On November 8, 2024 Midnight and other beasts published our post-election analysis, titled End of the Mutant Republic. In the nearly a year since, I find no cause to revise any of the conclusions therein. Any are welcome to review this feature, just look here:
https://midnightandotherbeasts.blogspot.com/2024/11/end-of-mutant-republic.html
The events of the past month require that we revisit this post. Not the conclusions, rather a specific point cited in the feature. Here is an excerpt from End of the Mutant Republic that will be our focal point today:
After the Nazi surrender in 1945 the Allied Commander, Dwight Eisenhower, was appointed as the Governor General of the western zone of occupied Germany. He was given the daunting task of simultaneously working to restore a functioning society while also expunging the Nazi influence from same. Even before President Truman issued a very detailed program for the administration in October 1945, Eisenhower had already made it a policy to confront the German people with the enormity of the Nazi regime's crimes. It was not too long into this process of de-nazification that a sobering discovery was made. The tentacles of this totalitarian regime were so far reaching into German society that the complete removal of each and every Nazi would result in the nation simply left huddling in the rubble.
The American administration in post-war Germany was not spotless in it's execution, but Eisenhower was a man eminently suited to the task. He had a firm grasp of the broader vision of the policy while deftly navigating the tactical challenges on the ground. He fully understood that they were dealing with a people who had known only a dysfunctional, ersatz republic, followed by twelve years of totalitarian, one party rule and total warfare. This great intellectual race had spawned genius in countless disciplines of both art and science, yet in only a generation had been so awash in state propaganda as to have lost their ability to think critically for themselves. Eisenhower was convinced that it would take a full generation for this to be corrected.
I am going to share with you a couple of lines excerpted from Eisenhower's correspondence with a Master Sergeant Meccner, stationed at Wright Field, 9 March 1946:
fr. paragraph 2 - "In general our policy on German re-education is founded on the concept that re-education must ultimately come from Germans themselves..."....we can not forcibly re-indoctrinate the Germans if we are to obtain the desired results."
fr. paragraph 4 - "This program does not simply concern itself with German educational institutions in the narrower sense, but is to a large degree concerned with the media of public information in Germany such as the press, radio, film industry, and similar means of contacting large groups."
I believe that these lines best encapsulate Eisenhower's thorough understanding of the nature of the problem and how to best address it. The Nuremberg Trials were the reckoning. Eisenhower's longer term administration (and that of his successors) were the reconciliation.
All that madness from only twelve years of state indoctrination. Still, amidst the enormity of tragedy, it must not be lost that this did not occur to a society of stupid people. Even in the post war misery of the shaky Weimar Republic, the Germans were a well educated and highly advanced society. Just imagine the monstrosity they would have created if they'd had fifty years to implement their program.
Of note in Eisenhower's quote above, there is in paragraph 4 reference to Germany's educational institutions. Ike had already designated this as a first order of priority. It is in this response to Staff Sgt. Meccner that he expands upon the breadth of institutions infected, and thus needing purging of their Nazi influence. We will, by varying degree, address those other institutions, but for the moment let's remain with the field of education. Not German education, but our own, which has for the last fifty years been infected with sick ideas. Just like the Nazis had sick ideas.
The American university has become a pesthole of sick ideas. I don't mean sick in any moral sense. Others often make their arguments on this basis, and I'll leave them to it. I don't have to resort to that in order to make my point. When I say an idea is sick, I mean it in the sense that the idea is unhealthy. Try to think of an idea as an organism. For an organism to survive it must remain healthy. So too with ideas. Sick ideas are unhealthy ideas that will not survive prolonged exposure to reality. These ideas may only survive and propagate in an insulated environment, one which does not face the rigorous daily challenges of reality. As an alternative, one might obtain similar results in a society where the state holds complete authority over every single aspect of daily life. I mean, I suppose that would work? For a while. Maybe.
These unhealthy ideas have escaped their university incubator, going viral and taking the public at large as their host. Like any smart virus, they behave accordingly, keeping their host in a perpetually weakened state, whereby the virus continues to enjoy the hospitality. The virus has been able to mutate, adapt to different settings. It has found a means of infiltrating disciplines which are typically considered immune from the infection of such unhealthy ideas. Fields like science, security and defense, but more than anywhere in education. All levels of education, both public and private. Smart viruses love to attack the young, as their immunities are not yet fully developed.
The Nazis recognized this. The formation of the Hitler Youth predated their ascent to power. By 1939, on the eve of the war, Hitler Youth membership was compulsory for all youth of Aryan parents, ages ten to nineteen. This was in addition to the party redirecting all school curricula with their assumption of power in 1933. From the elementary through secondary education, and of course the universities. It was easy in the case of universities, simply by barring admission to non-party members. In some quarters this technique would be referred to as "seeding the mine".
The Nazis enjoyed a set of circumstances which allowed them to fully implement this program. Not by stealth, but out in the light of day for all to see. There were doubtless many who simply accepted this out of a fear of what should happen to them if they were to raise the objection. There were also considerable numbers of Germans who wholly embraced these things and lent their support to it. The regime was not concerned with popular support; thus, it was in this Garden of Evil that sick ideas took root and thrived. While the program launched upon our education system may be less overt in it's sinister character, it is indeed an insidious poison, tailored for the long game. It is in part by design, and perhaps nearly as much by accident. Irrespective of motive or intent, the results are the same and they are undeniable.
University campuses enjoy a certain degree of autonomy in how they conduct their affairs. Included in academia's self-governance is a preference for the peculiar phenomenon we know as tenure. Now, while I can think of some other institutions that have a de facto tenured regime, in no other is this codified as in academia. It's like a monarchy, only without the hereditary element. Each department becomes it's own little politburo, bearing the imprimatur of their tenured gatekeepers. Over time, the gatekeepers ascend the ranks within the universities' administration, then what had been limited to a malignancy within the social sciences, ends up becoming the dictated orthodoxy for the entire institution. It is thereby that the fruit of these institutions has grown irreparably tainted.
This taint has infected public and private sector alike. In the private sector this has been accomplished by legions of HR personnel, a field which has metastasized from it's infancy a little over fifty years ago. These modern day kommissars are the woke tip of the spear in the workplace. They have served as the vehicle for the insertion of critical race theory and DEI into corporate HR policy. It is one thing to indoctrinate college students, but what of all the great unwashed out in the workplace who have not got the memo? If they had the backing of a complete authoritarian regime, they could just establish re-education camps. Don't think for a minute they wouldn't like to. In the absence of this, the HR regime will work. It has been working, to a large degree. It just takes longer because of the push back, but no worries. They have a solution for this too. Just call anyone who opposes these sick ideas a nazi. Echoed thousands fold there will be enough who will believe it or, at the least, be cowed into raising no objection.
That echo chamber takes form in those other institutions that Eisenhower identified in his 1946 correspondence: "... the media of public information... such as the press, radio, film industry, and similar means of contacting large groups." The media of public information is quite changed from 1946, except that it is just as easily infected and is hundreds of times more potent in it's power and reach. It is somewhat ironic that radio has largely become the domain of the right. I believe that the main reason for this is because radio is a medium that requires a certain level of engagement. One has to actually listen. Television is a passive medium by comparison, filled with mindless and banal content. One need only stare at the screen and drool. The film industry? Disney? Netflix? Are they purveyors of sick ideas? Go ahead. Try and defend them.
What of the "similar means of contacting large groups"? That rather sounds like social media, doesn't it? That one is the real game changer. Place a communications device and a platform upon which to opine into the hands of indoctrinated herds, then one has a force multiplier of some millions to amplify and reinforce the orthodoxy. It's like something from a propaganda minister's wet dream. Even before the revelations of the "twitter files" it was obvious to most that the social media companies were acting as agents to perform a function of censorship that was not permitted to government. Do not be swayed by their protestations of innocence now that the winds have shifted. Their claims that they were somehow strongarmed into their policies are tantamount to those police officers who served under Bull Connor saying that they didn't want to turn the dogs and fire hoses on those negroes. They were just following the lawful orders of duly elected officials.
Faced with the de-nazification dilemma, it was necessary to prioritize the application of the policy. Eisenhower rightly identified those institutions which required a strict application of the policy. He also rightly identified that it was a generational task, and one that "ultimately must come from the Germans themselves.... if we are to obtain the desired results." While it may be simple to identify the parallels in the problems posed by these two points in history, we are then left to find a like parallel in the solution.
In 1945, having won the war in Europe, our task then was to win the peace. It was determined that ridding German society of the scourge of nazism was to be a large part of defining that win. Today in 2025, having won the election, this administration needs to clearly define winning the peace and begin that program. The left does not want peace. They have made that abundantly clear. They've shown us who they are, and we must act accordingly. Call them the left or call it wokeism... call them whatever you like. It does not matter. Sick ideas are sick ideas, regardless the name or banner they march under. We might do well to just call them nazis. Why else would they call us nazis, unless they themselves are the nazis?
We know what the problem is. We know where it lives. We can treat it like a never-ending whack-a-mole, or we can treat it like any other pestilence. If one wishes a pestilence to end, one must find it's source and squash it. Mark E. Smith once posed the question in song: Who makes the nazis? Who indeed, Mark. Who indeed.
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