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Totalitarian Tools by Thomas DiLorenzo

July 12, 2012 Leave a comment Go to comments

What do the Nazi Gestapo, the South African police during Apartheid, the Japanese military during World War II, Spanish “Grand Inquisitor” Tomas de Torquemada, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Marc Levin have in common? The answer is that they were/are all practitioners of or apologists for forms of water torture that have long been illegal under U.S. and international law.

(The U.S. executed Japanese soldiers during World War II for the war crime of water torture). In the U.S. in recent years it has been called “water boarding.”

Thomas DiLorenzo, Illinois - crop

Thomas DiLorenzo, Illinois – crop (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These parallels were brought to mind recently while re-reading F.A. Hayek’s classic, The Road to Serfdom. In Chapter 10, entitled “Why the Worst Get to the Top,” Hayek wrote that in a totalitarian state (or one that is becoming more so), “to be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state, it is not enough that a man should be prepared to accept specious justification of vile deeds; he must himself be prepared actively to break every moral rule he has ever known . . .” Moreover, he “must be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything.” Those who aspire to “leading positions” in “the totalitarian machine,” wrote Hayek, will come to understand that “there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous” where one can prosper by practicing “cruelty and intimidation, deliberate deception and spying . . .” Hayek was referring to the fascist and socialist regimes of the 1940s, but his words also seem increasingly descriptive of contemporary American government with its taser-armed rogue police thugs, its TSA gropers and perverts, its constant bombardment of the public with lies about just about everything, and its spy cameras on street corners, in satellites, drones, warrantless wiretaps, internet spying, and worse.

The Spanish “Water Cure“

Water torture was a totalitarian tool used by the Spanish “Grand Inquisitor” Tomas de Torquemada during the fifteenth-century Spanish Inquisition. The accused were placed naked on a table with their feet elevated, hands and legs bound, and their nose blocked. Water was poured into his or her mouth which was then stuffed with a rag so that the water could not be spit out. It would create the sensation of drowning and in some cases the stomach would feel as though it would burst – or it would burst, killing the victim.

The purpose of what the Spaniards called “the water cure” was to torture people who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism but were suspected of secretly practicing their original religion. (For example, the absence of smoke from chimneys on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath, was considered to be a strong indication that the accused was a Jew since Judaism forbade performing labor such as lighting chimney fires on the Sabbath). Several thousand Jews were eventually convicted and executed after enduring “the water cure.” The sentence for “heresy” was burning at the stake. This was one of the worst examples in history of the evils of the non-separation of church and state.

The American “Water Cure”

The U.S. military has employed a version of Torquemada’s “water cure” almost from the beginning of the republic. It was used extensively by the Lincoln administration on Northern civilians during the War to Prevent Southern Independence according to historian and Lincoln cultist Mark Neely, Jr. in his book, Fate of Liberty. Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution defines treason as “only levying war upon the States . . .” which of course is exactly what Lincoln’s invasion of the Southern states was.

isdees

isdees (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

But Lincoln took it upon himself to personally redefine treason as being any criticism of himself, his policies, or the Republican Party. Consequently, hundreds of newspapers in the North were shut down and tens of thousands of Northern civilians were imprisoned without due process (Habeas Corpus having been illegally suspended) under the guise of battling “treason.” Lincoln himself even once announced that a man who merely remains silent while his administration’s policies were being discussed was being traitorous. All of the totalitarian communist governments of the twentieth century espoused the same notion and enforced it vigorously.

Neely writes of how Northern state citizens suspected of not being fully supportive of the Lincoln regime were frequently dragged into a gulag without due process and……………..

EXCERPT

via Totalitarian Tools by Thomas DiLorenzo.

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