undeniable relief. (Part 45)
I was taking my afternoon nap when Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld, pushing three prisoners ahead of him, entered my room. He informed me that Dr. Mengele had given me three assistants, and so saying he darted a glance in their direction, his expression a mixture of cynicism and pity.
They were indeed pitiful to behold, standing there in dirty rags, dumb from the ill-treatment to which they had been subjected, mortally afraid, and feeling both clumsy and embarrassed by their change of environment. They too had left all hope behind them when they had passed through the crematorium gate.
I extended them a friendly and compassionate hand. We introduced ourselves. The first who took my hand was Dr. Denis Gorog, a physician and pathologist from the state hospital at Szombathely. He was a small, lean man of about 45, who wore thick glasses. He made a favorable impression on me, and I had a feeling we would become good friends. The second was a man of about 50; small, stooped almost to the point of being hunch-backed. He was pot-bellied and had a most disagreeable face. His name was Adolph Fischer. For twenty years he had been the lab assistant at the Prague Pathological Institute. A Czechoslovakian Jew, he had been a KZ prisoner for five years. The third newcomer, Dr. Joseph Kolner, was from Nice, France, and had been interned in the KZ for three years. He was a young man of only 32, not at all loquacious, but most gifted.
Dr. Mengele had fished them out of the D camp barracks and sent them to me so that the ever-increasing numbers of autopsies could be effected without risk of a bottleneck. I was still responsible for the research undertaken, for the keeping of files and the writing of all reports made on the autopsies performed. The two doctors were going to help me with the dissections, and the lab assistant, faithful to his profession, would prepare the bodies. He would open the skulls, and extract and prepare certain organs for examination. After the dissections he would remove the bodies from the table and see that the dissection room and work room were kept neat and clean.
So I had been given competent, qualified collaborators, who would share my burdens. For me this was an undeniable relief.
–––
Approaching his bed, I was moved and chagrined to see that the patient was none other than the “Captain”… A native of Athens, he had been a captain in the regular army and tutor to the children of the royal family of Greece… (Part 46)
In my role of Sonderkommando doctor, I was making my morning rounds. All four crematoriums were working at full blast. Last night they had burned the Greek Jews from the Mediterranean island of Corfu, one of the oldest communities of Europe. The victims were kept for twenty-seven days without food or water, first in launches, then in sealed box cars. When they arrived at Auschwitz’s unloading platform, the doors were unlocked, but no one got out and lined up for selection. Half of them were already dead, and the other half in a coma. The entire convoy, without exception, was sent to number two crematorium.
Work was accelerated during the night, so that by morning all that remained of the convoy was a pile of dirty, disheveled clothes in the crematorium courtyard. I gazed sadly at the hill of rags which, little by little, grew wet and soggy beneath a fine autumn rain. Glancing upward, I noticed that the four lightning rods placed at the corners of the crematorium chimneys were twisted and bent, the result of the previous night’s high temperatures.
Today, during my rounds, a serious case awaited me in number four. One of the Sonderkommando chauffeurs had tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping tablets. This was the most common method of committing suicide at Auschwitz. The men of the Sonderkommando had no trouble procuring sleeping tablets, for they found large numbers of them every day when they went through the belongings of the dead.
Approaching his bed, I was moved and chagrined to see that the patient was none other than the “Captain.” That was what everyone called him, for no one knew what his real name was. A native of Athens, he had been a captain in the regular army and tutor to the children of the royal family of Greece. He was a polite, intelligent man, with three years of KZ behind him. His wife and children had been sent to the gas chamber as soon as they had arrived. Now, having lost consciousness, he was sleeping peacefully. He had probably taken the sleeping tablets several hours earlier, and yet I found that, for the moment at least, he was in no real danger. The men of the Sonderkommando grouped around his bed asked softly, and with resignation, “to let the captain go.”
“Don’t save him,” one of them said. “You’ll only be prolonging the agony. And you can see for yourself he wanted to escape it now, instead of waiting for the firing squad in a few weeks.”
Others offered much the same argument, but I silently went about preparing my instruments. Seeing that their arguments had had no effect, and that I was preparing to inject the antidote, some of the men lost their tempers and spared no words as they told me what they thought of my action. Nevertheless I finished the injections and left the room. Unless he contracted pneumonia during the next five or six days, the Captain would live. Then for several weeks he would continue to stoke the furnaces that burned the bodies of thousands upon thousands of his fellow men, tortured and killed by gas. Till one day the Sonderkommando’s final hour would toll, and he and his companions would line up outside the crematorium. A machine-gun blast and all would be over. He and the others would fall, their eyes filled with horror and astonishment.
Now that I was no longer beside his bed, now that his face no longer called forth the doctor in me, the purely human side of my nature was forced to admit that the Captain’s friends had been right. I should have “let him go his way,” not in front of the cold steel barrel of a machine gun, but in the pleasant narcosis that now enveloped him, where he was free from all moral and physical pain.
There’s (one of many) an interesting passage in Popper on this: “Plato introduces his Myth of Blood and Soil with the blunt admission that it is a fraud. ‘Well then,’ says the Socrates of the Republic [i.e. Plato’s straw-stuffed manikin…] (Part 47)
I finished my rounds and returned to number one. I glanced around the dissection room and saw that my new colleagues were busy working, with the zeal of neophytes, on the dysentery-racked bodies provided by Dr. Wolff. They were clean shaven and were wearing spotless smocks, new clothes and decent shoes. They looked human again. To see them standing around the dissection table in their white smocks and rubber gloves, anyone unacquainted with the work that went on here might easily have taken this to be the laboratory and dissecting room of some serious scientific institute. But I who had worked here for three months knew that it was not an institute of science, but of pseudo-science. Like the ethnological studies, like the notions of a Master Race, Dr. Mengele’s research into the origins of dual births was nothing more than a pseudo-science. Just as false was the theory concerning the degeneracy of the dwarfs and cripples sent to the butchers, in order to demonstrate the inferiority of the Jewish race. To be sure, all this was not to be propagated immediately, for the German people were not yet ready to swallow it. But when the race of Supermen had achieved final victory, having won the war and acquired the territory vital to its needs, then the skeletons of those cripples and dwarfs who had been murdered here would be put on display in the spacious halls of great museums, along with a descriptive plaque giving their name, age, nationality, occupation, etc. then, on the anniversary of Victory Day, thousands of students of this Third Reich, built to endure a thousand years, would be led through these halls by their professors, to pay homage to their illustrious forebears. Their forebears who, by this victory, and the realization of the sacred mission which History had entrusted to the Master Race, had pushed the surrounding peoples – French, Belgians, Russians, Poles – into the niches corresponding to their inferiority. Better still, they would have completely annihilated one European people, the Jews, who had a long history behind them, a history of 6,000 years, but who had no right to exist a few centuries longer. Why? Because in the course of its long history the Jewish race had degenerated into a people of dwarfs and cripples. By mixing with other races, they had sullied, and threatened to contaminate with degeneracy, the only pure race: the Aryan.
[There’s (one of many) an interesting passage in Popper on this:
Plato introduces his Myth of Blood and Soil with the blunt admission that it is a fraud. “Well then,” says the Socrates of the Republic [i.e. Plato’s straw-stuffed manikin…], “could we perhaps fabricate one of those very handy lies which indeed we mentioned just recently? With the help of one single lordly lie we may, if we were lucky, persuade even the rulers themselves – but at any rate the rest of the city.” [Republic, 414b/c] But Plato uses the term ‘persuasion’ very frequently, and its occurrence here throws some light on other passages. It may be taken as a warning that in similar passages he may have propaganda lies in his mind; more especially where he advocates that the statesman should rule “by means of both persuasion and force.” [Republic, 519e, f]
After announcing his ‘lordly lie’, Plato, instead of proceeding directly to the narration of his Myth, first develops a lengthy preface, somewhat similar to the lengthy preface which precedes his discovery of justice; an indication, I think, of his uneasiness. It seems that he did not expect the proposal which follows to find much favour with his readers. The Myth itself introduces two ideas. The first is to strengthen the defence of the mother country; it is the idea that the warriors of his city are autochthonous, “born of the earth of their country”, and ready to defend their country which is their mother. This old and well-known idea is certainly not the reason for Plato’s hesitation (although the wording of the dialogue cleverly suggests it). The second idea, however, “the rest of the story”, is the myth of racialism: “God… has put gold into those who are capable of ruling, silver into the auxiliaries, and iron and copper into the peasants and the other producing classes.” [Republic, 415a] These metals are hereditary, they are racial characteristics. In this passage, in which Plato, hesitatingly, first introduces his racialism, he allows for the possibility that children may be born with an admixture of another metal than those of their parents… The possibility of admixtures and corresponding changes in status therefore only means that nobly born but degenerate children may be pushed down, and not that any of the base born may be lifted up. The way in which any mixing of metals must lead to destruction is described in the concluding passage of the story of the Fall of Man: “Iron will mingle with silver and bronze with gold, and from this mixture variation will be born and absurd irregularity; and whenever these are born they will beget struggle and hostility. And this is how we must describe the ancestry and birth of Dissension, wherever she arises.” [Republic, 547a]… Plato’s reluctance to proffer his racialism at once in its more radical form indicates, I suppose, that he knew how much it was opposed to the democratic and humanitarian tendencies of his time…. (Karl Popper, from Chapter 8 of The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato, entitled, “The Philosopher King,” p. 140 – 1)
While Plato invented… ‘power’s playbook – and the influence of his thoughts… in being reverenced by ‘rulers’… who need to believe in a larger (‘Historical’) meaning to their misanthropy… cannot be over-estimated… his encouraging child abandonment and infanticide it created a need to ‘prove’ worth that continuously seeds and rebirths misanthropy… which ‘power’ needs… for class to exist…… (Part 48)
While Plato invented… or collected and dutifully captured… the whole of ‘power’s playbook – and, indeed, his influence… i.e, the influence of his thoughts… in being embraced and reverenced… cherished… by those who needed to believe in a larger (‘Historical’) meaning to their misanthropy… cannot be over-estimated… perhaps especially in his encouraging child abandonment and infanticide (it created a need to ‘prove’ worth that continuously seeds and rebirths misanthropy… which ‘power’ needs… for class to exist…)
– so while Plato provided the playbook… thereby ‘systematizing’ – making more ‘efficient’ – ‘power’s ruthlessness…
…once we started to read their texts (the legitimizations of ‘rule’…) ‘power’ had to hold their plays closer to the chest… and dress patent totalitarian hatred in the cloth of false ‘righteousness’ – i.e. they had to hide.
Miklos has carefully captured and recorded… documented… ‘power’ unbound by such niceties as public image or opinion. Even Hitler (perhaps… we’ll have to glance… at Mein Kampf… I suspect it’s easier to stomach that the Republic…)
…even Hitler could not publicly embrace and display… as Miklos says… the deviousness that the ‘lordly lie’ licenses… the systematic sculpting of such a monstrous… in terms of scale… false-reality – though it’s dwarfed by the monumental overall con of ‘class’ itself (of which it is a subset…)
– to dupe… and subdue… the people with….
These people… Plato’s Tribe… depend on their ability to hide. Miklos shines bright… the limelight. Let’s give our endless gratitude to him. – P.S.]
Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz…
Because of their blood, the Jews were harmful to that great race. Moreover, they were dangerous because their teachers, their artists, their merchants and financiers had become so powerful they threatened to enslave the whole of Europe. By destroying this race the Third Reich’s first Fuhrer had given his name immortal stature, and gained the respect and gratitude of all the civilized nations of the world.
It was on the basis of these nonsensical theories that the Nazis waged their war against the rest of the world and destroyed, after deportation, literally all of Europe’s Jews, down to the lastborn, suckling babe.
Everything in Germany was false. They called this war a crusade. In their eyes the whole of Russia was a savage steppe, peopled by Mongolian barbarians, themselves a threat to civilization. France was a syphilitic nation, well on its way to dissolution. The English, from their Prime Minister on down, were all incurable alcoholics, suffering for the most part from delirium tremens. While the Japanese, on the other hand, whom most people would be inclined to classify as Mongolians, were considered respectable Aryans, because the exigencies of the moment demanded it.
Their whole outlook on life was a lie. Their daughters and war widows could bear children by any man and receive the thanks of the State for doing so. Children so born could take the name their mother chose for them from among the names of those men, often numerous, to whom she had given herself. The multiplication of the race demanded it. Their cynicism was complete and terrible: details, like the lying signs outside the underground chambers of the crematoriums that announced in seven languages, “BATHS,” whereas in reality they were gas chambers; the boxes of cyclon gas…
[A Translator’s Note reads: “In reply to a query concerning the origin and composition of cyclon gas, Dr. Nyiszli wrote that it was manufactured during the war by the I.G. Farben Co., and that, although it was classified as Geheimmittel, that is, confidential or secret, he was able to ascertain that the name “cyclon” came from the abbreviation of its essential elements cyanide, chlorine and nitrogen. During the Nuremberg trials the Farben Co. claimed that it had been manufactured only as a disinfectant. However, as Dr. Nyiszli pointed out in his testimony, there were two types of cyclon in existence, type A and type B. They came in identical containers; only the marking A and B differentiated them. Type A was a disinfectant; type B was used to exterminate millions.”]
…which were labeled, “POISON: FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF PARASITES,” the parasites being, of course, the untold thousands of innocent Jews murdered in the space of a few minutes. Who knows just how far the lie went? Perhaps indeed the signs on the KZ’s electric barbed wire also lied; perhaps there was really no 6,000-volt current running through it. But no, that was no lie, for I remembered having seen Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld’s giant wolfhound run into the fence one day, at a point not far from the crematorium gate, and die instantly, electrocuted.
[The abandoned child must believe in his supposed ‘superiority’… and particularly that he is ‘smarter’ than everyone else. The ‘in-joke’… used to foster and strengthen totalitarian tribal loyalty… is then elevated above itself by means of Plato’s ‘lordly lie’…. This sad… sick… artifact of ‘abandonment’ is alive and visible all around us today… sick jokes that we occasionally hear tell of from the lower ranks of the faithful… but… trust… those are but the tip of a very large iceberg of soullessness…. I’m sure we’ll be coming back to this. – P.S.]
“FREEDOM THROUGH WORK”… (Part 49)
While on the subject of signs, I should not forget to mention the one, read by all prisoners, that was posted at the entrance of the camp. It exhorted them with these words: “FREEDOM THROUGH WORK.” Here is a concrete example of what those words really meant. One day a line of box cars stopped at the Auschwitz unloading platform. The doors slid open and 300 prisoners climbed down. Their skin was a lemon yellow color, and they were emaciated beyond all description. When they entered the crematorium courtyard I had a chance to converse with some of them. This is the essence of what they said:
“Three months ago we were shipped away from Auschwitz to work in a factory that manufactures sulphuric acid. When we left there were 3,000 of us, but many died of various and sundry illnesses. Now only 300 of us are left, and we’re all suffering from sulphuric poisoning.”
They had been told, before being sent back here, that they would be sent for a cure to a rest camp. Half an hour later I saw their blood-spattered bodies lying in front of the crematorium ovens. “Freedom through work!” “Rest camp!” How diabolic can one get? And that is just one of many examples. To cite another: during the months of June and July thousands of postcards were distributed to the inmates of overcrowded barracks, with instructions that they be sent to friends or acquaintances of the prisoners. It was strictly specified that the cards should in no circumstances be headed either “Auschwitz” or “Birkenau,” but “Am Waldsee,” which is a resort town located not far from the Swiss border. The cards were duly sent, and numerous replies came back. I saw these replies burned, some 50,000 of them according to reliable reports, on a pyre set up in the middle of the crematorium courtyard. To have distributed them to the addressees was quite out of the question, for the latter had preceded the former, that is, the addressees had been burned before the letters. That is the way the matter had been arranged. The purpose of this little scheme had been to allay the fears of the public at large and put an end to the rumors that were rife concerning camps like Auschwitz.
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WUR of February 23, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
I apologize… 25 minutes… no mike… The Raven snipped her own flight…
People of Ukraine… we salute you…
People of Ukraine… we celebrate you today… you braved the cold… the guns… the intimidation… the murder of your loved ones… and emerged triumphant. Thank you for showing us how it’s done. We salute you. You’ve taken your lives in your own hands…. Don’t stop now. “Yanukovych gone” don’t mean “free”… keep planning your freedom… and that means… factoring in the global shadow statesmen… and their control via financial mechanisms: debt and the extension of credit… control of markets… food and energy especially… – and that means planning for self-sufficiency… for yourselves and all humanity…. We must break free of the training we’re all given… to deny our body’s longing for freedom. We have to figure out how to inter-knit what we have in common: our efforts for authentic freedom… the kind our bodies recognize because we’re living… finally… without the whip’s crack… somebody riding our back….
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And when you look at these key strategies for keeping the people asleep… none of them is official state ideology… yet all states depend on them to augment ‘patriotism’ when the official state ideology – be it ‘democracy’… or ‘communism’… or ‘socialism’ – wears thin.
February 21, 2014: Brothers and sisters… and particularly those with whom Grief is keeping company… the Requiem I heard being sung from Independence Square in Kiev… brings these thoughts… about how ‘class’ – the state – creates ‘chaos’.
Of course this is the opposite from what we’re taught. In fact, everything we’re told – under the regime of ‘rule’… from the ethos of the state – about how our society is arranged is upside-down… because ‘power’ must hide… must divert our eyes… to survive.
So ‘class’ – the state – doesn’t ‘protect’ us from ‘chaos’… it creates ‘chaos’ (and I’m using the word as we’re taught to… not as it is…)… to keep us at each other’s throats… because it knows… that when that day arrives… when we refuse to be divided… and when we embrace each other at last… and reject narrow patriotism… and therefore ‘class’… the curse of ‘chaos’ is past.
‘Class’… the exclusive access of the few to prized resources – creates ‘chaos’ – using nationalism to get us to do its work of ‘division’… unleashing a host of ills: anger… secrecy… greed… mistrust… sabotage… betrayal… duplicity… spying… underhand dealing… fear… doubt… sadness… insecurity. It creates the very things it claims it holds at bay… while telling us it battles ‘chaos’… by ‘organizing’ the world into packages – beginning with these individual bodies we walk around in… on up to the states that try to keep us in our ‘places’… hoping to suppress… or finesse… the resulting anger that flows in its wake… while telling us this is the ‘chaos’ that we make…
…which they then use as excuse for their continuous drive to control all life… as the globe entire is the ‘ultimate’ ‘end’… of its demand for ‘orderliness’. And here ‘Plan C’ kicks in. ‘C’… for ‘catastrophe’.
Last week we called attention to ‘Plan A’: promote “rule of the best” as propaganda…
…and then… ‘Plan B’: “mislead dissent…” tell them it’s all about ‘the market’….
But when the people see through them… start seeing through the lens of truth Plans ‘A’ and ‘B’… as in Kiev…
Then…
…herd them together and unleash ‘Plan C’…
…because ‘chaos’ is ‘power’s reason-to-be…
…and no discussion of ‘democracy’ is complete until we consider what that means…
…examine more closely this ‘Plan C’… and so what better follow-up could there be… to our master teacher of ‘class’ and ‘strategy’… Miklos Nyiszli… than Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WWII… because he shows how ‘power’ – the state – systematically sows the seeds of ‘chaos’… disharmony… discord… disunity… betrayal and despair. And when you look at these key strategies for keeping the people asleep… none of them is official state ideology… yet all states depend on them to augment ‘patriotism’ when the official state ideology – be it ‘democracy’… or ‘communism’… or ‘socialism’ – wears thin.
“The individual state is the wrong frame…” we said in Palmers’ Chat. Fascism was systematically sown across Europe… and as Goring said… if they’d succeeded they’d be deemed the masters of men… but they didn’t and ‘power’ once again… tempered its ‘ideal’ with its ‘possible’… backed away from this failed attempt… and gave its chiefs their marching orders… to bide their time until… circumstances became more ‘propitious’… not just by the coming to fruition of their established trends (and I’m thinking here of their use of financial instruments and institutions…) but by making full use of all they’ve learned… over the centuries… about ‘breeding’….
My personal belief is that a lot of state executions… in the streets of Kiev… and wherever the people see through the cons… are targeted…. And this brings to mind another example of shadow-direction of the state (Solar Radiation Management is another we’ve looked at recently…) and that is the borrowing of the U.S. police of a tactic from the Israeli military… which we saw here locally in the suppression of the Occupy Movement… i.e. the targeted firing of tear gas canisters at members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. We-the-people obviously don’t want that…. And this tactic of targeting isn’t something with which the entire police force is complicit… just the opposite. ‘Shadow’… by definition means ‘small and hidden’… clandestine… infiltration. But the entire force will get the blame… and the people’s passions against them… enflamed… and we’re back at each other’s throats again.
‘Power’ hopes to ‘weed out’ dissent… and so we ‘intractable brutes’… we ones who refuse… ‘power’ wants to be rid of.
My personal belief is that a lot of state executions… in the streets of Kiev… and wherever the people see through the cons… are targeted…. Please bear with me as I cite what some may see as an irrelevant comparison:
…‘breeding’ begins eating…
…human sistren and brethren…
…and its own children….
…[And this…
…was hardest to admit.]
Class society began with a betrayal… the four-leggeds, lured with the promise of friendship, fell… under the pressure of necessity… under a wavering, utilitarian eye…. Friendship soured to cool appraisal, and, in the end, the ultimate degeneration… love turned to cold calculation…. Which flank held meat?… which mouth good teeth?… how solid of leg?… how easily led?
If he just realizes the advantage of having a group of such half-tamed beasts hanging around the fringes of his settlement as a reserve of game easily caught, he will be on the way to domestication.
Next he must exercise restraint and discrimination in using this reserve of meat. He must refrain from frightening the beasts unnecessarily or killing the youngest and tamest. Once he begins to kill only the shyest and least amenable bulls or rams, he will have started selective breeding, eliminating untractable brutes, and consequently favouring the more docile. But he must also use his new opportunities of studying the life of the beasts at close range. He will thus learn about the processes of reproduction, the animals’ needs of food and water. He must act upon his knowledge…. It can thus be imagined how with lapse of time a flock or a herd should have been bred that was not only tame, but actually dependent upon man. (p. 78 - 9)
Finally, war helped to a great discovery – that men as well as animals can be domesticated. Instead of killing a defeated enemy, he might be enslaved; in return for his life he could be made to work. This discovery has been compared in importance to that of the taming of animals. In any case, by early historic times slavery was a foundation of ancient industry and a potent instrument in the accumulation of capital. (V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, p. 134) (quoted in Palmers’ Chat: As We Take Our Earth Back)
Youth and their elders of heart are being decimated globally… and never doubt… these words that Childe applied to non-human animals… ‘power’ applies no less to us.
‘Power’ hopes to ‘weed out’ dissent… and so we ‘intractable brutes’… we ones who refuse… ‘power’ wants to be rid of.
But I believe it’s time to set anger aside…
It is Anger, after all, that got us this mess…
…and it must be Love that gets us out….
Love be now your song immortal One….
The Tribe of Plato, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the people loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men – carrion
for dogs and birds…
…and the will of the Abandoned Child was done. **
I am told that the first word Homer wrote foretold the theme, as it will be with our amended opening.
Love be now your song, immortal One.
A song of understanding… a song of hope… and, most of all, a song of determination…
For when we see the earth herself is calling, there is no greater love than to rouse our hearts and minds… and answer with raised hands and voices… her command.
But first… we must understand.
(from Palmers’ Chat: As We Take Our Earth Back)
** This is an alteration of the opening lines of Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Iliad.
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…the goal is simply the feeling we want to be living…
February 18, 2014: Sisters and Brothers…
I’ve been thinking a lot about children… and loss… and waste.
‘Waste’… in many ways… is the word that started me writing Waking Up.
Like the economist David Gordon I was moved by the notion… of the loss of us… of each individual one of us… of we-the-people.
For despite what we mostly say… I believe that we are sacrificial lambs to the exigencies of state… that we lose ourselves every day just to ‘make it’… I know I did… ignore what my body said… in order to be ‘productive’…
…and that’s what’s most hideous… the fact that we mostly don’t see… because it’s never discussed publicly… that we’re made to sacrifice… everything.
My thought’s bent started with a dream in which I was holding a baby… and he was smiling up at me…
…and completely happy.
And I awoke with such a warm feeling… and I thought… at first… that it must be Nanji … the baby… and then… the next night… the dream-more-like-a-feeling came again… and I realized that… no… it wasn’t him… it was my son… it was T… smiling up at me… as he was at the start…
…before unanswerable hurt… took over his heart…
…and I didn’t know that we start out whole….
I didn’t know that.
I was oblivious… and the resulting loss… waste… of us… now that I can see it… is… hideous.
But two-year-olds have shown me… so now I see more clearly… the cost of… not being able to give each other… our attention.
(But I have to interject that these past five years have shown me… we get ourselves back… we do… when we begin to create our own selves… we give our lives back to ourselves… and we begin anew.)
And this is a knowledge babies teach… that helps us see the goal we seek… the destination is the medium in which we’re moving that suffuses us with that warm loving feeling….
So if living isn’t love… it’s not the world we want.
There… that’s a clue to fuel our planning… the goal is simply the feeling we want to be living.
And since I’ve been on this path… in this place… of having come to decision… to certainty… about the world we deserve – …and I mean all humanity…
…I know…
…that the world in which no child will take that hit… that deep-soul-wounding festerment (because no one knows how to answer it…) that world in which we give attention… share our thanks… live our reverence… will be an amazing place… and we deserve it – that’s the world I want.
…we need someone to gather the actual… objective… facts of our situation as commoners: automation… resource exhaustion and depletion… death of our common oceans – present the objective case… that ‘work’ as we’ve been conditioned to accept it… is fading away… explain that it in any case… reduced whole human beings to functionaries… and that the species can’t grow when most are made to let go… their leadership capacities…
Last week we said that “we have to have a goal… to get there…” and afterwards I thought, “did I say ‘we’? did I emphasize the ‘we’?” Because it’s the ‘we’ who have to conceive it… the ‘we’ that for ‘power’ is so threatening… not the ‘we’ of a single rally… but the ‘we’ of on-going meeting… to fashion together the goal… and to live the achieving of it.
(And shall I state the obvious and say…
…that we’re seeing this in Ukraine today?
Young and old uniting to maintain…
…a Protest Camp of those who see…
…that it’s in living ‘the change’ we want to be…
…on-goingly…
…that we create a whole new society.
It’s called “being alive”…
…it’s what we do when we refuse the ways of ‘rule’…
…of ‘rank’… of ‘elevation of the few’…
…those vampire-like shadow-statesmen…
…and listen rather to the true authority…
…our earth… our bodies… the ancestors who are calling “be free!”
…and embrace the certainty…
…that the way of ‘rank’ will no longer be…
…the legacy to our children that we choose to leave.)
How do we start?
We need someone to gather the actual… objective… facts of our situation as commoners: automation… resource exhaustion and depletion… death of our common oceans –
…present the objective case… that ‘work’ as we’ve been conditioned to accept it… is fading away… explain that it in any case… reduced whole human beings to functionaries… and that the species can’t grow when most are made to let go… their leadership capacities.
Then we need to convene the children and youth – we elders who support them – and begin a conversation about ‘work’… and why we’re here… and realizing the authentic dreams of the ancestors…. We could describe it as “the FYI Campaign” – “for youth independence” – from the drag of ‘rank’… or maybe… “FELICITY”: “Freedom in Establishing Leisure In Common Trust with Youth….” Whatever we call it… that’s what it is… and it’s what we have the right to… because we’re here to live…
…life furthers life (and we’ve been feigning it….)
These guys have invaded our homes… our hopes… our heads…
…they’ve destroyed our peace… and our right to live free…
…it’s time for their regime to end.
Like my sisters in Ukraine breaking up the concrete… so are we… so are we.
Coercion is by definition unstable… as water seeks its level… earth seeks its balance… and we are earth… Imbalance embedded in the human family has to be corrected. That’s inevitable. And we seek Mutual Aid as certainly as all other species do. Petr Kropotkin showed us this…
Kropotkin told us that sooner or later ‘history’ would have to be rewritten along new lines (from ‘below’….) Under ‘class’ the line… the lens through which events are viewed… is through ‘scarcity’… ‘scarcity’-assumed – and of course ‘scarcity’ really is “created scarcity”… as ‘class’ creates scarcity by definition… in insisting on exclusive aggregation by the few… so that line ‘fits’… seems to make ‘sense’ – as well as through the twisted notion of “‘power’-driving-excellence”….
But what makes more sense is the imbalance in human relationships… attendant upon ‘class’… the evil seed sown… by betrayal and child abandonment – the violation of good fellowship. I wrote about this in Palmers’ Chat:
Coercion is by definition unstable… as water seeks its level… earth seeks its balance… and we are earth.
Imbalance embedded in the human family has to be corrected. That’s inevitable. And we seek Mutual Aid as certainly as all other species do. Petr Kropotkin showed us this:
Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts of human nature that at no time of history can we discover men living in small isolated families, fighting each other for the means of subsistence. On the contrary, modern research… proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common ancestors. For thousands and thousands of years this organization has kept men together, even though there was no authority whatever to impose it. It has deeply impressed all subsequent development of mankind; and when the bonds of common descent had been loosened by migrations on a grand scale, while the development of the separated family within the clan itself had destroyed the old unity of the clan, a new form of union, territorial in its principle – the village community – was called into existence by the social genius of man. This institution, again, kept men together for a number of centuries, permitting them to further develop their social institutions and to pass through some of the darkest periods of history… (p. 153)
…Stems are seen to fight against stems, tribes against tribes, individuals against individuals; and out of this chaotic contest of hostile forces, mankind issues divided into castes, enslaved to despots, separated into States always ready to wage war against each other. And, with this history of mankind in his hands, the pessimist philosopher [Hegel comes readily to mind…] triumphantly concludes that warfare and oppression are the very essence of human nature; that the warlike and predatory instincts of man can only be restrained within certain limits by a strong authority which enforces peace and thus gives an opportunity to the few and nobler ones to prepare a better life for humanity in times to come…. (Petr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, 115 – 116)
Petr understood that ‘power’ selectively passes down the ‘stories’ that further its mission, and that, “Ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines….”
So, for instance, Plato’s seemingly endless tomes and disingenuous propaganda are carefully preserved and falsely taught, while the anti-slavery movement of his day is discounted, if not disappeared altogether.
‘Class’ is a weight that must be continuously applied… and re-applied… to survive. So the institutions and the financial tools are made to counter our continuous tendency to awake. (from Palmers’ Chat: As We Take Our Earth Back
If there are certain subjects that are taboo – and ‘work’ is at the core – then we have to courageously face reality… and admit that the media silence means… totalitarianism is already here… and that it’s our responsibility to talk about it… we need a ‘Children’s Crusade’ designed authentically… to redefine ‘work’ as ‘attending to the earth’… and learning from her… a Crusade to help youth establish a very different future… for all of us…
Today (02.19.14) I listened to a woman who’d written a book about catastrophic species die-offs accelerating around the globe today… a result of ‘climate change’ – i.e. the result of a system of ‘rule by the few’ called class (of course she didn’t put it like that): the loss of the coral reefs… ocean death… the particularly devastating amphibian impact… she’d collected a lot of ‘evidence’… and a caller asked, “why is it that we listen to devastating reports such as yours… and then go right back to doing what we always do?” And her response… as you can guess… is that “people feel powerless…” and I of course objected… that we aren’t asking the right questions… like: “why is it… that ‘people feel powerless’?…” could it be the state forces us to be… structurally?
Consider how we’re trained to see ourselves as functionaries… all our energy… we’re told… must be forced down the right hole… feed the right tube… in order to be a ‘lucky one’ who is allowed to feel ‘useful’. The ‘story’ of how our energy is to be ‘spent’… has long since been made the state’s exclusive province.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is the only story children hear… the only frame in which they’re allowed to try to conceptualize… the purpose of our lives. This turf was captured long ago… no one ever challenges that story. We obediently concede… to let others lead us… agree to let others determine the use of our energy.
But look around at where our deference has left us! Look where our obedience leads! Is there really any ‘mystery’ to our ‘helplessness’? Is there really any wonder we’re unequal to the challenges facing the species (and all life itself)?
If there are certain subjects that are taboo – and ‘work’ is the one at the core – then we have to courageously face reality… and admit that the media silence around challenging the dominant story means… totalitarianism is already here… and that it’s our responsibility to begin… to talk about it…
In 1212 two youthful preachers – one in France, the other in Germany – led columns of young people to the sea expecting God miraculously to part the waters so that they could march to Jerusalem. Since this miracle did not take place, most of those who had survived the long march returned home. A few who took ship were either lost at sea or captured by Muslim corsairs and sold into slavery. (Richard A. Newhall, The Crusades, 1963, p. 77 – 8)
The Children’s Crusade invites speculation about the role abandonment might have played in it: this mysterious event took place around 1212 when, according to scattered comments in chronicles, thousands of children undertook to free the Holy Land and marched from areas of France and Germany to points in Italy (and France), where the movement dissipated. The chroniclers do not suggest that parents encouraged their children to go, merely that adults, in awe of the holy motivation inspiring persons so young, allowed them to leave. It does not appear to have been a camouflage for abandonment, although the fact that the movement began (apparently) among shepherds may mean that the children involved were already on their own in some sense. If, as several accounts maintain, some of them were actually sold into slavery at the ports they reached, it was not by parents or relatives, and was little different from other instances of slave trading involving children, apart from the peculiar ugliness of the circumstance. (John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: the Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, 1988, p. 349 – 350)
The children were… and are… mis-led under ‘class’… but the earth leads true… and if we as her living advocates and devotees help our children to be free… it would be … we would see…
…a ‘Children’s Crusade’ designed authentically… to redefine ‘work’ as ‘attending to the earth’… and learning from her… a Crusade to help youth establish a very different future… for all of us.
Vampires aren’t the only ones to span the generations. The ancestors who want us to be free also are living.
Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
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“Chapter XIX”:
“Doctor,” he said, “come quickly. We just found a girl alive at the bottom of the pile of corpses.” (Part 50)
In number one crematorium’s gas chamber 3,000 dead were piled up. The Sonderkommando had already begun to untangle the lattice of flesh. The noise of the elevators and the sound of their clanging doors reached my room. The work moved ahead double-time. The gas chambers had to be cleared, for the arrival of a new convoy had been announced.
The chief of the gas chamber kommando almost tore the hinges off the door to my room as he arrived out of breath, his eyes wide with fear or surprise.
“Doctor,” he said, “come quickly. We just found a girl alive at the bottom of the pile of corpses.”
I grabbed my instrument case, which was always ready, and dashed to the gas chamber. Against the wall, near the entrance of the immense room, half covered with other bodies, I saw a girl in the throes of a death-rattle, her body seized with convulsions. The gas kommando men around me were in a state of panic. Nothing like this had ever happened in the course of their horrible career.
We removed the still-living body from the corpses pressing against it. I gathered the tiny adolescent body into my arms and carried it back into the room adjoining the gas chamber, where normally the gas kommando men change clothes for work. I laid the body on a bench. A frail young girl, almost a child, she could have been no more than fifteen. I took out my syringe and, taking her arm – she had not yet recovered consciousness and was breathing with difficulty – I administered three intravenous injections. My companions covered her body which was as cold as ice with a heavy overcoat. One ran to the kitchen to fetch some tea and warm broth. Everybody wanted to help, as if she were his own child.
The reaction was swift. The child was seized by a fit of coughing, which brought up a thick globule of phlegm from her lungs. She opened her eyes and looked fixedly at the ceiling. I kept a close watch for every sign of life. Her breathing became deeper and more and more regular. Her lungs, tortured by the gas, inhaled the fresh air avidly. Her pulse became perceptible, the result of the injections. I waited impatiently. The injections had not yet been completely absorbed, but I saw that within a few minutes she was going to regain consciousness: her circulation began to bring color back into her cheeks, and her delicate face became human again.
She looked around her with astonishment, and glanced at us. She still did not realize what was happening to her, and was still incapable of distinguishing the present, of knowing whether she was dreaming or really awake. A veil of mist clouded her consciousness. Perhaps she vaguely remembered a train, a long line of box cars which had brought her here. Then she had lined up for selection and, before she knew what was happening, been swept along by the current of the mass into a large, brilliantly lighted underground room. Everything had happened so quickly. Perhaps she remembered that everyone had had to undress. The impression had been disagreeable, but everybody had yielded resignedly to the order. And so, naked, she had been swept along into another room. Mute anguish had seized them all. The second room had also been lighted by powerful lamps. Completely bewildered, she had let her gaze wander over the mass huddled there, but found none of her family. Pressed close against the wall, she had waited, her heart frozen, for what was going to happen. All of a sudden the lights had gone out, leaving her enveloped in total darkness. Something had stung her eyes, seized her throat, suffocated her. She had fainted. There her memories ceased.
What could one do with a young girl in the crematorium’s Sonderkommando? (Part 51)
Her movements were becoming more and more animated; she tried to move her hands, her feet, to turn her head left and right. Her face was seized by a fit of convulsions. Suddenly she grasped my coat collar and gripped it convulsively, trying with all her might to raise herself. I laid her back down again several times, but she continued to repeat the same gesture. Little by little, however, she grew calm and remained stretched out, completely exhausted. Large tears shone in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She was not crying. I received the first reply to my questions. Not wanting to tire her, I asked only a few. I learned that she was sixteen years old, and that she had come with her parents in a convoy from Transylvania.
The kommando gave her a bowl of hot broth, which she drank voraciously. They kept bringing her all sorts of dishes, but I could not allow them to give her anything. I covered her to her head and told her that she should try and get some sleep.
My thoughts moved at a dizzy pace. I turned towards my companions in the hope of finding a solution. We racked our brains, for we were now face to face with the most difficult problem: what to do with the girl now that she had been restored to life? We knew that she could not remain here for very long.
What could one do with a young girl in the crematorium’s Sonderkommando? I knew the past history of the place: no one had ever come out of here alive, either from the convoys or from the Sonderkommando.
Little time remained for reflection. Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld arrived to supervise the work, as was his wont. Passing by the open door, he saw us gathered in a group. He came in and asked us what was going on. Even before we told him he had seen the girl stretched out on the bench.
He considered the dispatch of hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers as a patriotic duty. (Part 52)
I made a sign for my companions to withdraw. I was going to attempt something I knew without saying was doomed to failure. Three months in the same camp and in the same milieu had created, in spite of everything, a certain intimacy between us. Besides, the Germans generally appreciate capable people, and, as long as they need them, respect them to a certain extent, even in the KZ. Such was the case for cobblers, tailors, joiners and locksmiths. From our numerous contacts, I had been able to ascertain that Mussfeld had a high esteem for the medical expert’s professional qualities. He knew that my superior was Dr. Mengele, the KZ’s most dreaded figure, who, goaded by racial pride, took himself to be one of the most important representatives of German medical science. He considered the dispatch of hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers as a patriotic duty. The work carried on in the dissecting room was for the furtherance of German medical science. As Dr. Mengele’s pathological expert, I also had a hand in this progress, and therein lay the explanation for a certain form of respect that Mussfeld paid me. He often came to see me in the dissecting room, and we conversed on politics, the military situation and various other subjects. It appeared that his respect also arose from the fact that he considered the dissection of bodies and his bloody job of killing to be allied activities. He was the commandant and ace shot of number one crematorium. Three other SS acted as his lieutenants. Together they carried out the “liquidation” by a bullet in the back of the neck. This type of death was reserved for those who had been chosen in the camp, or else sent from another on their way to a so-called “rest camp.” When there were merely 500 or less, they were killed by a bullet in the back of the neck, for the large factory of gas chambers was reserved for the annihilation of more important numbers. As much gas was needed to kill 500 as to kill 3,000. Nor was it worthwhile to call out the Red Cross truck to bring the canisters and gas butchers for such a trifling number of victims. Nor was it worth the trouble of having a truck come to collect the clothes, which were scarcely more than rags anyway. Such were the factors which determined whether a group would die by gas or by a bullet in the back of the neck.
I calmly related the terrible case we found ourselves confronted with. I described for his benefit what pains the child must have suffered… (Part 53)
And this was the man I had to deal with, the man I had to talk into allowing a single life to be spared. I calmly related the terrible case we found ourselves confronted with. I described for his benefit what pains the child must have suffered in the undressing room, and the horrible scenes that preceded death in the gas chamber. When the room had been plunged into darkness, she had breathed in a few lungfuls of cyclon gas. Only a few, though, for her fragile body had given way under the pushing and shoving of the mass as they fought against death. By chance she had fallen with her face against the wet concrete floor. That bit of humidity had kept her from being asphyziated, for cyclon gas does not react under humid conditions.
These were my arguments, and I asked him to do something for the child. He listened to me attentively, then asked me exactly what I proposed doing. I saw by his expression that I had put him face to face with a practically impossible problem. It was obvious that the child could not remain in the crematorium. One solution would have been to put her in front of the crematorium gate. A kommando of women always worked there. She could have slipped in among them and accompanied them back to the camp barracks after they had finished work. She would never relate what had happened to her. The presence of one new face among so many thousands would never be detected, for no one in the camp knew all the other inmates.
If she had been three or four years older that might have worked. A girl of twenty would have been able to understand clearly the miraculous circumstances of her survival, and have enough foresight not to tell anyone about them. She would wait for better times, like so many other thousands were waiting, to recount what she had lived through. But Mussfeld thought that a young girl of sixteen would in all naiveté tell the first person she met where she had just come from, what she had seen and what she had lived through. The news would spread like wildfire, and we would all be forced to pay for it with our lives.
“There’s no way of getting round it,” he said, “the child will have to die.”
Half an hour later the young girl was led, or rather carried, into the furnace room hallway, and there Mussfeld sent another in his place to do the job. A bullet in the back of the neck.
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WUR of March 2nd, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
It’s not fair for folks with less means than we… to take on global misanthropy alone… we need a global popular consciousness… we have the numbers to move this human story forward… out of the muck of ‘class’… so that we can live our gifts as last…
It’s not fair for folks with less means than we do to take on global misanthropy alone. We need a global popular consciousness. We have the numbers to move this human story forward… out of the muck of ‘class’… so that we can live our gifts at last.
February 26th, 2014: Sisters and brothers…
I’ve just been typing a scene in which Miklos was lying to the women…
…about the truth of the crematoriums….
To tell the truth would create a panic…
…and they’d all be dead…
…so…
…you have to be strategic…
…is what this said.
But we are growing stronger…
(…and if any among those reading this… say to themselves “but I’m living my gifts…” say “my talents receive recognition…” I’d ask…you don’t think you’re in a prison?… you think the so-called ‘rulers’ would never do to you… because you work so hard and have such talent – like the Sonderkommando – what ‘power’ did to them?…)
…and these processes of ‘class’ have so advanced… that more and more of us are ready to see… reality… i.e…. that the state is here to milk and manage human energy… not to ‘protect our freedom’…
(…and as we see with Putin’s machinations… pushing to the fore ‘his’ military… statesmen tarry not… when they see us waking up… make haste to create the threats… that seem to validate the state’s existence… either by trying to dupe us – yet again – with nationalism… or by shameless allusions to their ‘rule’… by jangling the coins they keep in their pockets… while carefully watching our responses. The only way we commoners can stand up to them… is with a global consciousness… carefully gifted to us by our ancestors of heart… who have given all we need to join together… against these ‘class’-old cons of manipulation…)
…and we are not only at a point where we can take the truth… but change this reality… that we are being overseen.
“What argument could you possibly raise against a test site?… a few… whoever wants to… beginning to develop a different way of life…? We have to start asking ourselves… why the resistance in us? We understand why in ‘power’… but why in us? Why would we not want to let those who want to figure this out… solve this thousands and thousands of years… of the devastation of class… the chaos of class…
So how can we be Miklos Nyiszlis… in this more advanced iteration… of ‘class’ dynamics… in this world scene… how can we be strategic?
How can we begin to shape another path forward from that of ‘the state’?…
…that we in every land can choose to take….
(…‘choose’ being the operative word. This isn’t about ‘force’… just the opposite… despite what some members of ‘Plato’s Tribe may fear… that if we-the-people were released from our long captivity that we would behave as they do… nothing could be further from the truth…. We are not them. It couldn’t be further from our minds… ‘retribution’. What we want… is to begin again.
And this must be something we say with each other as well: “What argument could you possibly raise against a test site?… a few… whoever wants to… beginning to develop a different way of life…? We have to start asking ourselves… why the resistance in us? We understand why in ‘power’… but why in us? Why would we not want to let those who want to figure this out… have a little bit of land… and a lot of love… and a release from the constraints of building rules and regulations (as Michael Reynolds said…) freedom from taxation…. We need a little oasis… where we can solve this thousands and thousands of years… of the devastation of class… the chaos of class….)
“Live light for the General Strike…” because how else are we going to support each other globally?… We’ve been talking about being strategic… what else do we have but our human energy?… and heart… and love… and the ability to inter-link…
Ukraine knows this moment is pregnant…
…that the steps they take now will survive the moment…
…are seeds that will be planted…
…from which will grow…
…either re-forged chains…
…or our future freedom.
It’s a solemn moment which all of us struggling with the same issues are trying to take in… with you…
…in common we trust…
…you are not alone.
That being so… what are the right steps that we can all meld together… a synchrony well-placed to crack the concrete?
I think it starts by being articulated… these steps… by saying out loud… that we finally see… that the way of ‘the state’ has failed us completely… and that another way is coming to be… a way with land held in common… held in trust for perpetuity… say that all our planning will tend toward it… toward a physical manifestation of freedom… toward working to realize a test site… while ‘living-light’… for the General Strike.
(Because how else are we going to support each other globally? Truly?
We’ve been talking these past few weeks about being strategic. All we have is our human energy… and our heart… and our love… and the Internet… and the ability to inter-link. This is the only way we can… not just save the planet but… for those of us who actually care about these human bodies we walk around in… save us as well….
I listened recently to a man… and… don’t get me wrong… I am definitely in love with our animal and plant brothers and sisters… who was talking about the horses who pull the tourist carriages in New York… and saying they have to work a 9-hour day and that it’s hard… and it is… agreed… but when are we going to start caring about we human beings in harness? When are we going to start caring about that?… with equal fervor?… all of my brothers and sisters in the animal-rights-movement? We are animals too! And when you start putting us first… we can then breathe a sigh of relief… and know that we indeed… matter… that we are card about… not viewed as just beasts of burden… of less worth than all others.)
Unless we make real by validating for each other what we truly want… what our bodies want… we can’t get it.
This is about standing with our bodies… instead of with the state… but we can only begin together… when… a few in every place globally… fold our words and acts together… behind a common banner… that means we hold the land in common… we hold the land in solemn trust… i.e….
…‘wholists’….
You’ve claimed Independence Square… why not keep it?
…make it the center of a Ukraine that’s free…
…create a model that all can see…
…of how human beings…
…can at last get free…
…share what you’ve learned about the role of the state…
…no matter its legitimating ideology…
…share what you’ve learned about growing your gifts…
…and the need of human beings to own and grow their own leadership…
(…capacities… by which I mean each human being…
…is supposed to be a leader…
…of course we don’t start out that way…
…we need each other to get big…
…but that’s what we’re here for…
…not to implement the commands of others…)
…share what you’ve learned about ‘power’ being global…
…how it uses food and energy access to maintain its control…
(…and when I say ‘food access control’ I mean as well…
…their obsession with controlling the very weather conditions we need to grow with…)
…how wage work is the means to make us all have a leader….
…and to train us in obedience and docility…
…and that we can’t do this alone…
…we need each other.
People of Ukraine… it’s ‘one-step-at-a-time’ time… time for planning… time for knowing the prize… and time for fixing our eyes on that vision… and definitely time for synchronization.
What greater evidence do we need… to prove that our thought is conditioned?… than that any among us could imagine… that we-the-people create ‘chaos’…
So what are the steps we synchronize?
Number one: Don’t give up Independence Square… you won it… you keep it. If you give it up it’ll be hard to recover… look at Egypt… look at the Occupy Movement.
(…and by ‘Independence Square’ I obviously don’t mean just the actual earth [as critical as it is…] but the relationships… the good fellowship…)
Number two: Discuss and get clear on the vision… on-goingly… with your brothers and sisters…. ‘The state’ ain’t the way for us to get free… never was… never will be. And we can’t be free wearing a leash… but only when we… as a global humanity… provide for our own necessities (and that means earth to grow things…) can we grow beyond perpetual infancy.
(…and to help us see more precisely just how phenomenally creative we are… and therefore just how much power ‘power’ has claimed in claiming us… consider this: last week we said that ‘class’… ‘rank’… ‘power’… creates ‘chaos’.
[And of course we’re trained to think the opposite… that it’s our energy unleashed that leads to it… but that makes no sense… as even a brief consideration of the accomplishments of ‘power’-worship shows us… e.g. the attempt to recreate ancient Greece by enslaving we Africans… and it reduced the built-world of the entire European continent to rubble… and dropped an atomic bomb on human populations… so everyone could see who has the big cojones… and some of us… even after considering this list… are concerned that we… released… means ‘chaos’? What greater evidence do we need… to prove that our thought is conditioned?… than that any among us could imagine… that we-the-people create ‘chaos’.]
So we see… in the quote following… what ‘power’-worship achieves… but also an illustration of the fact that our power can rise to any challenge… when we’re off-leash… when we choose… when we decide… to set things right… we do…
[…and here – please forgive the interjection – Chokwe Lumumba, Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, is coming to mind. A few weeks ago we said… if an empathic public figure’s death is unexpected… let’s take a look at what they’re doing… and boost it… pump up their vision…
…and when we look to see what Chokwe was doing… we see an attempt to “re-invent ‘government’”… his vision was to make it “inclusive’… by which he meant… “let’s let the people make the decisions…’ it’s quite believable that such a goal… put him in ‘power’s crosshairs…. Let’s boost that goal up… let’s keep it going… let’s take what we need to push forward his example… let’s let the people decide! (after, of course, we’ve probed the taboo subjects… exposed the wounds of class completely… for… as we’ll see below… when deep wounds go unexplored they but open further… and our waking up… and growing up… ‘power’ successfully forestalls…
When the university bosses… back at it again… tried to impose a $500 ‘fee for success’… students circulated a pledge… that said… “if you pass this fee… when we are alums… we will never donate to this university…” Awesome strategy… as… vampires understand what ‘future planning’ means… Mario Savio lives at Sonoma State University…
…and we also said… that they’re here with us… our ancestors of heart… right now. Here’s an example… today (02.28.14) we heard from Mario Savio… another powerful man who ‘conveniently’ (for ‘power’…) left the planet because of a heart attack….] Just as Chokwe was determined to make ‘governing’ inclusive… Mario wanted the same for ‘education’… well… Mario too died fighting an attack on that inclusiveness… by the ‘regents’ squeezing more fees out of students… and though the vampires never stop trying to sink their teeth into us… Mario lives in his latest iterations… in students who pushed his strategic gifts further. When the university bosses… back at it again… tried to impose a $500 ‘fee for success’… students circulated a pledge… that said… “if you pass this fee… when we are alums… we will never donate to this university…” Awesome strategy… as… vampires understand what ‘future planning’ means… Mario Savio lives at Sonoma State University…
…we’re forced to contribute our energy to projects that we are directed to do…. Imagine when we’re free to share our gifts willingly…
…forgive the long digression… which continues with this:
Chokwe’s example shows us how quickly we can begin to grow beyond containment… even in the belly of a very sick beast… and in his case without many resources (as were devoted to the Reconstruction of Europe… the case about which we’re going to read…) but rather with sheer heart – operating with the principles of inclusivity (and, by the way, the energy of rebirth… beginning again… is always the people’s energy… no matter how determinedly ‘power’ tries to claim it…) – with very few resources beyond the principles of inclusion themselves… which we have to start seeing as the most important resource of all. We don’t need to be forced to creatively cooperate… we just need ‘power’ off our backs.
And in the following quote… when you imagine this land without borders… imagine as well ‘power’s hidden hand… and of course their swollen egos… and their mad scramble to reassert their command… always guided by their vision… which… Plato-given… seeks to impose an illegitimate ‘order’.
Imagine a world without institutions. It is a world where borders between countries seem to have dissolved, leaving a single, endless landscape over which people travel in search of communities that no longer exist. There are no governments any more, on either a national scale or even a local one. There are no schools or universities, no libraries or archives, no access to any information whatsoever. There is no cinema or theatre, and certainly no television. The radio occasionally works, but the signal is distant, and almost always in a foreign language. No one has seen a newspaper for weeks. There are no railways or motor vehicles, no telephones or telegrams, no post office, no communication at all except what is passed through word of mouth.
There are no banks, but that is no great hardship because money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Nothing is made here: the great factories and businesses that used to exist have all been destroyed or dismantled, as have most of the other buildings. There are no tools, save what can be dug out of the rubble. There is no food.
Law and order are virtually non-existent, because there is no police force and no judiciary. In some areas there no longer seems to be any clear sense of what is right and what is wrong. People help themselves to whatever they want without regard to ownership – indeed, the sense of ownership itself has largely disappeared. Goods belong only to those who are strong enough to hold on to them, and those who are willing to guard them with their lives. Men with weapons roam the streets, taking what they want and threatening anyone who gets in their way. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection. There is no shame. There is no morality. There is only survival….
In 1944 and 1945 large parts of Europe were left in chaos for months at a time. The Second World War… had devastated not only the physical infrastructure, but also the institutions that held countries together. The political system had broken down to such a degree that American observers were warning of the possibility of Europe-wide civil war. The deliberate fragmentation of communities had sown an irreversible mistrust between neighbours; and universal famine had made personal morality an irrelevance….
That Europe managed to pull itself out of this mire, and then go on to become a prosperous, tolerant continent seems nothing short of a miracle…. Germany… transformed itself from a pariah nation to a responsible member of the European family in just a few short years. A new desire for international cooperation was also born during the postwar years, which would bring not only prosperity but peace….
[And I have to interject and ask: “who paid the bill? Who got skinned so Europe could ‘begin again’? And I’m talking well beyond and in addition to the commonfolk of Europe themselves… to the earth-connected commoners of many continents…. See… we’re forced to contribute our energy to projects that we are directed to do…. Imagine when we’re free to share our gifts willingly… – P.S.]
Savage Continent – a necessary and important book… Where is the Left? In every nation… why not simply say: “It’s time for a global day of planning.” We have to move on from this mess. We have to stop and think… all together… what we want for our future. It’s time to not let it be in the hands of the statesmen anymore…
…The Germans call the months after the war Stunde nul (‘Zero Hour’) – the implication being that it was a time when the slate was wiped clean, and history allowed to start again….
There was certainly no wiping of the slate, no matter how hard German statesmen might have wished for one. In the aftermath of the war waves of vengeance and retribution washed over every sphere of European life. Nations were stripped of territory and assets, governments and institutions underwent purges, and whole communities were terrorized because of what they were perceived to have done during the war. Some of the worst vengeance was meted out on individuals. German civilians all over Europe were beaten, arrested, used as slave labour or simply murdered. Soldiers and policemen who had collaborated with the Nazis were arrested and tortured. Women who had slept with German soldiers were stripped, shaved and paraded through the streets covered in tar. German, Hungarian and Austrian women were raped in the millions. Far from wiping the slate clean, the aftermath of the war merely propagated grievances between communities and between nations, many of which are still alive today.
[He’s writing about the period 1944 – 1949… and when we read this book… keep in mind that this is us… we commoners… who are the ones who bled… who died… who were persecuted… by each other. True, we were all set up… but we paid this price… not ‘power’… they got to test out their experiment… just as when they experimented by dropping an atomic bomb… and they experimented with enslaving a whole people. They have been toying with our lives for millennia… and we imagine… that our energy released is scary! We have been thoroughly brainwashed… but… on second thought… maybe not… as we don’t have access to the airwaves… we don’t know what each other thinks. What we do know is that we haven’t developed the means… using the tools we have… to inter-link our efforts.
Where is the Left? In every nation… why not simply say: “It’s time for a global day of planning.” We have to move on from this mess. We have to stop and think… all together… what we want for our future. It’s time to not let it be in the hands of the statesmen anymore. – P.S.]
Neither did the end of the war signify the birth of a new era of ethnic harmony in Europe. Indeed, in some parts of Europe, ethnic tensions actually became worse. Jews continued to be victimized, just as they had been during the war itself. Minorities everywhere became political targets once again, and in some areas this led to atrocities that were just as repugnant as those committed by the Nazis. The aftermath of the war also saw the logical conclusion of all the Nazis efforts to categorize and segregate different races. Between 1945 and 1947 tens of millions of men, women and children were expelled from their countries in some of the biggest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen. This is a subject that is rarely discussed by admirers of the ‘European miracle’, and even more rarely understood: even those who are aware of the expulsions of Germans know little about the similar expulsions of other minorities across eastern Europe. The cultural diversity that was once such an integral part of the European landscape before, and even during, the war was not dealt its final death-blow until after the war was over. (Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, 2012, p. xiii – xvi)
This is one of those books that runs the risk of being suppressed… because… like Miklos before him… it probes the ugliness of class – a necessary and important book.
This is ‘class’… this is ‘rank’… this is the ‘chaos’ that ‘power’ makes… in being the physical manifestation of ‘power’… ‘class’… ‘rank’… because we are all complicit… all do ‘power’s division work for it… all have been mired in the guilt of mutual betrayal… the wounds are deep… but a test site can reach them… and ultimately… the only way to secure our freedom… is to end ‘power’…
…so…at whose behest… the insistence on all the rigid categorization? Who created all the havoc?… as the Fascists have their funders and industrialists… it takes means to make massive ‘mischief’.
The tactics of ‘power’ have never changed…. It takes little imagination to see the hidden hand of shadow-statesmen… crouching behind all the ‘class-atrocities’ the people are egged on to make… or coerced to make by the simple means of the wage.
Yet it’s never discussed this way. Even when it’s obvious that only the few… who are always discreetly out of view… sitting on their ever-bloating egos and coffers… have the means to try to turn us against each other… has the ‘vision’ (‘no change’… everyone in their place…) to guide their actions… gives the steps they conspire to implement… and the playbook (the Republic)… long practiced by ‘rulers’ of states…that bestows the confidence… and sense of legitimacy… gives a false cast of benevolence to all their callousness.
This is ‘class’… this is ‘rank’… this is the ‘chaos’ that ‘power’ makes…
…but… and this we must face unflingingly… with our unconscious complicity… the minds and hands and hearts of we-the-subjects. And while there’s no shame in this… there is a huge requirement to return to the ethos of the earth… once we’re free of the hierarchy . ‘Hierarchy’ doesn’t allow time to think… as ‘class’ accelerates… in equal measure does our thought deteriorate… as… we can’t get past the wound of ‘class’ until we probe its ugliness… which we are now doing… globally.
What this means is that we’re finally freeing our energies from the huge load of guilt we’ve all been carrying… in being the physical manifestation of ‘power’… ‘class’… ‘rank’… because we are all complicit… all do ‘power’s division work for it… all have been mired in the guilt of mutual betrayal….
The wounds are deep… but a test site can reach them… and ultimately… the only way to secure our freedom is to end ‘power’. Did Chokwe die on his own or did he have help? We don’t know. All we know for sure is that the development of radio wave weaponry means the technology exists for ‘power’ to do this… and that ‘power’ can never resist… testing its weapons. ‘Power’ must end… to secure our freedom.)
Number three: Get clear on the scope – that its global… get clear that our efforts must be on-going… and must be… to be successful… inter-linked.
Do you see?… that such callousness begets misanthropy?… we abandon what we long for out of fear that it’s a fraud… fear that we’ll find ourselves betrayed again…
Number four: They’re trying to ‘breed’ our humanity out of us… so to refuse we must give our babies their due… resistance means giving them full attention…
(…and I have to interject that what I mean by that is a communal attendance…. I’m certainly not thinking of a ‘nuclear family’… or a struggling single mom trying to make ends meet. I mean that we must band together… and help each other… give each other our due…)
…so… full attention… full affection… and no judgment. (I stood in line this week behind a baby crying while his father stood placid and implacable. And the look on the baby’s face said, “why… why… why?…” And I tried to distract the child from his clear pain… but he couldn’t stop looking at his father’s face… and his look kept saying… “why… why… why?…”)
(Do you see?… that such callousness begets misanthropy… sociopathy…
…a mirroring lack of empathy?
And therefore…
…when we give our children their due attention…
…it cracks open the system?
That ‘work’… that true work…
…of making love our song…
…begets our new start…
…is the well-aimed strike…
…into ‘power’s heart.
We can’t serve two masters.
We either serve each other and the earth…
…or we abandon them… our children… healthy ecosystems… healthy oceans… and truth itself…
…to serve the ones who’ve trained us to serve them…
…we abandon what we long for out of fear that it’s a fraud…
…fear that we’ll find ourselves betrayed again…
…and that we can’t allow…
[…we’re far too ‘smart’ for that….]
And so on the cycle goes… and so our hearts grow cold.)
It’s in releasing the power of the people globally that we win. Let’s begin talking about this…
Number five: Think for yourselves! I listened this week to part of a documentary… called Spies in Mississippi… and some of the testimony revealed that folks who betrayed their brothers and sisters at the behest of the government used the excuse: “if the government says to do it… it must be the right thing to do….” (I have some neighbors that I would wager are saying this very thing… and this is another way in which reverence for the father [and mother] causes us to betray each other… parental harshness… for sure… but… this self-betraying reverence… is also in evidence in expressions of ‘patriotism’.) And it’s critical that we press forward the logic… start the dialogue… press the facing of facts…. Because if we know that the state is our overseer and keeper… then we can face this juncture authentically… knowing our choice is not between rivaling concepts… but between continued diminishment… and being free. And as social beings we must do this together… we need each other to get free… and so agglomerate necessarily….
(And I must add that… ‘power’ does!… Do you really not think… that every statesman [even as they compete for ‘supremacy’…] has ‘containing the people’ as their number one priority?… or that… English, German, and U.S. shadow-statesmen… don’t scheme together on this?…
…and when I say ‘shadow-statesmen’ I’m referring to the global state. That’s a collective project. They work together on that… scheme together on that… on how to play the ‘nationalist-card’ to greatest effect… and on how to wrest the means-of-state… from the hands of populists… like Hugo Chavez…
[…and by the way when we look at what Hugo Chavez was doing when he died… we see he was trying to create a regional counter-weight… to the ‘power’ of the global state… but the hierarchy defeated him. It’s in releasing the power of the people globally that we win. Let’s begin talking about this…]
Do we really not think… that Putin and Angela Merkel are not as one… when it comes to keeping the people of Ukraine from carving out a new way… from the way of ‘the state’?…
…or that Putin and Angela Merkel are not as one… when it comes to keeping the people of Ukraine from carving out a new way… from the way of ‘the state’?)
Number six: Share what you’re doing… give it a name… and encourage your brothers and sisters globally to do the same.
Number seven: Make love your song… Immortal Ones… and… never forget… they’ve got plenty of money they’ve been saving for this moment… and I’m talking about the global shadow-statesmen… to try to turn you away from that knowledge… but don’t study on them… study on this: “Love be now your song, Immortal Ones.” No matter how the ‘kings of state’ try to debase it… that word ‘love’… we know… that on their tongues it is but dust… their use of it… need not concern us.
Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
–––
The KZ also had its ration system, a much better one than that in force throughout Germany, for it furnished those who used it with any item they desired… it only took one point per item, a point of flame from the Ober’s gun… (Part 54)
“Chapter XX”:
Next door to the SS living quarters, on the second story of number two crematorium, was a carpenter’s shop, where three carpenters plied their trade, fulfilling any and all requests that were sent to them. For the moment they were busy filling a “private order.” Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld, taking advantage of the opportunity, had ordered the carpenters to make him a “recamier,” a sort of double bed that could also serve as a large sofa. It was to be completed as quickly as possible.
It was no easy job, but in the crematoriums there was no such word as “impossible” when an order was given. The carpenters had salvaged the necessary wood from among the construction materials scattered about the crematorium grounds. The springs had come from the easy chairs that certain deportees had brought with them to make the journey more comfortable for their ailing parents. There were hundreds of these abandoned chairs in the crematorium courtyard and we used to sit in them after work to rest awhile and catch a few breaths of fresh air.
So the recamier was built according to instructions. For me it had become an object of curiosity. I had followed all phases of its construction and seen it completed. I had watched them install the springs and cover them with elegant tapestries. Two French electricians had installed a bed lamp and arranged a niche for a radio. After it had been varnished it was quite handsome. In the small bourgeois home in Mannheim it would look even better than it did up in the uninviting crematorium loft. For the recamier was to be sent, at the end of the week, to Mussfeld’s home at Mannheim. There it would wait till the victorious Ober, back from the trying wars, could use it to rest his weary bones.
One day, the week prior to its shipment, I was in my room and saw a half dozen silk pajamas – a natural supplement for the recamier – waiting to join the package. They were of fine imported silk and would certainly have been unobtainable on the outside, where ration tickets were needed for even the most essential items. The KZ also had its ration system, a much better one than that in force throughout Germany, for it furnished those who used it with any item they desired. In the undressing room the goods were there waiting to be taken. It only took one point per item, a point of flame from the Ober’s gun, sending a bullet into the back of the owner’s neck.
In exchange for these “points” the SS officials received jewelry, leather goods, fur coats, silks and fine shoes. Not a week went by without their sending some packages home.
Even though we did not survive, it was our bounden duty to make certain that the world learned of the unimaginable cruelty and sordidness of a people who pretended to be superior. It was imperative that a message addressed to the world leave this place… (Part 55)
In the packages that had been sent one found, besides the luxury items already mentioned, tea, coffee, chocolate, and canned goods by the hundreds, all of which were also obtainable in the undressing room. Thus the Ober had conceived the idea of having a recamier constructed and sent home.
As I watched, day by day, the final phases of its construction, an idea began to take shape in my mind. Little by little the idea transformed itself into a project. In a few weeks the Sonderkommando would be a thing of the past. We would all perish here, and we were well aware of it. We had even grown used to the idea, for we knew there was no way out. One thing upset me however. Eleven Sonderkommando squads had already perished and taken with them the terrible secret of the crematoriums and their butchers. Even though we did not survive, it was our bounden duty to make certain that the world learned of the unimaginable cruelty and sordidness of a people who pretended to be superior. It was imperative that a message addressed to the world leave this place. Whether it was discovered soon afterwards, or years later, it would still be a terrible manifesto of accusation. This message would be signed by all the members of number one crematorium’s Sonderkommando, fully conscious of their impending death. Carried beyond the barbed wires of KZ in the recamier, it would remain for the time being at Oberschaarfuhrer Mussfeld’s home at Mannheim.
The message was drafted in time. It described in sufficient detail the horrors perpetrated at Auschwitz from the time of its founding until the present. The names of the camp’s torturers were included, as well as our estimate of the number of people exterminated, with a description of the methods and instruments utilized for extermination.
The message was drawn up on three large sheets of parchment. The Sonderkommando’s editor, a painter from Paris, copied it in beautifully written letters, as was the custom with ancient manuscripts, using India ink so that the writing would not fade. The fourth sheet contained the signatures of the Sonderkommando’s 200 men. The sheets were fastened together with a silk thread, then rolled up, enclosed in a specially constructed cylindrical tube made of zinc by one of our tinsmiths, and finally sealed and soldered so as to protect the manuscript from air and humidity. Our joiners placed the tube in the recamier’s springs, among the wool floss of the upholstering.
Another message, exactly the same, was buried in the courtyard of number two crematorium.
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I had become used to seeing a truck enter the crematorium gate every evening about seven o’clock, carrying 70 to 80 men and women on their way to be liquidated… (Part 56)
I had become used to seeing a truck enter the crematorium gate every evening about seven o’clock, carrying 70 to 80 men and women on their way to be liquidated. Coming from the barracks hospital, they represented the KZ’s daily selection. Prisoners for several years, or at least for several months, they were fully aware of the fate awaiting them. When the truck entered the courtyard the walls resounded with the screams and cries of the damned. They knew that at the foot of the crematory ovens all hope of escape dissolved.
Not wanting to witness that daily scene, I generally withdrew to the most remote corner of the crematorium courtyard, where I sat down under an arbor of pines. The crackling of the revolvers and the screams were deadened by the time they reached me.
One evening, however, my luck ran out. From five o’clock on I was working in the dissecting room. I had to examine the suicide case of an SS Oberschaarfuhrer whose body had been sent me from Gleiwitz. An SS captain – one of the court-martial judges – and a clerk sat in on the dissection.
About seven o’clock, while I was dictating the affidavit to the SS clerk, the heavy truck loaded with prisoners entered the courtyard. Two windows, barred and covered with metal mosquito netting, looked out on the crematorium’s rear courtyard. All the occupants were extremely calm. From this I deduced that they had been selected not out of the barracks, but from the hospitals. They were all seriously ill, too weak to scream or even to climb down from the raised platform of the truck.
The SS guards became excited and began to shout, urging them to get down. No one moved. The driver also began to lose patience. He climbed back in the truck and started the motor. Little by little the truck’s immense dump began to rise, till suddenly it spilled the occupants to the ground, a writhing, slipping, frantically grasping mass. As they fell they bumped against each other, striking their heads, their faces, their knees against the concrete. Then at last a horrible, collective cry of pain burst forth and echoed throughout the courtyard.
The SS court-martial judge, drawn by the moans and shouts, interrupted his investigations to ask me: “What’s going on in the courtyard?” He came over to the window, where I explained to him just what was happening. Apparently he was not used to such scenes, for he turned his head away and said disapprovingly, “Nevertheless, they shouldn’t do that!”
The Sonderkommando stripped them of their clothes and piled the discarded rags in the courtyard. The victims were led into the incineration rooms and put in front of the Oberschaarfuhrer’s revolver barrel. Mussfeld was today’s killer on duty. Standing near the ovens, wearing rubber gloves, he held his weapon with a steady hand. One by one the bodies fell, each yielding his place to the next in line. Within a few minutes he had “tumbled” – that was the term in general usage – the eighty men. Half an hour later they had all been cremated.
Later Mussfeld paid me a visit and asked me to give him a physical check-up. He suffered from heart trouble and severe headaches. I checked his blood pressure, took his pulse, listened to his heart with a stethoscope. His pulse rate was slightly high. I gave him my opinion: his condition was no doubt the result of the little job he had just performed in the furnace room. I had wanted to reassure him, but the result was just the opposite. He became indignant, got up and said:
“Your diagnosis is incorrect. It doesn’t bother me any more to kill 100 men than it does to kill 5. If I’m upset, it’s merely because I drink too much.”
And so saying he turned and walked away, greatly displeased.
WUR of March 9th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
One of the interesting things about that quote is what it takes for granted… assumes we know. ‘Power’ is so obvious it’s a given… yet today on the Left it’s gone missing… and with it… accurate analysis… and with that gone… so is gone effective action…
March 6th, 2014: Sisters and brothers…
Last week we (in a sense) asked: “Are we ready for the truth?” This question returned to me just now as I heard someone say… over the airwaves… that the women of Ukraine are trying to get more informed about ‘democracy.’ “What is ‘democracy’?” is one of those taboo questions that always returns… because no authentic discussion of it is tolerated.
I’m going to share a paragraph on this week’s show that I’m encouraging us all to think about… let lap slowly… in concurrent waves (that’s a shout-out to George Eliot… and I have to say that it shocks me when I hear pundits borrow from the greats and not give credit… and give thanks…) across our minds.
The communities therefore in which the secondary functionaries of the government [local and state legislators] are elected, are perforce obliged to make great use of judicial penalties as a means of administration. This is not evident at first sight; for those in power are apt to look upon the institution of elective functionaries as one concession, and the subjection of the elected magistrate to the judges of the land as another. They are equally averse to both these innovations; and as they are more pressingly solicited to grant the former than the latter, they accede to the election of the magistrate, and leave him independent of the judicial power. Nevertheless, the second of these measures is the only thing that can possibly counterbalance the first: and it will be found that an elective authority which is not subject to judicial power will, sooner or later, either elude all control or be destroyed. [We should listen to the words in terms of ‘power’… ‘power’-struggle’… – P.S.] The courts of justice are the only possible medium between the central power and the administrative bodies: they alone can compel the elected functionary to obey, without violating the rights of the elector. The extension of judicial power in the political world ought therefore to be in the exact ratio of the extension of elective offices: if these two institutions do not go hand in hand, the State must fall into anarchy or into subjection. (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Vol. 1, Chapter V, “Necessity of Examining the Condition of the States before That of the Union at Large.”
One of the interesting things about that quote is what it takes for granted… assumes we know. ‘Power’ is so obvious it’s a given… yet today on the Left it’s gone missing… and with it… accurate analysis… and with that gone… so is gone effective action.
…what actually happens is the official policy… no matter what nice words they issue in their official statements. The policy is what they allow to happen. They’ve got all he cards. They’ve got all the ‘power’. If it’s happening it’s because they want it to…
It was also interesting reading De Tocqueville warn ‘power’ about the need for proper control over us… by means of the judiciary… to ensure enforcement of its priorities… i.e. ‘supremacy’ (that last is a given… once ‘power’ is admitted… into the conversation…) after listening to two women from UC – Berkeley say that the university’s “official policy” means nothing…
(…it doesn’t matter what the words say… what matters is what actually happens… and what actually happens is the official policy… no matter what nice words they issue in their official statements. The policy is what they allow to happen. They’ve got all he cards. They’ve got all the ‘power’. If it’s happening it’s because they want it to…)
…the university’s “official policy” means nothing when there’s no enforcement… that the frat-guys (i.e. future ‘power’-hopefuls…) know the true policy… it’s “take possession of women’s bodies.” Never forget that this is a ‘power’ institution… hoping to attract future global-state statesmen. And what did we say recently about global-state statesmen?… that they are sociopaths and rapists. ‘Power’ wants to claim women’s bodies for their procreative capacity and as a perk for them. This mindset they teach all men… to woo them into collaboration.
In Savage Continent, there’s a disturbing photograph of a Corsican woman… accused of collaboration… stripped by French partisans… and the author commented that her body was being repossessed by the state. Exact… apt… true.
I.e. ‘democracy’ is not fit for a free people… by definition… because it requires our submission… it means… “‘power’ must have its way with us” – because while ‘power’ exists… it will stage the play to accomplish this…
“How do you compel obedience?” is the first-last-and-always preoccupation of the ‘philosopher’-part of the statesmen… men like De Tocqueville and Bentham… who sat down at their desks to establish the necessary… components… qualities… bits… from which a functioning ‘democracy’ could theoretically exist. ‘Power’… of course… was a given of these efforts… which… right at the outset as we embark on our quest… to understand this word more clearly… and… to find the way out of our current (global) mess… of resource-wars… and lost humanity… and loss of a vital earth… should give us pause… as… ‘power’ is the cause-generative… and what it requires… must obviously be flipped… to reverse these devastating effects.
I.e. ‘democracy’ is not fit for a free people… by definition… because it requires our submission… it means… “‘power’ must have its way with us” – because while ‘power’ exists… it will stage the play to accomplish this.
But you may say… along with a pundit I heard the other day… that “‘democracy’ is only as good as the people elected…” – but this by-passes the fundamental question of obedience. ‘Rule of law’ officially means ‘we’ subject ourselves to agreed-upon restraints. But Bentham and De Tocqueville are honest and say that the point of ‘the law’ is to compel us to obey.
But you then may object that if ‘we’ make the agreed-upon standards our object… what’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong is ‘force’.
What’s wrong is the hidden assumption that mutual aid is not our nature.
And it is.
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…a national Left is useless… it effectively means you stand with ‘power’… agree to betray your brothers and sisters who happen to be the designated ‘losers’… globally speaking… …with ‘socialism’ sweeping across Europe… destroying is also consuming… and… and this is the point… removing resources from our use…
March 3rd, 2014: Brothers and sisters…
The machinations of states is theater with two tightly inter-woven objectives…
…first: work steadily to conquer the people… according to the ‘laws’ of hierarchy (i.e. ensuring there are ‘winners’ and ‘losers’… this is key overall strategy…
(…and… by the way… when we said that the responsibility of the ‘intellectual’ is to stand with the people and renounce the privilege of standing apart… this is not a national project… a national Left is useless… it effectively means you stand with ‘power’… agree to its terms… agree to betray your brothers and sisters who happen to be the designated ‘losers’… globally speaking…)
…so this is key overall strategy… both for maintaining the undergirding ideology… as well as ‘power’s invisibility…) and of PR chest-pounding-posturing (this must be on-going…) and…
…second: play the game of ‘supremacy’ successfully… using quantifying means to keep score (otherwise known as ‘the economy’…) while maintaining the chest-pounding to draw from the people… the requisite energy.
We’ve said that the definition of ‘economy’ that’s most authentic is “eating the earth”: controlling the resources of the planet… the most key one… strategically… being us…. But with ‘socialism’ (which in the people’s mind then… and to many today,… simply meant ‘freedom’…) sweeping across Europe… and ‘infecting’ the ‘colonies’… that resource which is absolutely key to controlling all the others… us… was at risk of being lost… so ‘economy’ geared up… for destroying is also consuming… and… and this is the point… removing resources from our use… which makes sense from ‘power’s perspective… but never from ours. From ours it’s almost inconceivable… “why destroy that fertile land?”… we ask ourselves… “why enclose something that was doing such good things for everyone?”… why not universal health care?” You know we always ask ourselves these questions as if it’s just a matter of ‘power’ being educated… having their horizons broadened… gaining information… and so then the pundits delude themselves… if they’re not bought… into thinking they’re ‘helping’ to educate the ‘masters’. Trust… the ‘masters’ know what’s up… they know what’s going on. We have to start teaching each other to see reality.
And the book Savage Continent provides prodigious illustration of resources being removed from our use… and the whole mess being turned back over to ‘power’… because we were thoroughly demoralized… globally.
What he describes is an orgy of destructiveness. This systematic attack on ‘economic life’ was itself the ‘economic system’ working at a clip… racing at a pace unequaled since…
…but of course… ‘power’ isn’t done… yet.
The ‘economic system’ is not ‘capitalism’…. It’s called ‘power’… and they invent a tool called ‘the economy’ to keep us confused.
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‘Economy’ is just a tool… like any other technology. So ‘war’ is always war on us… whether they spill our guts with guns… or markets. The economy is just war by other means… and war is the profligate failure of ‘breeding’… to control the energy of the majority (the true point of the ‘education’ we’re all given.)
War is an ‘economic system’… and ‘the economy’ is war by other means… i.e…. it’s about controlling the energy of the majority… the goal being… to beat us into submission… and…
…in the ‘normal’ course of events… overt violence is (as Solozzo said…) “too expensive…” in terms of maintaining legitimacy… as a means of controlling. And so they ‘normally’ rely on Bentham… whose Panoptic guidance says: “wage war by other means… i.e. be ‘economic’… and ‘efficient’….” “Let the weight of scarcity weigh on their minds…” Bentham advised.
But when the people arise… ‘economy’… ‘efficiency’… and all that jazz… flies out the door…
…and in walks war.
‘Economy’ is just a tool… like any other technology.
So ‘war’ is always war on us… whether they spill our guts with guns… or markets.
The economy is just war by other means… and war is the profligate failure of ‘breeding’… to control the energy of the majority (the true point of the ‘education’ we’re all given.)
What they (the ‘power’-guys…) hate most… is resistance. What they love most… is obedience –
(…and… on this tip… it was a bit discouraging to listen to a man hawking a book… with similar sentiments to me when it comes to our non-human-animal friends… which is that they can teach us empathy… they can teach us how to be a living thing… as we seem [here in the U.S.] to have lost the knack. And to hear him scratching his head about where violence comes from… and how a sociopath could love animals… and then to say he thinks he’s figured out “why we’re violent…” that it’s because ‘we’ve’ created this notion of ‘the other’… ‘the other’ is co-terminus with ‘class’… with ‘power’ – it’s called the division between ‘the barbarian’ and ‘the citizen’… it’s called ‘Plato’… why won’t they say that? Why won’t they put it in that frame?… so that we can see the continuity of this mess and realize that if we don’t get busy we’re condemning our children… and the earth… to even worse destruction and devastation.
But on the connection with ‘obedience’: he was scratching his head about how the Fascists loved their dogs…. Yes… they love obedient beasts. Definitely. I’m sure it warms their hearts… and they’ll call that ‘love’. Don’t be deceived. What they ‘love’ is obedience. They love others reinforcing their sense of themselves as superior beings.)
What they love most… is obedience – to force us to obey is the name of the game… the key that explains everything… under ‘class’.
(So what does this tell us about the people of Ukraine? It should give us some sense of the risk they are in… as we said about Egypt… and Haiti… and Venezuela….
Come on! the Left. Let’s be a global Left. Let’s start realizing that if we don’t stand with our brothers and sisters in targeted regions… or in so-called… what? Whatever categories ‘power’ uses: “Well, these are the ‘producers’… and these are the ‘food growers’… or whatever. We cannot allow ourselves to be chopped up and managed.)
Keeping us stuck following orders confers on ‘power’ multiple ‘economic’ (i.e. in terms of maximizing – i.e. most ‘efficiently’… following Bentham’s ‘deep training’ way… his insistence on totalitarian control of all social institutions – the control of human energy…) benefits: it renders us pliable material with which to work… we easily bend to any use to which we’re put… offering no challenge to them; and it keeps our minds empty… bringing within reach… Plato’s dictum: “no change”… rigid class fixed in place; and… just as we need each other to develop our thought… the flip is also so… if our thought stagnates because empathy is lost… we’re less likely to congregate and overcome atomization… and so ‘decision-making’ then seems quite beyond us.
Hitler… Stalin… Mussolini… and… let’s not forget… the 1934 coup attempt in the U.S…. coordination on this scale is not gone and done… but living with us… until we… step up.
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…the answer is… we-the-people assume responsibility for our own education…
And… in every instance… of the hidden malevolence… coordinated planning to realize global totalitarianism… whether the global-statesmen are forming alliances… or jockeying with each other for position… who pays the price?… not these ones with the hubris… not these ones setting the goal… but always we commoners.
This will not end till we either deal with them… or are thoroughly conquered (which ain’t gonna happen…)
…but whatever does happen… while ‘power’ exists… whatever their intra-ruler machinations… while statesmen rule over us… they will be as one… in their fixed determination… to have their unfettered way with us…
…so that they can keep ‘working’ on… their ‘more perfect Union’ – of ‘rule’.
When will we refuse? Is it really true that we can’t move on… until we expose all of the ugliness? I hope not because it’s bottomless.
No… the answer is… we-the-people assume responsibility for our own education.
The propaganda of ‘class’ is everywhere and intense… when are we going to start challenging it?… the bizarre notion that some should have grand palatial residences… for their bodies’ and thoughts’ ease… while others not even protection from the elements… and the soul-wearying insecurity that results from it. Are we not all human beings? Is the earth not abundant?
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Of course we’re ‘smart enough’. The way the world is arranged is not ordained… is not about ‘intelligence’ but rather ‘power’… their control of aggregated human energy… which is true power… the power of life… which we reclaim when we stand with each other globally… and not with the would-be ‘masters’…. ‘Moving on’ is a ‘simple’ matter of having a transparent goal that we all discuss and get clear on… and then start working on… everywhere… universal leisure… each individual being free from necessity is the goal…
This week I heard an interview with a 21-year-old woman in the Navy as she described how… as she put in more and more time… essentially ‘making tribe’… she found herself becoming patriotic… although her reasons for signing up had been strictly economic. The folks on board talked a lot about ‘readiness’… so ‘the enemy’ could be targeted at any minute. ‘The enemy’ is how these young people are being trained to think… and we have no counter-education to offer a different way of seeing… a different story to counter the state’s. Instead… we placidly go along with patent indoctrination. When will we begin planning our way that’s opposite?
‘Power’ maintains its control by means of atomization and hierarchical division – and then by coercing (by means of the judiciary… as De Tocqueville said…) each fragment of this artificial social arrangement into performing the same inane and harmless (to ‘power’…) tasks…
…while it keeps the true goal hidden… completely outside this process – whether the angle on this manufactured reality is ‘the polity’… or ‘the economy’… or ‘society’ – in which ‘the people’ are forced to reside… i.e. the true goal is externalized.
The statesmen have by definition ruled out our freedom – by calling it ‘anarchy’. Remember Bentham’s: “He who owns the lexicon rules the world…”? Well… ‘power’ has seized exclusive naming rights for the key terms we need to get free… then told us they know best (“rule of ‘the wise’…”) that the world is too ‘complex’ to be turned over to ‘the people’… an heretofore mere uninitiated audience to the ‘world historic’ figures… and the ‘scientists’ and pundits are all pushed forward to ‘prove’ this….
…so to undermine our confidence that we don’t have to believe them… we don’t have to accept their definitions.
Of course we’re ‘smart enough’. The way the world is arranged is not ordained… is not about ‘intelligence’ but rather ‘power’…
(…our ancestors knew that… were very clear on that… we have to get back to their level of savvy when it comes to this because we have the tools now that allow us to act on it… globally…)
The current social arrangement is not about ‘intelligence’ but rather ‘power’…their control of aggregated human energy… which is true power… the power of life… which we reclaim when we stand with each other globally… and not with the would-be ‘masters’.
So what’s the opposite of this?… of standing with them?
…the opposite of hidden is transparent… instead of midnight… daylight…
…the opposite of exclusion is inclusion… wholism instead of division and atomization…
…the opposite of an externalized goal is an internalized goal… i.e. brought into the bosom of the people… as a goal we all pursue…
…thereby structurally eroding ‘power’s structure… thereby eroding its enforced control of us.
‘Moving on’ is a ‘simple’ matter of having a transparent goal that we all discuss and get clear on… and then start working on… everywhere….
What is this transparent goal?
‘Democracy’… as De Tocqueville describes it… is a fragile… carefully balanced compromise – given ‘power’ (which he most certainly does…) – between ‘anarchy’… ‘the people’ released from captivity… i.e. a classless society… and ‘subjection’… i.e. dictatorship… totalitarianism.
So it’s not ‘the economy’ that ‘power’ sees as the delicate watch (I’m referring to Albert O. Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests…) but ‘democracy’… requiring extreme craft and skill… or so the story goes….
But… to maintain a fragile balance requires a lot of energy…
…being free doesn’t.
But it does require some guarantors of non-interference with it… in the transition.
What would they be?
Individual freedom… i.e. individual ‘freedom from necessity’… or individual ‘self-sufficiency’… must be structurally guaranteed.
That is the standard… the goal… the vision… that must guide… everything… all of our actions. And… think about it… that means we can allow our thought process – our reason – to live. We can set aside the fear of how to exist… mere survival… we can devote our time to pondering from the vantage of the whole. And so… being powerful beings means that when we want those great ideas to live… we have to make that case… and convince… appeal to each other’s reason.
Universal freedom guarantees universal leisure… and vice versa… guarantees that the few cannot aggregate our energy. Because once we’re free… once it’s structurally supported and endorsed… we are at a point now where we can help each other globally… and… as Nikola Tesla saw… that’s a whole new set of terms and conditions that we have to start believing it… seeing… accepting… trusting.
That is the standard… the goal… the vision… that must guide… everything… all of our actions.
This is the point… of thorough and on-going global discussions… i.e. how to create the global infrastructure that undergirds universal leisure…
(…and by ‘universal leisure’ I mean the end of ‘coerced work’ (whether they call that ‘your service’ or ‘the wage’…) the end of others sucking on our aggregated energy… I mean freedom… freedom from necessity… individual self-sufficiency…)
…that is what we must figure out. What is the global infrastructure that allows that to be… because once that is structurally in place… we’re gonna hold on to it… we have the tools to ensure that now – thanks to Nikola Tesla and his Tribe… and all the hard work of all our commoner-ancestors over the millennia.
And once we have a clear start… we have our plow… and we who choose…
(…because it’s not about force… not about that mindset of ‘not-trusting-each-other’ – it comes back to that – and once we start the discussions that will become transparent…)
…and we who choose to be the ones who get us there… to universal leisure… can put our shoulders to it.
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So this is the touchstone of our discussions… what global reality… supports individual self-sufficiency?… People of Ukraine: if we who have the resources… the means… to say we will strike with you when you decide you’re ready… to make of Ukraine not a ‘third’… but an opposite way… do not step up…
So that’s what we have to figure out… what is that global infrastructure.
And if each individual being free from necessity is the goal… then… that’s a straightforward problem… the kind we humans are used to (over our thousands of years on the planet…) “piece a’cake… piece a’pie…” – as opposed to trying to reveal ‘power’s deep deceptions and untangle their knotted lies.
E.g.: what are the basics of shelter and food? What food holds up well over time and gives much in taste and nutrients? (…and states already keep such reserves anyway… so it may be a mere matter of mapping what’s already there…) so we can supplement food needs of our sisters and brothers elsewhere and locally. And how keep central to our thinking the value of ‘balance’… key to successfully creating an ‘opposite’.
Identification of what to do is straightforward… once we know what we want.
What we want for our world in many ways is guided by our bodies… by trusting at last what they’ve decided…
…and what they want… is to not be dependent…
…to be dependent sucks, doesn’t it?
So this is the touchstone of our discussions… what global reality… supports individual self-sufficiency?
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People of Ukraine: if we who have the resources… the means… to say we will strike with you when you decide you’re ready… to make of Ukraine not a ‘third’… but an opposite way…
…do not step up…
…then global ‘power’ can keep holding all the cards that control your ability to survive… because planning an opposite way… takes time.
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… but it’s not the “banality of evil”… it’s the banality of obedience… of following orders… putting our thought processes on hold (which we’re trained to do by parents…) which is all too familiar to us.
When we look at the vast and ‘incomprehensible’ devastation that Keith Lowe shows us… in Savage Continent… we think… or, rather are trained to think… ‘madness’!… (or ‘evil’!… or “those sad, demented autocrats!”…) and this is indeed the feeling one gets from the contemporary witnesses who come afterwards (whose words Lowe documents…) who all say, “such viciousness!… why?… why the viciousness?” They cannot grasp the ‘why’ of it… and yet… Miklos shows us the devastation as these acts are being committed… and in them the functionaries do seem… as Hannah Arendt termed it… ‘banal’… but it’s not the “banality of evil”… it’s the banality of obedience… of following orders… putting our thought processes on hold (which we’re trained to do by parents…) which is all too familiar to us.
This is one of the most important things Miklos shows us… the sense of normalcy that prevails… subsists… among the functionaries.
The banality of following orders means… our empathic feelings are frozen… but… released from the obedience training called ‘the wage’.... what flows is: more time with the children… more time to process the pain of one’s growing up… trapped in abandonment (in the “never been ‘seen’”…) and in the training in obedience… and we begin to make sense of what’s been happening to us.
But we’ve yet to ask ourselves… we’ve yet to say (in broad and extended global conversations…) how will we counter our massive mis-education?
I want to thank a man I heard this week… who called in to a radio show to counter the flood of orchestrated resistance to the notion… that we can learn empathy from our plant and animal friends. He told a story of how his anger as a child at being abandoned – and it’s always at base… our anger… due to this… the normalized mistreatment of children under ‘class’ – led him to take his anger out on small animals… and try to kill them. But one didn’t die… one lived long enough to look up at him… and say: “look at what you’ve done to me…” and so… helped him return to himself… his original empathy… because before all else we are living things – before a few among us tried to make us think that they were ‘kings’ – and our nature is to help each other…
…and this is what we must start saying… that ‘the way of states’ is opposed to our being living things… that grow according to our nature… we are not machines… here to perform the tasks we’re given… and then go meekly to our graves… give up our places… never having seen the depths of our longing even begin to be achieved…
…and it’s that longing that we’re here to attend to.
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Our feelings and empathy are forming again… here in the U.S…. “the thunder is the thunder of the floes…”
(…I’m referring to that poem I love from Christopher Fry’s play A Sleep Of Prisoners:
The human heart can go to the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this is no Winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move,
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring,
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
… but… the risk is enormous in this… as this means… by ‘power’s way of looking at things… that there are too many of us… i.e…. time for ‘Plan C’….
So you see what Shakespeare means when he says: “God grant I never prove so fond [foolish]… as to trust ‘power’ on its own bond… or a dog that seems a’sleeping… or a keeper with my freedom.”
So long as ‘power’ exists we are subjects…
…so long as we are subjects… we are subject to ‘power’s conditions…
…and its whims.
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And I suspect discrediting Barack is about more than just regaining the presidency of the U.S. [they can do that with a ‘Democrat’ – Jerry Brown being that stealth candidate…
The profligacy with which they waste our lives astounds us… and yet nonetheless (or maybe because of our astonishment…) we consistently seem to refuse to see… what’s obvious: that we are the targets… that we are what they’re trying to conquer…
…on this they’re all united… all the global shadow-state-statesmen.
And what’s the drumbeat I’m hearing today from the pundits who speak for this global shadow-state? (Ray McGovern being the most duplicitous… and John McCain the most ‘prominent’…): “Putin is crazy… Putin is nuts….” “Putin has an emotional attachment…” says Angela Merkel… playing Iago to perfection. “He’s not in touch… no telling what… insane stuff he’s capable of….”
Sisters and brothers… let’s never forget… that the media we’re given is orchestration…
…so… the question is… what is being orchestrated?
And as we said last week… until we no longer have keepers… we have to face the fact… that…
…it could be anything…
…anything along a horrific spectrum… from the most modest being… to remind us all globally… how comforting it is… to have a daddy…
…to… a conclusion that too many of us are actively presenting a challenge….
Recall what we said… that… because of our atomization… only they know the true global situation… how far along is our resistance… only they know the full extent of it….
This is no way to live…
…wondering just how hideous the next horror will be that they’ll choose to visit upon us.
It’s critical that we start our global planning to move beyond it…
…but… as we’re being confronted with this mess… if I had to guess… I’d say… we’re seeing an elaborate scheme… to discredit Barack… and regain the U.S. Presidency. That these guys have been desperate to discredit him… fabricating one crisis after another (Benghazi attack… the Syrian state killing ‘its’ citizens… phone taps – on ‘our’ ‘friends’, no less… [Angela Merkel… significantly…] Affordable Care Act… horrific drone attacks… I.R.S….
…from ‘right’ and ‘left’… hoping to make Barack look ineffective… has been patently obvious.
(And I suspect discrediting Barack is about more than just regaining the presidency of the U.S. [they can do that with a ‘Democrat’ – Jerry Brown being that stealth candidate….] And with this tactic about to be discussed… Miklos and Popper and Bernal have provided invaluable assistance… to enable us to see how ‘power’ invents the stories it needs… that ‘fit’… with them being ‘supermen’… men of ‘breeding’ and ‘cool intellect’… and that story will not admit… an African-American president that out-shines them in every respect… and most particularly in the enactment of their favorite story: ‘statesmanship’… which is supposedly their game… their signature expertise and specialty… the skillful guiding of the ‘ship of state’.
I suspect… they are compiling [crafting…] as we speak… the ‘evidence’ to make the case… not only that the first African-American president just ‘couldn’t cut it’… but that he was almost “the ruination of ‘us’….” This… in keeping with their usual practice… is the story they plan for the ‘history’ books… this is what ‘power’ does… in order to pursue its obsession… its dream of being deemed the ultimate supra-national ‘supermen’.)
But we’re still moved to ask: should they regain the White House… what’s their plan?
What would you imagine? Let’s get out our Plato-given-hubris gear… and put on our vampire-hat.
Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
–––
Chapter XXII
Whenever there was an alert we were taken, convoyed by well-armed SS guards, to the Sonderkommando shelter, that is, to the gas chamber. (Part 57)
I was in the habit of reading for awhile in bed each night before I went to sleep. One night, while I was doing just that, the lights suddenly went out and the KZ alarm siren began its dismal wail. Whenever there was an alert we were taken, convoyed by well-armed SS guards, to the Sonderkommando shelter, that is, to the gas chamber.
We crossed the threshold of the gas chamber with heavy hearts. The whole kommando was present, 200 strong. It was a terrible feeling to remain in this room, knowing that hundreds of thousands of people had met a frightful end here. Besides, we knew that the life of the Sonderkommando was drawing to a close. This being the case, the SS could very easily have closed the gas chamber doors and dumped four cases of cyclon gas down the chimneys to liquidate us all.
As a matter of fact, such action would not have been without precedent. A part of the eleventh Sonderkommando had been transferred from the D quarter to Barracks 13, a restricted area, and informed that, upon orders from above, the group would no longer live in the crematoriums, but henceforth in this barracks. They would continue to work at the ovens, however, going in two separate groups from the barracks to the crematorium. That same evening they had been taken to the D quarter for a bath and a change of clothing. After the bath they had been pushed into a neighboring room to get disinfected clothes. This room was a real disinfecting chamber, and as such could be hermetically sealed. Normally, that was where the lice-filled clothes collected in the camp were disinfected. Four hundred men from the Sonderkommando were liquidated in this manner. From there, trucks took their bodies to the funeral pyre.
Thus our anxiety while waiting for the alert to be over was not unfounded. This one lasted for three hours. Then we came up out of darkness to see the long kilometers of barbed wire once again lighted by the searchlights, and returned to bed. I tried to fall asleep, but sleep was slow in coming.
–––
This news gave us some slight hope for the future. We knew that the hands that had smuggled us these weapons could not be far off…. As for those destined to pay with their lives, at least they would not have died like worms, crushed by their butchers’ unclean hands. On the contrary, they would be the first in the history of the KZ who, despite overwhelming odds in both numbers and material, would have sowed death and destruction among their torturers before dying proudly like men… (Part 58)
The following day, while making my rounds in number two crematorium, the chief of the Sonderkommando there informed me confidentially that during the alert the previous night a group of partisans had slipped into the camp. In an out-of-the-way spot they had cut the barbed wire surrounding the courtyard and slipped three machine guns and twenty hand grenades through the opening. The Sonderkommando men ahd discovered them early that morning and hidden them in a safe place.
This news gave us some slight hope for the future. We knew that the hands that had smuggled us these weapons could not be far off. From a series of observations I was inclined to believe that the local underground was operating about 25 to 30 kilometers from the camp. We hoped that, under cover of the next alert, they would manage to slip us some more weapons. Recently there had been alerts every day. But for us the only ones that really counted were those that occurred at night and lasted a relatively long time, for only then could our anonymous and devoted friends get close to the camp. After three or four such alerts, we would perhaps have enough arms to try and force our way past the guards.
The organization for this future operation was coordinated by number three crematorium, and had contacts in all the others. The whole affair was being conducted with the utmost care and circumspection. Death stalked our every move, in the form of the lethal machine guns manned by our guards. We wanted to live. We wanted to get out of here. But even if most of us failed to make it, even if only one or two escaped, we would still have won out, for there would then be someone to tell the world about the dark mysteries of these death factories.
As for those destined to pay with their lives, at least they would not have died like worms, crushed by their butchers’ unclean hands. On the contrary, they would be the first in the history of the KZ who, despite overwhelming odds in both numbers and material, would have sowed death and destruction among their torturers before dying proudly like men.
–––
WUR of March 16th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
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…“killing in the name of…” remembering the incomparable courage of Rachel Corrie…
Thank-yous are due… to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine… staying clear and focused in the face of tremendous pressure… and to the people of Russia… who turned out in the tens of thousands to stand with them… and say ‘no’ to Putin… a very dangerous thing to do….
Today… before we hear from Miklos Nyiszli… we’re going to spend some time with Rage Against the Machine… the band… but also the historical event… which we’re still in the midst of…
…and how appropriate for us to do this today… when we give thanks for the incomparable courage of Rachel Corrie… thank you Sister… words fail… and we know that you’re just the known tip of an enormous well of courage found in every land… but perhaps most in those regions of the globe facing the greatest challenges (because designated as ‘peripheries’…) the ‘global South’: the Middle East… Asia and Africa… for whom surviving each day is a tremendous victory… who must watch their dearest ones fall… and yet live on… love on… fight on…
…you are in our hearts.
(…but on second thought it’s come to me… it may be we here in the U.S. who face the greatest challenge… threatened loss of empathy… as a direct consequence… of our deep atomization…
…all those with heart… despite… you are our inspiration….)
–––
March 10th, 2014: Sisters and brothers…
Joel’s book asks the tough questions… like… what exactly is ‘the system’ anyway?… And if you’re interested in taking that broader discussion out into the community… me too… please get in touch.
It’s interesting that George Eliot came up for me last week… because she’s coming up again for me now…
…both because I received in the mail this morning Joel McIver’s just-out book on Rage Against The Machine… [you can read the interview he did with me for the book on the page: Conversation with Joel McIver]
…and… simultaneously… because I’ve been pondering this word ‘democracy’…
…and a poem she wrote is pertinent:
1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
2nd Gent. Nay, power is relative;
You cannot fright the coming pest with border fortresses,
Or catch your carp with subtle argument,
All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
Unless effect be there; and action’s self
Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience.
It’s startling to me… as I read Joel’s book… what a gift it is – what he’s done – by asking the tough questions… the questions that have been plaguing the Left for some time…
…like: how to end ‘the system’ while being part of ‘the system’?… and what exactly is ‘the system’ anyway?…
…and: what is the objective?…
…and: should we try to be strategic?…
…and: should our focus be ‘local’ or ‘global’?…
…and: is Noam Chomsky right when he says, “don’t worry about what ‘the alternative’ should be. If you want a more free and democratic society, you go out and do it…”?
…but: what is ‘free’?… what is a ‘democratic society’?… and does ‘democracy’ mean ‘free’?… And why do our bodies contradict what you say?
In examining Rage Against The Machine’s messages and why they resonated…
…in exploring what gave rise to the band… and then…
…in asking those continuously recurring questions…
…he’s describing the dilemmas that still face our resistance – we who are grappling with how to move on – beyond commodification… beyond de-humanization… beyond our separation from each other…
… and… by bringing together the existing views of ‘where we are’… he’s… in a sense… assessing the current state of our resistance… summarizing the current state of our understanding of ‘the system’… of our ‘seeing-reality’…
…providing a tremendous service thereby …
…one very relevant and needed… I believe… in the current moment… for reasons I’ll be sharing shortly.
The most attention-grabbing element of the first 12 Rage Against The Machine songs was their lyrical content, devised by de la Rocha, and a pulverizing denunciation of almost everything which Western society was based on in 1991. Poverty versus wealth, exploitation of the masses by vested interests, the war crimes of the elite, the failure of education, the mental and physical enslavement of you and me… all of these things were spat out and stamped upon by this passionate kid with dreadlocks.
They use force to make you do what the deciders have decided you must do...
Now ya do what they taught ya
Now you're under control
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
(‘Killing In The Name’ – 1992)
…[T]he unforgettable ‘Bullet In The Head’, which begins with a chorded bass riff and slips quickly into some of de la Rocha’s most venomous lyrics. Addressing themes such as the manipulation of our minds by advertising, the song paints a picture of a zombified population (“believing all the lies that they’re telling ya / buying all the products that they’re selling ya”), sleepwalking through life as if brain-dead. The singer refers to TV as an “in-house drive-by”, and audiences as the victims who are dispatched for corporations’ convenience. Grim stuff, but delivered in a funky-as-hell manner, with Commerford’s relentless bass groove devolving at the song’s end into Rage’s most famous riff, a spidery, descending figure that is still heard all these years later in guitar stores worldwide. (Joel McIver, Rage Against The Machine, p. 53 and 62)
I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You were mesmerised
Cellular phones soundin’ a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realise
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
(‘Bullet In The Head’ – 1993)
There’s a lot here to ponder in those lyrics… and in the tough questions Joel documents. We’ll but scratch the surface of it on March 16th. If you’re interested in checking out his book, you can visit: Joel’s site or: the Blabbermouth site. And if you’re interested in taking that broader discussion out into the community… me too… please get in touch.
–––
I doubt not that ‘power’ put them in its crosshairs… made certain lots of inauthentic people crossed their paths…
For the past few weeks we’ve asked: “Where is the Left?”… and Joel McIver’s book arrived and I opened it… and as if in answer to my question… there was Noam Chomsky… being quoted advising guitarist Tom Morello of the band. This was 1996. A pregnant moment. Here was a group of young people reaching large numbers… and they were searching for the truth. They had high hopes for what could be accomplished… if truth were in hand.
I doubt not that ‘power’ put them in its crosshairs… made certain lots of inauthentic people crossed their paths… did all it could to sow dissension among them… did its best to lessen their effect… to nullify their impact… and of course… to pull them off track. This is what ‘power’ does when it perceives a threat.
And in this context… they sought unimpeachable sources… they reached out… and I have to speak on that… at the risk of singing solo voce… once again… I must wade in….
Not only was Noam Chomsky speaking on ‘democracy’ on the first page of Joel’s book… but when I turned on the radio this morning (03.11.14) there he was again… omnipresent spokesperson for the wise and measured Left it seems… and Joel’s book is helping me see more clearly… that the metaphor that came to me in pondering Chomsky’s impact… a few shows back – The Pied Piper of Hamlin – was all too apt…
Superficially… I thought… listening this morning… my words and his seem consonant… he too reminds us all that states serve themselves (and implicitly the game of ‘supremacy’…) and not ‘the people’… but this is posed as a failure of ‘democracy’… urging… by example and word… both a ‘left-style’ of patriotism (“make democracy real”… or “fix the state”…) – which reinforces the state – and an endless and ultimately fruitless quest to “be the best!”… i.e. learn more… get better informed… take on all the Left causes… and you’ll be making a dent… for the next generation to start with.
Except… each generation… we dig ourselves deeper and deeper… caught… high-walled-in… into creeping (or actual… depending on your slotted spot in the world – and on the definition…) totalitarianism.
And what do our wise elders say to do… when you’re stuck in a hole and can’t get out? Stop digging. Stop doing the conventional thing… the knee-jerk following of advice that is essentially but a set-up for burn-out…
(…mission accomplished?…) from ‘power’s perspective…
…and don’t we just do that too… all of it… try to be the best (intellects…) put our dedication to the test… try to soar above the common hoard (implied… but never said…) and flame-out trying?
–––
“…work hard…” This is the point of the state. For when we’re kept busy, we can’t figure out the illusion. Our eyes can’t see it…
The professional Left… the ones whose voices get to speak over the airwaves… in our atomization-clogged class-rigid-mired manufactured reality… have an obligation to the youth… to help them… as Karl Popper said… grow independent of ‘us’… of this calcified ‘reality’… of the limits imposed by their so-called ‘betters’…
…and they owe a debt to all of us… to we-the-species… to move us past this miring of class… it is a debt to humanity and all life… the price we pay for our ticket to ride….
And what I’ve learned on my recent spin… circling around and getting my look at it… is that this mess ain’t complicated… and if a pundit… with all his years on the planet hasn’t given us at least this… and therefore the way out of it…
…that’s not an accident.
Please listen to the following fragments from earlier shows. The first one is from December 2, 2012 (“…it’s not ‘the market’ that ‘power’ wants to make ‘self-regulating’… but us… we-the people…”), and the second is from January 13, 2013 (“…if we can be made obedient… ‘the system’ can be self-regulating’…” and… “the pundit class is the only thing that gives ‘power’ its hold…” [and some may be wondering about that… because there’s lots of ‘buffers’. But is the ‘pundit’-one key – because of our need to feel ‘smart’?])
…this is the goal of totalitarianism… Plato’s dictum: “no change.”
They bear, I think, on where we are now in our discussion. I’m more convinced than ever that “planning our future is a school… and what comes from it are tools…”
…it’s not ‘the market’ ‘power’ wants to make ‘self-regulating’… but us… we-the-people… and:
…if we can be made obedient… ‘the system’ can be ‘self-regulating’….
–––
This comment of Miklos’ from an upcoming chapter is coming up for me… I’ll share it – with my comment in reaction to it – as I ponder it…
I might add that during the filling of work quotas, the SS commission first accepted volunteers for the convoys, and used arbitrary incorporation only when the number of volunteers did not attain the required number. Nevertheless, there were few volunteers, since nobody wanted to forsake the advantages of his present situation – that of not working – for another. Few were willing to volunteer for forced labor when the food rations were insufficient even to sustain life in the KZ. Poor, short-sighted women, if only they had understood the mentality of the Third Reich’s KZ, they would have realized that those who did not work did not live.
[Need it be said that this is the mentality of ‘power’?… that ‘rule’ and ‘economic system’… are coterminous… – P.S.]
I think this is coming up for me because of that second implied Chomsky message: “focus on being ‘productive’… be the best… work hard….” This is the point of the state. For when we’re kept busy, we can’t figure out the illusion. Our eyes can’t see it… what we wake up to every morning: that we’re captives… that this is wrong… that this is not what we want.
–––
…that there is much confusion about “what is ‘the state’?”… because of all those buffers… between ‘the people’ and ‘power’… and that this is precisely the borderland where dissent gets waylaid… gets intercepted…
Because the story Joel McIver is telling is unknown to me… except in its larger sense of “youth posing a threat to ‘power’…” I approach it fresh… and so reads almost like a mystery: “how will ‘power’ mess with them?” is part of what I’m thinking…
…because that ‘power’ messed with them… I have no doubt.
But another part of what engages me is it’s underlying and running theme of ‘voice’… of how difficult it is to find it… one’s own authentic voice… given such massive state repression [because that ‘busyness’ starts early… we have to talk more about that…] that never rises to the level of discussion because it’s never acknowledged. We send our children to schools where orders are barked at them all day… and reward them according to the degree to which they learn to follow them unquestioningly… which to do means… silencing authenticity… their authentic voices…
…and of course the silencing begins before then… at the nipple… or in the crib….
So ‘claiming voice’ in a world where ‘power’ seeks to name us… that’s resistance…… that’s being ‘disobedient’…
…but then… what more is needed?… is the question that I ponder when I read George Eliot’s quote (and Joel’s book…) extended to conceive ‘power’ globally. Why is ‘disobedience’ alone… not enough… to expose… confront… and engage successfully with global ‘power’? For if it was… then… Rage Against The Machine… surely… and all the ones with equal determination if not more… all those large spirits… who refused to settle… who refused ‘obedience’ as their course in life… like Bob Marley… and Paul Robeson before him… also musicians who set out with intention to change the world… going head-to-head with ‘power’… would have done it… would have seen the ins and outs of ‘power’… and lit… that necessary global resistance. So why wasn’t it enough?
In a show over a year ago we said… while thinking through that poem by George Eliot… that “our choice can’t be disobedience unless our obedience comes to our awareness…” – and that means that ‘the state’ becomes a question. But Joel’s book is helping me see that that conclusion – that ‘the state’ itself becomes a question – is not self-evident… that there is much confusion about “what is ‘the state’?”… because of all those buffers… between ‘the people’ and ‘power’… and that this is precisely the borderland where dissent gets waylaid… gets intercepted…
The problem is… ‘power’ is using that same inspirational music… has a global focus… a tight lock on the limits of debate… and virtually limitless resources… and our oceans are dying…
…in this borderland of confusion….
“…gets waylaid…” in multiple ways… all of them varieties of distraction… all of them buffers that get pushed front and center….
Perhaps their favorite… because it works so faithfully… and is relatively cheap… is ‘the police’ (and I’m putting that in quotes to express that it’s a tactic…) that waylays our bodies… and then there’s the pundits… who define what it means to be wise… ‘smart’… which of course we all want to be.
So what does all this activism mean, if at the end of the road a band as venomous and exciting as Rage Against The Machine can fade quietly away? Perhaps this – that their message, viral in its behaviour, lingers on long after the music itself has stopped. What Rage would no doubt tell you to do would be to stop reading, go out and do whatever you feel you need to do to make the world better. On which note, there’s one more Noam Chomsky quote, as directed to Morello in that pivotal Radio Free LA interview, which we should revisit to ensure that this final point is hammered home.
Asked “What sort of society do you envision as one that would not be based on exploitation or domination, and how would we get there from here?” the great man replied: “I don’t really understand the question. It’s kind of interesting. I’m asked that question constantly in sort of privileged circles. I’m never asked it when I go to talk to poor people. They tell me what they’re doing. Maybe they ask for a comment, but they don’t ask how they do it. How you do it is very straightforward: you go out and do it. If you want a more free and democratic society, you go out and do it.”
He elaborated: “The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the sharp critique and breakdown of illegitimate authority in all sorts of domains which took place since the sixties, the environmental movements, the feminist movement, the solidarity movements in the eighties – all of these things changed the society a lot. Well, how did they do it? Well, they just did it. People get together, they organize, they pressure, they try to learn, they try to help others to learn. That’s the way things change. That’s why we don’t live under feudalism and slavery. That’s why we have, by comparative standards, a very free society in the United States, with a lot of opportunities and options and very limited capacity on the part of the state for forced control. Well, that’s been gained by struggle.”
[Notice that he changed the subject? – P.S.]
Chomsky continued: “People are now fighting to preserve workers’ rights and Social Security and medical support and some sort of health programme, and so on. People are now fighting to preserve these things. Well, they were not there not long ago. They were achieved by plenty of popular struggle and there are no limits to this. There’s no reason why corporate tyranny – which is a fairly recent development, its institutional form is from the early part of this century – there’s no reason why that form of tyranny should not be dismantled, just as other kinds of totalitarianism were dismantled. Fascism and Stalinism, for example. And there are no particular limits to this.
“Any kind of illegitimate authority that exists, whatever it may be, from interpersonal relations up to huge states and transnational corporations, every such form of authority has to demonstrate legitimacy. They have the burden of proof… When it can’t be met, it should simply be dismantled. And that’s the way to move more towards a free and just democratic society. I don’t think there’s any sphere of life where these questions don’t arise. There’s different answers in different places and that depends on the circumstances, but the mechanisms are always the same. It’s engagement, education, organizing, pressure, building new institutions. Those are the ways. In a country like ours they’re much more available than in a place like Haiti or Colombia where you might get murdered for it. It won’t happen here. But it’s the same mechanism.”
You take his point. Action is all that is necessary to make change happen: that and co-operation. Whether it’s sending a song to number one at Christmas, or evicting a dictatorial leader from office, the approach is essentially the same: get together, form a plan and execute it. And why you’re at it, play some inspirational music and turn up the volume. I’m sure you can think of the perfect band. (Joel McIver, Rage Against The Machine, p. 209 – 10)
The problem is… ‘power’ is using that same inspirational music… has a global focus… a tight lock on the limits of debate… and virtually limitless resources… and our oceans are dying.
–––
If we can set a path to a future that is the opposite of ‘power’… then ‘power’ cannot hide in our movement… as well as enable us to use our encounters with ‘power’s representatives as a learning experience… as they do with their encounters with us…
“…he’s describing the dilemmas that still face our resistance – we who are grappling with how to move on – beyond commodification… beyond de-humanization… beyond our separation from each other…”
…and when we attempt to move on beyond commodification… beyond de-humanization… beyond our separation from each other…
…at each one of these junctures… sits the state… enforcing them… the state is the enforcer for ‘power’… in every way… at every ‘level’… that no one says this… is not by accident.
The state appears at every juncture… every level… every box we’re herded into…
…‘power’ can only hide if we are ‘self-regulating’… i.e… obedient….
But ‘disobedience’ is easily contained… within a narrow state frame… as every state… to be a state… must be able to arouse anger against an ‘other’… create buffers… to ward off potential invasions of thought as this… as Rage… ideas that challenge it… i.e. challenge the legitimacy of ‘rule’ itself… so states are guardians at the gate – police our global interactions… our ‘idea-exchanges’… to be ready to repulse potential threats… Plato guided them well in this (his railings against ‘imperialism’ – his word for foreign invasions of thought…) here no less than in the need for keeping youth in check….
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So how do we see the state… standing at the gate? How do we ‘out’ ‘power’ wherever it hides?
…in class… (“‘natural’ inequalities”…)
…in greed (“corporate acquisitiveness”… and ‘human nature’…)
…in violence (‘human nature’…)
If we can set a path to a future that is the opposite of ‘power’… then ‘power’ cannot hide in our movement.
As I read Rage Against The Machine I found myself noticing if there was a way ‘power’ could have been ‘outed’… made transparent… and so both enable a focused effort to move on around it (assuming a clear goal…) as well as to enable us to use our encounters with ‘power’s representatives as a learning experience… as they do with their encounters with us…
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In the name of ‘the state’… in the name of religion… in the name of Plato’s Tribe… in the name of those who call themselves ‘the wise’… these killings are done… “killing in the name of…”
So how did ‘power’ ‘mess with them’ – as I went into the book thinking?
If you set aside the all-but-guaranteed and omnipresent agent provocateurs – some in uniform… some… not – inciting violence at public events… and the probably unprovable but equally certain Iagos… whispering in their ears… or providing drugs…
…and of course the inevitable right-wing media attacks… intended to prejudice the broader populace against them (which matters… by the way…) and use them as a tool for stimulating fear of ‘radical youth’…
…on the surface… ‘power’ seems to have ‘messed with them’ by granting them a healthy recording contract… which tells us… what?… in terms of that challenging double-question the book raises: “how to end ‘the system’ while being part of ‘the system’?… and what exactly is ‘the system’ anyway?” In some sense my work of recent years has all been devoted to that question… and we can’t delve deep in these brief minutes. Suffice to say… Epic Records… or Sony… had zero concern about them actually ending the system. But ‘ending the system’ was never framed as the end… how could it be… with the guidance they were given… born up by centuries of conventional wisdom…centuries of pundits containing us… establishing the ‘legitimate’ limits of thought – because we all want to be ‘smart’… right?
But I also think there’s another way that ‘power’ messed with… not just them but all of us… or rather… used them to mess with all of us…
…because ‘power’ learns from movements. It is a ‘learning-bot’ that also steals… raids… the people’s creativity… and uses what we’ve made… to grow stronger… to (to their minds…) hopefully inoculate them from us… for next time.
I.e. they plan…. (When will we do the same?… as determinedly focus as they do… on our goal… on what we want… because once we do… we’ll get it.)
Watching Rage move… how loose they were… reminded me of many of the inauthentic youth I met while hawking books (…I’m thinking also of Venezuela right now… there’s lots of ‘clues’….) So it didn’t surprise me to read… how ‘right-wing’… and Fascist movements have adopted their music as their own (the book documents its use in right-wing movements or causes in Britain… by Paul Ryan here in the U.S…. the jailors in Guantanamo….)
You see they study mass movements for tips on how to strengthen their totalitarian one (on-going though subterranean… until they have a firm hold on the U.S. government (what they’ve been seeking for decades….)
I suspect they’ve learned to use the music for their own ends… rather than fight it (remember?… “always temper ‘the ideal’ with ‘the possible’”…) their ends being to tempt as many youth as they can… into totalitarianism… dressed up as being ‘shepherds’ to gather up the sheep… patriotically, of course… and herd them to the den… to teach them to want to be just like them… “the wise ‘philosopher-statesmen’….”
If we name these aggressive… very intentional… organizing techniques and infiltration practices of ‘power’… then we can start to do something about them… but most importantly… whether you believe ‘power’ engages with youth to this degree or not… the pressure of converging crises weighing on our humble earth must surely help us see… that we must offer youth… another way to be… another kind of society… an alternative….
If hope is to live among us then… we must start consciously creating that opposite… with them… with our children… as they will be living it when we’re gone.
Today (March 15, 2014) I heard a Syrian activist living in exile… a man whose wife and younger brother had been kidnapped by… at least in one instance for sure… the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He was asked what he was feeling and he said, “I am angry and I’m trying to express this anger in a creative way and help our people find some hope for the future.”
In the name of ‘the state’… in the name of religion… in the name of Plato’s Tribe… in the name of those who call themselves ‘the wise’… these killings are done… “killing in the name of…”
And he’s so right. Miklos has shown us this too… we-the-global-people… need a realistic sense of hope. That is the priority… beyond all else… and certainly… beyond anger.
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Rage… demonstrated what listening to your body means… what it looks like… showed how tapping into the force of life itself releases power… and puts you at odds with ‘the system’…
As living things… whether you’re card-carrying Plato’s Tribe or we-the-global-people… we are continuously learning as we go…. So I don’t altogether agree with Dorian Lynskey when he says… in answer to a question from Joel… that there’s less of an appetite for ‘protest music’ today than two decades ago… because “the world’s problems seem so vast and suffocating…” (p. 158 – 9, …maybe our ‘protest music’ has gone deeper than just needing a song….)
What made Rage electrifying for the class-bound… trapped-in-suburban-bland youth who flocked to see them… was that they demonstrated what listening to your body means… what it looks like… showed how tapping into the force of life itself releases power… and puts you at odds with ‘the system’…
…they modeled that.
But… having pushed the limits of intuitive ‘disobedience’ as far as it could then be imagined… and yet… to see that it was absorbed by ‘the system’ – that ‘power’ handled it… that is a devastating final message to send…
…so then comes the pondering… and then ‘power’s reaction: incorporating and directing (they intend…) the inevitable ‘rage’… youth feel under class…
RATM showed ‘power’ that this rage must be managed and contained… and that that rage (they think…) can be… perhaps (they hope…) successfully diverted down totalitarian roads…
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…they can give us buffers ad infinitum… we gotta talk about that… we gotta look past the buffers. That means we have to have a goal to keep our eyes on… help each other respond… return to calm…
It feels like this Catch-22. We can only get free by listening to our bodies… but if we listen to our bodies they can always get us with their ‘police’ tactic (i.e. react with anger when provoked by agent provocateurs…) and divert our focus onto the buffers (they can give us buffers ad infinitum… we gotta talk about that… we gotta look past the buffers. That means we have to have a goal to keep our eyes on…)
…so… it’s a circle of growth that we must consciously sow… never forgetting… that we must provide… for each other… a continuous feedback loop of support. We are many… they are few… we have to be many eyes and minds watching these tactics unfold around us… and know how to respond… help each other… return to calm… and while we know… that some among us will be inauthentic… it matters not… if we know where we’re going – it’s only when we don’t that this tactic influences us… that we can be led into confusion.
I think that we are processing the fact that… until we see the snare… that we are ‘the state’… until we refuse to harbor that nightmare.
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…that we begin the unification in our pointing away from ‘this’… this current ‘system’ – for our brothers and sisters – seeing the ‘this’ as ‘class’… and seeing ‘class’ as ‘the state’……
“…Affairs are now soul size…” means our souls themselves are at risk – are what’s being contested – and that if this is the way more and more of us globally are looking at it… then this is the start of what unifies us…
…and we can begin with this… begin orienting our efforts – before having a common name – around this ‘knowing’…
…this ‘knowing’ that it is absolutely critical that we start the ‘opposite’…
– the ‘opposite’ to this current social arrangement –
…this ‘knowing’ that we begin the unification in our pointing away from ‘this’… this current ‘system’ – for our brothers and sisters – seeing the ‘this’ as ‘class’… and seeing ‘class’ as ‘the state’…
…before we physically manifest it – this ‘knowing’ – in a single day of resistance to the ranking… the division… to the atomization… to ‘power’… to ‘the state’…
…a day in which we simply say…
…“Love demands we take each others hands… globally…
…and show allegiance to our common life…
…by freeing ourselves from the constraints imposed by states…
…and with compassion and with courage… learn the ways by which…
…we self-govern (using those new tools that Nikola Tesla helped us have… we can do this now… we can self-govern… these are for us… this technology – not the evil stuff… but the stuff that helps us be one… and self govern…)
– ‘govern’ ourselves directly –
…and we need no name for that but ‘no-more-masters’…
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Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
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Chapter XXIII
…Annihilation time had come for the 4,500 inhabitants of the Gypsy Camp. …This time, however, the victims thrown to the flames were not Jews, but Christians: Catholic gypsies from Germany and Austria. (Part 59)
Annihilation time had come for the 4,500 inhabitants of the Gypsy Camp. The measures taken were the same as those taken for the liquidation of the Czech Camp. All the barracks were quarantined. SS guards, leading their police dogs, invaded the Gypsy quarters and chased the inhabitants outside, where they were made to line up. Rations of bread and salami were distributed. The gypsies were made to believe that they were being shipped to another camp, and they swallowed the story. A very easy and efficacious way of calming their fears. No one thought of the crematoriums, for then why would rations of food have been distributed?
The strategy on the part of the SS was dictated neither by pity nor a regard for those condemned to death, but merely by their desire to expedite a large group of people, without any unnecessary incidents or delays, to the gas chambers, guarded by a relatively small patrol. The strategy worked to perfection. Everything went off as planned. Throughout the night the chimneys of numbers one and two crematoriums sent flames roaring skyward, so that the entire camp was lighted with a sinister glow.
Next day the Gypsy Camp, once so noisy, lay silent and deserted. The only sound was the monotonous chant of the barbed wires rubbing together, while the doors and windows left open banged and squeaked endlessly under the powerful wind of the Volhynian steppes.
Once again Europe’s pyromaniacs had organized a gigantic display of fireworks. Once again the setting was the Auschwitz concentration camp. This time, however, the victims thrown to the flames were not Jews, but Christians: Catholic gypsies from Germany and Austria. By morning their bodies had been transformed into a pile of silvery ashes rising in the crematorium courtyard. The bodies of twelve sets of twins had not been consigned to the flames. Even before sending them to the gas chamber, Dr. Mengele had marked a Z.S. on their chests with his special chalk.
In this collection of bodies there were twins of all ages, ranging from newborn infants to sixteen-year-olds. For the moment, the twelve pairs of corpses were stretched out on the concrete floor of the “morgue.” Bodies of black-haired, dark-skinned children. The job of classifying them by pairs was a tiring one. I was careful not to mix them up, for I knew that if I should render these rare and precious specimens unusable for his research, Dr. Mengele would make me pay for it with my life.
Only a few days before I had been sitting with him in the work room, near the table, looking through the records already set up on twins, when he noticed a faint spot of grease on the bright blue cover of one of the files. I often handled the records in the course of my dissections, and had probably spotted it with a bit of grease. Dr. Mengele shot a withering glance at me and said, very seriously:
“How can you be so careless with these files, which I have compiled with so much love!”
The word “love” had just crossed Dr. Mengele’s lips. I was so taken aback that I sat there dumbfounded, unable to think of anything to say in reply.
[…“killing in the name of…” and notice… Christians this time… “killing in the name of…” ‘perfection’… – P.S.]
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WUR of March 23rd, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
…5 print books… no problem… using the same software… now it’s more like tacking into a strong wind… requiring extreme concentration… because ‘In Design’ seems to have sprouted viruses… and my hard drive seems to have an evil twin…
[Folks… I’ve hesitated about saying so (evidence of manipulation has been going on for some time…) assuming you probably know… but my files are being messed with… as in… altered… I believe ‘malevolent forces’ have made duplicates… for what purpose I think can easily be imagined… point being… I’ve decided to say something specifically about the substituted pdf of Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class… because that’s something (I hope) I can address… though I know it’s just the tip. I just discovered a much less complete substitute (1.3 MB as opposed to 1.6 MB) is what some folks may be downloading (the Internet download indicated it was 1.6 MB (and opened up this version on my machine) but when I opened up what was actually on the Internet from the top of my download list… it had switched to 1.3 MB – for the current time, i.e. the current download… a version from over a month ago. So… just so you know… when I upload more chapters I’ll make a note on the Nascence website… indicating how many chapters / pages you should be receiving.
The other thing is… since I’m on this topic… ‘before’… i.e. before the radio show… making books was a relative breeze (I’d done 5 print books… no problem… using the same software…) now it’s more like tacking into a strong wind… requiring extreme concentration… because ‘In Design’ seems to have sprouted viruses… and my hard drive seems to have an evil twin… one open to wireless… which replaces the one that isn’t (but it does have expanded capacity – it’s a miracle!…) a mini-odyssey, it’s been… just to make and put up pdfs… so please accept my apologies for the haphazard formatting… typos… and some omissions I’m sure (as there’s always updates once I do the actual show…) but getting them out at all – these pdfs – feels like an achievement… each one a tiny victory. – P.S.]
……the ‘local’ interconnections have to be with a global consciousness… consciously interlinking with all of our brothers and sisters globally… so that we can coordinate a global action… discuss and flesh out the key elements of a social arrangement based in good fellowship… like, ‘consensus authority’… ‘open tribalism’ (which has sharing as its purpose…) ‘transparent and inclusive decision-making’… fluid ‘structures’ and continuous growth… global-interconnections supporting individual self-sufficiency…
March 18th, 2014: Sisters and brothers… I think we should talk continuously – perhaps in ‘meet-ups’ – about the opposite of ‘power’… so we can start being strategic… and not be perpetually rolled-over by ‘power’. ‘Power’ has the resources – it has been systematically setting it up that way – claiming the resources of the globe-entire – to ensure that we got nowhere to go –…
…it has the resources to mess with us endlessly… provide us with ‘causes’ aplenty to keep us ‘busy’ – which is its key objective with us – busy for a lifetime (so like a parent locking a child in a room… and telling herself she’s helping her child learn to be ‘obedient’.) It’s all about leaving the ‘running’ of the world to a tiny… miniscule… number of people. We’ve never discussed the implications of this….
But beginning to discuss – and subsequently define – what the opposite of ‘power’ would look like… not only allows us to begin being strategic… it continuously feeds a realistic sense of hope… which we need to be ready… for whatever catastrophe ‘power’ unleashes.
(And on second thought… let me apologize for putting it like this… as if they haven’t already done this. But because they play the Liar’s part… because they act with hidden dollars… that doesn’t mean they haven’t already unleashed multitudinous catastrophes on Asia… Haiti… Eastern Europe… Egypt… and the Middle East generally… and Syria particularly… and Africa – which is not even to speak of the everyday catastrophe of being forced to live robotically.)
But even in the midst of manufactured crisis… we can continue to build our ‘opposite’: foster a global consciousness while building our interconnections – locally and globally…
(…the ‘local’ interconnections have to be with a global consciousness… that means we are at the same time consciously interlinking with all of our brothers and sisters… so that we can coordinate a global action: a global General Strike…)
– …coordinate our actions globally… begin to build a communal ‘infrastructure’ – i.e. increased abundance… to support individual self-sufficiency and therefore good fellowship… embrace key slogans like, “no more masters…” and “no more commodities…” discuss and flesh out the key elements of a social arrangement based in good fellowship… like, ‘consensus authority’… ‘open tribalism’ (which has sharing as its purpose…) ‘transparent and inclusive decision-making’… fluid ‘structures’ and continuous growth… global-interconnections supporting individual self-sufficiency. [I’m planning to flesh this out more on the page Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness…… which is also a periodically-updated pdf: “Founding & Realizing A Test Site” (pdf file)….]
If we start building our global mutual aid ‘infrastructure’ now… we’ll be able to withstand the pressure of a re-stimulated (by ‘power’…) sense of dependence on a ‘daddy’ (the state…) when global ‘crises’ are unleashed on us… because we’ll know the critical elements of a future based on opposite premises… aiming toward an opposite result… we’ll be able to see how to foster that opposite in concrete terms… e.g. we’ll be able to actively counter state appeals to nationalist sentiment by harboring and broadcasting its opposite. But so much depends on putting in place the communication means that would allow and support the fostering of these discussions… so how could that happen? This is key. I know we can start doing this individually in our individual networks… but we need broader means of talking to each other… a kind of a ‘Pacifica Network’… we have to increase the speed by which we forward our planning of an ‘opposite.’
…“Punch the clock!”… time is essential in order to experience our lives… ‘time’ is just the way they got us to alienate our own lives from ourselves…… and so at base… we have to put in place… an ‘infrastructure’ that allows this… The point is… that nothing can matter more than living our gifts… and living our interconnections – locally and globally – because this is the truth… it means aligning our lives (at long last!…) with truth…
During the Great Depression here in the U.S. folks were paid to travel across the South to gather from former captives their memories of captivity….
(…and I hate that word ‘slave’… it assumes facts not in evidence: that there is such a thing. My use of it in my very first blog was to say: “if you apply that concept to one… apply it to everyone … we are all in the same boat…” Trust. We are all in Auschwitz. No matter what nice upholstery they give us for the particular cage we’re stuck in. And it’s simply ‘betrayal’ to pretend otherwise…)
…What if we started gathering our visions of freedom and good fellowship… and the ‘infrastructure’ that supports it… collecting these visions from each other globally?… information-gathering for founding a free… globally-consciously-interconnecting society… for a purpose that we have made – we-the-people globally.
It seems to me what we’re talking bout is a globally inter-linked network of villages… land-gifted to folks who want to engage in this effort to design a future beyond force.
(This is not about force. We don’t want your stuff. Trust. That’s the point… there is abundance. There is enough for all… spend some time with the earth and she’ll show you. But we need our global interconnections to realize that possibility… that potential… if for no other reason than that ‘power’ has created so much havoc… with its ‘drought-making-techniques’ called ‘Solar Radiation Management’. So we have to help each other globally. We have to have each other’s backs. ‘Power’ has systematically tried to create a world in which survival is a question for all of us… and some more than others. So we who do have means have to help our brothers and sisters who have been systematically disadvantaged… whose means have been systematically removed from them. We have to do this all together… which is why if the Left punditry don’t start coming from that perspective… they’re carrying ‘power’s water.)
It seems to me what we’re talking bout is a globally inter-linked network of villages… land-gifted to folks who want to engage in this effort to design a future beyond force.
Because we’re living things… at base we want the same things… we want to govern our own lives… to once again own our own time…
(…there’s a Woody Guthrie cartoon I love that shows a man wearing boxing gloves… and in front of him is an alarm clock… and the caption reads: “Punch the clock!”)
…and time is essential in order to experience our lives… ‘time’ is just the way they got us to alienate our own lives from ourselves…
…and so at base… we have to put in place… an ‘infrastructure’ that allows this…
…‘village-scale’ is ‘human-scale’ simply means we get to experience our breathing… see the plants and animals around us… know the folks with whom we share the soil that feeds us… notice ways we can increase the love and beauty in the world…
(…and by ‘beauty’ I don’t mean ‘aesthetic sense’ but rather ‘life unfolding as it’s meant’… and ‘respect for balance.’)
The point is… that nothing can matter more than living our gifts… and living our interconnections – locally and globally – because this is the truth… it means aligning our lives (at long last!…) with truth.
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…we have to figure out that whole tactic of getting pulled off track when they insert those agents into our process…. It happens so easily because we are of good heart… this is partly what I’m thinking about in trying to develop tools for staying centered… and I know that ‘love’ is there at the core… is core to whatever techniques we develop to not get pulled off-track…
Last week, with the prompting of Joel McIver’s book – and Rage Against The Machine’s music – we were able to put in sharper focus the degree to which ‘power’ goes after the youth…
…and… obviously… in so doing it’s just being strategic…
…and therefore helping us see that every move ‘power’ makes is about being strategic… is about getting to that neatly categorized world where everyone cheerfully fulfills his or her given function – while we… on the other hand… have no strategy… for getting to the opposite of ‘power’.
And while ‘power’ is continuously trying to figure out how to inoculate themselves against us… against our movements… we haven’t been trying to figure out how to inoculate ourselves against them. We’ve just been ‘taking it’… blow after blow… while celebrating that we still have our existence… and the capacity to occasionally raise our fists to them… while they mutely step around us (while delivering a few kicks to our knees as they go.)
(I misspoke on the radio show and used the word ‘captivity’… which sounded like I was saying: “celebrating that we still have our captivity…”
…which prompted the pondering… what about those who ‘love their jobs’… why should they want freedom from necessity for all?
It gets back to this notion of ‘hierarchy and force’… that ‘class’ requires that there be ‘winners’ and ‘losers’… it gets back to that cattle-prod called ‘bills’ at our back…. But ‘force’ dogs the lives even of those who don’t have the worry about paying the bills…. Maybe we should do a show about how to see that ‘coercion and scarcity’ is the absolute premise for everyone’s life under ‘class’… no matter how privileged… no matter where your place is on the ladder… in the hierarchy…)
Meanwhile that existence is growing barer and bleaker… for the vast majority… and we pretend not to see… that we’re careening toward disaster.
(Perhaps that’s the best answer to the ‘I love my job’ sentiment. Settling for ‘a job’ means leaving the running of things to a sociopathic few… and whether we love our jobs or not is irrelevant to the oceans dying… to our brothers and sisters slaughtered for their land and mineral resources…. We have to take our earth back… from the sociopaths. And ‘our earth’ includes our bodies.)
We have to start inoculating ourselves now against ‘power’…
(…we have to figure out that whole tactic of getting pulled off track when they insert those agents into our process…. It happens so easily because we are of good heart… and we want to believe that people are what they say… and some among us will passionately defend the right of these (unbeknownst) inauthentic folks to pull us off track… so this is partly what I’m thinking about in trying to develop tools for staying centered… and I know that ‘love’ is there at the core… is core to whatever techniques we develop to not get pulled off-track by inauthentic folks… because you can never prove it… and it’s not worth our time trying… and this sapping of our energy is what’s so insidious about the hidden-ness of ‘power’… which of course they’re well aware of…
So we have to figure out how to not get pulled off-track by ‘power’ when they unleash that epidemic of ‘scarcity’ and nationalism – recall it only takes a paid tiny few to damage or destroy our carefully grown hope… our fine fabric of mutual aid.
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…he was contemplating returning to Kiev… despite loving the beauty of Crimea… because he could feel an ominous undercurrent of malevolence… a heavy breathing on scurrying feet… sowing the seeds of totalitarian authority… like a monster seizing the opportunity to come out of hiding…
“A realistic sense of hope…” – that phrase keeps coming back to me… because it is the reverberation from one of the key recurring questions for our resistance under class… of class itself – a question which at root is about this planned conflation in our minds (so destructive of hope…) of ‘the insanity of class’… with ‘human nature’. And the question reverberates from the confusion about the true (‘power’) dynamics at work – difficult to see and talk about… because ‘power’ works behind scenes.
This came up for me listening to a Ukrainian man speak on a radio program about the lingering Russian militarist (autocratic) influence from the Soviet era in Crimea even before recent events… because Russian generals retired on the peninsula and their descendants are often true to the influence of their fathers. He spoke about growing increasingly anxious… said he was contemplating returning to Kiev… despite loving the beauty of Crimea… because he could feel an ugly tension beneath the surface of things… an ominous undercurrent of malevolence… a heavy breathing on scurrying feet… sowing the seeds of totalitarian authority… like a monster seizing the opportunity to come out of hiding.
The physical devastation of Europe was more than merely the loss of its buildings and its infrastructure. It was more, even, than the destruction of centuries of culture and architecture. The truly disturbing thing about the ruins was what they symbolized. The mountains of rubble were, as one British serviceman put it, ‘a monument to man’s power of self-destruction’. For hundreds of millions of people they were a daily reminder of the viciousness that the continent had witnessed, and which might at any time resurface. (Keith Lowe, Savage Continent, p. 10)
In pondering that George Eliot poem we read last week it occurred to me… that it’s the ‘command’ part of it that’s tricky (“…command exists but for obedience…”) for us in our current iteration of class society.
For if the ‘command’ part (i.e…. ‘the system’…) is not properly understood… one’s ‘disobedience’… is useless.
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…‘power’ has no nation… And that’s patently unfair, right? ‘Power’ acts with global resources and as a global-shadow-state… and we are stuck in our little ‘nation-box’… trying to fight with this massive global Goliath. If the pundit Left was serious… was truly representative of us… they would be helping us figure out what to do about that…
During last week’s show… I argued that Left pundits serve ‘power’ unconsciously by promoting a ‘left-style’ of patriotism (“fix the state”… “make ‘democracy’ real….)
I can imagine some folks asking, “well, what’s wrong with that?”
What’s wrong with that is that ‘power’ has no nation…
(And that’s patently unfair, right? ‘Power’ acts with global resources and as a global-shadow-state… and we are stuck in our little ‘nation-box’… trying to fight with this massive global Goliath. If the pundit Left was serious… was truly representative of us… they would be helping us figure out what to do about that… recognize that acting within these little state boxes is a set-up…. I’m sure we could design a child’s set of blocks to illustrate this. A child could show us the insanity of that so-called ‘strategy’.)
…views ‘nations’ as either pack mules or racehorses in their possession… beasts needed for their grand, global competition… and they delight in their command of us… in how thoroughly they can dupe us…
…so a passive… hard-working… populace reflects well on them… in terms of their global competition…
…but what it means for us is… that we don’t get to live… our lives are stolen.
(And I hope everyone knows what I mean by “to live”…. Look up at the sky the next time some birds fly by to get a sense of what I mean.)
It is the function of the global-state to ‘win’ our agreement… to work for ‘it’… to keep us busy serving ‘its’ (the global-state statesmen’s…) objectives. And if they can’t ‘occupy us’ via market mechanisms – i.e. struggling to overcome ‘scarcity’…) then they will ‘occupy us’ with war (with more direct threats to our physical existence.)
What has been the consistent trend in the behavior towards us (we-the-people) of ‘rulers’… not just in recent memory… but throughout class’s demented ride on us?
You could say ‘exploitation’… that’s the traditional lens of left pundits. But a more useful… more strategic lens for us, I think… is ‘privatization’… because it more clearly ‘outs’ ‘power’ and its dream… as… what does ‘privatization’ mean?… if not reducing the vast majority of people on the globe to penury… via the means of making ‘scarcity’ the dominant theme of our existence on the planet… as ‘class-humans’. (Bentham… recall… said that the purpose of government was to “increase want – scarcity – to make the physical sanction of hunger effective.”)
Now… this is not always immediately apparent. Forcing us to keep our sight within narrow-state-lines can sometimes disguise it… distort the picture for those in ‘wealthier’ global regions. Because of ‘power’s ‘legitimacy and control’ issues – its need to create and maintain rigid hierarchies – it seems ‘wealth’ (‘jobs’… whatever…) is being ‘created’ when in reality it’s just been transferred… ferried up… from those lower in the hierarchy…
…so hierarchy is key… to maintain ‘power’s legitimacy… to keep us believing in its system of ranking. (You know… the ‘merit-rises’ con….)
And so another way to say: “…the function of government is to increase want – scarcity – to make the physical sanction of hunger effective…” is: “…the function of government is to punish those who don’t work…” which gets plugged into the targeting of various groups… i.e. various forms of ‘ism’s… which reinforces the con… that some are legitimately treated wrong… which easily feeds a vicious competition (as no one wants to end up on the bottom…) – and so the death of our mutual sense of interconnection…. And we need each other… to free ourselves from ‘power’.
“It’s dog-eat-dog…” “it’s a jungle out there…” “you’re on your own…” “you got two choices: you can be ‘predator’ or ‘prey’…”
When a ‘predator-prey’ choice is forced on us it destroys our humanness… and yet ‘power’ has successfully done this… not for generations… but millennia… in the name of ‘competition’… and yet the Left never talks about it…
And because it’s never discussed… it creates a sense of hopelessness… because our nature is mutual aid.
(You see this in little children… a point where they just give up trying to live according to what their bodies want… and they instead just try to be obedient… because that’s what gets rewarded… it’s called ‘domestication’.)
If the job of the state is to increase want (scarcity)… the job of freedom is to increase abundance.
Our work right now is to define ‘power’s opposite. Not having a goal that is the opposite of ‘power’ has meant we allow it to herd us into one hideous violation of good fellowship after another. It’s time to have a goal… a global goal much less ambitious than ‘power’s global goal to realize its ‘vision’ of the Republic… because global good fellowship conforms to our nature…. It’s want our bodies want to do.
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…‘weather machines’ and such… it’s like a blank check… a ‘without-limits-ATM-card’… There’s a big silence out there of folks who are targeted and can say nothing… Fascism wasn’t an anomaly… the goal of totalitarian ‘Perfection’ still exists and so what does it mean if folks can’t talk about it? The only way to counter this is to say “we know it exists… but we won’t get distracted from that vision of freedom…”
Now… recall what we said in a previous show about war serving the political function (for ‘rulers’…) of removing resources from our hands (the same result – purpose – of ‘the market’.)
We said: “war is always war on us… whether they spill our blood with guns or markets…”
…reducing us to penury (globally…) forcing us to our knees (viewed from the perspective of humanity as a whole…) is the only way a tiny few can pretend to be ‘kings’… as we are many… and they are few.
(And we have to always remember… all these agents… all their surveillance-state-troops… are paid to do what they do… it’s not what their bodies want…. The minute an alternative that seems viable is offered… it’ll break that down. The earth is powerful… it’s a powerful pull… life… letting your body do what it wants. There will be that tipping point. We just have to have a goal – which is obvious: freedom… freedom from necessity – that we move systematically towards… we have to say out loud that we want it.)
So amassing ‘wealth’ (the resources of the planet…) is but means for reducing us to penury so ‘rule’ may… without interference from the hired help… sculpt the world they want.
Add to this their obsession with acquiring… and exclusively possessing… high tech weaponry capable of causing massive destruction… ‘weather machines’ and such… “weaponizing the energy in the environment…” with the goal of both de-stabilization… and stimulating a faster rate of resource-transfer… from our hands to its coffers (by means of controlling access to ‘credit’… money…)
(Think about it. It’s like a blank check… a ‘without-limits-ATM-card’.)
…so all this… is the backdrop in my head… as I hear repeated… these last few days… talk of… ‘resilience’…
“…we want ‘resilient children’… says the education industry…
…and just now (March 18, 2014…) ‘the news’ has brought the tidbit that a new initiative is being unleashed on us… by the Rockefeller Foundation… to create ‘resilient cities’… as part of its ‘Resilience Project’… $100 million for 100 cities to render them capable of surviving… catastrophes.
Consider this moment we’re living… of the greatest concentration of ‘wealth’ in human history… who holds the keys to these coffers? Not you and me.
So… recall what ‘the foreclosure crisis’ did. It sucked almost all of low-income wealth out of the cities and into the banks…. But there’s a little bit left… in the ‘slightly-higher-income’.
And… thoughtfully… as there’s a ‘shortage of affordable housing’… San Francisco is raising its mortgage loan granting standard… for ‘first-time-home-buyers’… while Oakland is busy “growing its economy”… inviting investment from China and India.
>(…war by other means, right?…)
But… how unfortunate it would be… should the region need to be ‘resilient’… should we be forced to read… a new chapter in ‘power’s ‘privatization’ story.
And… as always I must say… when will we on the Left use these tools Nikola left us… for our own benefit?… and organize in every land… a day – to be expanded into three… and more… until it’s on-going – so we can plan our future beyond class… and in… good fellowship…
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Last week we said that if we discuss and define… and get behind… a goal… globally… we’ll get it…
…if…
…we don’t allow ourselves to get distracted…
(…and certainly not by agents – we’re going to be figuring that out – [you can tell one or two has crossed my path… since I’ve been on my journey…)
… if we focus only on the goal.
What are the distractions? War… religion… particularity (tribes that are exclusive… premised on the ‘specialness’… ‘superiority’… of its members….)
(One day… as Kropotkin said… ‘history’ will have to be rewritten along new lines… because there’s a big ‘silence’ out there which I have been blessed to become privy to. There’s a big silence of folks who have been ‘treated’ to these techniques of ‘power’ that it does behind scenes – whether it’s bombarding people with their radio wave weaponry causing them health problems if not death… strokes… they’ve been doing this to a lot of people who can never say anything because it’s hidden… dancing these inauthentic folks in their paths… and they can say nothing because it’s hidden. If you even try to bring it up… ‘power’ will encourage [by means of its control of the mediums…] the response: “…O my God she’s paranoid…” “…he’s got conspiracy theories on the brain….” What do you think this secretive weaponry is for? No one is saying that it doesn’t exist. Do you think it’s simply so they can save it for a rainy day […holding it in reserve to save us from ‘terrorists’?…] No. They deeply believe in ‘breeding’. Fascism wasn’t an aberration. It still exists… this goal of totalitarian ‘Perfection’.
And so what does this mean… that folks can’t talk about it? It means we let it continue to be used successfully.
(So we have to figure this out. We have to acknowledge that it exists… without allowing it to pull us off our vision. I guess it’s just as simple as that. And that’s where the ‘love’ comes in – the ‘love’ part. Because if someone starts complaining about being victimized like this… it could be real… or it could be inauthentic… and so the only way for us to respond and keep focused is to say: “You know, I know that capacity exists… but what we have to do is stay focused. We can’t waste time on it. So we have to trust. Know that it exists… and not get distracted.)
…it only takes a miniscule few to dominate [‘manage’] huge numbers if they know what they want… Recall Miklos’ lesson from the annihilation of the Gypsy Camp… we should see that this is what we do… to domesticated animals that aren’t human too…
What are the distractions? War… religion… particularity (tribes that are exclusive… premised on the ‘specialness’… ‘superiority’… of its members….)
It’s critical that we start talking about this issue of strategy. Otherwise we’ll have forfeited ‘the game’ (proprietary stamps on our lives…) without knowing we’re in one… and ‘power’ will always ‘win’… because they know where they’re going…
(…it only takes a miniscule few to dominate [‘manage’] huge numbers if they know what they want (and so can strategically plan… punishing dissent… while systematically giving us things to calm our fears…) and if the huge number is confused [disorganized]…. Recall Miklos’ lesson from the annihilation of the Gypsy Camp… i.e. that it only takes a few to control large confusion…
…and we should see that this is what we do… to domesticated animals that aren’t human too…
…notice that the reasoning of those who perished in the Gypsy Camp is precisely that of non-human domesticants: “why would they feed us if they mean us ill?”
‘Betrayal’ is the beginning… middle… and end of ‘class’. ‘Honesty’… honesty… is what we want. We want a world in which what people say… they mean… and… I have to say this… when we give food to an animal… that has a universal meaning in the language of life… it means “I want you to live…” In the world I want… we don’t lie when we do that….)
So the only logical… realistic goal for us… if we want to determine ourselves… live our gifts… is the opposite of this.
So our challenge now is to define it.
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Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
These remarks constitute, medically speaking, one of the basic laws of heredity concerning twins. This law has been used extensively by those who claim that environmental factors, such as education, nutrition, the illnesses a person may have suffered, etc., influence only slightly… (Part 60)
I conducted the pathological study of the twelve pairs of twins with the greatest possible care. As everyone knows, there are two kinds of twins, one-egg and two-egg. Twins born of the same egg are always identical, both in their internal and external manifestations, and of the same sex. They are variously known as identical, uniovular or monozygotic. Twins born from two separate eggs resemble one another in both their internal and external characteristics, but rather as brothers and sisters do. They are not perfectly identical and, in about half the cases, are of different sexes. They are known as fraternal, biovular or dizygotic.
These remarks constitute, medically speaking, one of the basic laws of heredity concerning twins. This law has been used extensively by those who claim that environmental factors, such as education, nutrition, the illnesses a person may have suffered, etc., influence only slightly his physical, mental and temperamental make-up, whereas heredity plays a much more important role. If the traits a person has received from his forebears occur again and again throughout several generations, they are known as dominant hereditary characteristics.
These dominant heriditary characteristics can either be to the advantage or disadvantage of the individual. For example, a good healthy set of teeth, a thick head of hair that does not thin with the years, or hypertension and, in some families, diabetes. Among the mental illnesses, nervous depression.
These hereditary phenomena, whether they are advantageous or disadvantageous, often appear at birth; a child born with too many fingers or toes would be an example. Other phenomena develop later on and become chronic illnesses, such as epilepsy, asthma, gout, certain forms of hypertension, a few cases of cancer, and the senile cataract of the ocular lens, this last occurring only in people sixty or older.
Among these hereditary phenomena one sometimes finds this peculiarity, that they occur more often in one sex than in the other. Daltonism, or congenital color-blindness, and anemia are two of the most frequent manifestations of these hereditary phenomena defined by sex. Both of these illnesses appear only in males, never in females. Anemia is the most obvious example: the most common hereditary form of anemia is that which has passed from an anemic grandfather through a healthy daughter to half the male grandchildren. Male children never inherit it directly from an anemic father. Each male child and all of his descendents will remain healthy, whether they be male or female. But the female children of an anemic father will, though in themselves healthy, carry the seeds of anemia, and each of their daughters will transmit the seeds to their male offspring.
I know men, and it seemed to me that my firm attitude, my measured sentences, and even my silences were the qualities by which I had succeeded in making Dr. Mengele, before whom the SS themselves trembled, offer me a cigarette in the course of a particularly animated discussion, proving he forgot for a moment the circumstances of our relationship. (Part 61)
I had the bodies of a pair of fifteen-year-old twins before me on the dissection table. I began a parallel and comparative dissection of the two bodies. Nothing particularly noteworthy about the heads. The next phase was the removal of the sternum. Here an extremely interesting phenomenon appeared: a persistent thymus, that is, a thymus gland that continued to subsist. Normally the thymus is found only in children. It extends from the upper edge of the sternum to the heart, thus covering a fairly large area. With puberty it begins to wither rapidly and soon disappears completely. Once sexual maturity has been attained, all that is left of it is a small pocket of fat, plus the remains of the fibrous tissues of the former gland.
The thymus has a great influence on growth. When it withers too rapidly, the individual will be small, perhaps even a dwarf, and besides, his tibular bones will be very fragile. Overdevelopment, or hypersecretion of the gland, is often found during the autopsy of children who have died suddenly for no apparent reason, without having been ill. Hypersecretion is also frequently found in young people who prove to be excessively vulnerable to infectious diseases.
Thus the discovery of the thymus gland in the twin brothers was of considerable interest, for not only was it still extant here in these fifteen-year-olds, whereas it should have disappeared at the age of twelve, but it was, besides, abnormally large. I dissected two other sets of twins, one of fifteen years of age and the other of sixteen, and found the thymus withered in both cases.
From each of the eight identical twins I extracted the cervical part of the spinal column. The fourth and fifth vertebrae presented an anomaly: these vertebrae had not closed up at the age of twelve or thirteen, but remained open, even in the case of the fifteen- and sixteen-year-old twins. This anomaly, called “spina bifide,” is a pathological state whose consequences can be extremely serious.
An individual develops in both directions of the spinal column, that is, upward towards the cranium and downward towards the pelvis, or rather, the caudal bone. Development is called cranial or caudal, depending on the predominant tendency. In the present case the tendency was cranial for all the twins, since the “spina bifide” and the transverse bone which had remained open were degenerate phenomena.
Another anomaly I found in the five pairs of twins was the non-fixation of the tenth rib. Normally, this rib is attached to the sternum. The fact that it was “floating” resulted from an irregularity of the spinal column’s growth in the pelvic direction.
I committed these curious observations to paper, in a much more precise and scientific manner than I have employed to describe them here, for my dissection report. Later I spent a long afternoon in deep discussion with Dr. Mengele, trying to clear up a certain number of doubtful points. In the dissection room and laboratory I was no longer a humble KZ prisoner, and I consequently defended and explained my point of view as though this were a medical conference of which I were a full-fledged member. I contradicted Dr. Mengele on several occasions, and completely disagreed with one of his hypotheses.
I know men, and it seemed to me that my firm attitude, my measured sentences, and even my silences were the qualities by which I had succeeded in making Dr. Mengele, before whom the SS themselves trembled, offer me a cigarette in the course of a particularly animated discussion, proving he forgot for a moment the circumstances of our relationship.
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Never to my knowledge had anything like this happened in the history of the camp. I did not know quite where to begin. The women were quartered in the C, B3 and FK4 Camps. As far as I knew, most of the Hungarian women were in C Camp. I decided to try there first. (Part 62)
Once when I was dissecting the body of a fairly old man, I discovered some very beautiful gallstones in the bladder. Knowing that Dr. Mengele was an ardent collector of such items, I washed the stones, dried them, and then arranged them in a large-necked flask, stoppered with a glass cork. I stuck a label on the flask, giving the person’s name, the kind of stones they were, and their pathological characteristics. During his visit next day, I gave them to Dr. Mengele. He admired the beautiful crystals. Turning the flask round and round, he looked at the gallstones and then, turning abruptly to me, asked me if I knew the ballad of the warrior Wallenstein. His question was completely out of keeping with the surroundings, but I answered: “I know the story of the warrior Wallenstein, but not the ballad,” Whereupon, smiling, he began to recite:
“Im Besitze der Familie Wallenstein
Ist mehr Gallenstein, wie Edelstein.”
…which, translated into English, would go something like:
“In the Wallenstein family
There are more gallstones than precious stones.”
My superior recited several stanzas of that comic ballad. He was in such a good mood that I decided to ask a great favor of him: that he let me go look for my wife and child. Only after I had uttered the request did I realize how daring it was: but it was already too late. He looked at me with astonishment.
“You’re married and have a child?”
“Yes, Captain, I’m married and have a fifteen-year-old daughter,” I told him, my voice breaking with emotion.
“Do you think they are still here?” he asked
“Yes, Captain, because at our arrival three months ago you selected them and sent them to the right-hand column.”
“They may have since been sent on to another camp,” he said. Suddenly I thought of the crematorium smoke: perhaps they had since been dispatched with that smoke to some celestial camp. Dr. Mengele, who was seated, his head bent forward, seemed lost in thought. I remained standing behind him.
“I’m going to give you a pass to go look for them, but…” and placing his forefinger on his lips, he looked at me menacingly.
“I understand, Captain, and thank you.”
Dr. Mengele left. I returned to my room, completely elated, holding the pass in my hand. Once there I began to read it: “Number A 8450 is authorized to circulate freely within the confines of the Auschwitz KZ. Signed: Dr. Mengele, SS Hauptsturmfuhrer.” Never to my knowledge had anything like this happened in the history of the camp. I did not know quite where to begin. The women were quartered in the C, B3 and FK4 Camps. As far as I knew, most of the Hungarian women were in C Camp. I decided to try there first.
If they had been able to recognize me it was because I had managed to live in such a way that I still looked like a human being. But it was almost impossible for me to recognize them…. Three months had been long enough for them to have learned to regret the past and fear the future. (Part 63)
The following day I got up still tired, not having slept a wink all night. Terrible doubts assailed me. Here, where three months was an eternity, so many things could have happened to them. My position in the KZ had made me realize only too well everything that went on inside these bloody walls.
I entered the SS office to announce my departure, and bid my comrades good-bye. They wished me luck. Although it was still early, the white August sun was already scorching hot when I set out on my three kilometer journey. As the crow flies, C Camp was considerably closer, but I had to keep within the fences, and was therefore obliged to make numerous detours. Filled with a mixture of dread and curiosity, I set out through the neutral zone, which was bordered by electrified fences. They never fired on you without warning when you passed through the maze of wires. Motorcycle patrols rode by with signs hung round their necks reading: “Lagerpolizei”: “Camp Police.” I met several of them on my way, but none molested me.
Reaching C Camp, I saw an immense iron gate looming before me, whose two wings bore numerous porcelain insulators, reinforced by barbed wire. In front of the gate, the inevitable guard house. Some SS soldiers were basking in the sun. They looked me up and down, for I was an unusual guest, but said nothing. They did not bother about business that concerned only their comrade seated near the guard house window.
I approached the latter and gave him my tattoo number. He looked at me expectantly. I took Dr. Mengele’s pass from my pocket and handed it to him. After perusing it, he ordered his comrades to open the gates, then asked me now long I wanted to stay inside, for, as always, he had to record it in his register.
“Until noon,” I said evenly. Two hours was a great deal to ask, but the customary bribe of a package of cigarettes was sufficient to get his assent. I handed him a pack and passed through the gate.
The main road of C Camp, bordered by dilapidated, faded green barracks, was animated. A women’s detail was carrying a large iron cask filled with hot soup, for here the noon meal was distributed at 10 o’clock. Another group – a highway kommando – was busily engaged carrying stones for repairing the camp roads. Several women were stretched out in the sun along both sides of this main thoroughfare. Their bodies were clothed in rags, their heads were shaven; they were indeed a pitiful sight to behold. Many were dressed in the most fantastic clothing – one was wearing a sleeveless evening gown – and were seated on the ground, busy delousing themselves or their companions. The exposed parts of their bodies were covered with foul, oozing sores. It was from this section that convoys were chosen to be sent to camps farther away. As far as I could tell the selections had been very carefully made, for all those left here appeared to be the very weakest. Lucky were they who had been sent to more distant camps, for they still had a chance of surviving, whereas the fate of those still here was sealed, a fate identical to that of the Gypsy Camp.
I headed towards the first barracks. From all sides cries and shouts greeted me. Those who had seemingly been mere bundles of rags lying on the ground or crawling on all fours revived and, leaving their places, ran towards me. About thirty of them had recognized me and crowded around anxiously for news of their husbands and children.
If they had been able to recognize me it was because I had managed to live in such a way that I still looked like a human being. But it was almost impossible for me to recognize them, so greatly had they changed. My situation in the middle of the clamoring crowd was becoming embarrassing. In ever-increasing numbers they crowded around me. Everyone wanted to learn something about her family. For three months they had been living under an impossible regime and in constant fear. Here selection took place once a week. Three months had been long enough for them to have learned to regret the past and fear the future.
After three months of KZ life they too had learned that the Sonder was the kommando of the living dead. Both looked at me aghast. I reassured them as best I could and promised to return the following day. (Part 64)
The women asked me if everything they had heard about the crematoriums was true. What was the smoke you saw pouring from the chimneys during the day, and the flames that replaced it at night? I tried to reassure them, denying everything.
“It’s not true,” I repeated after each of their questions and surmises. “Besides, the war is almost over and soon we’ll all be back home.” I said it without really believing it myself.
I left them without having learned any news of my wife and daughter. I entered the first barracks and asked the overseer, a young Slovakian girl, to have the names of my wife and daughter called out. There were between 800 and 1000 women stacked one above the other on the berths that lined the walls of every barracks. To have the names called out here was not easy. The noise of the thousand women drowned the single voice. The overseer returned a few minutes later to tell me that her search had proved fruitless. I thanked her for her kindness and entered the second barracks.
Here the situation was much the same; the same scene was repeated with like results. I was in the third barracks, standing in the middle of the room. Again I had the overseer called and asked her to have my wife and daughter sent for. She sent two little girls down each side of the barracks; they stopped at each layer of bunks and called out the names. In a few minutes they returned bringing my wife and daughter with them!
They approached hand in hand, their eyes wide with fear, knowing the probable consequences of a personal summons. But they had already recognized me. They stopped dead, astonished, rooted to the spot. I approached them, took both of them in my arms, and embraced them. They were incapable of speaking, but were satisfied to cry softly. I tried to console them, to reassure them, but already the crowd surrounded us. Under such conditions there was absolutely no way of holding a conversation. I asked the overseer if she would let us have the use of her little room for a few minutes. Then, at last, we were alone.
They brought me up to date on their sad experiences of the previous three months: the dreaded selections, from which they had till now escaped, but the very thought of which made them tremble with fear, living as they did in the shadow of the crematorium chimneys. Dressed in rags, they suffered from cold and perpetual hunger. It rained in their barracks and their clothes never dried out completely. The food was uneatable and, what was worse, they were unable to sleep. The place assigned to them was meant to hold seven people: twelve were stacked in there. Women whose social rank back home was fairly high pushed and shoved each other in order to give themselves a few inches more space, thus hoping to sleep a little better, even if it was at the expense of their companions. Everybody here had lost her former personality. Friends or strangers, each was concerned only about her own well-being, unwilling to make the slightest concession. My daughter told me that she slept on the concrete floor, since nobody would make a place for her on the bunk where her mother slept. My wife asked me about my work. I explained to her that I was Dr. Mengele’s assistant, and as such a member of the Sonderkommando. After three months of KZ life they too had learned that the Sonder was the kommando of the living dead. Both looked at me aghast. I reassured them as best I could and promised to return the following day.
“The fact that I had found my wife and child made sensational news at the crematorium.… But all good things must come to an end.” – …war itself – its result being its purpose: control of us – is ‘economic’ in function… removing from us any hope of self-determined access to our own reproduction process… (Part 65)
The fact that I had found my wife and child made sensational news at the crematorium. I took warm clothing, linen and stockings from the clothing department, toothbrushes, nail cutters, penknives and combs from the toilet article section. From the pharmacy I got a stock of vitamin pills, ointment for their sores, and anything else I thought might be useful. I got a sizable quantity, much more than was necessary for my wife and daughter. Besides, I filled my sack with blocks of sugar, butter, jam and bread in quantities large enough to be able to distribute them to the other prisoners. So it was that I left for the C Camp with my sack bulging. But all good things must come to an end.
For three weeks I visited C Camp every day. One day what I was afraid would happen actually came to pass. I had already come to the conclusion, after the liquidation of the Czech and Gypsy Camps, that extermination was merely a matter of chronological order. Sooner or later the time came for all those who spent their days of misery within the confines of Auschwitz’s barbed wire barriers.
One afternoon I was seated at my work table in the laboratory. Dr. Mengele and Dr. Thilo were present, discussing questions pertaining to the KZ’s administration. Dr. Mengele, as though he had just reached a decision, got up from his chair and said to Dr. Thilo: “I am no longer able to feed the debilitated prisoners of C Camp. I shall have them liquidated during the next two weeks.”
Such scenes often took place in my presence. Affairs of a most confidential nature were discussed as though I were not even there. Was I not after all a living dead man, whose presence no longer meant anything?
I was deeply shaken by Dr. Mengele’s decision concerning the liquidation of C Camp, for it concerned not only my immediate family, but thousands of my unfortunate compatriots. I had to act immediately.
As soon as Dr. Mengele and Dr. Thilo left the crematorium, I followed them and headed directly for D Camp, where the SS group which supervised the incorporation of foreign prisoners into forced labor battalions was installed. In this camp the prisoners necessary for that program of slave labor in force throughout all Germany were portioned out.…
[Although we’re never encouraged to think about it… German Nazism was and economic system… was… in truest expression… in its essence… a forced work economic engine… and that war itself – its result being its purpose: control of us – is ‘economic’ in function… removing from us any hope of self-determined access to our own reproduction process… which we discussed a few shows back… and is given vivid illustration in Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (mentioned in the March 2, 2014 show, see above…) – P.S.]
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WUR of March 30th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
But we know the time… we know that the time of ‘the people’ is come… and though it may be stalled… ‘power’ can never end our movement… our movement is life… our always-recurring good news… but it requires global action… you cannot claim Suiz alone… we must back you…
(The music playing at show’s opening is “Voices on the Wind” by the Soweto Gospel Choir.)
Shout-outs of thanks for courage today… in Scotland… breaking free of U.K… and in the massive resistance to so-called ‘austerity’ in Spain… and in the Ukraine… showing uncommon endurance in your search for a new path… in the midst of a global pressure that’s enormous… and for Egypt… writing our lessons in blood… grappling with a deepening military entrenchment… determined to turn back the clock for all of us…. But we know the time… we know that the time of ‘the people’ is come… and though it may be stalled… ‘power’ can never end our movement… our movement is life… our always-recurring good news… but it requires global action… you cannot claim Suez alone… we must back you.
…as we embrace love… as our future… if we don’t begin to see that ‘power’ sows Division’s seeds consciously… we’ll continue to get manipulated… so what are our objectives?… we-the-people’s?…
March 25th, 2014: Sisters and brothers… The more I ponder it… the more I trust… what I thought at first… in Waking Up… before it was tested… with such diligence… which is that… it’s defining the vision which is the real challenge… our vision of freedom… and that once we do that… as a critical mass… what ‘power’ does… becomes increasingly irrelevant…. We can step around them… as they did us… as we recognize that they can do nothing else but… cause the havoc they caused… and as we see that that’s true… of our deeply dreaming sisters and brothers too… as we embrace love… as our future…
Have you noticed that the art… our mutual expressions… that remain in our hearts… the ones representative of us… that we claim as such… despite… initial suppression… ‘power’s attempts to silence… or render invisible from neglect… like Sly & The Family Stone… Rage Against The Machine… Bob Marley… Prince… Malcolm X… Martin… Michael… Johnny Cash… or films like Beverley Hills Cop… or Attack the Block…
…tell the truth… represent… for “the opposite of ‘power’”… inclusion and unity rather than division and exclusivity….
In recent shows we’ve been saying that if we don’t know where we’re going… we can’t be strategic…
…and that… if we want “the opposite of ‘power’” for our future… “leisure for all” instead of “all serving the few”… we have to clearly see… what ‘opposite’ means.
I.e…. we have to define it.
But what this also means is that if we don’t define this ‘opposite’… we will perpetually manifest… ‘the system’… that is: hierarchy and division… ‘making-use-of’ and commodification… decision-making that’s narrow and exclusive… condemning the majority to never experience our leadership… normalizing child abandonment… forcing the-most-of-us to relinquish our gifts.
This week on Democracy Now there was an example of what it means for ‘power’s every move to be strategic… while ‘the Left’s… to the degree it exists… isn’t.
And if we don’t begin to see that ‘power’ sows Division’s seeds consciously… simply by means of holding the purse strings… by determining what gets seen… which phony controversy we’re given to keep us distracted… via the tactic of using the pundit class… as the medium – we’ll continue to get manipulated.
On Monday March 24th, 2014 the entire show was devoted to a film of which… the title alone was sufficient, I think… to find it the necessary funding… given… given what ‘power’ looks for… to further its objectives… aid its sculpting…
(…and what are ours?… we-the-people’s?… What are our objectives? ‘Survival’, merely?)
So we see here another angle on why ‘power’ needs the pundits – the middle ranks who pretend or believe they speak for ‘the people’ – ‘power’ uses them to drive wedges between us… because the media cares about what happens to the privileged – but not… the commoner – and likes stories of psychic-blood-and-guts… it will zoom in on them… and then pretend… that what they say is representative…
…and a whole generation is led down the garden path… of mutual-eye-cutting… and of seeking their ‘special identities’.
Miklos shows us the truth. Keith Lowe shows us too: that we like our rich variety… the stimulation the profusion of color and sound it’s providing. We keep reconstituting it… and ‘power’ keeps destroying it. (Have you noticed that the more we flee to our boxes… the more we’re leveled out [globally…]? The U.S. is now what used to be called… a ‘banana republic’ [with its crushing load of ‘scarcity’… disease… hunger… earth-poisoning… child-jailing… and overall populace-incarcerating stats…) – the proud of every heritage is being brought to its knees…. ‘Power’ is flattening us out… driving us all to a common submission. And as you hear his words… think about the silence to which the survivors returned.)
During the course of just six years, the demographics of Europe had changed irredeemably… large areas of Europe had become homogenous… So could racist frat-parties be a tactic?… Is ‘power’ capable of such machinations?…
During the course of just six years, the demographics of Europe had changed irredeemably. The density of Poland’s population fell by 27%, and some areas in the east of the county were now barely populated at all. Countries that had once been ethnically mixed had been ‘cleansed’ so extensively that, to all intents and purposes, they now included only a single ethnic group. As well as an absence of people, therefore, there was an absence of community, and an absence of diversity: large areas of Europe had become homogenous. This process would only accelerate in the months after the war. (Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WWII, p. 21 – 22)
Here in the U.S. at the very moment when its populace has come together more than at any time in its history… is it random… is it a mystery… is it accident and unplanned that we’re seeing a level of sowing Division’s seeds that is unprecedented?… always remembering that it only takes a tiny few… to sink a fragile hope grown in the vast majority…
…a tiny few… in police forces… and in universities…
(…and there’s a good illustration of this in the current East Bay Express (March 26, 2014) – which in one day had been disappeared from a lot of boxes – called “OPD Promoted Cops Involved in Scott Olsen Case” by Ali Winston:
As the Express reported in December 2011, those [Tango Teams… tactical squads…] also included several OPD officers who had used deadly force in the past and had been involved in numerous use-of-force cases over the years.)
…a tiny few… with allegiance not to life… not to open-ended possibilities… but the opposite of this: allegiance to Plato’s dictum… “keep them frozen in place in their separate boxes… if you would rule… and establish ‘Perfection’ (or allegiance simply to paying the bills… and that could be any of us… )”
So could racist frat-parties be a tactic?… Is ‘power’ capable of such machinations?
‘Power’ is constantly sowing these seeds of Division between us… constantly planting them in the media… is it really possible that the punditry doesn’t see them… doesn’t see this tactic?
I doubt it… which means it screams all the more… their silence…
–––
…our nature is to seek the truth by consulting the communal voice… the historical consensus… that comes from many minds working on a question… This is what makes the betrayal of the punditry so devastating… when ‘power’ owns them… it owns the communal voice… it creates… names… what it is possible to think… creating the illusion of ‘truth’… as Bentham instructed… It ain’t complicated… ‘states’ are there to get us to do the work – it’s pretty straightforward…
‘Silence’ is a key theme in our discussion this week. Who gets to speak?… the true self… or the one seeking approval?
So there’s the silence behind performance (and that’s heart-breaking to see in a three-year-old…) but there’s also the silence underneath… the secrecy or ‘power’. Shakespeare called attention to that… as with almost every one of our dilemmas of ‘class’:
“Bad is the world; and all will come to naught,
When such ill dealing must be seen in thought.”
(Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, III.vi)
[Recall, ‘seen in thought’ means: “observed but not referred to” (…you know… like this totalitarianism growing around us?…) (Yale Edition, edited by Jack R. Crawford)]
Silence… when only voices scrubbed by ‘power’ gain currency…
Silence… when born into a manufactured ‘reality’…
Silence… when masks are all we get to see…
Silence… is the death of authenticity.
Not long ago I listened to a conversation about the power of advertising to create opinion… influence thinking… and I replied in my head: “that’s only because of our inherent communalism… we’re all searching for ‘the communal voice’… that’s part of our nature… mutual aid… our nature is to seek the truth by consulting the communal voice… the historical consensus… that comes from many minds working on a question.”
So ‘power’ services our need for that communal voice by providing mass media. What is the opposite of a manufactured communal voice but an authentic one… one that arises from our communal practice. But we can only provide this for ourselves if it is an on-going practice.
But until we create such a practice… it seems we’re in a Catch-22. We can only ‘think’ – i.e. in the communal voice – through the punditry… and it only represents for ‘power’.
This is what makes the betrayal of the punditry so devastating… when ‘power’ owns them… it owns the communal voice… it creates… names… what it is possible to think… creating the illusion of ‘truth’… as Bentham instructed…
…because an authentic communal voice is denied us due to enforced atomization…
…and authenticity is effectively silenced.
This relates to this film first because ‘power’-orchestrated events – the manufacturing of ‘reality’ – remain hidden… under the terms of so-called ‘professional journalism’ (I’ve never heard that conversation either…) – remain forever removed from what it is possible to think…
(…because these guys have layers and layers and layers – you’re never going to prove it – and if you waste your time… which is all we get from ‘journalism’… pretending it’s doing us some vast service… as if this is a ‘mystery’…. Here… let’s from below… start saying out loud to these folks… “it ain’t complicated… ‘states’ are there to get us to do the work – it’s pretty straightforward – and they’re gonna have layers and layers and layers of… misdirection… and songs-and-dances to distract us from the obvious truth… it’s all about controlling our hands… our work…. They want to be able to harness our energy… to be able to put our brains to work for them… for obvious reasons: they want to think that they are in fact supreme – difficult as that may be for earth-rooted people to believe. But Virginia Woolf nailed it in one: we are creatures of illusion…)
…and from our understanding of ‘reality’… and because authenticity must be silenced for the ‘pundit’ (public personality) to be ‘seen’.
…because unprocessed ‘crabs-in-a-bucket’ but dumps on us more of the same. That’s not ‘disobedience’… that’s very much doing what you’ve been trained to do… (Barack in High School, Part 1)
So the film director would find funding flees from a film about ‘power’ orchestrating Division… and certainly it would never get wide promotion… and the Abandoned Child needs to be seen…
…and so… we-the-people never get to advance our thinking… because we’re stuck in atomization… we’re trapped in the inauthentic.
–––
To the degree the description of the film contained in the interview is an accurate reflection of the film, I’d say… the director is doing but a soft-shoe of “crabs-in-a-bucket” – softening ‘class’ for a complex of reasons: I think we’d find ‘self-interest’ in that mall… and ‘self-consciousness’… and a longing to belong… and a whole lot of unprocessed resentment dumped on us on our time… on our dime – completely discounting the political cost of so doing…
(…recall what we said in recent weeks… that it matters what the majority think (and by ‘the majority’ I mean those stuck in conventional thinking…) And by ‘it matters’ I don’t mean that we ‘play’ to the majority… to the ‘asleep’… but that we call ‘power’ out… that we challenge and illuminate… its manipulation strategies – because truth necessarily plays to us all… and our ears can be retrained to recognize its song… tuned to hear… its fine rhythms….
Because unprocessed ‘crabs-in-a-bucket’ but dumps on us more of the same. That’s not ‘disobedience’… that’s very much doing what you’ve been trained to do…)
I prefer the more mature reflections of Barack. There’s a scene in his memoir from when he was in high school in which he brings two white friends to a black party. Here’s some of the background to that scene:
“Man, I’m not going to any more of these bullshit Punahou parties.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time.”
Ray and I sat down at a table and unwrapped our hamburgers. He was two years older than me, a senior who, as a result of his father’s army transfer, had arrived from Los Angeles the previous year. Despite the difference in age, we’d fallen into an easy friendship, due in no small part to the fact that together we made up almost half of Punahou’s black high school population. I enjoyed his company; he had a warmth and brash humor that made up for his constant references to a former L.A. life…
There were times when I would listen to him tell some blond girl he’d just met about life on L.A.’s mean streets, or hear him explain the scars of racism to some eager young teacher, and I could swear that just beneath the sober expression Ray was winking at me, letting me in on the score. Our rage at the white world needed no object, he seemed to be telling me, no independent confirmation; it could be switched on and off at our pleasure. Sometimes, after one of his performances, I would question his judgment, if not his sincerity. We weren’t living in the Jim Crow South, I would remind him. We weren’t consigned to some heatless housing project in Harlem or the Bronx. We were in goddamned Hawaii. We said what we pleased, ate where we pleased; we sat at the front of the proverbial bus. None of our white friends, guys like Jeff or Scott from the basketball team, treated us any differently than they treated each other. They loved us, and we loved them back. Shit, seemed like half of ‘em wanted to be black themselves – or at least Doctor J….
One day in early spring Ray and I met up after class and began walking in the direction of the stone bench that circled a big banyan tree on Punahou’s campus. It was called the Senior Bench, but it served mainly as a gathering place for the high school’s popular crowd, the jocks and cheerleaders and partygoing set, with their jesters, attendants, and ladies-in-waiting jostling for position up and down the circular steps….
[Now this is a really good illustration of what’s really taught in school: “find your rank… find your place… and endorse the ranking with your support of it… ‘prove’ you’re ‘better-than’ by sniping at whoever you can… and the more you reinforce ‘class’… the more you’ll be rewarded…” – P.S.]
…‘Dependency’ sucks… don’t it? But who set it up? Who’s staging this play? And what is it anyway? Not just who wrote the script… but what’s the point of it?… This new film being discussed is a good example of a key ‘power’-strategy: “dupe the young”… who can’t know the historical ‘common-ness’ (under ‘class’) of what they’re going through… … (Barack in High School, Part 2)
…One of the seniors, a stout defensive tackle named Kurt, was there, and he shouted loudly as soon as he saw us.
“Hey, Ray! Mah main man! Wha’s happenin’!”
Ray went up and slapped Kurt’s outstretched palm. But when Kurt repeated the gesture to me, I waved him off.
“What’s his problem?” I overheard Kurt say to Ray as I walked away. A few minutes later, Ray caught up with me and asked me what was wrong.
“Man, those folks are just making fun of us,” I said
“What’re you talking about?”
“All that ‘Yo baby, give me five’ bullshit.”
“So who’s mister sensitive all of a sudden? Kurt don’t mean nothing by it.”
“If that’s what you think, then hey – ”
Ray’s face suddenly glistened with anger. “Look,” he said, “I’m just getting along, all right? Just like I see you getting along, talking your game with the teachers when you need them to do you a favor. All that stuff about ‘Yes, Miss Snooty Bitch, I just find this novel so engaging, if I can just have one more day for that paper, I’ll kiss your white ass.’ It’s their world, all right? They own it, and we in it. So just get the fuck outta my face.”
By the following day, the heat of our argument had dissipated, and Ray suggested that I invite our friends Jeff and Scott to a party Ray was throwing out at his house that weekend. I hesitated for a moment – we had never brought white friends along to a black party – but Ray insisted, and I couldn’t find a good reason to object. Neither could Jeff or Scott; they both agreed to come so long as I was willing to drive. And so that Saturday night, after one of our games, the three of us piled into Gramps’s old Ford Granada and rattled our way out to Schofield Barracks, maybe thirty miles out of town….
…I could see right away that the scene had taken my white friends by surprise. They kept smiling a lot. They huddled together in a corner. They nodded self-consciously to the beat of the music and said “Excuse me” every few minutes. After maybe an hour they asked me if I’d be willing to take them home….
…Outside the air had turned cool…. In the car, Jeff put an arm on my shoulder, looking at once contrite and relieved. “You know, man,” he said, “that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties… being the only black guys and all.”…
…By the time I had dropped my friends off, I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man’s court, Ray had told me, by the white man’s rules… if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. (Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father, p. 72, 81 – 85)
‘Dependency’ sucks… don’t it? But who set it up? Who’s staging this play? And what is it anyway? Not just who wrote the script… but what’s the point of it?
Well… there it is… there’s the set-up in all of its hideousness… “crabs-in-a-bucket” – loss of ‘longing’… souls gone into hiding… separation… division… confusion… mutual-eye-cutting… and a whole lot of unprocessed resentment dumped on us… by ‘power’… on our time… on our dime…. It’s a jungle out there…
This new film being discussed is a good example of a key ‘power’-strategy: “dupe the young”… who can’t know the historical ‘common-ness’ (under ‘class’) of what they’re going through… can’t know that they’re stuck in a living incarnation of Groundhog Day… and that… for all the seeming ‘disobedience’… they are not advancing us one iota… towards our long-delayed… much deserved… freedom.
–––
“This was my world, I said to myself, and I shall be in it, and surrounded by it, if it is the last thing I do on God’s green dirt-ball.”… “No matter about the difficulties past and present, step on it!”… (Zora in High School, Part 1)
Now let’s consult one of our ancestors who’s devoted a whole lot of thought to… what was called in her day… “the Race Problem”….
From the perspective of ‘power’ “the Race Problem” is how to keep us herded into boxes and therefore successfully divided….
For Zora Neale Hurston… the whole thing was nonsense…
…for me… it’s a con (i.e…. intended nonsense…)
How then did I get back to school? I just went. I got tired of trying to get the money to go. My clothes were practically gone. Nickeling and dimering along was not getting me anywhere. So I went to the night high school in Baltimore and that did something for my soul.
There I met the man who was to give me the key to certain things. In English, I was under Dwight O. W. Holmes. There is no more dynamic teacher anywhere under any skin. He radiates newness and nerve and says to your mind, “There is something wonderful to behold just ahead. Let’s go see what it is.” He is a pilgrim to the horizon. Anyway, that is the way he struck me. He made the way clear. Something about his face killed the drabness and discouragement in me. I felt that the thing could be done.
I turned in written work and answered questions like everybody else, but he took no notice of me particularly until one night in the study of English poets he read Kubla Khan. You must get him to read it for you sometime. He is not a pretty man, but he has the face of a scholar, not dry and set like, but fire flashes from his deep-set eyes. His high-bridged, but sort of bent nose over his thin-lipped mouth… well, the whole thing reminds you of some old Roman like Cicero, Caesar or Virgil in tan skin.
That night, he liquefied the immortal brains of Coleridge, and let the fountain flow. I do not know whether something in my attitude attracted his attention, or whether what I had done previously made him direct the stream at me. Certainly every time he lifted his eyes from the page, he looked right into my eyes. It did not make me see him particularly, but it made me see the poem. That night seemed queer, but I am so visual-minded that all the other senses induce pictures in me. Listening to Coleridge’s poem for the first time, I saw all that the writer had meant for me to see with him, and infinite cosmic things besides. I was not of the work-a-day world for days after Mr. Holmes’s voice had ceased.
This was my world, I said to myself, and I shall be in it, and surrounded by it, if it is the last thing I do on God’s green dirt-ball.
But he did something more positive than that. He stopped me after class and complimented me on my work. He did something else. He never asked me anything about myself but he looked at me and toned his voice in such a way that I felt he knew all about me. His whole manner said, “No matter about the difficulties past and present, step on it!”… (p. 107 – 8)
“My two years at Morgan went off very happily indeed. The atmosphere made me feel right. I was at last doing the things I wanted to do. Every new thing I learned in school made me happy…” (Zora in High School, Part 2)
One day, after about a week in school, Bernice Hughes, whose father, Dr. W.A.C. Hughes, was somebody important in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and a trustee of the College, sat watching me. Her gray eyes were fixed on me, and her red lips were puckered in a frown. I did not know what to think. But it was in English History which I liked very much and I was not doing badly in recitation. When the period was over and the class passed on to the next room, she fell in beside me and said, “If you ain’t one knowing fool! I’m naming you old Knowledge Bug.” Then she laughed that kind of a laugh she has to cover up her feelings and I laughed too. Bernice can register something that makes you look at her and like her no matter what she does.
“I’m sitting by you tomorrow, fool, and from now on. You hear me?” She went on with her catching laugh. “No use in both of us studying like a fool. You can just study for both of us.”
So from then on I was knee deep in the Hughes family…. (p. 110)
My two years at Morgan went off very happily indeed. The atmosphere made me feel right. I was at last doing the things I wanted to do. Every new thing I learned in school made me happy…
…When it came time to consider college, I planned to stay on at Morgan. But that was changed by chance….
…I shall never forget my first college assembly, sitting there in the chapel of that great university. I was so exalted that I said to the spirit of Howard, “You have taken me in. I am a tiny bit of your greatness. I swear to you that I shall never make you ashamed of me.”
It did not wear off….
…My joining The Stylus [“the small literary society on the hill”] influenced my later moves. On account of a short story which I wrote for The Stylus, Charles S. Johnson, who was just then founding Opportunity Magazine, wrote to me for material. He explained that he was writing to all of the Negro colleges with the idea of introducing new writers and new material to the public….
This move on the part of Dr. Johnson was the root of the so-called Negro Renaissance. It was his work, and only his hush-mouth nature has caused it to be attributed to many others….
…So I came to New York through Opportunity, and through Opportunity to Barnard….
I have no lurid tales to tell of race discrimination at Barnard. I made a few friends in the first few days…. They were well-traveled and cosmopolitan. I found out about forks, who entered a room first, sat down first, and who offered to shake hands. A great deal more of material like that. These people are still lying very close to my heart….
Because my work was top-heavy with English, Political Science, History and Geology, my adviser at Barnard recommended Fine Arts, Economics, and Anthropology for cultural reasons. I started in under Dr. Gladys Reichard, had a term paper called to the attention of Dr. Franz Boas and thereby gave up my dream of leaning over a desk and explaining Addison and Steele to the sprouting generations….
I had the same feeling at Barnard that I did at Howard, only more so. I felt that I was highly privileged and determined to make the most of it. I did not resolve to be a grind, however, to show the white folks that I had brains. I took it for granted that they knew that. Else, why was I had Barnard? Not everyone who cries, “Lord! Lord!” can enter those sacred iron gates….
…Two weeks before I graduated from Barnard, Dr. Boas sent for me and told me that he had arranged a fellowship for me. I was to go south and collect Negro folklore. Shortly before that, I had been admitted to the American Folk-Lore Society. Later, while I was in the field, I was invited to become a member of the American Ethnological Society, and shortly after the American Anthropological Society….
…My search for knowledge of things took me into many strange places and adventures…. (Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks On a Road, p. 107 – 124)
We cannot leave this mess for future generations to deal with… Remember that scene in the Robert DeNiro film The Good Shepherd…?… We didn’t make this mess… they suffer our presence… depending on our obedience… and this means all of us. You see… that’s the truth we never get to hear…
Zora is a really good example of ‘Open Tribalism’: sharing herself… living large… an open, curious spirit… as probing of others as they were probing of her. Because… by the time she consciously chose her path of Learning… she was already ‘big’… she didn’t self-censor – it was a white man who told her… when she was a child… that “truth is a letter from courage…” – early on… she wanted to be ‘big’… to have courage…. There’s a sense in which she cultivated it. So… as they weren’t the source… no one could take away pieces of her – she had no grievance on that score.
The real issue is… “how to occupy our ‘human-ness’… fully… with ‘power’ and its ‘rule-the-world’ issues – which each generation of so-called ‘rulers’ consciously absorb themselves with… and pass on to the youth the intention to realize that vision… mission – so how to ‘occupy’ a new vision… with this sitting on us?”
The questions Zora’s involved with are the questions that should – if we could ignore the heinous crimes of ‘power’… globally – absorb us. They are the ones that look beyond this mess… they are concerned with humanness.
But we’ve arrived at the juncture where this can no longer be an individual effort. The oceans are dying. Our brothers and sisters are being slaughtered… imprisoned… and executed. Our earth has been trashed beyond belief. We cannot leave this mess for future generations to deal with.
–––
In Waking Up I argued that the abandoned child is the source of our problems… that it has systematically done to others – to those who still had cultures… to those who still cherished their children – what was done to it: it made orphans. Putting it this way explains why ‘power’ is so antagonistic to our own authentic cultures: obviously first… because they are the basis for self-definition (and ‘power’ wants to name us… give us our assignments…) but no less… because… when we are earth-connected… we cherish our children… this is but the earth speaking through us… our allegiance to life… and the ancestors.
Unless we’re of the First Nations…
…the First Folks on this side…
…or our earth-connection has miraculously survived…
…Abandonment sweeps us up in its tide…
…we are immigrant nations all here in the U.S.…
…caught… trapped… imprisoned by…
…the secrecy of ‘rule’…
…the sine qua non of ‘Plato’s Tribe’…
…who serve ‘ideas’ instead of life…
…and you cannot serve two masters.
Remember that scene in the Robert DeNiro film The Good Shepherd…?
Mafia Man (Jimmy Palmi, played by Joe Pesci): Youse are the guys that scare me. You’re the people that make the big wars.
CIA Counter-Intelligence (Edward Wilson using an assumed name, played by Matt Damon): No, we make sure the wars are small ones, Mr. Palmi.
Mafia Man: Let me ask you something. We Italians, we got our families and we got the Church. The Irish, they have their homeland. The Jews, their traditions. Even the niggers [Africans] they got their music. What about you people Mr. Carlson? What do you have?
CIA Man: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.
There was a pregnant… a significant… silence in the wake of those words. This is what ‘power’ does… it steals our voices… our vibrancy… our light… for this is not something that can be mimed. It’s from within – it’s an earth-gift.
We didn’t make this mess, says Barack’s friend Ray: “It’s their world, all right? They own it, and we in it…”
…and… moreover… we’re not welcome in it… they suffer our presence… depending on our obedience…
…and this means all of us. You see… that’s the truth we never get to hear… that’s the silence all pundits… and media interviewers… tacitly agree to… so they play their parts in a most depraved stage-play… helping to construct… and legitimate… an elaborate charade….
…“Dupe the children” is the name of the game … because grown-ups know we’re living in The Matrix… and to the degree we do… and don’t tell the children the truth…we’re complicit too.
–––
What does the Left punditry imagine the U.S. state is? Do they not understand that for Plato’s Tribe… who have the coffers and the conviction… and the firm determination… to realize their vision… that it is a vehicle for them to demonstrate for all (other statesmen) to see… not just their supremacy… but the validity… the truth… of breeding.… What a gift gratis – except they paid for it – this film must be. It reads like a Plato’s Tribe fantasy: Black – White Divided… mutually sniping…
“Truth is a letter from courage.”
The truth is… all pundits take the money and run… that’s the deal they make to be pundits… but very few have the courage to admit this… which means they choose – to the degree that Abandonment could allow them to do anything but – they choose… to be silent.
The Lost Child made orphans… but he also made silences.
Who gets to speak?… the true self… or the one seeking approval?
In the present example of the interviewer and the film director… we’re led to believe that the former is helping the latter to get out his truth… because it reflects a problem to be addressed… which can only be corrected… if we-the-people better understand … ‘race politics’:
And I think – you know, I think part of it is – and what I also wanted to do, I didn’t want to vilify anyone in the film. I think that one of the most interesting things about researching these parties is the responses that these students give after the fact. And believe it or not, there really is a sort of a naiveté to what they’re saying and a really sort of like – they kind of didn’t realize like how messed up this was and didn’t completely comprehend how that would come across to a minority, particularly in those environments. And ultimately, the movie, to me, is not even really about racism; it’s about identity and about sort of like what is the mask that you wear, what is the mask that you’re forced to wear by the culture around you. And there’s no better way to get into that than by showing students who are literally wearing blackface and wearing these masks and wearing these costumes that, to them, represent Martin Luther King. To me, like there’s just no – there’s no – that, to me, was like a perfect end, and particularly since it’s kind of a phenomenon. I mean, it happens every year, all the time, no matter how many times these controversial stories come out.
Could it be a tactic? Is ‘power’ capable of it? Is it likely they do this? Hell, yes. What have numerous ancestors shown us about ‘power’ manufacturing its ‘evidence’? And what could be more important to it – as ‘rule’ itself depends on it – but stirring up among the people mutual disaffection…. Particularly as…
…these incidents are dwarfed by the evidence of our increasingly coming together… learning about each other… liking each other?
‘Power’ is scrambling right now to somehow turn back the fact that tens of millions of white folks helped to elect Barack.
Now… what does the Left punditry imagine the U.S. state is? Do they not understand that for Plato’s Tribe… who have the coffers and the conviction… and the firm determination… to realize their vision… that it is a vehicle for them to demonstrate for all (other statesmen) to see… not just their supremacy… but the validity… the truth… of breeding. Plato is their Paterfamilias (‘Plato’ being not mere metaphor…) and they are loyal to him… and his ‘racial theories’…. Imagine how infuriating it must be for such as these… to see a Black man walk into that symbolic role…
And… moreover… think what it means for our overcoming ‘power’s chief divide between us… here in the U.S.
Think how critical that divide is… for its control of us.
What a gift gratis – except they paid for it – this film must be. It reads like a Plato’s Tribe fantasy: Black – White Divided… mutually sniping.
The director tries to play it off… like the title’s irrelevant…
You know, I just say to all the white people in the audience, on behalf of all the black people in the world, you have the right to laugh. You get a free honorary black card with each Sundance ticket. Because it is – it’s meant to be a satire, you know? I think if you stop at the title, and you get the knee-jerk reaction –”Oh, this is just going to be an indictment, you know, an hour-long indictment”– you’re kind of missing the point. It’s the title of a movie, and I just want to put people at ease. It’s OK, you know? This movie is meant for people of all races to connect to. I think that the issue of being an other is a universal human experience. I happen to be talking about it from a black point of view, and just like every filmmaker is talking about whatever they’re talking about from their point of view. And that should make it no harder to watch or enjoy than any other movie.
…but the title’s the sound-byte… the title’s what ‘power’ bought… so of course a whole lot of folks will be put off….
How would the director feel about a film taking the opposite tack… that claimed it was speaking to us ‘dear’ Blacks?
And the interviewer was clearly complicit. When she asked one of the actors if he’s ever had an experience such as the one the film describes… he replied:
Yeah, it was – it wasn’t a black-themed party, but, I mean, you have, you know, Cinco de Mayo parties. You have, you know, Chinese New Year… all these different – so, as minorities as a whole – right before we started shooting, a friend was throwing a white-trash party. That’s what they called it, a white-trash party. And I had read the script. And prior to reading the script, I probably would have went. I probably wouldn’t have even thought – you know, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But I didn’t go, because it was the same thing – in terms of – you know, whether it’s economics, it’s the same thing.
If ‘truth’ getting out… was what this media-show was about… the next question to be asked was obvious… but it was by-passed –
…and in Waking Up I wrote that when they don’t ask the tough questions… it’s a con… a ‘reality’ is being sculpted.
‘Race’ is a tactic for Division. Division is key for control. This is basic class-truth… and for most of us obvious… and without it there is no “analysis of race politics…” which is how this film is being described.
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…you see this in Zora (in all of us…) – until she got right with what her body wanted… she couldn’t be happy… and that gets us back… we here in the U.S… to what we’re guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence… our right to listen to our bodies… our right… to pursue happiness… Instead of “Move To Amend” we need “Move To Plan”… the state’s abolishment… and our gradual transition… to freedom…
Remember how we said that force – coercion – dogs our lives under ‘class’ even if we’re free from worry about bills?
‘Power’s hatred for authentic… self-defining… cultures (that that scene we referenced from The Good Shepherd so powerfully expresses…) is a good illustration of that.
For if you don’t have worry about bills… you have worry about your soul… even if it’s unconscious… because the earth always pulls… the earth… she’s always there… and she has certain requirements… independent of one’s conscious caring…. And she wants community for us… communalism… and mos def love.
You see this in Zora (in all of us…) – until she got right with what her body wanted… she couldn’t be happy.
And that gets us back… we here in the U.S…. back to what we’re guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence… that it is our right to listen to our bodies… our right… to pursue happiness…
…and when the state gets in the way… it is our right… to abolish it.
Instead of “Move To Amend” we need “Move To Plan”… the state’s abolishment… and our gradual transition… to freedom.
Continuing with Chapter XXV of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
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…“Poor, short-sighted women, if only they had understood the mentality of the Third Reich’s KZ, they would have realized that those who did not work did not live.” – Need it be said that this is the mentality of ‘power’?… that ‘rule’ and ‘economic system’… are coterminous… that the point of the state… is to coerce our ‘agreement’… to work… (Part 66)
As soon as Dr. Mengele and Dr. Thilo left the crematorium, I followed them and headed directly for D Camp, where the SS group which supervised the incorporation of foreign prisoners into forced labor battalions was installed. In this camp the prisoners necessary for that program of slave labor in force throughout all Germany were portioned out. The head was an Oberschaarfuhrer. I found him alone in his room. I introduced myself and showed him Dr. Mengele’s pass.
I explained to him that my wife and child were interned in C Camp. After having tracked them down with Dr. Mengele’s help, I had been doing all I could for them. Nevertheless, I knew the fate in store for C Camp, and thus had to arrange to have my family sent to some place far from here. He concurred and promised to help me.
That week two convoys of 3,000 prisoners were due to be sent from C Camp to western Germany’s war plants. “These factories are the best setup,” he said, “since the lodging and food do not aim at exterminating, but rather at the maintenance of good conditions for the workers, in order to assure maximum productivity.”
I left a box of 100 cigarettes on his table. He accepted the package and promised that if my wife and daughter volunteered during the selection, he would assign them to one of the two convoys. I had got what I wanted. I hurried to C Camp, but there my job was even more difficult. I had to make my family understand that they had to get away from here. I could not tell them the truth, for I would only start a panic, which would be fatal for all of us. I asked for my wife and daughter in the overseer’s little room, and tried to make them understand that, however painful it was for me, the situation demanded that they leave. They would have to renounce my help. For my part, I too would have to forgo the pleasure of seeing and helping them. Some time this week there would be a selection to fill a convoy quota. They were to volunteer for one of the convoys, preferably for the first. I explained to my wife that serious motives forced me to advise her thus; I asked her to tell all her acquaintances to volunteer as well for the convoys but that she say nothing more about it.
I might add that during the filling of work quotas, the SS commission first accepted volunteers for the convoys, and used arbitrary incorporation only when the number of volunteers did not attain the required number. Nevertheless, there were few volunteers, since nobody wanted to forsake the advantages of his present situation – that of not working – for another. Few were willing to volunteer for forced labor when the food rations were insufficient even to sustain life in the KZ. Poor, short-sighted women, if only they had understood the mentality of the Third Reich’s KZ, they would have realized that those who did not work did not live.
[Need it be said that this is the mentality of ‘power’?… that ‘rule’ and ‘economic system’… are coterminous… that the point of the state… is to coerce our ‘agreement’… to work. – P.S.]
My wife and daughter realized, however, that my reasons for making such a decision must be good, and they promised to volunteer for the initial quota. I made my good-byes, but told them I would return in two days to bring them some warm clothes and food for the journey.
When the two days were up, I returned to C Camp to bid them a last farewell, bringing the clothes and provisions with me. But I did not return alone. I was afraid to take such a load of packages through the C Camp gate. Some high-ranking officers might have been in the neighborhood when I arrived and become curious. So I asked one of the crematorium S guards, whom I had treated for pleurisy, to come with me and help carry the packages. This time I did not visit my wife and daughter in their barracks, but had them sent for from a deserted point along the barbed wire enclosure. It was there we held our last conversation. We threw the packages over the barbed wire. The place was so out of the way that nobody saw us. With the barbed wire strands separating us, it was impossible for us even to kiss each other good-bye.
In the few minutes we spent together my wife assured me that everything had worked out as planned. Both she and our daughter had been accepted for the convoy, without having had to solicit the Oberschaarfuhrer’s help. I was also happy to learn that many of the other women in the camp had taken my wife’s advice and volunteered for the convoy.
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WUR of April 6th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
…‘jobs’ commandeer our energy… divert it down fruitless paths – in terms of getting ourselves free. This is what struck me when reading about the endless discord at Pacifica Radio… You KPFA listeners… how could these stations become village possessions? And how could we dismantle the Pacifica Foundation?…
Last week we attempted to show that… the state disallows our pursuit of happiness… because the state exists to enforce its mandates (division and subservience…) – and that ‘force’ and ‘happiness’ are not just ‘ill-matched’… but opposites…
…and that… everywhere globally… and certainly here in the U.S…. a movement to end coercion… is also a ‘Move to Plan Our Alternative’….
This week’s show takes the next step… and suggests that ‘Move to Plan’ is coterminous with developing our thought process (which is being true to this gift of life we’re given…) – i.e., that the state cannot ‘govern’ if authentic thought is not conquered… that ‘force’ (the state) and authentic thought possess a mutual… and contrary… animus. [This is discussed in Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness….]
And as I listen to the official ‘media-voice-left’… each day I’m struck by how they confuse the process… by assuming the state’s definitions… and never questioning them… e.g. here are the ones I’ve just heard (on April 4th): the speaker was urging us to act ‘for the good’… for ‘peace and non-violence’… and… here’s a good one: “a dispute is not a zero-sum game…” and suggesting that this is useful guidance… for charting a course (which… per usual… they all say… will take “quite some time… centuries maybe…” so… “good-luck oceans”… “good-bye freedom”… “good-bye life for many of our brothers and sisters…”) for charting a course… to… what?… they don’t say.
April 1st, 2014: Brothers and sisters… In an interview on Democracy Now (of March 31, 2014), Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah described how he was being punished… essentially… for thinking… i.e. thinking authentically… like Andrey Platonov’s Voshchev:
On the day when he reached the thirtieth year of his personal life Voshchev was discharged from the small machine factory where he had earned the means of his existence. The dismissal notice stated that he was being separated from his job because of his increasing loss of powers and tendency to stop and think amidst the general flow of work. (p. 3)
“The government gave you an extra hour for your thinking, Voshchev. You used to work eight hours, and now it’s only seven. You should have lived and kept quiet! If everybody starts thinking all at once, who’ll do the acting?”
“Without thought, there won’t be any sense in the action,” Voshchev said reflectively. (p. 6) [i.e. we would be like the rocks… and the dried-up leaves…] (The Foundation Pit, by Andrey Platonov [1899 – 1951], written in the late 1920s and early 1930s)
In listening to Abd El-Fattah describe the dashing of hope our brothers and sisters are experiencing in Egypt… I thought: “Isn’t that a familiar feeling? Isn’t that akin – though certainly a massively enlarged version – isn’t that akin to what we experience when we first enter what we think at first is the ‘job’ of our dreams?” We stretch our wings and imagine limitless possibilities… and then… then comes the reins… the threats… the intimidation.
It’s… not just important… but it’s everything… it’s the whole thing… that we see… that this global system is a single reality… – a totalitarian regime… a totalitarian whole… and that we can’t get free… unless we take ‘the whole’ as our goal…
…and we certainly can’t do this by imagining that we can re-take a tiny piece of it… and clean it up… and establish it on principles that are ‘honest’… whether that tiny piece is an individual… a radio station… or a nation.
(If we are focused on ‘the small’… it leaves them free to focus on… ‘the all’… and we forfeit our lives to them… because in controlling ‘the all’… ‘power’ owns them (our lives.) And we’re going to be discussing how ‘jobs’ commandeer our energy… divert it down fruitless paths – in terms of getting ourselves free. This is what struck me when reading about the endless discord at Pacifica Radio… that the internal strife – the so-called ‘political in-fighting’ – successfully diverts a lot of progressive energy… kills a whole lot of hope… so what do we do about it?
Or about the fact that this humble pirate radio station hasn’t had a stream for almost a month… and no one knows what to do about it….
You KPFA listeners… and those of all the Pacifica-affiliates… you’re pooling your money… why not pool your brain resources… and figure out how to make each station a local communal resource? The folks who work in these places are stuck… trapped in the hierarchical structure imposed by management. So how could these stations become village possessions? And how could we dismantle the Pacifica Foundation? )
But ‘the whole’ is our goal… because whether or not we’re aware of it… our tiny piece is still connected… still receiving a blood transfusion… from the vampire’s heart… daily… right back into it…
…and when we’re fed by the vampire global-state with poisoned food and blood… eventually… inevitably… we’ll be re-taken – that is its nature. It’s nature is force – to force us to be it… no matter how small the corner in which we try to live.
This is a single problem we are all grappling with globally… and it is a single ‘opposite’ to which we must give our allegiance… if we are determined to achieve it… as… and this we must always remember… ‘power’ is totally committed to preventing this… and they have systematically gobbled up… the planet’s resources.
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…we must also see that ‘power’ has a totalitarian reality… a whole world-view… defined according to its control-needs – to pull us back into… in the aftermath of those moments when we break free… we have to build an alternative focal point – a different center around which to orient our energies – all the energy that is released with ‘power’s hold loosening – which we’re seeing globally…
And listening to Abd El-Fattah… I also found myself thinking… that we keep cycling round and round (for centuries…) the same major dilemma of ‘class’… summarized well enough perhaps in a conversation D-Way and I had a year ago. Here’s a snippet I hope you’ll listen to in advance of the April 6th show: …the problem is developing the certainty that we can… in fact… work together to create a society in which we get to express our gifts fully… [the text follows:]
The Raven: We are asserting our common ownership of the earth… and as soon as we make our own bodies part of that goal… as soon as we include our bodies in that goal consciously… we’ll be on our way home… to freedom.
And I know folks are doing that… that they are putting their own gifts first… over jobs… a lot of people are trying to figure out how to hang onto themselves while doing jobs. I’m just suggesting that we take the next step… of organizing around that truth: that it’s not just a few of us who have gifts that we’re trying to hang onto… it’s every human being and that we have to reach out to each other. So how do we start?… is the question.
D-Way: There’s too many dilemmas that come up: the need to make money… that seems to be ingrained in all of us: “I don’t have enough money… I need money… I need a job…” that script is what plays out in our heads over and over again… so how do we break that script? It’s incredibly hard because we do need money in this system and we do need to provide for our families… I’m feeling that pressure a lot… the financial pull is really hard…. And it is an issue of coming together and talking about it… but it always seems to be this Catch-22 because it seems to be that there’s no time for this because our minds are wrapped around trying to survive… and so how do we break that?… it’s very difficult….
The Raven: [So…] until we are free of necessity we are not free. And that ‘getting free of necessity’ is not rocket-science… it ain’t difficult figuring out how to reproduce our lives… we know how to do that…. The problem is getting ‘power’ off our backs. So I’m more and more convinced that the problem is developing the certainty that we can… in fact… work together to create a society in which we get to express our gifts fully. So… it is developing the certainty that is the issue. With certainty we are fierce… we are fearless. If we knew for sure that we deserve to express our gifts and that this is wrong… the putting them on hold and the selling them… then we will do what has to be done. We will go door-to-door… we will name place and time and provide some snacks and say: “come sit down we’re gonna talk about our stolen gifts and how we move on as a global humanity. We would get the job done.
It’s just like Shakespeare said: “all difficulties are but easy when they are known….” And so it is only by coming together and pooling our information… sharing notes… that we can know for certain that we can have each other’s backs… that we can help each other… that we can grow food for each other… and share the burdens together… “all difficulties are but easy when they are known…” that’s why they work so hard to make sure we are kept apart from each other… so we can’t know… that the difficulty is not each other… the difficulty is ‘power’… and we have to get it off our backs. Period. (130303firststep.mp3, Waking Up Radio of March 3, 2013)
Last week we said we need a “Move to Plan” the state’s abolition… and our transition to freedom. Today we’ll discuss not only that we’re taught that this term’s (‘freedom’s) meaning is its opposite…
…that we’re taught to reject (per our parents example and instruction…) our body’s truth – this is the message packed in the faulty notion that ‘freedom’ and ‘governance’ exhibit some vague equivalence (we’re taught as youth that ‘the state’ ‘governing’ us is but the larger version of us ‘governing’ our ‘passions’ – i.e. the truth of our bodies’ (the earth moving in us…) a false equivalence that quickly falls apart when we trust our body’s longing… the course in which it directs us…
(…now some might say: “one’s body sometimes leads you true… and sometimes astray…” and I would answer: “it only seems that way…” because our process of growth has been sat on by ‘power’ for millennia… and we are all damaged souls… but we must trust that we will get whole… and we must also see that ‘power’ has a totalitarian reality… a whole world-view… defined according to its control-needs – to pull us back into… in the aftermath of those moments when we break free… we have to build an alternative focal point – a different center around which to orient our energies – all the energy that is released with ‘power’s hold loosening – which we’re seeing globally…)
…we’ll consider not only that we’ve been intentionally trapped in scarcity… in survival-mode for millennia (and keeping us in survival-mode erodes our leadership capacities… our courage… so the problem is not just the ‘chaos’… it’s ‘dependency-made-chronic’…)
( – and I have to add here that African-American and indigenous youth are targeted… because they have not been for millennia in harness… and still have vibrant alternative cultures… alternative allegiances (which makes them attractive to other youth, by the way… whose bodies miss these things…) – and makes them (by the system’s way-of-seeing…) ‘disobedient’… and so particularly threatening to ‘power’…)
…we’re going to discuss that the difficulty is not just that we’ve been atomized and divided from each other… not just that we’ve been taught to believe that ‘democracy’ – and ‘civilization’ itself – depends on all of the above… but that… even if we could somehow see through all of these cons… too many of us deeply believe that we’ve been rendered so inadequate to the challenge of feeding… clothing… and sheltering ourselves – independent of ‘the state’s assumption of this prerogative – that we’d never be able to make it through a planning period…
…that this is not true too many of us fear to trust.
Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah summarizes it thus:
And so, obviously now, where the state only aligns via Hellfire missiles, it becomes a space where human trafficking and drug trafficking and arms trafficking and also terrorism and jihadis and so on flourish. But then you use that fact to make people live in fear, fear of Sinai, which is part of the country, which is a part of the country that we went to war for and, you know, people died for. And now it’s being treated as an alien threat. And now it’s being – it has become – I mean, they have mismanaged it until – I’m not – I mean, there is a real threat. Yes, there is a real threat. They created it. But now we’re stuck with it. And so, people are scared of change.
And I somehow have to find a way to explain to people why we need to dismantle the state and build a different one and appease their fears and actually find a way of confronting all the chaos that they are unleashing right now…
[But this is only a problem because we haven’t cultivated sufficient ‘certainty’ globally… obviously we can’t… stuck in our individual ‘state’ boxes… confront global ‘power’ alone… and it is global ‘power’ he’s confronting – global ‘power’ that has the deep pockets… that funnels its dollars through layers and layers of actors… – P.S.]
“And I somehow have to find a way to explain to people why we need to dismantle the state and build a different one and appease their fears and actually find a way of confronting all the chaos that they are unleashing right now and all the chaos that they will continue to unleash…” (Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Part 1)
…And I somehow have to find a way to explain to people why we need to dismantle the state and build a different one and appease their fears and actually find a way of confronting all the chaos that they are unleashing right now and all the chaos that they will continue to unleash and all the chaos that will be unleashed when they collapse. And they are going to collapse. That current military regime is – I mean, it could last for years and years. But this current state of emergency is not temporary. I mean, that’s – violence is the only thing they have. They’re absolutely incapable of even producing discourse that young people, even young people who are not revolutionary, you know, or radical in any way, just even people who would love to believe them, and they keep alienating them. They keep alienating them. It was very clear in the referendum when basically most – almost all young voters did not show up. The discourse they use is so poor, you know, that it’s just – and you’re talking about most of the country if you’re saying young people. But even – even the people who believed them, the people who rallied to Sisi and, you know, created the Sisi cult and so on, they were being promised security, stability and food and work and so on. And they have absolute – and they have an energy crisis, which they’re going to solve with coal, which is going to create a massive environmental and health crisis. The healthcare is in collapse. Education is in collapse. Staples are completely dependent on – we’re completely dependent on imports for food staples, which means that we’re very dependent on hard currency. And, you know, their plan is to just borrow a lot of money from Saudia and Emirate, and that’s not going to last.
“The moment even when they collapse, unless we do something about it…” Let’s be strategic. Isn’t it obvious where we have to put our energy?… on building a solidarity that can’t be undermined? How do we do that?… while we plan… using the Internet… (Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Part 2)
And when they collapse, it’s going to be scary. It’s not going to be – you know, when Mubarak collapsed, it was beautiful. And there were months in which the regime was so – I mean, they never lost complete control, but there was–but the revolution was so strong, and the regime was so weakened, that at least in public space and in the street and so on people were liberated and could imagine a completely different world….
[Let’s be strategic. Isn’t it obvious where we have to put our energy?… on building a solidarity that can’t be undermined? How do we do that?… while we plan… using the Internet. – P.S.]
The moment even when they collapse, unless we do something about it, you know, the sense that is going to prevail is not a sense of liberation but a sense of fear. And that’s going to get the worst reactions out of people. We’ve seen that when Morsi’s rule collapsed…
[Morsi didn’t do his analysis. Basic analysis: what is our strength?… it’s our hands… it’s the people. It’s our work they want to control. In whose hands were we placed? In Egypt. The Egyptian military… obviously. So for Morsi to ‘suck-up’ to them… was a strategic error no less than a moral failure… a failure of ethics… of love… of solidarity with his brothers and sisters. – P.S.]
We’ve seen that when Morsi’s rule collapsed. Everybody was scared of everybody. Everybody was being paranoid. And so, for a couple of months during July and – most July – July and August, there was civilian-on-civilian violence. I think something around 200 people were killed in civilian-on-civilian violence that had absolutely no logic and was so chaotic and so – so scary – even though the police and the military were all over the place.
“But for it to be a revolution, you have to have a narrative that brings all the different forms of resistance together, and you have to have hope…” I believe we need to re-think ‘governance’… It may be we cannot get ‘obedience’ out of this word ‘governance’… They desperately want us to be ‘self-regulating’ as Bentham advised… (Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Part 3)
Police completely collapsed in January 2011, and we spent months with no authority on the ground. But they were safe months. You know, people were not killing each other. There wasn’t a wave – there wasn’t a crime wave. Prisons were opened. All the detainees were out in the street, and nothing happened, or not much happened; while [on the other hand] you had these months of absolute military control, but people were scared and paranoid, and so we had chaos. And I think we’re going to get more of that, unless we do something about it.
…when we talk about the revolution while living it, we are talking about a dream, you know, a wish, something that we’re trying to fulfill, something that we’re trying to create…
But for it to be a revolution, you have to have a narrative that brings all the different forms of resistance together, and you have to have hope. You know, you have to be – it has to be that people are mobilizing, not out of desperation, but out of a clear sense that something other than this life of despair is possible. And that’s, right now, a tough one, so that’s why right now I talk about defeat. I talk about defeat because I cannot even express hope anymore, but hopefully that’s temporary. (Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah on Prison & Regime’s “War on a Whole Generation”, Democracy Now of March 31, 2014)
We’ve discussed this dilemma a lot… particularly as it relates to Egypt… and I hope you will listen to the excerpts I put up for this show (transcripts of the final two are included on the page for WUR shows of July 7 and 14, 2013, which are also in “Reclaiming Our Leadership: Waking Up Radio Conversations (Vol. 1)” (pdf file). But I’m going to repeat some of what I think is key in them:
I believe we need to re-think ‘governance’…. Re-reading Beginning Again I realized I see the word differently now… since Bentham explained to me the way it’s used by ‘power’ to mean: “ensuring that we are obedient…”
It may be we cannot get ‘obedience’ out of this word ‘governance’ [because ‘governance’ is but another word for ‘rule’… and remember… “command exists but with obedience…”] and need a new word that supports true power: ours… and the earth’s….
If ‘democracy’ is a management strategy… technique… tool… along with ‘philosophy’ ruled by ‘hierarchy’… part of an hierarchical management structure… system… is not even more so ‘governance’?
Each one of us being free, I believe, is key to a truly new society… the force of the underlying structure will assert itself and so ‘obedience’ cannot be in us if our world is to be based in freedom and good fellowship. These… along with reverence… are the qualities… qualities that we need to live individually… no less than collectively… free…
[So there’s] no division between [my brothers and sisters] being big and my being big… we ‘all’ have to be big in order for ‘me’ to be big. That’s just the reality… that’s just the underlying earth truth…
…but let’s not get stuck on an individual focus.
So… mos def… let’s meet each other’s creative needs… [was the point of the ‘Planning’ tool I included at the end of Waking Up.)
But I’m more and more convinced… because of the ‘time’ issue… the crunch we’re under with the consumption of the planet… that [our resistance… and all of our efforts to get big individually…] have to be tied to a larger goal of ‘moving on as a species’…
…have to be tied to a sense of unity with our brothers and sisters struggling all over the world. This is something that all of us have to do. And so having some ‘art collective’ in one small community… it may feel good… but it’s not gonna get us our future unless it is consciously intending to. In the same way that Bentham was powerful for ‘power’… his certainty was powerful for ‘power’… because it unified their thinking… it helped give them certainty… and they concentrated their efforts on a goal. I believe [their focusing on a goal] was more important than the trillions amassed by the financial industry to ‘guarantee’ (to their minds…) as security to get them to that goal of total suppression of the world population (and I mean that as an internal ‘suppression’… I don’t necessarily mean hardcore [violent…] although we’re seeing that obviously.
[They desperately want us to be ‘self-regulating’ as Bentham advised – as a matter of energy-conservation-and-efficiency.]
I believe there will be differential means used for differential groups… depending on who they think they can con… and who they can buy off… and who they can’t.)
[And “who they can’t” includes not just the youth of Egypt… although they are certainly – along with the people of Haiti and South Africa and Indonesia – the most threatening… but just in general the ‘low-slotted’ of many places: Spain… Greece – those tenuously-threaded-to-work generally…]
But if we do not have the goal of a re-designed society globally in mind… then [our resistance] will be co-opted… no doubt…. It will fit right into those various ideologies of control we talked about: whether ‘nationalism’… or the notion of the superiority of ‘this people’ over ‘that people’… the notion that we have to serve the installation – the triumph – of ‘science’ or ‘technology’ or ‘the rule of reason’ or whatever the ideology is that separates us from our brothers and sisters or convinces us to give up our gifts… or put them on hold… we will be suckered into that… because we want our gifts to live some kind of way… even if it’s in a tiny little familial bubble.
So how do we believe in our gifts?… enough… not to put them on the market? It’s not an easy thing… but we have to take the first step by first acknowledging that we want to talk about it with each other…. There’s a deep pain in not being ‘seen’… that our gifts aren’t valued…
…We are priceless… each one… and we’re conned into believing the opposite…
[Here’s an illustration I heard on April 3rd from an ‘economist’ being consulted about… what the segment termed, “the food stamp economy”… by which they meant that big businesses like Wal-Mart suckled on the public tit while claiming they are providing us a wonderful ‘service’. He said, speaking about the folks forced by necessity to work there: “I wish they were more skilled and could earn more from the ‘labor market’… but…” This is the ‘merit-rises con they always throw in our faces… as if his excess reward was a law of nature… and not the result of his being ‘exceptionally’ obedient.]
…that we are tools to serve the few…. And so… just saying that out loud with each other… and beginning to grow them… with each other… is huge… if it’s tied to a goal of supporting our brothers and sisters to get free of this system… all of us… and to not diminish the suffering of someone stuck in a job because there’s folks literally in slavery… or being slaughtered for their mineral resources. We are all in this together. We are all the pawns of this system… and it’s wrong… plain and simple. It is wrong. And when something is wrong… you work to make it right….
Egypt: a de-centralized civic structure… requires transforming 'work'…:
“Fame is fickle food…” I do think that language is at the heart of this matter of our transformation… because to work together we have to be on the same page… working with the same meanings… share the same definitions… so we return to this issue of shared media… in which our speech can gain currency… and with it… our confidence grow… and with it… our hope…
So… Egypt… the Ukraine… Honduras… Nepal… Venazuela… South Africa… Greece… Spain… Haiti… the Indegenous globally… how can we support each other? What are the mechanisms that will allow us to have each other’s backs globally?… so that we can align our actions…. This is the question.
And I do think that language is at the heart of this matter of our transformation… because to work together we have to be on the same page… working with the same meanings… share the same definitions…
…so we return to this issue of shared media… in which our speech can gain currency… and with it… our confidence grow… and with it… our hope.
I happened upon a journal entry (of 04.02.06) from 8 years ago in which I was pretty much resigned to my captive status…
…resigned to not living my gifts… accepting their relinquishment… in exchange for an insecure… tenuous… always conditional ‘security’… and a bit of ‘entertainment’. My body knew I was being lied to… but I couldn’t see a way out of it…
…because there is no individual solution… not for an individual person… or an individual nation. We are one – all of us – being masticated or managed together… on that shifting plate.
[I use that metaphor a lot… and the last time I forgot to give the attribution… and give thanks:
Fame is fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s corn –
Men eat of it and die.
(# 1659, Emily Dickinson)]
[Journal entry of 04.02.06:
“…as I have a new Perry thriller, almost as hard to put down as the previous one, the night is shaping up to be a book-party night. And because, at least for another week, work is not an issue, I’m free to indulge my whim. Freedom is never having to worry about time or space while limitlessly able to ponder time and space. You may quote me.” – P.S.]
“…things fall apart…” so what is there to gather that energy?… is what we should be asking ourselves… if we were being strategic…
“…hegemons are self-liquidating…” [“…things fall apart…” so what is there to gather that energy?… is what we should be asking ourselves… if we were being strategic…] On the December 2, 2012 show we said that “the global economy exposes the con ‘nationalism’…” Egypt is showing us this… as it exposes that ‘rulers’ or elites have only one allegiance: to ‘power’… whatever their nation-state of origin…. It’s a world economy. ‘Ruling’ elites in every nation-state have only one allegiance: to ‘power’.
And we also said in that December 2nd show that global scarcity… what they call ‘austerity’ eliminates the need for economic ideology… as ‘scarcity’ is self-justifying…
…we here in the U.S. have this advantage… called “The Declaration of Independence”… which says that we have the right to abolish this state when it gets in the way of our happiness… so with the speed and the energy of the vortex in our hands (because we have the Internet…) what we send out can sweep wide around… it falls to us to serve the re-balancing process… to consciously take the lead in bringing about freedom for our global humanity…
[…as D-Way pointed out in that earlier excerpt… and as we all know – and what did Shakespeare say… and what did Barack add? “Self-esteem begins with a workable plan.” We in the U.S. are at this Disaster’s epicenter… and we here in the U.S. have this advantage… called “The Declaration of Independence”… which says that we have the right to abolish this state when it gets in the way of our happiness… so with the speed and the energy of the vortex in our hands (because we have the Internet…) what we send out… can sweep wide around….
We – or, rather, some of us – have benefited from the ‘rulers’ pillaging of the earth… and never known… but now we do… and now we see the difficulty for our brothers and sisters stuck in scarcity (jobs that barely provide subsistence…) or in brutally repressive regimes (never forgetting that ‘jobs’ are also ‘brutally repressive regimes’…) and so it falls to us… here in the U.S. to serve the re-balancing process… consciously… and to consciously take the lead… in bringing about freedom for our global humanity…]
De Tocqueville (Democracy In America) shows us that atomization and division are intentional tactics of control on the part of ‘power’…
(…because they are key to manufactured and enforced dependency… which… recall… when made a chronic state… forestalls our thought process… prevents conviction… certainty… and with it… courage… i.e. we need each other… we need to be backup for each other… to reclaim responsibility for setting the terms for our lives… i.e. to overcome so-called ‘scarcity’…)
So these are intended tactics of control on the part of the state (FYI: the word ‘administration’ is used to mean ‘management’ – of us…)
But what I have already said may suffice to show the general principles on which the administration of the United States rests. These principles are differently applied: their consequences are more or less numerous in various localities; but they are always substantially the same. The laws differ, and their outward features change, but their character does not vary. If the township and the county are not everywhere constituted in the same manner, it is at least true that in the United States the county and the township are always based upon the same principle, namely, that every one is the best judge of what concerns himself alone, and the most proper person to supply his private wants. The township and the county are therefore bound to take care of their special interests: the State governs, but it does not interfere with their administration. Exceptions to this rule may be met with, but not a contrary principle.
And… see… that’s what has to be flipped. It’s not “ourselves alone” that must concern us… but ‘the whole.’
(And what’s true for the U.S…. likewise applies to the globe-entire.)
Do we understand that ‘management’ means ‘not free’?… and that if we are only concerned with ‘the small’… ‘the state’ is free… to ‘govern’ (i.e. ‘rule’…) ‘the whole’.
Centralized de-centralization – and the Pacifica Foundation is a mini-example of this – soft totalitarianism… is present… as our ancestors recognized… from ‘democracy’s inception [this is discussed in Founding & Realizing A Test Site…] because once the terms are established… the reins may be adjusted in due course…
…you may leave the ‘states’ to their various devices… so long as you have firm control of the judiciary (the rules…)
…what’s key is manufactured dependency… ‘scarcity’ established as the condition for our lives – which is why Pacifica keeps going after local budgets – accomplished via our enforced atomization… which creates and is created by – both mutually-reinforce (see… it’s a single inter-locked system…) hierarchical and other false divisions between us.
All of which results in the ‘externalization of one’s leadership capacity’ (the longing for a ‘Daddy’… discussed as well in Founding & Realizing A Test Site…] rootless-bootless-ad-infinitum that comes from manufactured and enforced… insecurity.
When we… we-the-people… as a critical mass… start to see… that the global state is the one (no matter our particular region or location…) the one we all confront… its terms imposed across the globe… and plan from this vantage of the whole… then at last… we’re cooking with gas.
What Alaa Abd El-Fattah is expressing is our seeming dependence on something that is creating that sense of dependence by creating our fear.
Our dilemma is just as he said: unless we’re ready… prepared… for ‘power’s response to us (and ‘ready’ means ‘working with the entire populace’…) we’re readily disassembled by what they do to us – i.e. undermine our mutual trust – because once this is done… we’re rootless… bootless… done (for some time indefinite…)
…So… just as the state stands in the way of our pursuit of happiness… it stands in the way of developing our thought… for authentic thought to come… and be developed… we need independence from the state…
And this Democracy Now program is a really good example… not just of the insufficiency of ‘journalism’ (for we-the-people… it serves ‘power’ well enough…)
(…and in this sense they can be like soldiers who are incredibly heroic… and yet in fact serving an ultimately harmful project…. Journalists too might see themselves as ‘patriotic’… involved in a ‘fix-it’ project… if not for a nation… then for an ideology… like ‘democracy’…)
…so this program helps us see that harm results when ‘journalism’ is abstracted out… or independent… of… a [global] plan – for it forwards this ‘rootless-bootless’ problem ad infinitum.
Here they broadcast Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s plea… this clear plea – if phrased generally – for assistance…
…which our common humanity yearns to answer…
…and this is Egypt for love’s sake… Egypt… which… with Tunisia… led the way… and yet we do nothing?
But once the media-show is over… it’s on to ‘the next thing’… the next thing to divert and entertain its audiences… divert us from our heavy chains of boredom… and service to ‘we-know-not-what’… akin… in essence… to that Afghan child suicide-bomber… tool of those who serve ideas instead of life.
–––
So what does ‘working with the entire populace’ mean? How do we make our discussion of these issues on-going? Such that when we hear pleas from Egypt… the Ukraine… from South Africa and Spain… we’re ready to respond.
And in what way do we incorporate ‘listening to our bodies’ into this plan?… beyond… that is… incorporating food, song and dance in our movement?
And to what degree do we emphasize the need to develop our thought?… because it is ultimately this that the state wants to render harmless… speaking in terms of the broad populace…
…and this state project is endorsed by almost all media outlets… by providing no means for us to develop our thought collectively…
…because for authentic thought to come… and be developed… we need independence from the state….
So… just as the state stands in the way of our pursuit of happiness… it stands in the way of developing our thought….
But what’s key is seeing that ‘the state’ has followed Bentham’s (and Plato’s) advice and ensures that it delegates itself to every corner of our lives – i.e. is totalitarian.
But what is also key – for our re-balancing – is seeing that we have the means… finally… to accelerate the unraveling… the center loosening… losing… its hold…
…and that means trusting that what we are inherently… needs no ‘management’… but only honoring.
Continuing with Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
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Chapter XXVI
As I left C Camp, I let my gaze linger in farewell upon the rows of dilapidated barracks. It was with a mixture of sadness and compassion that I looked once more upon the grotesque spectacle of our women and girls… (Part 67)
Three days later I returned to C Camp to check and make certain my wife and daughter had indeed departed. They were gone all right, with one of the two convoys consisting of 3,000 prisoners. I did not know what the future might hold in store for them, but I was nevertheless relieved, for here they were headed towards certain death. Now, with a little luck, they might escape with their lives. Indications that the war was drawing to a close were becoming increasingly evident. The Third Reich’s grave was already being dug. I had a feeling that, at this point in the game, a prisoner’s chances of survival were roughly proportional to this distance from camps such as Auschwitz. Which meant that my own chances were growing slimmer every day.
Whatever my fate, however, at least I could end my days knowing that my family was now far from the paths leading to the funeral pyres. It was neither fear nor despair that kept the thought of death uppermost in my mind, but rather the memory of the eleventh Sonderkommando’s bloody end, presaging our own, plus a coldly objective attitude, untainted by any sentimentality.
As I left C Camp, I let my gaze linger in farewell upon the rows of dilapidated barracks. It was with a mixture of sadness and compassion that I looked once more upon the grotesque spectacle of our women and girls: they who had once been so attractive, so meticulous in their toilet and dress, were now shaven and emaciated, dressed like scarecrows, stripped of all human dignity, ghosts of their former selves.
As I returned to the crematoriums I found myself shivering, and suddenly realized that autumn was here: it was already the end of September. The north wind, sweeping down from the already whitened summits of the mountains, sang through the barbed wires and made the shutters creak ominously. The only bird that inhabited this god-forsaken region, the crow, flashed against the leaden sky. From the crematoriums, built to endure forever, the wind bore clouds of smoke, and with them the characteristic, familiar odor of burning hair and flesh.
The twelfth Sonderkommando had almost lived out its four months. The sands of our allotted time were fast running out. We had only a few days left – at most a week or two – to live… (Part 68)
My days were spent in idleness, my nights were sleepless. I was terribly depressed; all desire had left me. Since my family’s departure, I had been filled with loneliness and haunted by my own inactivity. For the past several days silence and boredom had weighed heavily on Auschwitz. A bad sign – and my intuition was just about infallible – merely the herald of more bloody deeds to come. The twelfth Sonderkommando had almost lived out its four months. The sands of our allotted time were fast running out. We had only a few days left – at most a week or two – to live.
Dr. Mengele’s decision to liquidate C Camp had been carried out… stripped of their clothes… they were quickly pushed below… And what a long road they had traveled in coming here! How filled with unimaginable sorrow each lap of that journey! … (Part 69)
Dr. Mengele’s decision to liquidate C Camp had been carried out. Every evening fifty trucks brought the victims, 4,000 at a time, to the crematoriums. A horrible sight, this caravan of trucks, their headlights stabbing the darkness, each bearing a human cargo of eighty women who either filled the air with their screams or sat mute, paralyzed with fear. In slow succession the trucks rolled up and dumped the women, who had already been stripped of their clothes, at the top of the stairway leading down into the gas chamber. From there they were quickly pushed below. They all knew where they were going, but the rigors of their four months captivity, the corporal punishment they had been made to endure, and the disintegration of their nervous systems, had reduced them to such a point that they were no longer capable of putting up any resistance, or even of feeling pain. They were herded passively into the gas chambers. Weary of being hunted and persecuted, of living in constant fear, they dumbly awaited the hand of the sure physician, Death. For them life had lost all meaning and purpose. To prolong it would merely have prolonged their suffering.
And what a long road they had traveled in coming here! How filled with unimaginable sorrow each lap of that journey! First, their warm, comfortable homes had been invaded and pillaged. Then, together with their husbands, children, and parents, they had been taken to the brick-kilns on the far edge of town, where for weeks they had been made to live and sleep in the swamps born of the spring rains. These were the “ghettos,” from which, in small groups, they had been taken every day to the specially designed torture chambers, outfitted with all the latest instruments conducive to making people “talk.” There they had been questioned, until, half dead with pain, they had confessed either the hiding place of their valuables, or the name of the person to whom they had confided them. Many had died from these interrogations. Those who survived had been almost relieved to find themselves being loaded into boxcars, eighty or ninety to a car, for it had meant they were leaving the torture chambers far behind.
Or so they had thought….
[So we see the careful planning behind these lies… they are… after all… ‘the wise’… those who Plato sanctions as his Tribe… the very layers of duplicity I’m sure they think speaks to their ‘superiority’… the opacity of their cold… brutal… ‘reasoning’… each step… they pride themselves… planned in depth….
…So what should this tell us… beyond our need to have a strategy… which we lock eyes on fixedly… and move towards systematically? It tells us that ‘calamity’ will be stepped methodically before us… will be ‘calculated’… and ‘modulated… to control us… step-by-step…
…and they trust… that (at least if we have not readied ourselves for this…) that our good natures and our inventiveness will concoct many ‘reasonable’ explanations that don’t mean… that the worst possibility is in fact upon us… that we are being herded… once again… to a devastating end. Recall how quickly it happened in Europe.
…So you see… what deciding (at long last!) to be true to our bodies means? It means everything. – P.S.]
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WUR of April 13th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
April 8th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Last week we listened to Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah testifying from Egypt… how… following each one of our steps toward freedom… ‘power’ learns from our movements… and mounts a reaction… that… they hope… incorporates what they’ve learned.
In Founding & Realizing A Test Site… we noted – or rather De Tocqueville does – that this is a long historical process (much longer than he discusses…) coterminous with ‘class’…
…and that it was with the French Revolution that the dutiful sons of ‘rule’ finally got what Plato was trying to teach them… that the only way to successfully… to permanently… sit on the people is: if they (‘power’… the philosopher-king-global-statesmen…) unite… while we (the people) are systematically riven (by them…) by divisions…
(… and aren’t states just working double-time on this of late – perhaps they are ever working double-time on this – trying to rev up antipathy towards immigrants… gays, lesbians and transgendered… mutual mistrust between police and people… and between various ethnicities…
…and let’s not forget that the wage work system is the mechanism by which states utilize our energy… and thereby implement their plans: so the Kenyan police become tools of those who rule… and are the means for global-state-backed ‘ethnic cleansing’… and Russian soldiers are similarly played… to try to create divisions in the Ukraine…. This is the banality of obedience – everyday horrors ‘power’ unleashes around us – the banality of ‘following orders’. Only when we are free to think for ourselves can we end these everyday horrors of betrayal… and of the failure of our empathy… our greatest gift as a human being – and the coerced work system… our dependence on the state for the ‘right’ to exist… doesn’t allow this…)
…and – and this is equally important – they cannot successfully sit on us… and thereby maintain their ‘superior’ position… unless the development of our thought-process is prevented.
Just as ‘power’ was slow to grasp Plato (it took the French Revolution and Bentham to accomplish it…) ‘power’ has been likewise slow to ‘get’ De Tocqueville – or maybe just slow to accept his message… that we-the-people will never stop pushing to use our gifts… and that they must ‘manage’ it – this longing (preferably… for ‘power’… in the way that Bentham said – and De Tocqueville heartily endorsed: “get them to internalize ‘discipline…” [and – going beyond this – De Tocqueville praised the U.S. way of de-centralizing our – we-the-people’s – management… because it makes the state seem non-totalitarian.])
…So… ‘leadership’ is in all of us… and as the Piper’s price (his blood-lust of consumption of the planet’s resources…) has now fallen due… is weighing on us… ‘power’ has three choices…
Yet the consumption of the planet… and the advance of the Internet… occurring at once… pose an unmeetable challenge for ‘power’.
When De Tocqueville describes ‘democracy’ as an irresistible force he’s but noting that we human beings are determined to grow our gifts… to get ‘big’… and use our leadership (capacities.) This is the earth speaking in us.
So what can ‘power’ do about it?
What it does is to… simultaneously (again following Plato’s guidance…) rank us… teach us to deify ‘mind’… equate ‘mind’ with growing our gifts… while only allowing some to devote their lives to this ‘mind-worship’… and… if all else fails… try to orchestrate a way to make us (the broad populace…) feel we’re growing our gifts… our leadership (a quality… again… inherent in every human being… by virtue of our being living things.)
(They can only make it seem like a scarce ‘commodity’ by using the means we’ve been discussing: creating ‘scarcity’… and so dependence… ensuring insecurity as our general inheritance… and its sine qua non applied-atomization – the means of achieving this larger orchestration of managing and maintaining the illusion of ‘scarcity’ – )
So… ‘leadership’ is in all of us… and as the Piper’s price (his blood-lust of consumption of the planet’s resources…) has now fallen due… is weighing on us… ‘power’ has three choices… which in its desperation it unleashes all at once: first… appeals to nationalism… by creating external threats – the threat of war; second… population-reduction… by unleashing catastrophic events; third… buy-off the former ‘better-offs’… the ones it used to placate with jobs… with offers to let them use their ‘leadership’….
(And now that I’ve delved a bit into ‘Campaign Sic-Rifkin-On-’Em’… I have to admit a fourth option… though it’s really an amalgam of all of them… but for convenience let’s call it “re-energize ‘capitalism’”.)
Which is the proper context… I think… for making sense of this series of over-lapping orchestrations that we’ve been witnessing… from ‘power’s bought-and-paid-for media. This is what ‘power’ does… when it unleashes significant propaganda. It throws it at us from every angle… using multiple pundits but with single messages… variously stated… employing inter-linking… mutually-reinforcing… terms and concepts – all designed to paint a clear picture… of the future ‘power’ wants us to want (while always controlling the definitions): “local economies”… “worker-owned businesses or cooperatives’… “‘democratic’ economics”… “making independent contractors owners of the company”… “the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’”… “the sharing economy”… “‘owners’ instead of ‘workers’”… “a new left-right consensus”… “guaranteed minimum income” – and just now (April 9, 2014): “zero-marginal-cost-jobs”… “social commons”… “cooperative commons”… “collaborative commons” (‘the commons’ being a concept of which they are obviously much a’feared…) – that are “based on the notion of ‘abundance’ instead of ‘scarcity’”…” (‘abundance’… likewise a word the definition of which ‘power’ very much wants to determine… to ensure a definition of ‘abundance’ that refuses all relationship with ‘reverence’…) ‘self-sufficiency’ (of course what they call ‘self-sufficiency’ isn’t ‘individual self-sufficiency’…
(When you look at the terms they claim… you see the terms of which they are deeply afraid. I heard another one just today (April 11, 2014 on Democracy Now)… another one they’re rushing to name… fit into the ‘democratic economics’ frame…
…so when they propose their vision… of ‘socialism’…
…let’s get out our glasses with clear lens for that discussion… let’s insist on certain basic parameters for our future… and never forget that clear terms… definitions… language… is critical… as is the fact that until now ‘power’ has owned them, the terms… controlled the lexicon… and so the thoughts we think keep getting stuck in empty jargon.
Or… worse… mire us in division. For example… we’re thinking with ‘power’s terms when we use those ‘ism’ words. We could say instead: “systems of ranking imposed by ‘power’”… which locates the source… and helps us align our sense of reality more accurately – rejecting ‘power’s frame. We can’t develop our thought… and we can’t get on the same page… using ‘power’s concepts and frame.
So let’s not be duped by circular… abstract… loops… that are designed to cycle us right back… to rule by the few.)
And perhaps the most telling fact dropped along the way is that: youth today can’t be bought with a wage… they want their ‘work’ to also be a contribution… they want their ‘work’ to be socially significant… probably because… the earth is in the throes of consumption… and the Internet has brought us all closer… and they care about their brothers and sisters….
So… ‘power’ asks itself… “how to control them?”… “how to manage this matter of shrinking resources… and swelling numbers of humans who no longer want to be ‘factors of production’?”… “how to push back into boxes the growing numbers who are determined to get out of them?” If not by controlling the menu of options available to them?
So the questions that matter most to us everyday folks… are carefully avoided:
What about the children who are being abandoned right now? Does he care about them?
And what about us… stuck… soul-crushed… right now? Does he care about us?
And how did these global-statesmen who pay him fill their deep pockets?… how did they get their bottomless war chests?
What about all that ‘legacy-disparity’? While the youth are building the ‘healing economy’… their ‘merit’ rising them up to the surface… does he care about us systematically kicked below it?
What about ‘hierarchy’?
Who makes the decisions?
What about this matter of global-‘power’ sitting on our leadership?
What about the horrors that have come from states instilling ‘obedience’?
And how do we help our brothers and sisters? (They want us to not care about our brothers and sisters. Lack of empathy will always be rewarded with a ‘wage’… or with whatever new word they come up with that means the same thing: “Don’t fight the leash and you'll get extra things…”)
And is your vision of future based on coercion?
Doesn’t following the state’s orders but gets us more ‘Auschwitzs’?
Isn’t what’s needed that we-the-people free our souls of ‘obedience’?
The future is not the global-state statesmen’s exclusive province. ‘The future’ means the lives of all of us. And they cannot be respected by maintaining the current terms of ‘governance’… which disallow ‘all of us’ making the decisions… and rather, as Spearman said, ever tend us toward totalitarianism.
How is this so-called ‘new’ vision not “the subordination of the individual to the collective purpose…”? as Diana Spearman described ‘dictatorship’?
‘Power’ must end for our world to be based on reverence… instead of obedience.
It could not be more obvious that ‘power’ is but trying to get their ‘global-statesmen-status’ past this present generation… past those dangerous (for ‘power’) questions…
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Let’s not let another generation have to deal with this mess… Please!… we need on-going efforts that aren’t exclusive… ‘power’ is deadly committed to its ‘future-vision’… we have to start talking about how to challenge it… meet it with an alternative vision that is not elitist… but rather is ‘power’s opposite.…
April 10th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: The more I probe this latest thrust… from ‘power’s ‘Shape the Future’ Project… in which they make use of Jeremy Rifkin (I listened to an interview with him yesterday… promoting his latest book…) particularly as there’s quite a pile of spokesmen now stacked up (Venus… Zeitgeist… Thrive… the MIT guys… the pop-economists asking us to help save ‘capitalism’… all the ‘visionary thinkers’ telling us what our future will be…)
(…and realizing that they will just keep coming… they can trot them out ad infinitum [and so… what do we got?…] because ‘power’ has endless resources to devote to their problem… of herding us into our 21st century boxes…)
…the more it seems to me…
…we need strategy sessions… ‘planning-ins’ (‘Planning-ins’ to launch our transition… ‘PILOTs’… pilots of the process of helping to further these necessary discussions…) we need on-going efforts that aren’t exclusive… that recognize, e.g., that folks who work construction… or grow and harvest our food… may be the ‘thinkers’ that we most need… to get us to… the ‘opposite’ of ‘power’… of ‘rule’… of hierarchy and exclusivity.
Because… truly… we must somehow make our voices louder… somehow get our priorities out there… those of us who want to move forward an alternative for popular discussion… demonstrate to our brothers and sisters that ‘power’s plans are being met with an alternative….
This cannot only be and an academic discussion. This is up for me because when I went to look at Jeremy Rifkin’s book I saw almost next to it a book called Does Capitalism Have A Future? And impetuously I splurged and got it… because it includes an essay by Immanuel Wallerstein… and I thought… here might be the best offensive… against ‘power’s ‘Shape the Future’ Initiative…
We’ll see… although my first foray makes me kind of doubt it. My first foray makes me think… that we-the-people are caught between ‘two poles of punditry’ (as I’m seeing these two middle ranks as either unconscious or conscious servants of ‘power’): ‘the scholarly pursuit of truth’… versus ‘the planted propagandist’…
…seeing this… a strong sense of urgency in me surges… that says: we on the Left… that is, those of us who admit that ‘power’ is not engaged in ‘objective’ ‘scholarship’… but is deadly committed to its ‘future-vision’… we have to start talking about how to challenge it… meet it with an alternative vision that is not elitist… but rather is ‘power’s opposite.
We learned from Sebastian de Grazia that ‘power’ has known for decades that ‘wage work’ is an antiquated system… and that it doesn’t need us on leash anymore. It’s long past time for us to figure out how to have our time back – that’s the only way to be happy…. So we have this right… here in the U.S…. to plan freedom… and it’s just so completely reasonable to say “let’s have a test site…
Given the time constraints of the radio show… and given this effort’s (of ‘power’s) scope… what may be best is to list some of my concerns about this propaganda plant of Rifkin’s… and then tackle the whole initiative in more depth (as doing so will help us… I think… get clearer on ‘power’s key con ‘the economy’…) using the page we set up and left (initially titled “Is Capitalism Doomed?”… but which should perhaps be re-titled “How Do We-The-People Come Together To Invent The Future We Want?: Getting A Design-Draft… Putting It On The People’s Telegraph” [because that’s the real issue…]) – and inter-linking its discussions with those of Founding & Realizing A Test Site
(We learned from Sebastian de Grazia that ‘power’ has known for decades that ‘wage work’ is an antiquated system… and that it doesn’t need us on leash anymore. It’s long past time for us to figure out how to have our time back – that’s the only way to be happy…. So we have this right… here in the U.S…. to plan freedom… and it’s just so completely reasonable to say “let’s have a test site… – just the folks who want to… we’re not trying to impose nothing on nobody. We just want whoever is interested… we need a sufficient little bit of land… we want to use all this amazing knowledge [Michael Reynolds’ Earthship… David Blume’s de-centralization of energy production… e.g… each village having it’s own energy co-op…] that people are putting on the table because they want all of us to be free [globally….] So this is reasonable. There’s no reason aside from ‘power’ nakedly exposing itself why this shouldn’t be… a test site.)
It seems to me we need to identify the key criteria – the people’s criteria – for evaluating any proposed plan for our future… so as not to be duped… as Karl Popper said… by ‘mere words’.
(See… this is where we’ve been tripped up in the past… with mere words… plugged into our good-heartedness and our longing to be able to trust our fellows…. We’re told: “Now we own the means of production! Get to work!” And the flowery phrases don’t make my body feel any more free – and my speaks true… I’m not.)
Some of the main ones we’ve identified:
First: Does it help free us – each individual one of us – from dependency? Does it emphasize individual self-sufficiency? Is ‘freedom’ defined as “freedom from necessity”? Is ‘work’ or leisure at the core of the vision?… leisure? – living and sharing our gifts freely?… or forcing them to fit within given limits?
Consider… for example… this from David Blume… who argues that de-centralized production of alcohol… from a variety of plant sources… could allow all humans to be energy self-sufficient… And far from us needing ‘power’s help with this business of reproducing ourselves… their imposed class-regime of millennia has but meant them sitting and sucking on us…
(Consider… for example… this from David Blume… who argues that de-centralized production of alcohol… from a variety of plant sources… could allow all humans to be energy self-sufficient:
It’s become a sort of heresy to talk about alcohol fuel or any form of alternative energy as a viable way out of our energy dilemma…. Rest assured, there is enough land to produce solar energy in many forms, including alcohol, for a world that makes energy-efficient design a priority. We can have a large cooperative cellulose distillery operation in each county, producing ethanol and biomass electricity to keep our essential services running. We can have small integrated farms that produce fuel, food, and building materials. We can eat well on locally produced food and locally processed products. We can even cogenerate our electricity and hot water at our homes using our cars running on alcohol in a pinch…
…I was granted a patent in 2007 on the process to use distiller’s dried grains with solubles [DDGS: “the substance that remains when, in making alcohol from grain, all of the starch is removed, but all of the protein and fat, some of the cellulose, and a wide array of vitamins and minerals remain, along with yeast from fermentation; useful as animal feed. In the case of DDGS, after the DDG is separated from the spent mash, the liquid portion is evaporated to concentrate the soluble components to a syrup, which is then blended with the DDG.”] as a combination fertilizer and herbicide. Now an agribusiness corporation cannot patent it and then prevent others from using it. I am going to handle use of my patent in a completely different manner than a large agribusiness corporation would. A program will be set up to let individual farmers and small collectives with small capacity license this patent for a nominal fee, perhaps only requiring registration (details are still be worked out as of the publication date of this book (2008).]
I ask the following three things of these small-volume users of my patent: 1) that they not use chemical herbicides and not use genetically modified seeds; 2) that they learn how to breed and save their seed from season to season; over time, you will end up with a variety tailored to your climate and soil (write me if you need help with this): and 3) in lieu of the patent royalty, donate what you think is fair to the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture [309 Cedar Street #127, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA] so that I can keep doing this kind of work. Make sure that you take care of your family and workers first. I trust my fellow small farmers to do right by me if their profit increases. So take that, Monsanto!
Alcohol fuel production can result in more concentrated corporate farming of monocrops processed in giant plants, or it can save the family farm and provide farmers with markets for a wide variety of crops. The preferable route to a sustainable agriculture system looks to me like farmers cooperatively producing fuel and multiple co-products in small plants, using a wide range of feedstocks, from roots to grains to cellulose. (David Blume, Alcohol Can Be A Gas!, p. 24, 50, info@permaculture.com)
Second: Does it acknowledge the existence of ‘organized ‘power’’… and that there will be therefore strenuous resistance and reaction (backlash)… and factor that into the plan for how to get there? Does it even have a plan for how to get there?
Third: Does it overcome our atomization? Does it bring us together – physically and psychically – across false divisions?
Fourth: Is decision-making broad and generous… open and transparent… slow and inclusive?
And far from us needing ‘power’s help with this business of reproducing ourselves… their imposed class-regime of millennia has but meant them sitting and sucking on us.
Moreover… as David Blume illustrates in his book… ‘power’ sits on the ideas that would free us from their ‘direction’ of us – Nikola Tesla’s work being perhaps the most glaring example – at least until we start to do them anyway… and it’s clear they can’t be stopped – then it rushes in to claim ownership… and as they’re shameless… they’ll even try to reinvent provenance out of whole cloth… and pretend they are the source of them.
…we need our own public media commons… our own shared public discussion space… our own shared voices to echo throughout our day to counter ‘power’s… and… let’s get on the same page regarding this matter of ‘the economy’… and consider together “Does Capitalism Have A Future?”
The parade of ‘power’s prognosticators are revealing of their plans for us. But I’ve yet to hear our commensurate response – i.e. one global in scope… that penetrates the deep social relations of class (as ‘power’s does implicitly… never inviting discussion of course…) and attempts to enlist global humanity in this massive ‘transition’ project. Now that’s largely a matter of our not having our own public media commons… our own shared public discussion space… our own shared voices to echo throughout our day to counter ‘power’s. But that we must figure out how to create such spaces could not be clearer. In the space “How Do We-The-People Come Together To Invent The Future We Want?: Getting A Design-Draft… Putting It On The People’s Telegraph” [because that’s the real issue…]) – and inter-linking its discussions with those of Founding & Realizing A Test Site I’ll try to present as much of Does Capitalism Have A Future? as I can… so that we can engage with it… and advance our thinking on the question… and hopefully make progress toward consensus… but consider how it begins:
Our quintet gathered to write this unusual book because something big looms on the horizon: a structural crisis much bigger than the recent Great Recession, which might in retrospect seem only a prologue to a period of deeper troubles and transformation. Immanuel Wallerstein explains the rationale for predicting the breakdown of the capitalist system. Over the next three or four decades capitalists of the world, overcrowding the global markets and hard pressed on all sides by the social and ecological costs of doing business, may find it simply impossible to make their usual investment decisions.
[…he will be arguing that the sine qua non of ‘capitalism’ as a world system is not wage labor… or production for exchange and profit… or the class struggle… or the ‘free market’… but rather the endless accumulation of capital… which Rosa Luxemburg told us a hundred years ago… – P.S.]
In the last five centuries capitalism has been the cosmopolitan and explicitly hierarchical world-market economy where the elite operators, favorable located at its geographical core, were in a position to reap large and reasonable secure profits. But, Wallerstein argues, this historical situation, however dynamic, will ultimately reach its systemic limitations, as do all historical systems. In this hypothesis, capitalism would end in the frustration of capitalists themselves. (Wallerstein, Collins, Mann, Derluguian, Calhoun, Does Capitalism Have A Future?)
But what about organized ‘power’? Where do they fit into this analysis?… is one of the key questions… as we begin examining the book… that we will be asking.
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…so what ‘power’ most wants is for us to turn our backs on our brothers and sisters… keep to our given tasks… and be obedient… else… how can ‘statesmen’ govern?
Initial Thoughts On the Rifkin Initiative:
• As with all ‘power’s propaganda about ‘the future’… it uses the declarative voice. It brooks no challenge… no counter vision… and certainly no squawking from mere commoners. This is ‘Big Boys Business’ is what he’s saying… the ‘Big Boys Game’… the exclusive province of the Global Players.
So we’re told what we’re going to get – and it’s an appalling vision… all this “billions of sensors” business has always been ‘power’s longing: total surveillance of us and all life. But it’s not what we want. Where are the healthy, happy babies in this vision? Where is the limitless time? Where is the boundless roving and the spanning of seas to explore new things? When ‘power’ salivates about how it can monitor the entire planet from it’s Control Room atop the Panopticon… and waxes poetic about how we also should want it… should passionately wish to contribute our small bit to the “billions of brains” working on Total Surveillance… what it’s lusting for is the end of our efforts to even try to be independent… the achievement of their deep longing that we will end all resistance… and become passionately ‘self-regulating’… eagerly offer our allegiance…
• …so what ‘power’ most wants is for us to turn our backs on our brothers and sisters… keep to our given tasks… and be obedient.
…and who is the only player strong enough to do battle with this villain? – the evil corporations – well, ‘the state’ of course… only Daddy has sufficient resources… we-the-people are way out of our league… we must go back to our bedtime stories… and let the Big Boys lead…
• He describes an ‘economy’ in which ‘marginal costs’ (of production) will plummet… resulting in a Brave New World in which:
…thousands of start-up businesses and hobbyists establish 3D-printing operations, infofacture products at near zero marginal cost, power their Fab Labs with green electricity, market their goods for nearly free on hundreds of global websites, and deliver their products in electric and fuel-cell vehicles powered by their own green energy.
A powerful new technology revolution is emerging that is going to fundamentally alter our economic life. The Communication Internet is converging with an embryonic Energy Internet and Logistics Internet to create a new technology platform -- the Internet of Things (IoT) – that connects everything and everyone. Billions of sensors are being attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks, recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores, and vehicles, feeding Big Data into the IoT global neural network. Small and medium sized enterprises and Prosumers will be able to connect to the network and use Big Data, analytics, and algorithms to accelerate efficiency, dramatically increase productivity, and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of physical products and services to near zero, making them nearly free, just like we now do with information goods.
The plummeting of marginal costs is spawning a hybrid economy – part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons – with far reaching implications for society. Millions of people are already transferring parts of their economic lives to the global Collaborative Commons.
But who is buying these things? And how is it that they’re able to? And who will feed the folks who have all this discretionary income?
• And since we’re on the subject of food. To keep the book from being a downer… so as to not spoil the good vibe… blow the great high… he thoughtfully leaves the dire predictions to the end… when he says:
Extreme storms and floods… are occurring twice as often as they did a century ago…
Droughts are proliferating everywhere. A 2009 International Food Policy Research Institute report on the impact of climate change on agriculture in the developing world was sobering…
The impact on agriculture in the Middle East and North Africa over the next four decades because of climate change is equally alarming: rice yields will decline by 30%, maize by 47%, and wheat by 20%…
Climate change will have no less of a dramatic impact on human infrastructure…
Is it any wonder they’re pushing so hard to create an ‘economy’ based on ‘cooperation’ (for us…) to get us to give generously of our time… and… willingly… continue to let them direct our lives.
They have manipulated our good hearts and our good natures only because we haven’t been able to talk about it. Those good hearts and good natures need to be turned to a worthy object: ourselves and the earth…
• And every good fairy tale needs a villain… would it surprise you to learn it’s corporations?…‘power’s traditional cover – the facade global-‘power’ apparently cannot do without.
(During the February 16, 2014 show on “mis-directing dissent” we argued that the Left’s ability to be strategic has been successfully derailed by ‘power’… in large measure via the efforts of propped-up pundits directing it down fruitless paths… so here’s another example not just of the broad strategy of misdirection but of the particular strategy (for ‘power’) of using ‘the economy’ for cover.
And while last week we repeated what was said in an earlier discussion: that “‘scarcity’ is self-justifying”… and if imposed universally reduces the need for economic ideology… what we’re seeing… in ‘power’s clinging to it – the idea of ‘capitalism’ – is ‘power’s need for its larger ideological purpose: ‘capitalism’s ideological function… in this stage of the game… is less about providing motivation – or legitimization and justification of ‘rule’ – and now almost exclusively about providing ‘power’ with needed cover… i.e. shielding its totalitarian planning from public scrutiny… and trying to get we-the-people on ‘it’s side [as Hugo told them… “no vacuum in the human heart…”] So… their story will go “there’s no ‘plan’ to force or brothers and sisters in other lands into a desperation that’s inescapable… oh no… there’s only evil corporations…” And of course that example of destitution will also do admirable service as a cautionary tale for all of the ‘privileged’ servants… as a reminder of how ‘good’ they have it: a ‘guaranteed income’!… and all that ‘freedom’.)
And who is the only player strong enough to do battle with this villain? – the evil corporations – well, ‘the state’ of course… only Daddy has sufficient resources… we-the-people are way out of our league… we must go back to our bedtime stories… and let the Big Boys lead.
• He tells us there’s an ‘epic struggle’ going on… and I agree… but of course his is not the ‘epic struggle’ that I see…
(Further discussion of ‘power’s ‘Shape the Future Project” will hopefully unfold at: “How Do We-The-People Come Together To Invent The Future We Want?: Getting A Design-Draft… Putting It On The People’s Telegraph”.)
Continuing with Chapter XXVI of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
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And what a long road they had traveled in coming here! How filled with unimaginable sorrow each lap of that journey! …they had been taken every day to the specially designed torture chambers, outfitted with all the latest instruments conducive to making people “talk.” There they had been questioned, until, half dead with pain, they had confessed either the hiding place of their valuables, or the name of the person to whom they had confided them. Many had died from these interrogations. Those who survived had been almost relieved to find themselves being loaded into boxcars, eighty or ninety to a car, for it had meant they were leaving the torture chambers far behind.
Or so they had thought….
We already know what happened to them here. Heartbroken at being separated from their husbands and children, frantic with fear, sent, at “selection time,” into the right-hand column, they at last reached C Camp. But before entering the foul, disease-ridden barracks, they were made to submit to another humiliation, designed to divest them of any lingering vestiges of human dignity: the baths.
Ungentle hands cut their hair and stripped them of their clothes. After the bath they were given rags that no self-respecting beggar would ever have touched. In these clothes they received their first dividend under the Third Reich: lice.
After this reception, they began their life of confinement behind the KZ barbed wire, their life of the living dead. The food they received, more like dirty dishwater than anything else, was sufficient to keep them from dying, insufficient to keep them really alive. Albumin was completely lacking in their systems, causing their legs to become as heavy as lead. The absence of fats made their bodies swell. Their menstruations ceased. As a result, they became irritable and increasingly nervous, had migraines and nosebleeds. The lack of Vitamin B caused perpetual drowsiness and partial amnesia: often they could no longer remember the names of the streets where they had once lived, or their house numbers. Only their eyes were still alive, but event hey no longer sparkled with intelligence.
These were the circumstances in which they submitted to the daily roll calls and musters, which lasted several hours. When they fainted and were rudely revived with a bucket of cold water, their eyes invariably turned towards the clouds of smoke that covered the KZ, or towards the flames belching from the crematorium stacks. These two signs, smoke and flames, reminded them, day and night, that they were living at the gate to the other world.
The C Camp inmates had lived for four months in the shadow of the crematorium gate: it took ten days for all of them to pass through it. Forty-five thousand tormented bodies rendered up their souls there. Upon C Camp, whose wire stands had enclosed as many poignant tragedies, a dismal silence descended.
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The Sonderkommando was awaiting the final blow. Day after day, week after week, month after month, terror had hovered over our heads, suspended by the thinnest of threads. And now, in a day or two, it would descend bringing with it instantaneous death, leaving in its wake only a pile of silvery ashes. We were ready for it. Hourly we awaited the arrival of our SS executioners.
Early in the morning of October 6th, 1944, a shot rang out from one of the watch towers, killing a KZ prisoner who had strayed outside the neutral zone into the area between the first and second lines of guards that surrounded the camp. The prisoner, an ex-Russian officer, had been sent here for trying to escape from a prisoner-of-war camp. In all probability he had been trying to escape again when the guard had fired on him.
A political commission headed by Dr. Mengele proceeded to the spot to make the customary investigation. If the victim had been Jewish his body would have been shipped directly to the morgue and thence to the crematoriums, and that would have been the end of the matter. But since this was a Russian officer, whose name and personal data were duly inscribed in the camp records, the same procedure could not be followed. An autopsy report would be required to explain his death. Following his on-the-spot investigation, Dr. Mengele had the body taken to the crematorium, with orders that an autopsy be made. The report was to be ready by 2:30 P.M. Dr. Mengele would pick it up and check the findings by personally examining the body.
It was 9:00 A.M. when Dr. Mengele left the dissecting room. I had the body placed on the table, and would have completed the autopsy in thirty or forty minutes if the date had not been October 6th, the last day but one of the Sonderkommando’s allotted life span. We were not certain of anything, but I felt the imminence of death.
Since I was unable to work, I left the dissecting room and went to my room, planning to take a healthy dose of sleeping tablets. I smoked cigarette after cigarette, my nerves completely shot. Unable to stay put, I crossed into the incineration room, where I found the Sonderkommando crew working half-heartedly, despite the fact that several hundred bodies were stacked up in front of the ovens. Small groups had formed and the men were talking in whispers. I went upstairs to the kommando’s living quarters and immediately noticed that something was amiss. Normally, after morning muster and breakfast, the night shift turned in. Now, however, at 10 o’clock, everyone was still up. I also noticed that they were dressed in sport clothes, with sweaters and boots, although the room was bright with a warm October sun. Here too many of the men were huddled, talking in whispers, while others moved about feverishly, arranging and packing their clothes in suitcases. It was obvious that some sort of plot was being hatched. But what?…
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WUR of April 20th, 2014… “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”
April 15th, 2014… Brothers and Sisters: Decisions are being made for us apace… under the banner “Stop Climate Change.” When have states done anything but… use whatever’s around to bolster themselves? (and then send out their hired guns to cover their butts.) This is ‘the state’s raison d’etre. States don’t exist for our benefit. Recall what we said during the July 28, 2013 show… that the state exists to keep power out of our hands in order to maximize its…. So they lie to us… by means of their propaganda mechanisms. This is what states do… as… if they told us the truth… how could we be kept in check? And checked we must be… for states to direct our energy… and play the game of global supremacy.
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Is a global ‘Supremacy Game’ necessarily totalitarian?
In our upcoming show we’ll be considering this question… and one that flows from it: “What does it mean to have a revolution… in a “world-‘class’-system’”?”
Obviously as I write this the Ukraine is at the foremost of my mind… but not she alone… there are many today… and many that have gone before… who walk the very road the Ukraine walks today: the U.S…. France… Haiti… Russia… China… Cuba… Rwanda… Somalia… Venezuela… to name perhaps the best known since the advent of the ‘global system.’ It seems that no matter what a state does… it becomes what it was… before the ‘revolution’ (a term-apt as it’s from the late Latin: “to roll back”…) the ‘leaders’ but need an external threat… which the ‘global order’ is more than happy to provide to it… to be restored to ‘statesmenship’…
…or the ‘Big Boys’ will systematically whittle it away… or orchestrate its ‘decay’… and the culprit-recalcitrants will be dismissed… like children who have been disobedient… and sent to languish at the bottom of ‘the order of upright states’… or expelled altogether from grace and labeled ‘failed states’… cautionary tales for others to contemplate.
So… what does it mean to have a revolution in a global ‘power’-system?
It means to be a target… it means to be harassed… it means trying to live with a vampire on your ass… it means balancing on an edge with a bully behind you howling menace….
During the June 23, 2013 show we quoted Victor Hugo and then George Bernard Shaw:
The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future. That spectre, the past, not infrequently falsifies its passport. Let us be ready for the snare. Let us beware. (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, Book VI – XI)
“Revolutions never lift the burden of tyranny, they merely shift it to another’s shoulders.”
This is so because ‘tyranny’ and ‘rule’ and ‘statesmanship’… are coterminous. Or… as we’ve said before and will say again: ‘power’ is ‘power’ is ‘power’.
Consider this from Plato’s beloved uncle Critias:
Then came, it seems, that wise and cunning man,
The first inventor of the fear of gods…
He framed a tale, a most alluring doctrine,
Concealing truth by veils of lying lore.
He told of the abode of awful gods,
Up in revolving vaults, whence thunder roars
And lightning’s fearful flashes blind the eye…
He thus encircled men by bonds of fear;
Surrounding them by gods in fair abodes,
He charmed them by his spells, and daunted them –
And lawlessness turned into law and order.
And consider this from Kissinger’s On China:
Confucius’s answer to the chaos of his era was the “Way” of the just and harmonious society. Confucius preached a hierarchical social creed: the fundamental duty was to “know thy place.” To its adherents the Confucian order offered the inspiration of service in pursuit of a greater harmony…. His philosophy sought the redemption of the state through righteous individual behavior. Oriented toward this world, his thinking affirmed a code of social conduct, not a roadmap to the afterlife. (p. 15)
And consider this from Mary Peter Mack:
As Bentham’s pages on Indirect Legislation are among the most neglected of all his work, so too are they among the most important. What did he mean by “indirect legislation”? “Legislation is a state of warfare,” he said in another favorite metaphor: “Direct legislation – a formal attack made with the main body of [the legislator’s]… forces in the open field; indirect legislation – a secret plan of connected and long-concerted operations to be executed in the way of stratagem or petite guerre.”… His vision was remarkably Confucian. “But the thing is,” Confucius said in the Analects, “to aim so that there should not be any lawsuits at all.”
And consider this from Bentham:
All the indirect means, then, which we can use with advantage, must be employed in directing the inclinations of men, in putting into operations the rules of a logic hitherto but little know, the logic of the will – …
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But resources are not only shrinking costs are rising
But resources are not only shrinking – our earth’s been gnawed to the bone – and what meat is left for the global pot must be carefully apportioned… costs are rising: crumbling infrastructure… toxic dumps in our earth and water (long-ignored…) must be cleaned up… middle ranks in ‘emerging states’ must be paid off – and ‘power’s thinning soup can’t support enough of us.
In starting to read this collaborative effort of Wallerstein’s (Does Capitalism Have A Future?) [discussed on the page “How Do We-The-People Come Together To Invent The Future We Want?: Getting A Design-Draft… Putting It On The People’s Telegraph”] – keeping in mind that for us this – “can ‘capitalism’ continue to exist?” – is not really the question… for us the question is strategic: “how do we get the future we want?”… because it’s time for us to start living self-determined lives… –
…as I consider how they (how all of us…) are trained to see the world… multiple interrelated (in ‘class’) issues relevant to our strategic question arise. First… that if the future we want is (as I’ve been arguing…) the opposite of ‘class’… so will be our ‘way of seeing’… as Kropotkin said – and ditto for its implied ‘value-system’. Second… if that ‘opposite lens’ – the view from ‘the bottom’… is simultaneously… necessarily… the view from the vantage of ‘the whole’… i.e. encompasses more of the truth (what the earth has established as reality…) it must best represent for the health and wholeness of the planet. And lastly – and this is an issue that comes up every day… as I listen to the media-propaganda-parade – that there must be a way for us to have this discussion… of the importance of controlling the definitions… for ‘power’ – to control us… and for us – once we have ‘the People’s Lexicon’… i.e. our own definitions – in order to begin creating the world we want.
Yesterday (April 14th, 2014) I listened to one voice over the airwaves after another echo what I hear from folks out in the ‘day-to-day’ – who say the job is forcing them to act like robots… i.e. that we’re being sped-up…
(…which concretely illustrates the point Wallerstein’s making: that even as the earth-resources available to ‘the rulers’ for eating… are shrinking – or perhaps because of that fact – ‘power’s unconscious agents (the bosses) are determined to extract even more out of us… determined to get every last bit… until all the life of the planet has been ‘spent’…)
…I listened to folks say… in essence… that this train called ‘class’… called… “just-sit-back-and-enjoy-the-ride-and let-the big-boys (the Important Ones)-drive…” is rolling downhill… and it’s got a speed to it…
This story in which they ride our backs – that they call ‘Progress’ – was written by others who then strangle all other stories… cut them off at the pass…
Continuing with Chapter XXVII of Miklos Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account – P.S.]
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It was 9:00 A.M. when Dr. Mengele left the dissecting room. I had the body placed on the table, and would have completed the autopsy in thirty or forty minutes if the date had not been October 6th, the last day but one of the Sonderkommando’s allotted life span. We were not certain of anything, but I felt the imminence of death.
Since I was unable to work, I left the dissecting room and went to my room, planning to take a healthy dose of sleeping tablets. I smoked cigarette after cigarette, my nerves completely shot. Unable to stay put, I crossed into the incineration room, where I found the Sonderkommando crew working half-heartedly, despite the fact that several hundred bodies were stacked up in front of the ovens. Small groups had formed and the men were talking in whispers. I went upstairs to the kommando’s living quarters and immediately noticed that something was amiss. Normally, after morning muster and breakfast, the night shift turned in. Now, however, at 10 o’clock, everyone was still up. I also noticed that they were dressed in sport clothes, with sweaters and boots, although the room was bright with a warm October sun. Here too many of the men were huddled, talking in whispers, while others moved about feverishly, arranging and packing their clothes in suitcases. It was obvious that some sort of plot was being hatched. But what? I entered the small room that housed the kommando chief and found the various leaders of the night shift seated around the table: the engineer, the mechanic, the head chauffeur and the chief of the gas kommando. No sooner had I taken my seat when the kommando chief took an almost empty bottle from the table and poured me a large glass of brandy. It was a strong Polish eau-de-vie, the famous cumin brandy. I downed my glass in one gulp. Now, in the waning hours of the Sonderkommando’s fourth month, it might not be a life-prolonging elixir, but it was none the less an excellent remedy for dulling the fear of death. My comrades presented me with a detailed account of our situation. All evidence seemed to indicate that the Sonderkommando’s liquidation would not take place before the following day, and perhaps even the day after. But careful plans had been made for the 860 members of the kommando to try and force their way out of the camp. The break was scheduled for that night.
Once out, we would head for the loop of the Vistula two kilometers away. At this time of year the river was very low and could easily be forded. Eight kilometers from the Vistula there were vast forests, extending to the Polish border, in which we should be able to live for weeks, even months if necessary, in relative safety. Or perhaps we would run into some partisans along the way. Our supply of weapons was adequate. During the preceding few days a shipment of about a hundred boxes of high explosives had reached the camp, sent from the Unio factories of Auschwitz, a munitions plant that employed Polish Jews as workers. The Germans used it for blowing up railroad lines. Besides this stock, we had five machine guns and twenty hand grenades.
“This should suffice,” said one of the group. “With the element of surprise on our side, we can disarm the guards using only our revolvers. Then we’ll take the SS by surprise in their dormitories and force them to come with us until we have no further use for them.”
The signal to attack would be given by flashlight signals from number one crematorium. Number two would immediately transmit the signal to number three, which would in turn alert number four. The plans seemed all the more feasible to me for the simple reason that the only crematorium working was number one. And even it would knock off work at 6:00 P.M., which meant that the Sonderkommando night shift would not go on duty that evening. Whenever this happened, the SS guards tended to relax their vigil. There were three SS guards in each crematorium.
We adjourned the meeting until the evening, the order being that, until the moment the signal was given, everyone should accomplish his task as usual, scrupulously avoiding any act liable to arouse suspicion.
Returning to my room, I again passed through the oven room. The men seemed to be working even more slowly than before. I informed my two colleagues of the plan, but refrained from mentioning it to the lab assistant. He would inevitably be drawn into it once it began, but I saw no need to inform him of it for the present.
Time moved forward on leaden feet. Lunch time arrived. We ate slowly, then went into the crematorium courtyard to warm ourselves in the slanting rays of the autumn sun. I noticed that the SS guards were nowhere to be seen. But there was probably nothing unusual about that; it had happened more than once before. They were no doubt in their rooms. The gates were closed. Outside, the camp SS on duty were at their posts. So I accorded no importance to the absence of guards inside. I smoked my cigarette in peace. To know that within a few hours we would be outside these barbed wires and free again lifted a dark cloud from my mind, a cloud that had hovered there since my first day in the KZ. Even if the attempt failed, I would have lost nothing.
I looked at my watch. Half past one….I looked at my watch. Half past one. I got up and asked my colleagues to join me for the autopsy, so we could be ready with the report when Dr. Mengele arrived to pick it up. They followed me silently into the dissecting room, and we began the autopsy immediately. Today one of my associates was performing the dissection, while I recorded his findings on my typewriter.
We had been working for about 20 minutes when a tremendous explosion rocked the walls. In the echoing silence, the steady staccato of machine gun fire reached our ears. Peering through the green mosquito netting that covered the main window, I saw the red-tiled roof and supporting beams of number three crematorium blow off, followed by an immense spiral of flame and black smoke. No more than a minute later, machine gun fire broke out just in front of the dissecting room door. We had no idea what had happened. Our plans called for tonight. Two possibilities occurred to me: either someone had betrayed us, thus enabling the SS to step in and break up the planned escape, or else a considerable force of partisans had attacked the camp. The dismal wail of sirens began in both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. The explosions grew louder and louder, and the rattle of submachine guns more and more persistent. Then we could hear the harsher staccato of field machine guns. I had already made up my mind what to do. Whether it was a question of treason or of a partisan attack, it seemed best for the moment to remain in the dissecting room and see how the situation evolved. From the window I saw 80 to 100 trucks arriving. The first one pulled up in front of our crematorium. Half a company jumped out and formed up in battle formation in front of the barbed wire fences.
I began to see what had happened. The Sonderkommando men had taken possession of number one crematorium and, from every window and door, were spraying the SS troops with bullets and grenades. Their defense seemed effective, for I saw several soldiers drop, either dead or wounded. Seeing this, the besiegers decided to resort to more drastic methods. They brought up 50 well-trained police dogs and unleashed them on the Sonderkommando entrenched behind the walls of number one. But for some strange reason these dogs, usually so ferocious and obedient, refused to budge: ears back, tails between their legs, they took shelter behind their SS masters. Perhaps it was because the dogs had been trained to deal with prisoners wearing striped burlap, whereas the Sonderkommando never wore this “uniform.” Or perhaps, too long used to dealing with weakened, unarmed prisoners, they were momentarily frightened by the smell of powder and scorched flesh, the noise and confusion of a pitched battle. In any case, the SS soon realized their mistake and, without letting up on their fire, began to haul some howitzers into position.
It was impossible for the Sonderkommando to hold out against such numerical and material odds. Shouting exultantly, they erupted through the back gates of the crematorium. Firing as they went, they poured through the electrified barbed wires that had been cut ahead of time, and headed for the loop of the Vistula.
For about ten minutes the fighting was heavy on both sides. Loud machine gun fire from the watch towers mingled with the lesser blasts of the sub-machine guns, and interspersed could be heard the explosion of hand grenades and dynamite. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, everything became quiet.
Then the SS stationed in front of the crematorium advanced, leaving behind the two howitzers, which they had not used. With fixed bayonets, they attached the building from all sides, and scattered through the rooms in the basement and ground floor. A group of SS entered the dissecting room. Guns leveled, they surrounded us and drove us, under a rain of blows, into the courtyard. There they made us lie down on our bellies, our faces hard against the ground. The order rang out: “Anyone who makes a move, or raises his head, will get a bullet in the back of the neck!” A few minutes later I could tell from the sound of footsteps that another SS group had rounded up and brought back a considerable number of Sonderdommando men. They too were made to lie down beside us. How many of them could there be? With my head pressed against the ground it was impossible to tell for sure. Three or four minutes later another group arrived and was made to lie down beside us.
While we were lying there inert on the ground, a hail of kicks and blows from the guards’ clubs fell on our heads, shoulders and backs. I could feel the warm blood trickling down my face, till its salty taste reached my tongue. But only the first blows really hurt me. My head was spinning, my ears were ringing, my mind was a blank. I could no longer feel anything. I had the impression I was slipping into the indifference that precedes death.
For some twenty or thirty minutes we lay on the ground waiting for the bullet from the SS guards standing behind us. In this position, I knew it was with a bullet in the head that they intended to kill us. The swiftest of deaths at least, and in these circumstances the least horrible. In my mind I imagined my head blown off under the tremendous impact of the bullet fired point-blank, my skull exploding into a thousand pieces.
Suddenly I heard the sound of a car. It must be Dr. Mengele, I thought. The political SS were awaiting his arrival. I didn’t dare lift my head to look, but I recognized his voice. An order, from the lips of an SS: “Doctors, on your feet!” All four of us got up and stood at attention, waiting for what would follow. Dr. Mengele made a sign for us to approach. My face and shirt were bloody, my clothes covered with mud as I appeared before him. Dr. Mengele asked us what part we had played in all this.
“No part,” I replied, “unless carrying out the orders of the Hauptsturmfuhrer could be construed as guilt. We were dissecting the body of the Russian office when the incident occurred. It was the explosion that interrupted our dissection. The unfinished autopsy report is still in the typewriter. We did not leave our posts and were there when they found us.”
The SS commander confirmed our words. Dr. Mengele looked hard at me and said: “Go wash up and return to your work.”
I turned and left, followed by my three companions. We had got no more than twenty steps when a burst of machine guns sounded behind us. The Sonderkommando’s life was over.
I did not look back; on the contrary, I increased my pace and returned to my room. I tried to roll a cigarette but my hands were shaking too much and kept tearing the paper. Finally I got one rolled, lighted it, inhaled deeply several times, and, on unsteady legs, made for my bed and lay down. Only then did I begin to feel the aches and bruises that racked my whole body, the result of the SS kicks and blows.
So much had happened today, and yet it was only 3:00 P.M. The fact that I had come away with my life gave me neither comfort nor joy. I knew it was only a reprieve. I knew Dr. Mengele, and I knew the mentality of the SS. I was also fully cognizant of the importance of my work: for the moment I was indispensable. Besides myself, there was no physician in the KZ qualified to meet Dr. Mengele’s requirements. And even if there were, they would be careful not to reveal themselves and make public their professional abilities, for to do so would be to fall into Dr. Mengele’s hands, and so bring their lives to an end: like every member of the Sonderkommando, they too would find themselves condemned to a life span of four months.
When my nerves became calmer, I got up and went to look around. I wanted to know exactly what had happened this afternoon. Was thre really a traitor among us? And did the SS really suppress the revolt by destroying the Sonderkommando? Even if they had been hunting for a pretext, they could never have found a better reason to liquidate the kommando. It was quite likely that today merely marked the expiration of our allotted four months, and the SS had received orders to liquidate us. They had probably set out to execute their orders, but had discovered, to their surprise, that the twelfth Sonderkommando had no intention of lining up in the courtyard. Nor were they to be lured by the pretext that this assembly was merely to make some routine announcement, or for muster. Our kommando, quite aware that the SS had come to exterminate us, had apparently chosen to go down fighting.
[This illustrates in concentrated form the importance (for us…) of maintaining… and building on… our historical memory… and the importance (for ‘power’…) of breaking it down. Earlier this morning (April 15, 2014) I listened to a woman who’d written a book called The People’s State of Amnesia about the Tiananmen Square massacre twenty-five years ago… and she said that Chinese ‘rulers’ have successfully erased the memory of the event from the minds of the young in China. All states re-write the historical record… try to wipe the memory of its betrayals from our minds… in order to continuously re-accustom us to its steady diet of lies…. – P.S.]
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