Stasi – Engaging Peace

President George W. Bush addressing the media, National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., Jan. 25, 2006. In the public domain. Photo by Eric Draper.

This is the third post in a series on Two Paths in the Woods by guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella.

A popular tactic used by “national security agencies” to neutralize critics does not involve directly interfering with an individual’s efforts to promote peace and social justice or to be a voice for moral actions.

Rather, these agencies simply collect and collate extensive information from surveillance, monitoring, and searching archives from distant years. At some point, if the critic becomes too “unbearable” to the agency, they simply begin the process of neutralization by releasing “offensive” information gleaned from many sources, and systematically destroying the critic’s character and moral standing.

All our lives involve sins of commission and omission. Some are apparent and well-known. Others may be buried in the privacy of the critic’s soul. But agencies intent on “neutralization” engage in building a systematic profile designed to destroy the words and ideas of the critic. This is done by using different cooperating sources to affirm their conclusion. Was this not what occurred in Nazi Germany, STASI East Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist USSR, North Korea – “Enemies of the State”?

Is this not what is happening in the USA and its allies today?

These destructive acts, whether done by a person, society, or nation, are equally violent and devastating, leaving scars on minds and bodies that are painful and memorable for the agony they have carried. We accuse, vilify, slander, denigrate, abuse, and malign individuals, groups, races, religions, nations, and the very planet on which we live through choices we make and utter each day. This is the way it begins! This is the root of hate and violence. This is the seemingly innocent path that leads so easily to broader acts of violence, destruction, killing, and war.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii. Dr. Marsella’s essay was originally published by Transcend Media Service at https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/10/two-paths-in-the-wood-choice-of-life-or-war/ . We will publish excerpts from it intermittently over the next few months.

I recently watched the German film “The Lives of Others,” got ready to mail it back to Netflix, but couldn’t let it go. Scenes from the film, elements of the plot, haunted me for two days, so I tore open the Netflix envelope, and watched the film again. I recommend it to all readers of this blog, but only if you can stand an emotional roller coaster and are ready to agonize over what it’s like to live in a national security state.

In the film, situated in Berlin in 1984, the security state is the communist-ruled German Democratic Republic, and their strong arm is the Stasi, the secret police. The playing out of the major theme of the film—how good men deal, over time, with the corruption and malevolence of a security state—is, successively horrifying, infuriating, anxiety-provoking, and ultimately inspirational. See the New York Times review.

In the United States, the term national security state is associated with the National Security Act of 1947. In In his book “Brave New World Order,” Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer argued that characteristics of a national security state include: investing enormous power and influence in the military; viewing true democracy as dangerous; promoting an ideology claiming that freedom and development are possible only when the elite are in control; seeing enemies everywhere and considering any means to destroy them as justifiable; and restricting public debate through intimidation.

We see all of these characteristics in The Lives of Others. In this day of spy drones and the National Security Administration in the United States, should we be watching for them here?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Enemies of the State . . .

Keep an eye out for the Stasi