Written by Robert Douglas   

Robert Douglas, RBDMedia.com


Has America been morphing into a totalitarian state since September 11, 2001?

And have the majority of Americans been complicit in the violations of human dignity, constitutional rights and exploitation that have brought us where we are?

I am moved to ask such questions after watching Hannah Arendt, a 2013 film now showing on Netflix.

The film focus is on the author of series of 1963 New Yorker articles based on her coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official who made the trains to the death camps run on time.

After World War II ended, he fled to South America where he lived quietly until 1960 when Mossad agents kidnapped him and took him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes for which he was found guilty and subsequently hanged in 1962. Throughout his trial, Eichmann was unrepentant and claimed he was only following orders.

In her articles, which became the book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt took the position that this Nazi had ceded his ability to think to the Third Reich and therefore was incapable of exercising moral judgment. Therefore, rather than being evil per se, he was stupid — mindlessly caught up in the totalitarianism of his day where, through a combination of fear and propaganda, Hitler crushed anyone who questioned his authority. Thinking — that most quintessential of human qualities — was, in fact, banned. Or at least acting on a thought that did not conform to party line was.

At the time of its publication, Arendt’s thesis ran into a buzzsaw of criticism — especially among those who felt she was critical of Jewish leaders for not more strenuously resisting Hitler’s genocide of their people. But her insight into how the suspension of thought can result in profound acts of evil resonates down though history and echoes in present day America.

History seems to show that the trigger for the rise of Hitler’s totalitarian regime was the repressive terms imposed on Germany after World War I. I would argue that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the trigger of today’s Totalitarianism 2.0: The Amerikan Version.

The attacks were used to justify a US campaign for world domination — substituting Muslims for Hitler’s Jews. Beginning with George W. Bush and continuing under Barack Obama, the campaign has used military might, widespread surveillance and corporate media to keep us too afraid and too misinformed to question policies and practices that are unconstitutional, immoral and at times rise to the level of war crimes.

You may think me off base. And that’s fine. As long you think. My concern is those of us who — like Eichmann — have ceded our ability to think to our own Evil Doers.
--Robert Douglas is a former union official and former business editor for The Palm Beach Post and Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .