I am having trouble getting into this essay on the war on critical thinking. I cannot figure out whether it is dumb or ignorant. My mother would say that the people conducting the war are malditos, mean. The reality is that the criminalization of rational thought goes beyond being dumb, ignorant or just plain mean.

Because the consequences are so calculated and far reaching, it is important to break it down so everyone can understand it and where we are headed.

Fascism did not start on February 27, 1933 with the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin; it did not begin with the building of concentration camps after the fire. It was all planned and a strategy of division, doubt, and fear simply bore fruit at this point.

Hitler summed up his strategy; he sowed the seeds of “mental confusion, contradiction of feelings, indecision, [and] panic.”

Were the German people dumb, ignorant or just plain malditos? Some were all of the above.

Hitler and his gang set out to stamp out all vestiges of freedom and decency in German society. It is a story goes back to the early 1920’s and was formed after great forethought.

It used symbols such as the black swastika within the white circle, triggering images of hate toward Jews. Similarly, the Tea Party movement uses the flag with the circle of stars, the border and the tea kettle to nurture fear and hate.

The process of “mental confusion, contradiction of feelings, indecision, panic” follow a blueprint. You watch Tea Party rallies play to mobs that identify with a distorted sense of nationalism; the speakers playing to the fears of the dumb, ignorant and malditos.

In the United States, the Tea Party has been taken over by corporate interests. The involvement of the Koch brothers is well documented. Like the Nazis it has integrated friendly media such as Fox News and a network of right-wing radio talk shows that include scores of hate-mongers such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage who are supported by dozens of other radio hosts and guests.

The message is redundant.

In Germany it was the fear of attacks from without – the invasion of aliens from within — who would infect their racial purity and rob them of the bounties of the German Nation. The Tea Party following a similar plan has substituted the word “illegal alien” for Jew.

The excesses are discernible even at this early stage. One can see the parallels with the Tea Party’s alliances with so-called Minutemen who can justify the murder of a nine-year old Mexican girl, Briseña Flores.

These parallels hit me over the head when I read my friend Devon Peña’s blog, one of the more intelligence on the internet. Devon is one of the few Chicano intellectuals that I know who thinks outside the box.

(See Devon G. Peña, “Fear & Loathing in Texas: State Republican Party Seeks to Ban Critical Thinking in Public Schools Platform Prohibits Teach Higher Order Thinking Skills,” July 1, 2012)

Peña’s blog follows the Texas State Board of Education and its adoption of high school social studies and history curriculum standards. The Texas body is a collection of extremists who mirror the fanaticism of the gaggle in Phoenix.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: Criminalizing Thinking » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.