An astonishing foreign point of view

From a foreign correspondent:

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and misleading press and radio in the United States. Though unlike most Americans, I made an effort to access foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris, and Zurich...and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other non-American broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day combing the American Press, checking American TV and radio, conferring with Republican officials and going to party meetings.

It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Republican sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda.

Often in an American home or office, or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they heard onth the radio or read in the newspapers.

Sometims one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare if incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Amighty, that one realized how useless it was to even try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Bush and Limbaugh, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.

A Canadian?

A BBC reporter?

Al-Jazeera?













No, It's William Shirer, circa 1934, as recounted in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", 30th anniversary edition, copyright 1990. Pages 247-248 (paperback.)


With the sole exception of changing the place names, party name, and persons, it's word for word.

Be afraid....be very afraid.