Freedom Toast for Breakfast

FREEDOM TOAST FOR BREAKFAST

Conspiracies: Seizing Power over the World

By Franz Hinkelammert

[This article originally published in the Berlin Freitag 22, 5/27/2003 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.freitag.de/2003/22/03222301.php.]

[The economist and liberation theologian Franz Hinkelammert living in Latin America (born in 1931 in Germany and today professor of economics in Costa Rica) analyses how the battles around rule over the world of the 20th century greatly marked the 20th century. Nazi Germany made the first great assault on global power with the Second World War. After the Cold War, a multilateral world was constituted in which the last superpower was “primus inter pares.” “This multilateral world no longer accepted this assignment with Bush’s presidency,” Hinkelammert writes. Beside his teaching activity, Hinkelammert directs an ecumenical research center for Central America.]



With the beginning of George Walker Bush’s presidency, an attack for power over the whole world was prepared. The impetus came from the “hawks” of American society who recruited the current president as a marionette. These hawks have close ties to the American Enterprise Institute (a citadel of US corporations).

After Nazi Germany’s attempt, this was the second great attempt to seize world power. This time this attempt is in no way as illusory as with Adolf Hitler. This time the attack is supported by the power of a military greater than the power of all countries of the world together. The United States wants to be “ruler over the ruled” and no longer “first among equals.”

FROM CONSPIRACY TO DEMONIZATION

To begin the attack for power over the world, an enemy is needed who is present everywhere in the world and threatens the aggressor. According to the legend, gaining power over the world is the only way of defending against this enemy. This scenario functions when the enemy is constructed as a world conspiracy. This enemy threatening the aggressor does not really exist and therefore must be invented. A monster of world conspiracy is invented forcing the conquest of the whole world for liberation from the danger. This monster is so frightening that it can only be fought by becoming a monster.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, battles over world rule were often accompanied by world conspiracies that had to be combated. Every attempt at conquering world rule created its own world conspiracy theory. This began with the invention of the “Jewish world conspiracy.” Nazi Germany tried to gain world rule in the name of the struggle against this conspiracy. Stalinism contributed the invention of the “Trotskyist world conspiracy” even though this wasn’t a real world conspiracy. The Cold War in the form of the “communist danger” that found its supreme incarnation in the “evil empire” controlled by the Kremlin in Ronald Reagan’s times provided the next world conspiracy. In contrast, the US is elevated to a “city glittering from the hills” in allusion to the millennium of the revelation.

The “terrorist world conspiracy” invented by the Bush administration follows. Like the others, it is an invention even if many believe it. This conspiracy is based on the assassinations of New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. After these events, fear of this world conspiracy was fomented in the American population and the attempt at conquering world rule began. The conspiracy and the existence of sinister powers are again a pure invention. In the case of New York, people still do not know who really were the persons responsible for September 11. In the time afterwards, there were no attacks in the US, Europe or Japan. Thus there is no reason to believe in the existence of some terrorist world organization capable of threatening humanity. There are very different kinds of terrorist groups but nothing suggests a world conspiracy.

Nevertheless a devil organizing invisibly behind the scenes is necessary to corroborate this plot. In the case of the “Jewish world conspiracy”, “Lucifer” had to be overthrown and sent to hell. In Reagan’s era, the “evil empire” that was also described as the “kingdom of the devil” assumed this role. George Bush sees evil’s face behind his invented terrorists and their “axis of evil”, in particular in the face of Saddam Hussein.

In this stage, attack for world rule becomes exorcism. To round out the picture of the devil, George Bush created the picture of his God who obviously has US citizenship and seems to be a high official of the White House. “God bless America,” he says. “God bless the world” is never heard. This is all pure narcissism. Popper also thought in these terms when he said democracy was a method for controlling the demons.

FROM FRENCH FRIES TO FREEDOM FRIES

The meaning of the4 word “freedom” changed as a consequence of this policy. Eating “freedom fries” and not French fries is important now because France opposed the Iraq war. Congress itself decided to call French fries “freedom fries.” I would be worse off if I had to eat “freedom fries” since I prefer French fries. French toast also does not exist any more, only “freedom toast.”

“Russian salad” is now called “freedom salad.” 40 years of cold war had not changed this name. “Russian salad” was enjoyed this whole time in the US. Now there is only “freedom salad” since Russia resisted the Iraq war. The “Russian salad” has not changed. The United States has changed along with the meaning of freedom.

A freedom associated with “freedom fries” and “freedom salad” is emphasized, no longer the freedom of the past. Freedom for the free destruction of others is central. The US now exercises this freedom in Iraq as previously in Afghanistan. The US announces that it will practice this freedom for a long time, even 100 years. They have lists of countries that should be destroyed. The decision which country is next in line is decided in the White House during breakfast with “freedom toast.” We can read these lists since they are published, even though they are always provisional. These lists are results of meetings similar to the famous meetings of the Guatemalan dictator Rios Mont in the 1980s. Mont always discussed the lists of political enemies after going to church on Sundays and decided who had to disappear by the next morning.

The White House has globalized this practice. A world dictatorship of national security was established since the government of the US firmly believes that power comes from the barrel. However without legitimation, the weapons only serve destruction and there is no “life after.” Nevertheless legitimation arises in a humanized exercise of power.

If we want to change something in all this, we can only be successful when we withdraw legitimacy from this power of weapons. This already happens because the emperor stands naked before the eyes of the world. This nakedness must be exposed again and again because he changes his clothes everyday. His brutality is obvious and his inhuman cynicism and contempt of all the values that marked humanity in the course of thousands of years. We must show this dehumanization of power to reveal what is happening. When we do this, we can achieve something. I’d like to end with Gandhi’s sentence quoted by many in the past months: “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”