UnCommon Sense TV receives occasional feedback of various forms, some praise, some thoughtful criticism. Here is a somewhat misguided appraisal (spelling from original) of USTV’s Special Inaugural Edition program, first aired on January 20th, 2005. See our USTV Program List for more details on the episode in question.

I turned to this show and all they did was play clips of the NAZI’s and Hitler. I found it especially disgusting being that it is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwich death camp. I was in very poor taste and show a lack of common sense hence the name of the show. I don’t know what political message they were trying to make but after this a used car salesman is more credible that these idiots!!!

Thank you for expressing your concern about the content of Uncommon Sense TV.

I want to reassure you that UnCommon Sense TV is completely and unalterably opposed to all forms of dictatorship, especially ones that scapegoat the innocent and foment hatred. Our purpose for showing excerpts of the propaganda film Triumph of the Will was to warn people against fascism, and was IN NO WAY an endorsement of Nazism or any of its many evils. We despize Nazism.

We at UnCommon Sense TV believe that there is a very real threat from fascism in the USA right now, in the 21st century. The Nazi propaganda visuals were shown to illustrate for contemporary Americans how easily Germans in the 1930s were duped into supporting some of the most monstrous evil ever to manifest in the history of the human race. We hope that viewers will be able to see how what appears normal to us now in American politics, the rampant nationalism, the glorification of war, and the unleashing of the most selfish elements in our commercial economy, are all eerily similar to the political conditions in the early stages of Nazi Germany.

If you read the series of quotes by both German Nazi and contemporary American politicians that were shown on the screen during the show, you may have noticed that there were numerous disturbing similarities between the rhetoric of our own leaders and the twisted rhetoric of the mid 20th century fascists. It is wholly inaccurate and misleading to characterize the show as nothing but clips of Nazis.

We do not mean by our comparison to trivialize the evils of the Nazis, nor to exaggerate the evils of our current leadership. We believe that both can be seen for what they are, in both similarities and differences. If you have watched any previous installments of USTV, you know thet we are no fans of George W. Bush, and we consider him and his minions a threat to democracy in America, and to both the economic and spiritual health of the United States. We do believe there are several ways in which his administration resembles the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini.

Please take another look at the Inaugural Special the next time it re-airs in your viewing area, and take special care to read all of the quotes and facts that are displayed on the screen. Keep in mind that NONE of the information or quotations originated with our show. We have simply put the facts on the air, and provided what we think is an appropriate context in which to review them. I suppose our fault was in underestimating the number of casual and inattentive viewers who might stumble across our presentation and misinterpret it, either innocently or maliciously.

If you have any lingering doubts about our intentions, note to whom the program was dedicated (see the closing credits). There were three men mentioned. George Orwell, whose classic novel 1984 warned against totalitarianism, Franz Kafka, the greatly respected surrealist author of The Metamorphosis, who was a Czechoslovakian of Jewish descent, and some of whose relatives were murdered by the Nazis, and finally Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who tried to assassinate Hitler with a bomb in 1944. Unfortunately, Hitler survived the blast.

Ask yourself: Would anyone sympathetic to Nazis dedicate a program to these men? Resoundingly, NO!

We at UnCommon Sense TV are in favor of a democratic republic, and we are opposed to hate and oppression of all kinds. THAT is why we think there is no better time than now to remember the veracity of the closing quotation from the Inaugural Special, that Fascism doesn’t begin with concentration camps, it ends with them.

Anyone who payed attention to the content of our presentation would know that we also find Nazis distasteful, to say the LEAST. We also know that as the American philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I am certain that the victims of Auschwitz would not want us to forget how the Nazis rose to power, or how their propaganda conflicted with their actual goals.

What is truly tasteless is the willful ignorance of people who like to pretend that The USA is somehow immune to the evils of totalitarianism.
I will have much more confidence in the resiliance of the American people against fascism when they stop allowing people like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al to wield political power.
I look forward to that happy day of renewal in the annals of democracy.

Ed Lacy
UnCommonSense TV
Long live the spirit of Thomas Paine