The Nazi Gestapo & The US Police State

The world is watching what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri. After the announcement by the grand jury that Officer Darren Wilson was acquitted for the shooting death of Michael Brown, angry residents took to the streets of Ferguson and other towns and cities across the U.S. to protest police brutality. The U.S. government has the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) along with the Ferguson police department and the Missouri National guard ready to confront the angry protesters with force.

Michael Brown’s murder is not the only incident that sparked riots. There have been other similar incidents involving police brutality such as the Rodney King beating by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991 that also sparked riots. The Police used excessive force against the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and other anti-Establishment protests across the U.S.

….U.S. law enforcement in the U.S. has been heading towards what Germany became, a totalitarian police state. Why such a stark comparison? Not only police brutality is a major problem, but there are other factors to consider. The history of the Gestapo has many parallels to what the U.S. law enforcement on the federal and local level has become. After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he appointed Hermann Göring as Interior Minister of Prussia allowing him to become head of the largest police force in Germany. Göring filled the ranks with Nazis in both the political and intelligence sections of the police. By 1933, Göring merged both units to form the Gestapo. He was soon head of the Gestapo in 1934 and extended the agency’s authority under Hitler’s leadership. Then Göring gave the command of the Gestapo to Heinrich Himmler that same year. Hitler then appointed Himmler as the chief of all German police outside Prussia. Then Reinhard Heydrich was named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on April, 22 1934. On June 17th, 1936, Hitler unified all of the police forces in the Reich and named Himmler as Chief of German Police.

The Gestapo became a national state agency and gained authority over all of Germany’s uniformed law enforcement agencies and had the authority to investigate alleged acts of treason, espionage and other activities seen as crimes against Germany, in particular against the Nazi Party. The Gestapo operated without any judicial review by state imposed law, putting them above the law, relatively speaking. The Gestapo used Schutzhaft or “protective custody” to imprison people without judicial proceedings. The system was that the prisoner was ultimately forced to sign their own Schutzhaftbefehl, an order to allow themselves imprisoned out of fear that agents would personally torture or even execute them. Thousands of political prisoners throughout Germany and occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree disappeared under the Gestapo. The Gestapo’s tactics rooted out political opponents of the Nazi Party. Communists and religious groups who attended church were spied upon. The communists, working-class people, and even far-right conservative organizations covertly fought against the Nazi’s which led to mass arrests. “Racially undesirable elements” such as the Jews, criminals, homosexuals, and the Romani people were also sent to concentration camps or were executed. Student protests were crushed. Businessmen, office workers, teachers, and others that resisted the Nazi party were in danger of Gestapo informants and agents if they held rallies opposing the Nazi party which in fact is a familiar pattern in the U.S. today. The main stream media, specifically The New York Times reported that “The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show.”….

By Timothy Alexander Guzman – Silent Crow News – via Signs Of The Times –