What caused Americans to become Nazis?

The U.S. does vastly more foreign invasions, and political subversions, and coups, around the world, than any other nation does, and none of the countries we’ve invaded and overthrown had ever invaded the U.S.—these are all brutal international aggressions, and they have destroyed each of the countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and numerous others. The coups that the U.S. perpetrated have likewise destroyed many countries, starting in Thailand in 1948, then Syria in 1949, then Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and extending right up to the U.S. coup in Ukraine in February 2014, after which Ukraine’s GDP plunged by 50% and stayed down for years and still hasn’t recovered from the civil war and other destruction that the U.S. government caused in that country. (Furthermore, repeatedly, in 2013, and in 2017, and even going back as far as 2003, global polling around the world has shown that the U.S. comes out way on top for being the “biggest threat to peace” of any nation on the planet—and it’s cited for that vastly more frequently than is any of the countries that America has invaded or threatens to invade, or calls an ‘enemy’, is. If Americans don’t know this fact that every American needs to know, then it’s because our news media hide it from us.)

And, yet, ever since 2001, when we invaded and destroyed Afghanistan, and even more in 2003 when we invaded and destroyed Iraq, the most respected of all institutions by the American people is its military, which is the chief agency of America’s curse upon the rest of the world; so, why are Americans so supportive of this blatantly evil government—especially of its military? Are Americans insane, or instead deceived?

Nazism isn’t just a dead political party that was German and hated Jews; it is actually an ideology, a type of fascism which is bigoted against some group or groups, and which proudly invades and uses other aggressive means against foreign nations that characterize themselves as accepting whatever that bigoted-against group is—be they Jews, or Russians, or Blacks, or “Chinks,” or whatever. In other words: nazism, the ideology, is hyper-aggressive, and it is heavily bigoted. It is also very militaristic. The world’s leading nazi country today is certainly the U.S.A. And, as Barack Obama repeatedly said, America is the ONLY “indispensable” country; all others are “dispensable.” And, yet, Obama is popular amongst not only Americans, but in many countries. He was a charming person; Hitler, of course, was not (even though his “Deutschland über alles” was similar to Obama’s American version). And now America has Trump.

This bigotry and international aggression distinguishes nazism from mere fascism, such as ruled in Spain under Franco. He wasn’t interested in foreign conquest, but only in conquering Spaniards (and anyone else in Spain) who resisted his rule. So, he was only a fascist.

Mussolini was an imperialistic fascist, as Hitler was, but he wasn’t nearly as bigoted as Hitler was; and, so, Mussolini, like Franco, is called “fascist,” instead of nazi.

A public’s answer to the question of “Who was the most evil person in all of history?” draws out, and even personifies, their value-system, by defining personally whom the most-evil individual was; and so it’s an extremely important variable to track in each country, and in each year; but, unfortunately, social scientists tend not to be especially intelligent, and so no scientific poll has yet been done on this key question in the social sciences, “Who was the most evil person in all of history?” However, the New York Post, which naturally has almost entirely a NYC audience, did do a poll (no detailed methodology described for it), and headlined on 17 November 1999, “POST READERS: HITLER WAS MOST EVIL” and reported that, “The votes are in: Adolf Hitler is the most evil person of the millennium, and Thomas Edison is the most influential, according to a poll of The Post’s online users.” Someone headlined about it, “Top 25 Most Evil People of the Millennium” and provided considerably more details of that poll. The top ten “most evil” persons in it were: 1. Adolf Hitler at 1,664 votes; 2 Bill Clinton (write-in) at 1,625 votes; 3. Joseph Stalin at 1,284 votes; 4. Pol Pot at 919 votes; 5. Dr. Joseph Mengele at 783 votes; 6. Hillary Clinton (write-in) at 765 votes; 7. Saddam Hussein at 710 votes; 8. Adolf Eichmann at 641 votes; 9. Charles Manson at 548 votes; and 10. Idi Amin at 514 votes. Obviously, since both of the Clintons were high on that list, this was a very Republican readership, and the poll has no scientific respectability, but probably Hitler would have scored at the top of it even if the poll had been scientific and nationwide. Furthermore, Wikipedia has a “Talk: Adolf Hitler/Archive 54” that includes a discussion “World’s Most Evil Person”; and, obviously, Hitler is heavily in contention for that title.

Hitler provided the model of nazism, because he was the extremity not only of imperialism, but of bigotry. Though no scientific poll has yet been done on the terribly important social-science question “Who was the most evil person in all of history?” Hitler certainly is (to put it mildly) extremely unpopular. And, yet, Americans today display more of his values than the values of America’s president at that same time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was intensely opposed to imperialism, not only by Germany, Italy, and Japan, but also by England, and by any country.

By contrast to FDR, recent American presidents are strongly in favor of America invading countries that never even threatened America, such as Iraq in 2003, and Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2012, and threatening Iran almost constantly, and repeatedly trying coups in Venezuela and many other countries that never even threatened America.

There has been a sharp increase in the American public’s support for war, even perhaps war against the other nuclear superpower, Russia, because of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama, who craved in 2013 to take over Ukraine and to take over Russia’s largest naval base, which is in Crimea. Consequently, with the cooperation of all of America’s war-thirsting news media (who must be virtually owned by the same people who own firms such as Lockheed Martin), the polling on approval-disapproval of Russia went from 50% Favorable and 44% Unfavorable in 2012, to reversing those percentages in 2013, to then suddenly an overwhelming rejection of Russia in 2014: only 34% Favorable, and a massive 60% Unfavorable—and it has been even worse than that, ever since. So, the country, America, whose government in 2013 was secretly scheming to steal Russia’s biggest naval base, has now achieved a rabidly anti-Russian, thoroughly duped, public, and not only a rabidly pro-military, duped, one.

Americans are deeply duped—just like Germans were, under Hitler.

Where the news media are this bad, what else can happen?

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.