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communications and culture: In 1933, he set up separate departments to Nazify "propaganda, radio, the press, film,
theatre, and popular enlightenment."21 Cabaret singers, actors, directors, and musicians who would not "co-ordinate"
with the regime were closed down professionally. Those who did support it often saw their careers thrive.
Czech arts saw a similar freeze in 1948. But two decades later, Czech theater, writing, cartooning, and visual arts sprang
back to life during the Prague Spring. This explosion was seen as destabilizing: The government cracked down once
again. Finally, only "official" art, music, writing, and theatre was left unthreatened. General Pinochet also went after
artists and performers: One of the first people to be "disappeared" in the coup was the beloved folk singer Victor Jara.
22
(Castro's Cuba and Somoza's Nicaragua jailed artists, writers, and performers too. The creative voice is dangerous to
dictators of any persuasion.) In the 1950s, McCarthy's supporters in Congress threatened movie studios heads with
boycotts unless they in turn pressured their actors, producers, and screenwriters to cooperate with the Senate
hearings. Those who still refused to comply were blacklisted by major media outlets such as CBS and Hearst, and
found it difficult to work.23
Pressure on Civil Servants
In a fascist shift, while entertainers are the most visible, civil servants are the most vulnerable to being targeted with
job loss: They work directly for the leadership. Goebbels, as we saw, purged the civil service in 1933, and private
industries followed suit. He directed special ire at lawyers and judges.
Victor Klemperer writes of a senior district attorney at the High Court in Berlin who was not a Party member. The
government fired him, calling the move "temporary retirement." Independent district attorneys across the nation were
purged as well, and replaced by lawyers who were loyal to the regime.24
The Bush administration has purged civil servants who do not follow the "party line," long before the United States
Attorneys scandal. When Washington Post reporter Dana Priest exposed the secret CIA prisons, the Bush White
House fired the civil servant who leaked the information.25 The Justice Department also let it be known that it was
opening a criminal investigation into the leak of information to the New York Times about the NSA eavesdropping
program.26
In 2003, Lt. Commander Charles D. Swift was assigned to represent Salim Hamdan, a 26-year-old Yemeni taxi driver
accused of having been a driver for bin Laden. The Bush administration wanted the military lawyer to get his client to
plead guilty. Swift was appalled that his client's access to a lawyer was dependent on his willingness to have him
negotiate a "guilty" plea.27
You can't go along with that, if you are a lawyer in America: You have taken an oath to represent your client for real.
"Instead of carrying out this morally repugnant task," noted the New York Times, "Commander Swift concluded that
the commissions were unconstitutional. He did his duty and defended his client.... The Navy responded by killing his
military career." This sent a message to all the other military attorneys about what they risked if they refused to sell out
their clients.28
Private lawyers who helped detainees were also threatened with career hits: In January 2007, Charles Stimson, Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, expressed "shock" that American law firms would represent the
detainees, and suggested that companies refuse to do business with them in essence, a boycott. He read out a list of
the names of those very law firms on a radio station.29 A boycott could cripple those firms. (Senior Nazis orchestrated
an economic boycott of Jewish-owned law firms, among other boycotted businesses. Germans who were legally
represented by Jews or who shopped at Jewish-owned firms were "traitors.") These boycotts not only destroyed Jews
economically years before "the final solution": they also created a "no-go zone" in which ordinary Germans
understood that if they spoke up for the "others" they, too, would face reprisals.
If you can show citizens that they can lose their livelihood if they refuse to comply with the party line, it doesn't take
long to "co-ordinate" an intimidated civil society.
CHAPTER NINE
RESTRICT the PRESS
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