I too have spent a significant share of my life wondering how the Germans could have succumbed to Nazism. I could see the initial appeal because the German economy was so bad. Unemployment and inflation were off the charts. People were literally starving to death. It was a perfect breeding grounds for competing populist movements. The ri…
I too have spent a significant share of my life wondering how the Germans could have succumbed to Nazism. I could see the initial appeal because the German economy was so bad. Unemployment and inflation were off the charts. People were literally starving to death. It was a perfect breeding grounds for competing populist movements. The rightwing Nazis appeared less threatening than the left wing communists and were better organized with a much better propaganda machine.
This initial German fuel has no comparable environment in the US. It's never really been about bread and eggs or ridiculously high levels of inflation. In the US, MAGA in it's core messaging, has always been about the 'othering', the cruelty, the hate. That makes the US even less understandable, less human. Given how far off the rails of humanity Germany went, it does not bode well for what could happen here.
I grew up in the US in the 60s and 70s hearing first hand about what the Nazis did. The way it was described, though, was as if Nazis were aliens-from-outer-space who caught Germany off guard and tried to invade Earth through them. Then I started studying history and realized, no, they were just regular human beings who decided evil was OK. And, hey, Americans are regular human beings, too. Huh.
We all lie to ourselves that we can't be as bad as [fill in the blank].
Nazism leveraged grievance to the hilt. Land taken from it following WW I, German people “oppressed” in the Sudetenland, German communities isolated in Danzig, oppressive restrictions on its ability to arm itself, the list goes on and on. What have we heard from Trump for eight years? Grievance. Hitler’s demands steamrolled European democracies, exhausted from WW I were willing to do almost anything to avoid another bloodbath of a war. Trump floods the zone with shit just as we are at our limits of tolerance to the lies and perversion of norms and truth. We are in for a real fight as preventing a slide into authoritarianism is a very real threat.
I too have spent a significant share of my life wondering how the Germans could have succumbed to Nazism. I could see the initial appeal because the German economy was so bad. Unemployment and inflation were off the charts. People were literally starving to death. It was a perfect breeding grounds for competing populist movements. The rightwing Nazis appeared less threatening than the left wing communists and were better organized with a much better propaganda machine.
This initial German fuel has no comparable environment in the US. It's never really been about bread and eggs or ridiculously high levels of inflation. In the US, MAGA in it's core messaging, has always been about the 'othering', the cruelty, the hate. That makes the US even less understandable, less human. Given how far off the rails of humanity Germany went, it does not bode well for what could happen here.
I grew up in the US in the 60s and 70s hearing first hand about what the Nazis did. The way it was described, though, was as if Nazis were aliens-from-outer-space who caught Germany off guard and tried to invade Earth through them. Then I started studying history and realized, no, they were just regular human beings who decided evil was OK. And, hey, Americans are regular human beings, too. Huh.
We all lie to ourselves that we can't be as bad as [fill in the blank].
Nazism leveraged grievance to the hilt. Land taken from it following WW I, German people “oppressed” in the Sudetenland, German communities isolated in Danzig, oppressive restrictions on its ability to arm itself, the list goes on and on. What have we heard from Trump for eight years? Grievance. Hitler’s demands steamrolled European democracies, exhausted from WW I were willing to do almost anything to avoid another bloodbath of a war. Trump floods the zone with shit just as we are at our limits of tolerance to the lies and perversion of norms and truth. We are in for a real fight as preventing a slide into authoritarianism is a very real threat.