Hitler on Steroids:
Nietzschean Roots of the `Governator'
by Harley Schlanger
Harley Schlanger, the West Coast spokesman for Lyndon LaRouche, gave this presentation to the Schiller Institute/ICLC Presidents' Day weekend conference on Feb. 20.
In the Summer of 2003, a former child actor named Gary Coleman announced his candidacy for the governor of California. Within days, he was joined by pornographer Larry Flynt and more than 130 others, including a former steroid-popping, female-groping body-builder, and Hollywood action figure, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As became very clear, this was going to be a very different kind of campaign.
Schwarzenegger announced on Aug. 7 that he would run—not at a press conference, not at a rally, but on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Who could take seriously, as a possible governor of the largest state, and the largest economy, in the United States—an economy, that, if California were an independent nation would be the fifth or sixth largest in the world—who could take seriously a cartoonish self-promoter like Arnold Schwarzenegger? A muscle-bound mumbler, best known for growling "I'll be ba-a-ack!" or "Hasta la vista, baby!" as governor of a state which had been plunged into a deep financial crisis by the crooked friends of Dick Cheney from Enron and the other energy pirates?
On Oct. 4, then-Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche issued a statement to explain the Schwarzenegger phenomenon, which Lyn had been onto from the very beginning, including at a very powerful and large rally in Burbank, Calif. on Sept. 11, 2003. But, in this statement, called "Hitler and Schwarzenegger as Beast-Men," Lyn wrote the following: "Many Californians and others have found it difficult to explain how and why Hollywood geek-act Arnold Schwarzenegger could have become so suddenly a prominent contender in an impromptu race for governor," LaRouche continued, "They've been caught off-guard by Schwarzenegger, because they never really understood how Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. They've overlooked the fact, that Schwarzenegger was chosen for politics, because he is, in real life, the unhuman beast-man, whose role has been his most lucrative Hollywood screen-role. They do not understand what fascism really was, and is."
This statement was issued just days before the Recall vote. And it came on the heels of a massive and highly effective deployment of the LaRouche Youth Movement on the West Coast, the centerpiece of which was a leaflet [shows leaflet with photos of Schwarzenegger and Adolf Hitler in twin Nazi salutes]. We distributed over a million copies of this leaflet—maybe one and a half million—not just in California, but nationwide. The "Return of the Beast" with Arnold Schwarzenegger saluting his hero, Adolf Hitler.
Now, at the time, there were many Democrats who looked at this and said [voice dropping to a stage whisper], "Look, I agree with you! But don't say this publicly; you'll hurt your credibility!" And what we argued to them, was "No, you're hurting your credibility, by not saying it." And, as I will present in these next minutes, we were absolutely right. Lyndon LaRouche was right. Those people who did not listen to him, were wrong. And as a result, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California, on the way to a possible candidacy as President of the United States.
George Shultz: Aging Nazi
There was one group which took the Schwarzenegger candidacy not as a joke, but took it very seriously, as an answer to the question: "Is there anyone available to replace Gov. Gray Davis, who has the stomach to impose the fascist austerity policies which will prey upon the poor, the elderly, the disabled, those unable to defend themselves? Is there someone out there who can do this?" And the leader of this group is George Shultz: an aging Nazi, who, like Schwarzenegger, has a hereditary Nazi background, going back to his father, at the famous 120 Broadway office in New York City, where you had the American faction that worked with London to impose Adolf Hitler in the 1930s in Germany.
Now, Shultz became the co-chairman of Arnie's council of economic advisors, and of his campaign. Shultz has a long history, as one out to destroy the Constitutional republic, that Debra [Freeman] identified as the center feature of our fight: that we're defending the very Constitution which Shultz has been out to destroy. He's the most important architect of the free-trade and privatization policies known today as "globalization." Beginning in his role in the Nixon Administration, where he was one of the key figures in dismantling the Bretton Woods system that Franklin Roosevelt had crafted at the end of the World War II.
On Aug. 15, 1971, Shultz, along with backup from Paul Volcker and Henry Kissinger—two other people who dislike our Constitutional commitment to defending the general welfare—told a frightened Texas macho, John Connally, then the Treasury Secretary, that he had to convince Nixon to end the Bretton Woods system, which, on Aug. 15, 1971, Nixon did. This was followed by Shultz's role at the Azores Conference, to establish the floating-exchange-rate system, today, in place of the Bretton Woods system, which has put the world on the brink of a total financial disintegration.
Now, Shultz was also one of the godfathers of the Pinochet regime that Debra had been speaking about. It was his so-called "Chicago Boys," going back to Milton Friedman, and the Nazi economic austerity policies of the University of Chicago Economics Department—which, by the way, was created in the 1890s to oppose William McKinley's fight for a restoration of the Lincoln tariff. So, the Chicago School goes back to its founding as an anti-American, pro-free-trade center. It was the Chicago Boys who went in and gave Pinochet the model, which was nothing but theft, and brutalization, carried out under a dictatorship, a military dictatorship, to loot the pension funds in Chile, which is now the model of Jose Piñera, and the fascists of the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and their pathetic little promoters behind President Bush's imbecilic plan.
But Shultz also served as a talent scout. He vetted a number of people who have become prominent figures in this period: Ronald Reagan, for example, who scared a lot of the Wall Street people, especially after his 1976 campaign, when he attacked Kissinger repeatedly. Shultz said, "Don't worry, Reagan is all right."
Now, there are some people who are comparing Arnold Schwarzenegger to Ronald Reagan. Let me just show you one of Ronald Reagan's most famous screen roles [shows movie poster for "Bedtime for Bonzo," featuring Reagan with a chimpanzee]. That was not a campaign picture of Reagan with his Vice Presidential running mate, George Bush Sr.—but rather, his good friend Bonzo, who probably was one of his economic advisors before Milton Friedman.
But, there's a fundamental difference between Ronald Reagan and Schwarzenegger, one that we know, because of Reagan's bringing in Lyndon LaRouche to draft the Strategic Defense Initiative, which Reagan endorsed on March 23, 1983—over the objections of Shultz and Kissinger: And that is, that Reagan's background was that of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; whereas, Schwarzenegger's background, as you're about to see, is Friedrich Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler. And that's a very, very huge difference.
Now, two other people that Shultz vouched for—one was George W. Bush, who in 1998 was still recovering from his cocaine problem. Who was pretty much, a mumble-mouth governor of Texas, who did very little and said very little, except he jogged a lot. In fact, when Bush first became President, he told Runner's World, one of the problems he has, is that as President he doesn't get to jog enough. But, in April 1998, George W. Bush went to Palo Alto, Calif., to a salon hosted by George Shultz. And afterward, Shultz said, "I think this man can be President." He was asked, what did he like about Bush? He said, "He has a sense of security about himself." Well, that sense of security and calm, is sometimes called "catatonia." But, it made Bush at least the transitional figure for what Shultz and others intended.
Now, the third person who was vetted by Shultz, was none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Shultz determined, that perhaps Schwarzenegger is the person with the stomach to implement the Nazi policies that Shultz and his friends intend. Other members of this group include Warren Buffett, who many people think, "Well, Buffett is a sort an iconoclast. He's really an interesting guy. He makes a lot of money." Buffett is another predator. Another thief. When deregulation destroyed a number of the utility companies and energy companies and pipeline companies in California, Buffett swept in to purchase them. And then, backed Schwarzenegger, because a key part of Schwarzenegger's policy, is to revisit the deregulation that destroyed the state. He took Schwarzenegger with him, to meet with Lord Jacob Rothschild and leading British bankers, in order to assure them, that Schwarzenegger would be okay as a future President.
Also in this group, was Dick Cheney. And Enron's Ken Lay, because, at the height of the crisis in California, Schwarzenegger met, at a private meeting in Beverly Hills, with Ken Lay.
When Goverment Gets It Right
Now, what was the purpose of Shultz in targetting California with a Recall election, and then with the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, California had been built by the great infrastructure projects. It's an example of what happens when government gets it right. When government works with the private sector on infrastructure. This began in the early 1900s: Los Angeles, as many of you may know, is a desert (It certainly doesn't seem much like a desert these days, with the heavy rains we've been having!) But, without water, this part of California could not survive. And it was the projects in the beginning of the century, followed up by those of Franklin Roosevelt, which made the state bloom: water projects, power projects. These were then advanced again, in the 1950s, under Pat Brown—the continuation of the New Deal approach: infrastructure, water, power, satransportation.
And also, education. The development of the University of California system, to provide a skilled, educated workforce. Pat Brown made an important point—and by the way, he's under attack right now. There's a book that came out that said, he was sort of an amiable guy who had no idea of what he was doing, who just happened to benefit from the economic growth in California after World War II. Well, in fact, Pat Brown made a statement which Shultz disagrees with and fights against: Pat Brown said, that we're going to attract industry to California, not because of cheap labor and anti-union policies, but by educating a skilled workforce.
And that was the basis of the growth of California, the so-called "economic miracle." From 1945 to the 1960s, California became a major auto producer, with tire and rubber, steel, and then aerospace. It was at this time, that the Congress for Cultural Freedom launched the phony environmentalist movement, which attacked those policies, which attacked the FDR policies, of economic development as the basis of serving the general welfare. And it was in California, that the so-called "free-speech movement" began the tree-hugging decade, which targetted and attacked that, at precisely the moment—in 1971—that Shultz went after the Bretton Woods system.
And so, in the 1980s and '90s, there were factory shutdowns. Agriculture shrank in California. And you had, instead, the growth of cheap labor, in tourism, entertainment, similar kinds of areas, textiles.
And then, in the 1990s, the big gamble, the idea of the "tech revolution," that everyone can become rich because of computers. Computer chips and so-called "information," the Internet Age. And everyone bought into it. And it became a gigantic, speculative bubble. As Lyndon LaRouche had forecast in the early 1990s, this bubble collapsed, officially, beginning in March 2000.
The final straw for breaking California, was the deregulation policy. Deregulation, again, Chicago School orthodoxy—privatization, free trade, and deregulation. Take the powers of the state to regulate away. Supposedly "big government" is the enemy. And the codeword for Franklin Roosevelt, when you hear Rush Limbaugh and these fools babble on, is "big government." Or, as one of the leading imbeciles from this crowd, Phil Gramm, says, "big gu'mint."
And so, they used deregulation to steal whatever else they could. They drove the prices up of electricity. They bankrupted the state. It's estimated, conservatively, that over $70 billion left California during that period, into the black hole called Enron and the other energy pirates.
And this is what led to the opportunity to change the government, to bring down the elected Governor of California, Gray Davis, in what was a coup! The Recall election was a coup! And they brought in a lot of coup-koos: the 130 people [running for governor] to clear the way for someone who never could have won an election on his own, in a general primary: namely, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And so, Gray Davis was defeated, in a great victory for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The one bright spot in that campaign, was the role of Lyndon LaRouche, and the role of the growing LaRouche Youth Movement in California. And I would say, that it was where the LaRouche Youth Movement won its spurs for the first time. The incredible mobilization, early morning to late night, day after day; the circulation of tens of thousands of pamphlets; the challenges to Schwarzenegger, everywhere his people showed up.
It didn't escape the attention of the Democratic Party. And while the Democratic Party paid lip service to supporting Davis, a number of them running for President made appearances in California, they showed up, shook some hands, raised some money, and then left town. We stayed there, on the streets, every single day. Relentless. And this was clearly taken in by the Democratic Party.
And so, our decisive role was seen in two areas, where we were deployed the heaviest. The Bay Area, which as a Democratic area, might have been won anyway, by Davis, but it was a significant victory in the Bay Area. And Los Angeles, where it had appeared as though Davis would lose, we actually defeated the Recall in Los Angeles, where the LaRouche Youth Movement deployed. And this was confirmed to me by several Democrats, that they realized that it was the role of LaRouche and the LaRouche Youth Movement, which was decisive in this part of the state.
What Is Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Well, this brings us to the question: Who—or what—is Arnold Schwarzenegger? Now, in this case, a little biography is useful: Schwarzenegger grew up in Austria. His father joined the Nazi Party as soon as it was legal in Austria, in 1938, to become an official Nazi. And he served in the SA, the most brutal of the units of the Nazis.
After the war, he was a very stern, alcoholic figure, a demanding figure, basically telling Arnold, he's not good enough. Schwarzenegger himself was in trouble quite a bit. He was not exactly a scholar in school. But he was influenced, whether through reading, or just through the environment in his home, by one of the creators of Nazi ideology: Friedrich Nietzsche. And from this attempt to please his father, Arnold Schwarzenegger developed this idea of the Nietzschean "will to power."
Now, you can ask, "Can the son be held responsible for the beliefs of the father?" Of course not—unless he adopts the father's outlook. Especially when he is driven by the desire to gain the father's acceptance. And this is the case, in Arnold Schwarzenegger. He sought approval by becoming physically strong. And as he became strong, this strengthened his Nietzschean outlook, this "will to power." That's the young Arnold Schwarzenegger [shows photo of Arnold, as a young body-builder]. You'll notice, he doesn't have the obscenely huge biceps in that picture, but you'll notice how happy he is to get the adoring glances of women.
Now, something that many of you may not know: There is a whole sub-culture in this body-building, which is essentially Nietzschean, not just by implication, but explicitly. And this goes back—Nietzsche could be called the "patron saint of body-builders."
Now, Nietzsche was a leading opponent of the ideas of Friedrich Schiller. Nietzsche promoted the Dionysian concept, that is, the orgiastic, writhing, sexually obsessed approach, which says, "no" to reason, and says there is no higher purpose in life, therefore, everything is permissible; and divides the population into a handful of masters, and the vast majority of the rest of the population as slaves. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche wrote, "I assess the power of the will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures, and knows how to turn it" (that is, the pain and so on) "to its advantage."
Now, this is a quote which appears in a number of weight-lifting manuals. Also, as we saw with "Conan the Barbarian" earlier, the opening of "Conan the Barbarian" includes a quote from the "Twilight of the Idols," another piece by Nietzsche: "What does not destroy me, makes me strong."
This nihilism, that helped create a Nazi, was there in Schwarzenegger. So, it should not be surprising, therefore, that Hitler was a major influence on young Arnold.
Now, I'll give you that, in a moment, but I want to make one other point. Because, some people say, "Well, how bad could he be? He married into the Kennedy family? Doesn't that say—? I mean, isn't he open to being a Democrat? Isn't he `liberal' on social matters?" Well, look at the Kennedy family. And, I'm not talking so much about John Kennedy, who overcame his upbringing; or perhaps, Robert Kennedy. But, look at Joe Kennedy, the founder of the dynasty. Joe Kennedy was the ambassador to Great Britain, during the period leading up to World War II. And during that time, he associated himself with Lord Beaverbrook and the Cliveden Set, which was the pro-Hitler faction in Britain. And Joe Kennedy was fired by Franklin Roosevelt, for being too much a spokesman for that group.
So, Schwarzenegger married into the dynasty. And the Kennedy family was responsible, to some extent, in the miserable deployment by the Democratic Party, except for LaRouche, in the California Recall. In fact, Ted Kennedy's often-campaign advisor, Bob Shrum, was working on the Schwarzenegger campaign in California.
Arnie the Nietzschean
Now, let's take a look at some comments from Arnold Schwarzenegger, this from a 1977 interview with the filmmaker George Butler, that was cut from the film "Pumping Iron" but expresses Schwarzenegger's view. And by the way, he was not a "young man." You know, sometimes they say, "Well these were youthful indiscretions," like the 60-year-old Henry Hyde keeping a mistress, while he's attacking Clinton, and saying, "Oh, that was just a youthful indiscretion." Well, here's what Schwarzenegger had to say, and just listen to these quotes (I'm not going to try and do it with a guttural German accent, because I want you to hear what I'm saying). Schwarzenegger said: "I admired Hitler, because he came from being a little man, with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker, and for his way of getting to the people."
Now, he later made this comment—this is Schwarzenegger, again: "We can't live without authority. Because, I feel that a certain amount of people who were meant to do this and control, and a larger amount, like 95% of the people, who we have to tell what to do, and how to keep order. That is why I am all for it. I feel if you want to create a strong nation, and a strong country, you can not let everybody be an individual. Because everybody has his own opinions, and you can't just stick together as a strong nation. Then you have to tell people what to do, and you can't just let them float away. In Germany, there was a lot of unity."
Now, on America, what did Schwarzenegger think? "America! There's one thing I didn't like here, and that is, that people go on their own little trips too much. The unity isn't there any more. And I don't think it's too much the people's fault. I think it's because we don't have a strong leader here." And then he indicated what he means by a "strong leader," again, in this interview with Butler, he says: "To speak to maybe 50,000 people at one time and have them cheer. Or like Hitler in the Nuremberg Stadium, and have all those people scream at you, and just being in total agreement with whatever you say."
If you listen to those quotes, you would have to conclude, in Schwarzenegger, George Shultz had found his man, one who would willingly be an American Hitler. Who is, as LaRouche said, "the kind of Nazi that Schwarzenegger's father would be proud of."
The only question then, is, would the people buy it? Would they buy a clowning, wisecracking, muscleman as governor? Well, this is where you have to get at the question of tragedy in the United States, and in this case in particular, the role of celebrity. Rome had its gladiators, who were admired for their strength and their ability to kill. There is a fascination in the United States with something similar, whether it's with pro football (which also, by the way, is heavily steroidal), whether it's so-called wrestling, but also the creation of heroes—and Schwarzenegger, as an action figure and hero.
Now, why do people fall for that? This is where you get to the question of fear, or insecurity, of littleness. And this is, in fact, what explains, I think, the election of George Bush. As Debra said, the role of the church, the so-called fundamentalism—people who are frightened. What's the phenomenon of the "red states"? The phenomenon is that people are losing everything: They're losing their farms, they're losing their jobs, they're losing their security, they're losing their pensions. Many people are living on huge amounts of credit, debt. They're one week, maybe, away from complete bankruptcy. Over one and a half million bankruptcies were filed again last year, for the third year in a row!
And so, when people are insecure, when they're frightened, they end up responding to the simple appeal, whether it's on so-called "values" or whether it's "we have to stick with Bush in the middle of war." And this is what happened with the frightened voters in California: "The Terminator will protect us!" This idea that their fear, combined with so-called "charisma" of Schwarzenegger. But, it's actually fear of the charisma of the Beast-Man, as Lyndon LaRouche described it: That's what elected Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California. That, and many millions of dollars from those financial interests, which want a fascist regime.
The Recall: `Terminating' Davis
Now, once Schwarzenegger won the Recall, what did he do? The first thing he did, is, he loaded the state up with debt! He pushed through a referendum and borrowed $15 billion, which increased the total debt of the state by over 50%. And then he said, "We're going to cut out waste," and he set up a commission to look for waste, and he borrowed one of Jeb Bush's people to do it. And she said, "We're going to root out the waste and the fat in the budget." If she was looking for fat in the budget, she probably could have looked at what happens to someone after being a body-builder and no longer taking steroids, and found a lot of fat in the Governor's office. Instead, she looked and looked and looked, and, then they reported, "Well, there's not really much fat here." So, what do we have to cut?
Well, what Schwarzenegger did in his campaign, was make it clear, that he intended to go after the real sinews, and tendons, and muscle and bone, in the state budget—not the fat! During his campaign—look at how he ran the campaign: "I'm going to Terminate Davis!" Think of the very blatant symbolism there: the Nuremberg Rallies of the Schwarzenegger campaign. They were complaining about the car tax going up, so they would take a new car, and smash it! With wrecking balls, while a bunch of crazed suburbanites—the SUV Dads, the Soccer Moms, the NASCAR Red-Neck Dads from the eastern part of California, cheered wildly, as they watched a car being smashed! This was the level of California cultural politics.
So, Schwarzenegger came in, and he said, "I am going to put the Democrats under control. We're going to cut spending." He then said, if the legislature—which is almost two-thirds Democrat, both in the Assembly and the Senate—if they don't give me what I want, I'm going to go to the people. Just as a fascist populist would do. And so, what did Schwarzenegger do? He would go to the food courts in shopping malls, so that suburban housewives, on a sugar high, would be screaming and holding up signs saying "Arnie! Grope Me!" I'm not kidding! We saw this. (Of course, we had to see it from the outside, because they wouldn't let us in.)
And then, Arnold's final appeal, the proof of his fascist populism: "I'm for the people against the special interests." Who are the special interests, in Schwarzenegger's World, in Arnie's World? Teachers. Nurses. People who work two or three jobs for a living. They're the special interests. And who are "the people" that he's defending? Well, he set a record for first-year fundraising, and he raised over $26 million in his first year in office. And he's protecting "the people" from the undeserving, the poor, those who are not capable of defending themselves, protecting people in the financial sector, in real estate, and in insurance and pharmaceuticals, the entertainment sector, and so on.
So, he's loaded up the state in debt, created a $9 billion shortfall in this year's budget. And he came up with what he calls his "four reforms," and what are these? First, if the legislature won't give it to him, he will put a referendum on the ballot, that will have mandatory budget cuts. That is, when the state's revenue falls below the expenses, mandatory cuts. And what will be cut? Health care, human services, education—he's already stolen the transportation funds from the tax on gasoline to pay for the regular deficit. In education, he's pushing this fraud called "merit pay," which means that teachers who don't doctor up test scores to pass the state standards will be fired! And they'll shut down the educational institutions.
Secondly, redistricting: He's bringing the horrible idea of that Texas fascist, Tom DeLay, who the LYM ran a very good campaign against, to redistrict; to supposedly make the districts more fair, which means, elect more Shultzian Republicans.
Now, when it comes to the cuts—I should bring this in—Schwarzenegger is not naive. He knows what he's doing. Because, when he gave his State of the State address last month, he said, "I'm well aware that there are lives behind these numbers of the cuts. But I have a responsibility to the fiscal health of the state." In other words, a responsibility to Shultz and the Shultzian fascist financiers, and not to the people.
His third proposal was state government reorganization. And, again, in typical Schwarzenegger rhetoric, he said, "We're going to blow up the boxes!" We're going to get rid of 88 regulatory agencies. Well, just two days ago, he quietly announced, he's decided not to do that, because of the opposition to it.
And finally, and most important, the privatization of the state pension funds. Now these are called CalPERS, the Public Employees Retirement System, and CalSTRS, the Teacher Retirement System. There is over $360 billion in these funds. Very well managed, provides a good retirement for people who serve the state. Schwarzenegger wants to turn them into individual 401(k) plans to be administered by the financial institutions, as privatized entities—with hidden fees, that will steal the pension and retirement fund system of the people of the State of California. And this is crucial, for what Wall Street is intending, through Shultz.
The Fascist Bully Emerges
Now, in doing this, what we've seen, is less of the smiling Schwarzenegger, and more of the real, fascist bully emerging. We saw it a little bit earlier, when he referred to legislators who opposed him as "girlie-men." Kind of a strange comment from a guy who has been on steroids most of his life—and you know what steroids do to men. So, the real "girlie-men"—well, let's not follow that too far.
But, he's using Big Lies. In his State of the State address, he said, "We've stopped the bleeding!" Actually, the bleeding has increased! There's hemorrhaging going on in the state budget, under Arnie! At the Republican Convention last week, he referred to Democrats as "evil"! He said, "they're addicts." "They're on meds," he said, because they're opposing him. So, anyone who opposes Schwarzenegger, is an "evil-doer." And you know that means, in the codeword of the Bush language.
Now, the other thing is, he's attacking even more aggressively, nurses and teachers as special interests. At a rally, not too long ago, financed by Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Prudential Insurance—in other words, sponsored by "the people"—the nurses were there demonstrating. They were demonstrating, because he had promised to cut the official nurse's patient-load from six patients to one nurse, to five patients to one nurse. That's not a big cut, is it? But, Schwarzenegger rejected that, after he had promised. And when the nurses protested, Schwarzenegger said, "Pay no attention to them. They are a `special interest.' They don't like me because I kicked their butts!" The image of the Terminator kicking the butt of a nurse! Think about that. That's what we're dealing with in the state.
And so, we have with Schwarzenegger, a drive for fascism.
Now, let me go back to this question of Nietzsche for a moment. Because, you really have to understand that this lying mentality, is something that is natural for him. This is who he is. This is what his whole movie career was built around, creating figures that are fascist barbarians. That's who he made himself. In "Beyond Good and Evil," you can see in Nietzsche why he was a mentor to the fascist Leo Strauss, of the Straussian neo-conservatives of the Bush Administration. In "Beyond Good and Evil," he talks about "master morality" and "slave morality," and he says—this is Nietzsche: "Whatever a master commands becomes good, because the master commands it." (Keep in mind that Leo Strauss favors Thrasymachus, with the idea of "might makes right," over Socrates.) Nietzsche went on to say, "Masters have the right to do whatever they please. Everything for them is permissible."
Now, further, when Schwarzenegger was meeting with the Sacramento Bee editorial board the other day, he quoted Nietzsche, and typically, he misquoted him. But, later, he went on to use the Nietzschean concept, that the state is the worst of all monsters, the coldest of monsters. And Schwarzenegger said to them—and Nietzsche said that in Thus Spoke Zarathustra—Schwarzenegger said, "Taking money out of the private sector, is a no-no. We don't want to feed the monster. We don't want to feed the state, the public sector, and starve the private sector. We want to feed the private sector and starve the public sector." So, Schwarzenegger as a classic Nietzschean, coming out in the open.
Now, one other idea that underlies the Schwarzenegger operation, is this concept of the strong leader, the way Hitler was known, the Führerprinzip, the "leadership principle." When you hear this quote from Nietzsche—or, this is actually a quote from William Shirer about Nietzsche's influence on the Nazis—think about not just Schwarzenegger, but also Bush and our new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "The strong men, the masters, regain the pure conscience of the beast of prey. When a man is capable of commanding, when he is by nature a master, when he is violent in act and gesture, of what importance are treaties to him?"
That's what we're dealing with. That's what we mean when we say "fascism," both in terms of the mentality, the question of what the leader is entitled to do, and also, the idea that the poor are undeserving. They're weak. They live at the pity of the powerful. Bush's idea of "compassionate conservatism" comes from this, that you have to use the church to shame people who are weak and poor.
The fact that people on mental disabilities are being told they'll have to work, to get a check. The fact that one of Schwarzenegger's cuts, is to take away the insurance for poor people who have children with permanent or chronic diseases, such as spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis. Without help in an insurance policy, those children die young, miserable deaths! The state tries to help them—and Schwarzenegger is saying, "We're not going to fund those. It's their own problem." "They shouldn't"—he didn't say this, but this is what he's really saying, "They shouldn't have been born weak. Look at me! I built myself up. Anybody could do that." And so you see the policy of the "useless eaters" of the Nazi era. The useless eaters now, are your grandparents, your sick children, the poor people who live among us: They are the useless eaters in "Arnie's World."
And to win this fight, Schwarzenegger intends to raise $100 million. And so, what we see, is exactly what we printed on the new pamphlet ["Bush's Social Security Fraud: Stop George Shultz's Drive Toward Fascism"]. The fat, grinning George Shultz—and by the way, I think this should be used as a poster for steroid abuse; if you use steroids too much, you get an ugly growth that looks like Milton Friedman, coming out of your hip! This is the cover of our new pamphlet. And it was recommended to me by a leading Democrat, that we get at least a million of these out in California, alone!
I think that's a challenge for us.
But, we are now called upon, for the same relentlessness that we showed during the Recall, the same relentlessness that we showed during the Presidential campaign, the same tenacious fight from the Boston Convention at the end of the July 2004, through the period that Debra described in her presentation, up to the present—we have been relentless in fighting this fascism.
Now, as a result, the wheels are starting to come off Arnold's Hummer. Schwarzenegger went to Washington, D.C. this week, and he said, "I will be the Collectinator!" In other words, collect money for California. And he got there, and he found out, the Republicans are pissed at him! Because they're afraid, if he tries to do a Tom DeLay-style redistricting in California, that Republicans will lose more seats! And so, he took a shot in chops on that. Then, he put his privatization of the pension scheme, in front of his board, the Pension Trustees—and it was defeated by a 9-2 vote! He was so angry, he fired four of the people that he had just appointed. And one of them came out and basically said, "This is fascism."
And there's new courage from the teachers and the nurses. And I'll tell you one thing, if teachers are anything today like they were in my day, if you push them too far, they'll get up and kick your butt!
So, Lyndon LaRouche has been right from the beginning on Schwarzenegger. He's not simply a geek-act, a clown, an overly-bloated steroidal creature, who married into the Kennedys. But, he's a real, hereditary Nazi. And the Democrats who rejected this analysis during the campaign are now coming to realize this. With Shultz running the show, if Bush is incapable of presenting the lines well enough, of acting the role, they have Schwarzenegger in the wings. Schwarzenegger has demonstrated that he does have the stomach to push for fascism.
So, the challenge is up to us, whether we have the courage to inspire the population to rise up, to first recognize that, as Franklin Roosevelt said, "You have nothing to fear, but fear itself." And there's reason to fear the future: Because, if we don't act, it will be a future dominated by Schwarzenegger, under the direction of the Nazis in the financial community, under George Shultz. So, there is reason to fear. But, what do you do, when you face what Roosevelt called "unreasoning fear"? You use reason. And we have, in Lyndon LaRouche, the leader who can give people that reason, and not cold, sterile reason, but reason with passion. The passion to go out, and fight to win this war.
And in the face of that, there's no steroidal, Nietzschean, muscle-bound figure, who can stand up to the confidence of an American population whose commitment to the Constitution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence, has been roused to take up the battle. And that's the challenge to us. And I'm confident that we will succeed in that.
