The line about duplicity resting upon apparent frankness could be from the 1600s. Which was also a time of a seemingly endless experiment in authoritarian government. Eventually, arbitrary intrusion backed by force was seen as stupid. The term “Tyrannical Duncery” was crafted and well understood. However, this article reviews that today’s experiment is fronted by a number of slogans, many false. Resulting in justifiably scornful descriptions.
The past has recorded legends about prosperous villages that were fake called “Potemkin Villages”. Today there is “Fake News” as well as too many ambitious promotions about weather, climate and the environment. Unfortunately, the latter is being used as a front for another experiment in intrusive bureaucracy. To be blunt, communism is being pitched as an attractive “green” movement fronting an inner “red” drive to control everything.
Those using the disguise are appropriately called “Watermelons”.
In order avoid any possibility of bogging down in comparisons between Republican or Democratic ambiguities, physics has a remarkable definition of a totalitarian system. “That which isn’t compulsory is prohibited.” This elegantly describes everything from murderous Communists to bullying schoolboards.
Through community organization, Democrat ambition seems compelled to use any fear to impose any authoritarian vision. Whatever can be marketed. Furthermore, every facet of life must be politicized and controlled. Which is concerning because in Europe with every authoritarian experiment the governing classes eventually granted themselves the privilege of state murder.
Of course, the term “watermelon” in today’s usage means someone who professes to be appealingly green on the environment. Naturally, with the purity of purpose as represented by Ansel Adam’s pristine pictures of Yellowstone or the Greenpeace Foundation. And with this, for far too many people in too many places environmentalism has become a religious experience.
The conversion of souls and tithes to Rome has been replaced by the conversion of fealty and taxes to the United Nations.
And recent authoritarian movements will use any banner. In the early 1970s it was “Global Cooling”. But in the late 1980s, fear merchants found “Global Warming” much more sensational and profitable. Subsequent iterations such as “Climate Change” and just before “Covid Hysteria” they were getting good returns from “Climate Hysteria”. Not to overlook the “Extinction Rebellion”.
The game is simple, and it is to invent a fear so drastic that only government bureaucrats can fix it. Always through taxation and regulation. During the political furies that afflicted the country in the early 1900s, H. L. Mencken wrote a wonderful line about “hobgoblins”, which is enjoying a revival.
The watermelon analogy clearly condemns yet another impassioned movement by control freaks demanding perfection. International Socialists had the “New” man, who would be perfect. National Socialists were dedicated to perfection of race and living space. Today’s authoritarians are boasting that they can perfectly set the temperature of the nearest planet. At 288 Kelvin, plus or minus half a degree. And furthermore—keep it there no matter what.
Audacity without example.
One of the remarkable success stories in the authoritarian movement that arose in the early 1930s occurred when Dr. Joseph Goebbels was sent to establish the Nazi Party in Berlin. As the city was strongly Communist this was considered futile.
However, through remarkable marketing skills the National Socialists prevailed, and dues flowed in. During WW I, the real German Army had brown uniforms made for duty in African colonies. Not needed in the early 1930s and short of money the army sold them to the Nazis, who established uniformed storm troopers called “Brownshirts”.
As money flowed in and uniforms for street violence became attractive, many Communists actually joined the Nazi Party. And within this the Strumabteilung (SA), was the party’s paramilitary wing.
Born in Munich, Konrad Heiden, became an American. As an historian he published “Hitler: A Biography”, in 1936. It covered the phenomenon of so many Communists in the Brownshirts that there was a quip “In our storm troop there are three Nazis, but we shall soon have them spewed out.”
Heiden recorded that Communists posing as Brownshirts were popularly called “Beefsteaks”.
Because they were “brown” outside and “red” inside.
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.
