Getting People Killed For Political Gain
By Patrick N. Theros - June 3, 2022
If
I believed that the politicians who have hijacked the once Grand Old
Party had any historical literacy, I would be tempted to believe that
they had read about and decided to copy the tactics of the communist
guerillas (AKA “partisans”) in Greece and Yugoslavia during World War
II. At that time, the communists deliberately exploited the Germans to
recruit volunteers into their bands. They knew that German Army doctrine
called for mass retaliation on nearby civilians to prevent support for
the guerrillas. The communists would regularly ambush and kill one or
two German soldiers near a village unsympathetic to the communist cause.
With Teutonic predictability, the Nazis would roll into the village in
the next few days and select scores of innocent civilians, with a
preference for the educated ones, and kill them. As soon as the Germans
left, recruiters from the communist partisan organizations would appear.
They would offer young men (and young women) who had just lost a parent
or sibling the opportunity for revenge by joining their ranks.
In
both countries, the communists prioritized fighting other non-communist
resistance movements over fighting the Germans while preparing to take
over after the Germans left. This tactic worked well because the
non-communist groups in both countries had an aversion to militarily
useless attacks on the Germans that resulted in the deaths of innocent
thousands. Winston Churchill, in fact, wrote that the Greek communists
“took our gold and money” and waited for the Germans to leave so they
could seize power.
I used to regularly drive up the old road from
Sparta to Corinth; virtually every village had erected a monument
inscribed with the names of scores of villagers killed in reprisal by
the German Army. Not a coincidence, this region, the districts of
Arcadia and Laconia, have almost always voted monarchist and
conservative.
I do not suggest that the American right-wing
deliberately copied the Balkan communists; they probably never heard of
them in the first place. However, evidence abounds that right-wing
populists in America – like populists of every political color worldwide
– have independently discovered that misery can be exploited for
political gain. Historian Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter with
Kansas” describes in painful detail a poor county in Kansas that
consistently votes in favor of politicians whose policies actually
increase the county’s crushing poverty. American populist politicians
use the same formula as World War II communists. They recruit by
offering “revenge against the people who did this to you”; in the Kansas
case, the invisible and anonymous “liberal elites who hate America.” It
worked with Greek villagers, and it works now with disaffected white
Americans.
How else to explain the political appeal of gun laws
that allow demented teenagers to legally obtain semi-automatic weapons
originally designed for military use and massacre almost two dozen
school children in each of Connecticut, Florida, and Texas? Look at Ted
Cruz, Greg Abbott, and Ron DeSantis. They don’t just defend the madness
but use it as a political tool. Well-rehearsed lines leap from their
lips moments after the attacks hit the news. Their subliminal message is
simple; “It’s too bad but these children died as unavoidable collateral
damage in a war to protect our freedom from the liberals who are coming
to enslave you.” Ask yourself why is it that Republican-controlled
state legislatures react to mass shootings by passing more legislation
designed to loosen gun restrictions?
When avowed white
supremacists drive hundreds of miles to slaughter Jews, blacks and
Hispanics in synagogues, supermarkets, and churches, the populist
politicians dismiss them as “solitary cranks.” Is it not reasonable to
assume that the politicians who espouse the “great replacement theory”:
-- you know the one, the accusation that “liberals and democrats” are
importing dark-skinned anti-Christian foreigners to replace the
God-fearing native white population – secretly rejoice at these
massacres? The subliminal message they deliver is that the murderers are
sadly overwrought “victims” driven to excess by the “elitist” plan to
extinguish white Christianity. How else to justify the actions of a
17-year old who drove 150 miles with an AR-15 to defend white people in
another town against rioting blacks and then killed two people?
Creating
misery for political gain goes beyond guns. How else to explain Florida
Governor Ron DeSantis’ steely-eyed determination to obstruct healthcare
measures that might have prevented thousands of Floridians from dying
of Covid as well as uncounted hundreds more who died because they could
not get into hospitals that were swamped with covid patients? DeSantis
tells us he did it “to preserve freedoms.” Why else would the good
governor (and wannabe Trump successor) launch a campaign to criminalize
teaching or reading about the history of slavery, Jim Crow and
homosexuality in public schools? It enables him to argue that his
enemies, you know, the ones who hate America, are the ones who threaten
Floridians’ freedom. (DeSantis leaves out of his slogans that the
‘freedom’ he defends includes the right to die needlessly on a
ventilator.)
Very skilled politicians can craft a message that
will persuade people to blame others for their misery and vote for them.
The southern racists, once known as Dixiecrats, who took over and
killed my beloved Grand Old Party are political maestros. They honed
their skills persuading poor white southerners that they had to defend
themselves against blacks, and forget their povert