The Chris Moeller Archives

Biting the hand that protects you

Are you familiar with this proverb below? It references the silence and inactivity of the “intelligentsia” in Germany during the Nazis’ rise to power. I’m proud to say that it’s attributed to a Lutheran theologian who shares part of my surname, Martin Niemoller. (We share Martin as a middle name also.) Here's one version of it anyway:

First they came for the socialists,
And I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, 
And I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak for me.

These words spring to my mind on occasion and did again this week when the Washington media class-- even MSNBC, the unofficial public mouthpiece of the Democratic National Committee-- at last rose up in almost-unified, vocal criticism of President Obama and his sick and shameful record on civil liberties. It took a violation of the rights of the pundit class-- that is, the Justice Department’s secret acquisition of Associated Press phone records-- to get the herd’s attention.

When it's been a community of Muslims or a dissident group whose liberties were being trampled, the establishment media simply bowed obsequiously to power. As an example, the New York Times was quick to re-publish the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables that outlined criminal misbehavior and cover-up by government officials, but in its typical manner of parroting the official line, worked actively to smear the character of Julian Assange in publication and adopted the DOJ’s public narrative that Assange’s organization was criminal in its actions. Was the Times really incapable in this instance of understanding that Assange’s battle was their battle too-- that the Obama administration’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers was a simultaneous war on journalists? (It’s a war on you too since the attempted intimidation of reporters and their sources is designed to limit what you know.)

Obama’s biggest political mistake finally was targeting members of a privileged class. Inside the Beltway, the gravity of your sin is measured by who it is you’ve sinned against. Richard Nixon secretly and illegally dropped several million tons of bombs on rice farmers in Viet Nam, but his presidency met its ultimate fate over a half-assed burglary of his political opponent’s campaign office. Some people you can dick with, some you can’t.

Any violation of civil liberties committed against an individual or small group is a violation against the lot of us. The most marginalized groups are the first to get whacked, but your day and mine will arrive.

posted by CM @ 6:01 PM