Almost as if the GOP wanted or asked for inflation to spike after the Covid pandemic. Pardon me, not quite inflation when corporate profits are coincidentally soaring.
It is suspected the Putin caused the bombing that led to his taking over in Russia. Trump turns every problem into this sort of cataclysmic event, and if there are none, he makes them up. For him "the immigrants" are what Hitler used "the Jews" as, a common enemy that all problems can be blamed on. This stuff is all made up. Yet, we see people falling for it. It shows us that their world view is that people are scary, so they arm themselves with lots of guns, view everyone who is not just like them with suspicion, and readily believe all sorts of scary stuff that is absolute bollocks.
Justification for the war in Chechnya and to reboot his popularity. Anti corruption federal police investigator began to unravel the conspiracy by the FSB that was caught placing the bombs in apartment buildings. He escaped with some help from Putin’s rival oligarch Boris Berezovsky and escaped to England. He wrote a book about it, Blowing up Russia. He was poisoned by FSB agents in London and died in the hospital from radioactive polonium. His name was Alexander Litvrnchenko.
“If The people can be left uncertain by the constant manufacturing of crisis, their emotions and actions can be managed and directed.” Solkov, former adviser to Putin Solkov borrowed this from Alexander Dugin, Russian Fascist/nationalist who was influenced by the White’s political philosopher Ivan illinn who worshipped Hitler and Mussolini. If there is no crisis to exploit, create one. That is what Putin and Trump both do, and with demagogic fervor.
It’s amazing how normal people can get hoodwinked by someone like Hitler and Trump! They fall in line behind their “leader “ and give him unconditional support! Sounds all too familiar!
The human mind is known to be susceptible to suggestion but what we have seen with tRump is staggering. When a person can be convinced that the most ridiculous things are true, then that same person can be convinced that the truth is ridiculous. It takes confirmation bias to a whole new level. The human mind is much more malleable than I thought years ago.
Very good explanation! Some seek out sources which reinforces their views, no matter how ridiculous they are! Fox News thrives on this! But, I might be biased! 🙄
After years of shows like Jerry Springer, and perhaps also charismatic Evangelical preachers, they are too ready to be both entertained by tragedy and brainwashed.
It's the same playbook. Oligarchs grease the wheels for Trump like they did for Hitler. It's about chaos and in chaos you can steal, both money and power.
Once capitalism breeds an oligarch class, they push for authoritarian rule to match their authoritarian economics. Neoliberal economics is authoritarian and in conflict with democracy. It has been said that capitalism has within it the seeds of its own destruction.
Quite interesting and unfortunately a little too similar to what we are living through. Only difference is that Hitler promised a new Germany while our crazy promises to take us back to what we were….country for rich, white, land owning men who hate everything and everyone else.
Sickeningly real with an appalling sense of Deja vu - we are living through the same nightmare once again. I used to wonder how people could be so blind - not anymore. I find it incredible that so many get sucked deep in that rabbit hole, losing any sense of what is up and what is down.
Just like free internet today: fb, Twitter, toktik, etc etc. new and free communications technology to confuse, mesmerize, distract, but mostly to divide.
In the 60’s Bobby Kennedy saw it differently, a more moral opportunity, “ for new communications technology is bringing people closer”, and “the needs of one, eventually become the concerns of all”. ( I hate quoting him now because his son is such a whack job!)
FB is a cesspool of fascist propaganda. If this is what FB thinks is fair and balanced, they need to review the hazards of fascism. FB has become a breeding ground for those hating human virtues.
The orange felon has read Hitler’s “my new order” book/speeches. He is following Hitler’s path and process to power. The GOP has adopted the same. They can never be trusted with power. Ever.
I think what concerns me most is the vast difference between the experiences of the German people leading up to Hitler's rise and those of the MAGA crowd. Americans have over two hundred years of whatever we've managed to make of our republic while the Germans had nothing of the kind. We should have more of a cushion against the demagoguery of Trump and his myrmidons than the German people following their centuries of autocratic rule, and in the wake of WWI, the harshness of the Versailles treaty and the reparations it demanded, the political violence that rocked them following the war, the failure of Weimar, and the effects of the Great Depression. I certainly don't excuse them for the direction in which they allowed Hitler to take them, but at least they could claim to have had no real experience of anything like democracy and to have been through a series of events that would have shaken any nation to its core. The experiences of the MAGA crowd have nothing on that. Indeed the only even remote similarity would lie in the devastation of the flu epidemic following the war and our experience with COVID. Yet they are willing to follow this man wherever he leads. I think a good part of it must be that they really have no idea what they are playing with, but it seems a harsh judgment on the long term effectiveness and resilience of democracy.
I believe I’ve read that Weimar Germany was the most educated populace and most democratic in the world at that time Hitler was rising. Hitler striding hypnosis and worked those techniques into his speeches. Certainly grievance and validation are powerful manipulators. He never won more than 37% of the vote. Conservatives, fearing the loss of their own majority, invited Hitler and the Nazis into their tent. They miscalculated they could control him. Ironic that some of those conservatives escaped Germany. That’s a story I think. Who were they and were did these conservatives escape to? England, France, the US?
Thank you for you essay is how Hitler came to power, this morning I also read (funny how those algorithms can work) Brian Klaass' Substack on how it began to unravel starting with D day. Its a quick read and worthwhile today. The ending really triggered some strong emotions from me. Perhaps because I am a father of late teenage boy. Boys in their early twenties and late teens didn't die in Normandy so that Donald Trump could commit fraud with other felons, with the help of foreign adversaries of this country, then lie about it, get convicted of it, and lie more about it, even lie about our elections being "stolen", all the while he is the one that perpetrated his conspiracy to do just that for his own gain. American boys did not die so he could get away with that and other fascist crimes. Were there any Republicans at Normandy this anniversary? Fitting.
“First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.” Bertrand Russell on Fascism
Watching the Netflix series: Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. He was sentenced to 5 years for the Beer Hall Putsch, but was granted eligibility for parole after 6 months by a Conservative judge. I’d like judge Eileen Cannon to know that.
I recently finished reading Takeover:Hitler's Final Rise to Power by Timothy W. Rybeck. His focus is 1932-1933. The NSDAP was losing votes in state elections. It was the political elites and industrial interests jockeying behind the scenes that in essence nullified the importance of the rejections voters were handing Hitler in state elections. What is so disturbing now is the cabal of right wing /Fascist interests behind the gop, organizations many of which got their start under Reagan during the deindustrialization of the US and the strengthening of robber capitalism. The gop was already on the road before Nixon's southern strategy.
"As in Italy, the action of a few conservative elites, rather than popular acclaim, got the strongman into power. Around 1930, the media magnate and German National People’s Party head Alfred Hugenberg and the German President Paul von Hindenburg had begun to court Hitler, thinking he would support rearmament and help them subvert the left’s growing electoral strength."
At some point there must be action that weakens such gop organizations as The Heritage Foundation, The American Legislative Exchange Council, and CPAC among others. All anyone need do is read the hundreds of pages of Project 2025 to learn what the people pushing Trump are planning. He is the shiny object. This group, many of whose funders also fill the pockets of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have a plan. They will work it with or without the orange cheato.
Thank you, professor. You’ve done it again by showing the similarity between the felon Trump and the clear path he follows first trod by Mussolini and then Hitler. In 1935 Sinclair Lewis described what is happening today in his novel “It Can’t Happen Here”.
Note: On the steamship to Paris in 1919, President Wilson caught the flu ( influenza A, H5N1) that had the previous year killed more soldiers than all combat did worldwide with a 9% mortality rate for those 18-32 years old ( the lost generation) and an estimated 55 million worldwide, 650,000 Americans. His aids described what was later thought to be a stroke. President Wilson, sick and debilitated, was absent in many of the negotiations and the French and European leaders were successful punishing Germany with exorbitant reparations that prepared the landscape for German shame and grievance. But this might be another reason, knowing the history of the Treaty of Versailles, that George Marshal had a different plan to assist Europe post WW2. Interesting how many times Pandemics and their lessons have shaped wars and the course of history.
Authoritarianism scares me, but now it's worse, reading that a few elites were who got Hitler into power. That sounds all too familiar here, these days. The Supreme Court is certainly doing their part.
If Timothy Snyder said it, I believe it. He knows whereof he speaks. Although I would tend to say that what I'm seeing is that the so-called conservatives are the fascists. The one thing that's absolutely true is that they fear losing (not their majority, because they don't have a real majority).
That quote was from 2017. I think u are right now in 2024. They are in full bloom Fascista now, even adopting strategies and tactics of Orban, Putin, and Hitler. That they have the Supreme Court now, that is parallel to all three. Vote vote vote. Expect that they will contest the election no matter what the result.
The fake electors need to be charged, and severely sentenced once found guilty. That needs to happen in the next few months. Put the fear of god into those willing to do such awful things around the election.
‘Hitler and the Nazis’: Building a Case for Alarm,
Joe Berlinger’s six-part documentary for Netflix asks whether we should see our future in Germany’s past.
“Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface … “
Joy, it's so great that we have experts like Ruth who are tutoring a nation, and maybe the world, in recognizing the danger signs of the psychopathology that manifests outwardly as fascistic abuse. Thanks for the link...
Yes, trump has studied Hitler well. The only saving 'grace' we have is his worsening dementia. Hitler was in his mid t late twenties when he started his push and in hi late 50's when he died by his own hand. He may have been verging on insanity, but he didn't show he signs of dementia we see in trump who will be 78 this month. BTW, Biden who is 3 years 7 month older is still sharp as a tack.
Ruth's superlative excerpt concisely explains how a few men who felt shamed by the military loss and by the punishment meted out in the Treaty of Versailles, soaked up the rage and indignation that Hitler modeled for them. Indignation and blame create a perfect antidote for guilt and shame. The mistake it seems that Hindenburg and others made is in thinking that they could use Hitler for their own purposes. If they'd really understood what motivates a sociopathic, megalomaniacal, delusional man like Hitler, they would have realized that once a man like that has a taste of power over others, there is no end to his craving for more. Men like Hitler and Trump have an infinite well of righteous anger and narcissistic rage that will eventually be directed at anyone who tries to limit them...anyone.
That's precisely why the protective web of judicial action must be employed by a self-respecting democracy, functioning as the firm "parent" that sets the limits on the tantrumming two-year old. He cannot be expected to contain his own destructive impulses when in a fit of pain, rage, and desire for revenge. He has no internal limits.
Surely not overlooked but nevertheless unmentioned are the many aspects of Hitler & his philosophy that made him a creature of his time. He came of age at the height of the age of empires, so his vision of Germany in part was as a great empire. He was born at the twin dawns of Darwinism & eugenics, so he based his vision on the ideas that mankind as a species could be cultivated to a level of perfection by selective breeding from which those from his view of lower orders would be excluded. His essential message of violence was also tailor-made for a generation that survived WW1, the first war that made full use of machine-guns, aerial bombardments, tanks & chemical weapons to achieve slaughter on s industrial level & create a generation of survivors inured to carnage that deprived even the act of patriotic dying of the remnants of human dignity.
True enough, but at the same time, I don't for a minute discount the role of the Treaty of Versailles and the reparations demanded of Germany, which hobbled and hamstrung the Weimar Republic from the beginning -- and provided ample fuel for a demagogue to ignite. Grievance is a powerful accelerant. Trump, the MAGAs, and, less directly, the powers behind them are using it to great effect, even though IMO the grievances of white working-class men (among others) can't be so readily traced to a single source as the grievances of Germans in the 1920s.
True & well said. Grievance is an interesting topic because it always represents a legendary-style retelling of a history in which the roles are always more predetermined & defined than they develop as events unfold. The fraudulence of Germany's retrospective role as the victim of WW1 is underscored by its objective aggression at the start. So too are the aggrievements of white rural males in our era of social progress for other groups somewhat less a matter of them being "left behind" than is the objective fact that they have emotional stakes in insisting that the world around them not move forward and in refusing to adapt to changing economic realities that signalled progress for the US as a whole. In the present case, also, the fraudulence is even more ersatz because there was no act of even claimed betrayal like the Treaty of Versailles, unless one counts the Brown v. the Board of Education decision which was a true act of justice with no element of revanchism attached to it in fact.
Ruth, I have been a professional translator from German for the past 30 years, specializing in scholarly works and diaries and letters. In my "retirement" from translation, I'm translating Nazi texts aimed at young people, in large part because of what I'm seeing in American politics (Florida jumps out in this regard). They go to the question of the indoctrination of the next generation.
Most recently, I translated Philipp Bouhler's 1939 "The Struggle for Germany," which Hitler asked him to write for use in the schools. It had the 3rd largest print run of any book published under the Nazis: just shy of 2 million. Kids actually read this stuff. It is essentially Mein Kampf for students. (Bouhler was Nazi party member no. 12. If he hadn't committed suicide after he was arrested, he would undoubtedly have been tried and executed for his implementation of the T4 euthanasia program, which as you know murdered more than 250,000 people deemed not worthy of life.)
Here is one of the most salient quotes. After the failed Beer Hall Putsch, which had been intended to trigger the revolution...:
"The Führer now recognized clearly the necessity for pursuing the struggle by legal means. That, however, merely meant a change in tactics, by no means a change in goals, which was still to capture political power in Germany. The constitution of the November [i.e., Weimar] Republic, built on a democratic basis, afforded the possibility for increasingly winning over the German Volk by means of tireless propaganda, and infiltrating the parliamentary system by means of elections, thereby achieving his goal by thoroughly legal means. In other words, democracy had to be defeated using its own weapons."
Certainly an idea that was articulated by Goebbels and Hitler, but a rather compact statement of intent. And again, this was intended as a lesson for teenagers! The indoctrination of young people is certainly a next step, and I think we see the beginnings of this in the "reforms" undertaken in places like Florida, and the book bannings there and other places.
There is also the question of the role of violence. Here is Bouhler describing how it became a recruitment tool:
"... Nonetheless, even though large holes in the audience were filled with the help of the placards, the meetings lacked a palpable ingredient of success because the entire press, of all shades, remained stubbornly silent about them. Then something took place one evening in the Hofbräu cellar. A man who had dared to interrupt was helped a little ungently out into the fresh air. Next day the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten reported that a harmless attendee had been beaten up at a meeting of the German Workers Party. It was, they said, regrettable to the highest degree the excesses to which the political struggle had degenerated in our day. – Finally, the party had found the way to lure the newspapers out of their icy reserve! Here was the rope by which it could hoist itself up from the depths of disregard to the daylight of “public opinion.” The criticism leveled in the press at the party’s efforts was harsh and unfriendly because it never discussed its intentions and goals. But more than anything else the party did not want to continue to be buried in complete silence. So in the future, every opportunity was taken to respond to even the most minor challenge with physical ejection. And lo and behold! From then on both the bourgeois and the Red press began to cover the evil Nazis daily."
Our far right anti-intellectualism push and general criticism of our education system seems to be a scheme to replace those institutions with fascist thinking. The roots of this appear to be the Hitler-Jugend program. This is just another piece of data to show the bad intent of our neofascists.
Horrifyingly prescient of today’s fascist movement.
Almost as if the GOP wanted or asked for inflation to spike after the Covid pandemic. Pardon me, not quite inflation when corporate profits are coincidentally soaring.
It is suspected the Putin caused the bombing that led to his taking over in Russia. Trump turns every problem into this sort of cataclysmic event, and if there are none, he makes them up. For him "the immigrants" are what Hitler used "the Jews" as, a common enemy that all problems can be blamed on. This stuff is all made up. Yet, we see people falling for it. It shows us that their world view is that people are scary, so they arm themselves with lots of guns, view everyone who is not just like them with suspicion, and readily believe all sorts of scary stuff that is absolute bollocks.
The Moscow apartment bombings?
Yes. It is suspected that he was behind them. His training in KGB and Stasi has given him far too much intel on people, and on how stealth works.
Justification for the war in Chechnya and to reboot his popularity. Anti corruption federal police investigator began to unravel the conspiracy by the FSB that was caught placing the bombs in apartment buildings. He escaped with some help from Putin’s rival oligarch Boris Berezovsky and escaped to England. He wrote a book about it, Blowing up Russia. He was poisoned by FSB agents in London and died in the hospital from radioactive polonium. His name was Alexander Litvrnchenko.
“If The people can be left uncertain by the constant manufacturing of crisis, their emotions and actions can be managed and directed.” Solkov, former adviser to Putin Solkov borrowed this from Alexander Dugin, Russian Fascist/nationalist who was influenced by the White’s political philosopher Ivan illinn who worshipped Hitler and Mussolini. If there is no crisis to exploit, create one. That is what Putin and Trump both do, and with demagogic fervor.
Here's hoping that Trump has his fall soon!
It’s amazing how normal people can get hoodwinked by someone like Hitler and Trump! They fall in line behind their “leader “ and give him unconditional support! Sounds all too familiar!
Demagogues.
You make the case for real education
The human mind is known to be susceptible to suggestion but what we have seen with tRump is staggering. When a person can be convinced that the most ridiculous things are true, then that same person can be convinced that the truth is ridiculous. It takes confirmation bias to a whole new level. The human mind is much more malleable than I thought years ago.
Very good explanation! Some seek out sources which reinforces their views, no matter how ridiculous they are! Fox News thrives on this! But, I might be biased! 🙄
Russia.
After years of shows like Jerry Springer, and perhaps also charismatic Evangelical preachers, they are too ready to be both entertained by tragedy and brainwashed.
It's the same playbook. Oligarchs grease the wheels for Trump like they did for Hitler. It's about chaos and in chaos you can steal, both money and power.
Once capitalism breeds an oligarch class, they push for authoritarian rule to match their authoritarian economics. Neoliberal economics is authoritarian and in conflict with democracy. It has been said that capitalism has within it the seeds of its own destruction.
Quite interesting and unfortunately a little too similar to what we are living through. Only difference is that Hitler promised a new Germany while our crazy promises to take us back to what we were….country for rich, white, land owning men who hate everything and everyone else.
Sickeningly real with an appalling sense of Deja vu - we are living through the same nightmare once again. I used to wonder how people could be so blind - not anymore. I find it incredible that so many get sucked deep in that rabbit hole, losing any sense of what is up and what is down.
Imagine the use Hitler and the Nazis would have made of the internet. Exactly what the MAGA crowd has done with it. Any questions?
Nazis gave the German people free radios. But with only one channel to listen to Hitler’s speeches at “rallies”.
Just like free internet today: fb, Twitter, toktik, etc etc. new and free communications technology to confuse, mesmerize, distract, but mostly to divide.
In the 60’s Bobby Kennedy saw it differently, a more moral opportunity, “ for new communications technology is bringing people closer”, and “the needs of one, eventually become the concerns of all”. ( I hate quoting him now because his son is such a whack job!)
FB is a cesspool of fascist propaganda. If this is what FB thinks is fair and balanced, they need to review the hazards of fascism. FB has become a breeding ground for those hating human virtues.
Like nicotine for your attention to serve you more ads to buy more junk.
Which rallies were very much like Trump’s
The orange felon has read Hitler’s “my new order” book/speeches. He is following Hitler’s path and process to power. The GOP has adopted the same. They can never be trusted with power. Ever.
I have quotes in the book of people talking about the effect of Hitler's speeches that match MAGA reactions
Not at all surprising.
I think what concerns me most is the vast difference between the experiences of the German people leading up to Hitler's rise and those of the MAGA crowd. Americans have over two hundred years of whatever we've managed to make of our republic while the Germans had nothing of the kind. We should have more of a cushion against the demagoguery of Trump and his myrmidons than the German people following their centuries of autocratic rule, and in the wake of WWI, the harshness of the Versailles treaty and the reparations it demanded, the political violence that rocked them following the war, the failure of Weimar, and the effects of the Great Depression. I certainly don't excuse them for the direction in which they allowed Hitler to take them, but at least they could claim to have had no real experience of anything like democracy and to have been through a series of events that would have shaken any nation to its core. The experiences of the MAGA crowd have nothing on that. Indeed the only even remote similarity would lie in the devastation of the flu epidemic following the war and our experience with COVID. Yet they are willing to follow this man wherever he leads. I think a good part of it must be that they really have no idea what they are playing with, but it seems a harsh judgment on the long term effectiveness and resilience of democracy.
I believe I’ve read that Weimar Germany was the most educated populace and most democratic in the world at that time Hitler was rising. Hitler striding hypnosis and worked those techniques into his speeches. Certainly grievance and validation are powerful manipulators. He never won more than 37% of the vote. Conservatives, fearing the loss of their own majority, invited Hitler and the Nazis into their tent. They miscalculated they could control him. Ironic that some of those conservatives escaped Germany. That’s a story I think. Who were they and were did these conservatives escape to? England, France, the US?
Thank you for you essay is how Hitler came to power, this morning I also read (funny how those algorithms can work) Brian Klaass' Substack on how it began to unravel starting with D day. Its a quick read and worthwhile today. The ending really triggered some strong emotions from me. Perhaps because I am a father of late teenage boy. Boys in their early twenties and late teens didn't die in Normandy so that Donald Trump could commit fraud with other felons, with the help of foreign adversaries of this country, then lie about it, get convicted of it, and lie more about it, even lie about our elections being "stolen", all the while he is the one that perpetrated his conspiracy to do just that for his own gain. American boys did not die so he could get away with that and other fascist crimes. Were there any Republicans at Normandy this anniversary? Fitting.
The GOP should be so ashamed.
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/a-tale-of-two-d-day-cemeteries-ee7
Sociopaths have no shame. Somehow, the MAGA-teers have attracted an extraordinary number of dysfunctional personalities.
“First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.” Bertrand Russell on Fascism
Watching the Netflix series: Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. He was sentenced to 5 years for the Beer Hall Putsch, but was granted eligibility for parole after 6 months by a Conservative judge. I’d like judge Eileen Cannon to know that.
That’s a scary thought.
I recently finished reading Takeover:Hitler's Final Rise to Power by Timothy W. Rybeck. His focus is 1932-1933. The NSDAP was losing votes in state elections. It was the political elites and industrial interests jockeying behind the scenes that in essence nullified the importance of the rejections voters were handing Hitler in state elections. What is so disturbing now is the cabal of right wing /Fascist interests behind the gop, organizations many of which got their start under Reagan during the deindustrialization of the US and the strengthening of robber capitalism. The gop was already on the road before Nixon's southern strategy.
"As in Italy, the action of a few conservative elites, rather than popular acclaim, got the strongman into power. Around 1930, the media magnate and German National People’s Party head Alfred Hugenberg and the German President Paul von Hindenburg had begun to court Hitler, thinking he would support rearmament and help them subvert the left’s growing electoral strength."
At some point there must be action that weakens such gop organizations as The Heritage Foundation, The American Legislative Exchange Council, and CPAC among others. All anyone need do is read the hundreds of pages of Project 2025 to learn what the people pushing Trump are planning. He is the shiny object. This group, many of whose funders also fill the pockets of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have a plan. They will work it with or without the orange cheato.
Thank you, professor. You’ve done it again by showing the similarity between the felon Trump and the clear path he follows first trod by Mussolini and then Hitler. In 1935 Sinclair Lewis described what is happening today in his novel “It Can’t Happen Here”.
And Phillip Roth’s “The Plot Against America”
Have you all seen the screen adaptation? It's brilliant.
No, not yet
Note: On the steamship to Paris in 1919, President Wilson caught the flu ( influenza A, H5N1) that had the previous year killed more soldiers than all combat did worldwide with a 9% mortality rate for those 18-32 years old ( the lost generation) and an estimated 55 million worldwide, 650,000 Americans. His aids described what was later thought to be a stroke. President Wilson, sick and debilitated, was absent in many of the negotiations and the French and European leaders were successful punishing Germany with exorbitant reparations that prepared the landscape for German shame and grievance. But this might be another reason, knowing the history of the Treaty of Versailles, that George Marshal had a different plan to assist Europe post WW2. Interesting how many times Pandemics and their lessons have shaped wars and the course of history.
The Great Influenza by John Barry, Tulane
https://news.tulane.edu/content/john-barry
Authoritarianism scares me, but now it's worse, reading that a few elites were who got Hitler into power. That sounds all too familiar here, these days. The Supreme Court is certainly doing their part.
“Conservatives, fearing a loss to their majority, invite the Fascist to share power”. -Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom
If Timothy Snyder said it, I believe it. He knows whereof he speaks. Although I would tend to say that what I'm seeing is that the so-called conservatives are the fascists. The one thing that's absolutely true is that they fear losing (not their majority, because they don't have a real majority).
That quote was from 2017. I think u are right now in 2024. They are in full bloom Fascista now, even adopting strategies and tactics of Orban, Putin, and Hitler. That they have the Supreme Court now, that is parallel to all three. Vote vote vote. Expect that they will contest the election no matter what the result.
Thank you, Ted. We are definitely in agreement. I just hope we as a country, are up to dealing with the contested election.
The fake electors need to be charged, and severely sentenced once found guilty. That needs to happen in the next few months. Put the fear of god into those willing to do such awful things around the election.
Fear of orange, stripes, bars with no windows I meant to say.
Romania made a statement against their dictator in 1989 with a firing squad. Both he and his wife were shot.
Fake electors are a part of a coup d etat attempt, and agree that they need to be made an example of.
Amen to that!!
NYT review
‘Hitler and the Nazis’: Building a Case for Alarm,
Joe Berlinger’s six-part documentary for Netflix asks whether we should see our future in Germany’s past.
“Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface … “
(Gift link}
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/arts/television/hitler-and-the-nazis-netflix-review.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xk0.rMo6.vZ3pa-qYRe5J&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Joy, it's so great that we have experts like Ruth who are tutoring a nation, and maybe the world, in recognizing the danger signs of the psychopathology that manifests outwardly as fascistic abuse. Thanks for the link...
oh interesting!
Yes, trump has studied Hitler well. The only saving 'grace' we have is his worsening dementia. Hitler was in his mid t late twenties when he started his push and in hi late 50's when he died by his own hand. He may have been verging on insanity, but he didn't show he signs of dementia we see in trump who will be 78 this month. BTW, Biden who is 3 years 7 month older is still sharp as a tack.
Ruth's superlative excerpt concisely explains how a few men who felt shamed by the military loss and by the punishment meted out in the Treaty of Versailles, soaked up the rage and indignation that Hitler modeled for them. Indignation and blame create a perfect antidote for guilt and shame. The mistake it seems that Hindenburg and others made is in thinking that they could use Hitler for their own purposes. If they'd really understood what motivates a sociopathic, megalomaniacal, delusional man like Hitler, they would have realized that once a man like that has a taste of power over others, there is no end to his craving for more. Men like Hitler and Trump have an infinite well of righteous anger and narcissistic rage that will eventually be directed at anyone who tries to limit them...anyone.
That's precisely why the protective web of judicial action must be employed by a self-respecting democracy, functioning as the firm "parent" that sets the limits on the tantrumming two-year old. He cannot be expected to contain his own destructive impulses when in a fit of pain, rage, and desire for revenge. He has no internal limits.
Surely not overlooked but nevertheless unmentioned are the many aspects of Hitler & his philosophy that made him a creature of his time. He came of age at the height of the age of empires, so his vision of Germany in part was as a great empire. He was born at the twin dawns of Darwinism & eugenics, so he based his vision on the ideas that mankind as a species could be cultivated to a level of perfection by selective breeding from which those from his view of lower orders would be excluded. His essential message of violence was also tailor-made for a generation that survived WW1, the first war that made full use of machine-guns, aerial bombardments, tanks & chemical weapons to achieve slaughter on s industrial level & create a generation of survivors inured to carnage that deprived even the act of patriotic dying of the remnants of human dignity.
True enough, but at the same time, I don't for a minute discount the role of the Treaty of Versailles and the reparations demanded of Germany, which hobbled and hamstrung the Weimar Republic from the beginning -- and provided ample fuel for a demagogue to ignite. Grievance is a powerful accelerant. Trump, the MAGAs, and, less directly, the powers behind them are using it to great effect, even though IMO the grievances of white working-class men (among others) can't be so readily traced to a single source as the grievances of Germans in the 1920s.
True & well said. Grievance is an interesting topic because it always represents a legendary-style retelling of a history in which the roles are always more predetermined & defined than they develop as events unfold. The fraudulence of Germany's retrospective role as the victim of WW1 is underscored by its objective aggression at the start. So too are the aggrievements of white rural males in our era of social progress for other groups somewhat less a matter of them being "left behind" than is the objective fact that they have emotional stakes in insisting that the world around them not move forward and in refusing to adapt to changing economic realities that signalled progress for the US as a whole. In the present case, also, the fraudulence is even more ersatz because there was no act of even claimed betrayal like the Treaty of Versailles, unless one counts the Brown v. the Board of Education decision which was a true act of justice with no element of revanchism attached to it in fact.
This is so distressingly familiar. How does anyone not see the similarities?
As I learned way back in the day, "Denial is not just a river in Egypt." :-(
They don't WANT to see the similarities.
Ruth, I have been a professional translator from German for the past 30 years, specializing in scholarly works and diaries and letters. In my "retirement" from translation, I'm translating Nazi texts aimed at young people, in large part because of what I'm seeing in American politics (Florida jumps out in this regard). They go to the question of the indoctrination of the next generation.
Most recently, I translated Philipp Bouhler's 1939 "The Struggle for Germany," which Hitler asked him to write for use in the schools. It had the 3rd largest print run of any book published under the Nazis: just shy of 2 million. Kids actually read this stuff. It is essentially Mein Kampf for students. (Bouhler was Nazi party member no. 12. If he hadn't committed suicide after he was arrested, he would undoubtedly have been tried and executed for his implementation of the T4 euthanasia program, which as you know murdered more than 250,000 people deemed not worthy of life.)
Here is one of the most salient quotes. After the failed Beer Hall Putsch, which had been intended to trigger the revolution...:
"The Führer now recognized clearly the necessity for pursuing the struggle by legal means. That, however, merely meant a change in tactics, by no means a change in goals, which was still to capture political power in Germany. The constitution of the November [i.e., Weimar] Republic, built on a democratic basis, afforded the possibility for increasingly winning over the German Volk by means of tireless propaganda, and infiltrating the parliamentary system by means of elections, thereby achieving his goal by thoroughly legal means. In other words, democracy had to be defeated using its own weapons."
Certainly an idea that was articulated by Goebbels and Hitler, but a rather compact statement of intent. And again, this was intended as a lesson for teenagers! The indoctrination of young people is certainly a next step, and I think we see the beginnings of this in the "reforms" undertaken in places like Florida, and the book bannings there and other places.
There is also the question of the role of violence. Here is Bouhler describing how it became a recruitment tool:
"... Nonetheless, even though large holes in the audience were filled with the help of the placards, the meetings lacked a palpable ingredient of success because the entire press, of all shades, remained stubbornly silent about them. Then something took place one evening in the Hofbräu cellar. A man who had dared to interrupt was helped a little ungently out into the fresh air. Next day the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten reported that a harmless attendee had been beaten up at a meeting of the German Workers Party. It was, they said, regrettable to the highest degree the excesses to which the political struggle had degenerated in our day. – Finally, the party had found the way to lure the newspapers out of their icy reserve! Here was the rope by which it could hoist itself up from the depths of disregard to the daylight of “public opinion.” The criticism leveled in the press at the party’s efforts was harsh and unfriendly because it never discussed its intentions and goals. But more than anything else the party did not want to continue to be buried in complete silence. So in the future, every opportunity was taken to respond to even the most minor challenge with physical ejection. And lo and behold! From then on both the bourgeois and the Red press began to cover the evil Nazis daily."
I hope that this may at some point be useful to you. The full translation is available on my website: http://kfkronenberg.com/The%20Struggle%20for%20Germany.docx.
Thank you so much for this, and for your work and the link!
Thank you. Please feel free to use it in your work. It's under a Creative Commons license.
Thank you Kenneth, this is indeed useful (and disturbing).
Our far right anti-intellectualism push and general criticism of our education system seems to be a scheme to replace those institutions with fascist thinking. The roots of this appear to be the Hitler-Jugend program. This is just another piece of data to show the bad intent of our neofascists.