It happened in Hitler’s Germany and – despite our election – it could still happen here

How Hitler Transformed a Democracy Into a Tyranny - The New York Times

Adolf Hitler congratulated by a mob of supporters in Nuremburg, 1933. Courtesy New York Times/getty images

The horrifying regime of Trump still festers in the mind and heart, so I was compelled to plow through a long article in The Nation about a new scholarly angle on Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. There remains fertile and fearsome grounds for a shudder of  apprehension in America, the powerful evidence of “Trumpism,” which isn’t going away because of an election loss. Indeed, 70 million Americans willing to chose a  kind of blatantly obvious American authoritarianism over democracy should keep us all awake at night. So I include below a quote from, and a link to, the article “Who Voted for Hitler?” which should stir us to reflection and action, in the ominousness of the hour.

This is no time to relax. At a personal level, I was disturbed by the slight response to my previous blog post, which suggested the blandishments of an inauguration reflect how people may be too satisfied with the presidential win as a “solution” to the nation’s gravest danger since the Civil War.

Donald Trump gesturing to his supporters. The Economic Times

The work has just begun. The violent right-wing siege on The Capitol was no joke, nor a freakish anomaly. Such allied fanatic forces are likely gathering to strike again, at some point when National Guard protections are relaxed. Here’s a quote from the article that should stir us to action. But I recommend you sit down and give this scary story time to breath in the poisoned air it probes, and understand how history just might be poised to repeat itself. I’m hardly a doomsayer, but reality is too overt and ugly now for anything but our most ardent attention.

Here’s the link to, “Who Voted for Hitler?” by Dan Simon, and below the quote from the article, which I urge you to read, at the very least: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-hitler-nazi-fascism/

From “Who Voted for Hitler?”:

All year long in 2020, we saw people of color murdered by state security forces, without redress. We protested, but the powers that be have waited out those protests. Little has changed. As Americans, our protests were muted and gentle by comparison with the wrongs we were protesting against.

We learned fear at a whole new level; we learned inequality at a whole new level. How is it that we tolerate a population of the homeless and the hungry in this, the richest nation in the world?

We withstood these daily assaults and defeats and then dealt authoritarianism a blow at the ballot box.

But there were 70,000,000 Americans who found they preferred being citizens subject to authoritarianism to being citizens in a democracy. Our job now is to make the fruits, the honor, the protections of living as citizens in a democracy so consistent and true that the arc continues to bend in the direction of justice. There’s no middle ground.

Another right-wing leader could to sweep up those millions – and what beyond them? – who’s stronger and strategically smarter than Trump.

In other words, we need to pay full attention and act, today and tomorrow, for the sake of our damaged and endangered democracy, however and whenever we can.

Yes, that means you, dear reader.

Whiteness or democracy? Which will they (or we) choose?

A supporter of President Donald Trump chants outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

” ‘People were angry when the projections came out. People said they wouldn’t stand for being a minority in their own country.”

“Now there are troops at the border,” I said. “and shootings of black and brown and Jewish people.”

Taylor nodded. He contemplated the meaning of that. “So the real question would be,” he said finally, “if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”

We let that settle in the air, neither of us willing to hazard a guess to that one.’ ”

— from Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson

My ensuing thoughts formulated on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So let’s pause, peer out at the horizon of our souls, and see if we can see, above and beyond, any glimpse of “the mountaintop,” “the promised land” or that ever-mystical “arc of justice”?

The question, to me, posed above, came from Wilkerson’s profound and necessary book. The query has settled in the air just long enough for me to hazard a response.

There on the ground before us, the question prompts another one: What does “whiteness” mean in the context of losing our democracy? It ostensibly would mean benefiting a new white minority aggrieved, for fears of not being the most populous ethnicity. More to the point, they seem unaware of, or to not acknowledge, that the desired change means losing the freedoms — those that are typically lost in the authoritarian nations that have challenged democracies around the world in recent years. If you are white, what good is it if you lose the privileges your white privilege had afforded you? And a statistical minority hardly means, by itself, that the deeply uncased conventions of systemic racism will suddenly disappear, or be appreciably weakened.

This was a manifestation that power at its worst, of domestic terrorists.

And there’s no mistaking it, Donald Trump lusts to be an authoritarian “strong man” like his professed idol, Vladimir Putin. The neurotic depths of his narcissism will allow him no other sense of truth, Thus, he’s incapable of admitting defeat. So, this is classic case of followers fighting against their own interests, and for only the presumptions of social systems hundreds of years old, which systemically enslaved and lynched, and still discriminate against and prolifically incarcerate, people of color. A system that allows men to be punished, or killed, simply for breathing.

The larger point is that authoritarian governments by definition benefit those in authority, and those with the power to directly curry favor and influence with such authorities — typically unprincipled rich people. Ordinary palookas clinging to guns might coerce or steal freedoms from those threatened, but in the contemporary world if you’re merely “free.” you’re gonna struggle mightily as a lone wolf even if you have a big hunting pack. That’s because in a society is geared to an array of financial demands that only a system with a democratic government provides. If you don’t like the government, democracy allows you to peaceably replace it, through elections.

So how many would choose whiteness over democracy? One would sadly assume a certain percentage of the most radicalized, fanatic, racist and aggrieved Trump devotees. Even if Trump himself truly fades away (increasingly likely), “Trumpism” won’t soon and it may attract a new more intelligent and strategic avatar. That is the fear of lovers of democracy and its freedoms and political beauties.

Even after the Capitol travesties, most Republican legislators remain largely craven in fear of losing the Trumpism vote.

As CNN senior political analyst Jeff Greenfield commented on Republicans called for temperance rather than impeaching the president who incited the deadly attack: “Forgive me, but the cynic in me thinks that’s like the teenager who kills his parents and pleads for leniency because now he’s an orphan.”

But the issue remains saving democracy, or saving whiteness. By activism of a genuinely patriotic kind, that is still exemplified,  by Martin Luther King Jr. , as much as any leader.

In his biography of King, the brilliant writer and public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson explains, King’s was a “patriotism of flesh and blood, born of the holy obligation to provide a bridge over which the words of democracy might march from parchment to pavement. His most enduring trophies were the calluses he gathered for marching for justice and merciless heat in the sore knees he gained bending to pray for enemies he defiantly loved…

King’s version of love of country was certainly challenging. It drew a contrast between belief in the strange providence of God, which is often disguised unpredictable events, and the idolatry of a nation that it is a damaging counterfeit of true patriotism. King understood that authentic patriotism depends on telling the truth about the nation in an effort to help it achieve its highest destiny.” 1

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (at right in front row, arm raised) leads a march for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, March 1965. Courtesy The Clarion Ledger 

In our times, such idolatry has been offered up to a con-man president who promised the moon and delivered the dregs of his rich cronies’ empty bottles, at best.

And “telling the truth about the nation to help achieve its highest destiny” has been lost in the cacophony of social media and politically supine news media, so that those susceptible live in an alternate’s universe, a pretend reality. But the siege on the Capitol was no pretend exercise, it was a “well-coordinated attack” on the heart of our democratic government, according to acting deputy secretary of Homeland Defense, Ken Cuccinelli. Time will tell of who did the strategizing, and how.

Meanwhile, here’s a report based on extensive viewing of videos of the mob attack, posted by participants:

Our house. It is the most dominant phrase of any of the chants shouted by the mob as it presses into the Capitol. It is an expression of entitlement — white nativist entitlement, as many have noted: This is our house, our country. It’s the entitlement that leads one invader to pick up a phone in a Capitol corridor in one video and say: “Can I speak with Pelosi? Yeah, we’re coming for you, bitch. Mike Pence? We’re coming for you too, fucking traitor.”

What is striking about the videos, though, is how often this entitlement is laced with insecurity. The attackers profess ownership of this house, but so much of their commentary betrays discomfort and alienation within it, bordering on a sort of provincial awe. “This is the state Capitol,” a man says to his young female companion inside the visitor center, his struggle to grasp the grandeur of the place encapsulated in his incorrect terminology. “It’s amazing,” she says, as a man dressed as a Roman centurion, complete with sandals, wanders by.” 2

Where will these people wander off to, those who aren’t convicted of crimes and jailed? What do they hope to gain? The world to lose their souls? And yet they’ll likely gain, in a totalitarian regime, the “world” in a paper bag. Such are the rewards of delusional idolatry.

Am I being unfair to these people who believe baseless propaganda, rather than facts? They convey a kind of pathos, a sense of a patriotism they believe in. So pity is stirred.

But too many are the kind of hate-filled extremists — racists, Neo-Nazis, the wildest conspiracy-mongers — who any reasonable person would despise. And enough of them brandishing paramilitary weapons remain a threat to our way of life and governance, to the historically vast majority who voted for Joe Biden, and a threat to potentially anyone else, including themselves.

Actually overcoming our government by military force is quixotic, so they will inevitably fail, but not without further damage to our nation’s most precious values and functions.

After Trump’s sagging gasbag wheezes away in the wind, no one can say for sure what darkness lies on the horizon. We can brace ourselves, live our lives, and build them on the power of love, as King, Jesus, Gandhi, John Lennon, John Coltrane, and other enlightened people counseled, and work to bolster our democracy. Our wounds, still open, need serious healing. Black smoke hovers over the looming sky yet the morning breaks anew, as ever. So may hope and action.

____________

  1. Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You: The True Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.,The Free Press, 2000, 226
  2. Alec MacGillis https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-capitol-riot-what-the-parler-videos-reveal

Add Jack Wepfer to the short list of sports writers who offer a historical cultural perspective

 

Running back Aaron Jones does his version of the Lambeau Leap for socially-distanced Packer Nation fans after a touchdown Saturday. Courtesy Steve DeSisti and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 

Jack Wepfer, who writes for PackersWire, rainbowed a superb historical-cultural Hail Mary to the Packers success this year, and he nailed it beautifully. It’s the Romantics finding their redemption, at least at one level, in a time of tragically damaged rationalist-fed Capitalism.

And if you don’t believe the “intuitional” qualities are key for the Packers, just listen to Zen master Aaron Rodgers this season — his tone, attitude and grateful content. Coach LeFleur, too, exemplifies the stunningly wise humility, amid overwhelming excellence. It temper’s the swagger they also need to win.

In blighted times, The Packers have sustained my spirit and that of Packer nation worldwide. America’s team, for my money.

After refraining lately, I’ll comment further on politics/society shortly.

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