The Real Friends of America Should Not Remain Passive Now
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
The chairman of the Civil Rights Movement-Solidarity, of Germany, released this statement on the U.S. leadership crisis on Jan. 8, 2001, as a mass leaflet. It has been translated from the German by EIR, and subheads have been added.
For some time, there has been a growing sense of uneasiness among many Europeans, over various failures developing in the U.S.A., at the rising use of the death penalty, at the extreme growth of the prison populations and the privatization of penal systems, at the growing violence by youth and by the police; but also at the arrogantly unilateral conduct of a U.S. foreign policy, which increasingly ignores European interests. But up to now, a real thinking through of the whole condition of America has been lacking in public discussion.
What I say now, I wish to say with all possible caution, for it is of the greatest importance that it be understood rightly. My observations, even if they may appear monstrous to many, are the opposite of an anti-American view. I wish for nothing so much, as that America return to the high ideals of the Fathers of the American Revolution, of Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King. What I nonetheless must say, is carefully thought through, and the expression of a deep concern over the situation in the U.S.A. and its implications for the world.
The fundamental problem consists in the fact that the American leadership has no grasp of the escalating financial and economic crisis. It was said, up to the past November's Presidential election, that an "economic miracle" ruled in America, with perpetual "prosperity." This bubble of illusion is now broken: The stock markets are melting down, production is slumping, unemployment growing, the trade and payments deficits have never before taken on such an order of magnitude, and the U.S.A. can no longer remain the credit-financed "importer of last resort" for the products of the rest of the world economy. The end of the line has been reached. The traditional market mechanisms no longer hold. Greenspan's "drumroll" of interest-rate cuts has not even held things up for three days, and neither further cuts in the interest rates, nor large tax cuts, nor new arms programs, will overcome the economic and financial crisis.
The great danger lies in that, to the degree one tries to conceal the dimensions of the economic crisis, with its center in the U.S.A., a real solution to the problems cannot be considered in the first place. Then, a sudden and dramatic sharpening of the financial crisis can very rapidly occur, which can no longer be controlled by economic and financial policy-measures, so that emergency regimes are seized upon as the "only remaining way." Even if many specifics today are different, the danger today is like that of the 1930s, that out of a global financial crisis and economic depression, a new fascism will arise, which certainly will show different external forms than in the 1930s, but which will have no less the core characteristics of fascism. There are ominous parallels between the Jan. 30 and Feb. 28, 1933 period, and the present-day situation in the U.S.A., from which we ought to draw lessons as quickly as possible.
American Fascism Was Close, Too
In the U.S.A., too, there arose at that time the danger of an essential fascism based on Social Darwinism, racism, and eugenics, above all as a consequence of the economic Depression after 1929. America only escaped this danger of an "American fascism" by a hair, because just at the right time, a political genius like Franklin D. Roosevelt bestrode the American scene, and pulled his country out of the Depression with dirigistic economic methods. Had not Reichschancellor von Schleicher been overthrown on the 30th of January, 1933, Germany would have been able to put into effect the Lautenbach Plan, supported by part of the government, by management, and the labor unions, which contained, in principle, the same state economic startup measures brought forward by Roosevelt. Then Hitler, and the Second World War, would have been prevented!
Let us never forget, that when Hitler came into power, this happened in the framework of a coalition government, to which belonged a majority of conservatives and technocrats. Only with the "enabling acts," for which the Emergency Ordinances had laid the basis since 1930, and for which the Nazis' own staged Reichstag fire provided the pretext, did Hitler receive dictatorial power. In Hindenburg's conservative circles and in the German military, people deceived themselves with the idea that it were possible to "tame" Hitler, that he could be used and then soon discarded.
In the U.S.A., the decision on the "outcome" of the Presidential election by the Supreme Court is a bad omen. Especially dangerous, is the policy of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, which stands in the tradition of Carl Schmitt—the "legal" apologist of the Nazi dictatorship. Here were taken the first important steps toward the dissolution and perversion of the American Constitution. With the threatening confirmation of the John Ashcroft nominated by Bush as Attorney General, who makes no secret of his racist convictions and his preference for the ideology and policy of the Southern states in the U.S. Civil War, another extremely hazardous step is taken. Let us remember the so-called "Thornburgh Doctrine," of the Attorney General of ex-President George Bush, that de facto declared the national sovereignty of all states outside the United States to be meaningless. Several members of the new Bush team were proven "experts" in "crisis management" and "emergency measures" in the former Nixon and Ford Administrations. Let us not forget that the leading think-tank of the Wall Street establishment, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, has simulated several computer-generated "war games" over the past year, in which emergency measures were used in the case of a global financial crash.
1930s Misestimations, Today's Warnings
False estimations and illusions made Hitler's path to power at that time fundamentally easier. In this, the problem was not so much a lack of information. Anyone who wished to, could draw a clear picture for himself of what Hitler represented. It had to do much more, with the incapability to size up the new political, social, and ideological phenomenon. A not inconsiderable problem consisted in the underestimation, on account of his intellectual illiteracy, of the "Bohemian corporal." The Social Democrats and the unions believed that after Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm, they would by now be ready even for Hitler as well. The conservatives and economic leaders believed that they could take over Hitler for themselves. Only a few voices, such as the conservative Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin or the unionist Wladimir Woytinsky, recognized the danger and also spoke out. Hitler's seizure of power also awakened no great concern abroad—until it was too late.
These misestimations remain a warning for us today. The greatest danger today, would be passivity in the face of the ever-more-dangerous economic, political, and ideological developments in America. There, in the Democratic Party, the opposition forces have gathered around the person of Lyndon LaRouche, determined to make the purpose of their political interventions the Constitution and the defense of the general welfare. The number is growing of elected representatives at various levels, who sense the Ashcroft nomination to be a provocation directed against the Constitution, and who categorically reject it. Increasing as well, are those who demand that the Congress investigate the unprecedented irregularities in the Presidential election. And there are also an increasing number, who publicly and in their elective bodies, support LaRouche's demand for a New Bretton Woods system of world finance, and for a Lautenbach-Roosevelt economic program corresponding to the conditions of today.
There lies the crux of the matter. The only way that a new fascism can be stopped from developing, once again, from the global financial crisis and depression, lies in putting into effect, worldwide, measures to overcome the financial and economic crisis, and for a new global currency and credit system, in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the German economist Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach, but also that of the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau [Credit Bank for Reconstruction, of post-war Germany]. The alternative to the worldwide depression today lies in the building of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, to which Africa and the American continent must be joined. The most modern transport infrastructure (Transrapid), nuclear energy, and machine-tool technologies, and corresponding educational systems, are part of that. All true patriotic forces in America support such a world economic development perspective.
There is today an opposition in the United States, which must be supported by all those in Germany, who have learned something from history. The most effective way that this can be done, is for Europe to seize the initiative for a reorganization of the world's financial system, a "New Bretton Woods." The miscalculations of the 1930s remain a warning for us all, especially for all those, who are not indifferent to the future of the United States.
