The Village Voice

maia asked: Compare and contrast the US right now and Germany in the 1930s.

Welll, that's the 1 billion question, isn't it. (Literary so, given that the Orange Felon wants to have this sum of money from any fellow autocrat so they can join his "board of peace".

Now: being German, I instinctively shy away from invoking Godwin's law, so I'll start at the outset by declaring that no, I don't think the Orange One is Hitler 2.0, or that ICE are the Gestapo. (The SA during the late Weimar Republic might be a better comparison, as in, paramlitary units lustily doing their best to create and exude violence in the cities so that the dear leader can declare only he can restore order.) Also, I wish we'd have had as many demonstrations against our newly authoritarian government in, say, 1933-1935 as there are in the US right now, instead of, well, none. Individual acts of resistance, sure. Also the SPD being the sole party speaking out against the Ermächtigungsgesetz after the Reichstag burning. (Don't remind me that our current bunch of Neonazis wants to inhabit the very room named after the brave SPD guy who spoke against Hitler on that occasion in 1933.) But no equivalent to the "No Kings" demonstrations, or the current ones in the bitter cold of Minnesota, not until it's the 1940s and the women married to some of the last free Jews in Berlin actually demonstrate in front of Gestapo headquarters when their men get rounded up. I respect and admire the hell out of these women, but given the reaction by Goebbels & Co., who really didn't know how to handle this, I can't help but which these kind of demonstrations had happened in 1933 already, when the ostracisation and taking away of civil rights of everyone's neiighbours started.

Anyway: where I do see parallels is the way rich industrialists paved the way and/or quickly fell in line and profit from the autoritarian government that came to power legally and then promptly started to destroy the republic it was supposed to govern from the inside, and the way huge swaths of the media of the day even before complete state control lis established cleave to the new Overlords. And on the other side of the political spectrum, I see a parallel in the tendency of the left and/or liberal parties to attack each other instead of allying against the authoritarians. (This would be the early 1930s pre 1933.) Now this is hardly unique to the 1930s; a friend of mine who is in his late 80s and actually is a member of the SPD, our traditional centre-left party, said you can always rely on the left to attack each other with more vehemence than anyone else to the profit of their opponents.) Seriously, in the late Weimar Republic the Communists might have had their streetfights with the Nazis, but they kept declaring the SPD was the true enemy, and never mind the communists, your avarage progressive journalist was far more likely to attack and complain moderate or left leaning politicians than the Nazis. (Famously, journalistic icon Karl Kraus declared this was because "nothing about the Nazis inspires my imagination" ("Zu den Nazis fällt mir nichts ein"). Thanks, Kraus.) I'm not saying Democrats should be above criticism, absolutely not, but honestly, I have no time at all for the type of purist who declared they couldn't vote for Kamala Harris (or Hilary Clinton before her) because "Republicans and Democrats are the same anyway" or other arguments along that line. They knew what was at stake, just as anyone paying attention back in the Weimar Republic day did.


Of course, the Orange Menace has been far more open about his grifter status and his unending greed than the Nazis back in the day, but that's because of the difference in eras and societies; financial shakedowns and mafia tactics are getting admiration from huge parts of US society, it seems, whereas the Nazs while being no less interested in robbery by state (some were a bit more blatant about it like Goering, but it really was practised on every level, starting, of course, with forcing German Jews to "sell" their property for ricidiculous little sums) felt the need to dress it up far more, not least because part of Hitler's image included priding himself on "asceticism" and "living for the people". But they - and pretty much every populist/authoritarian system not just in the 1930s - use the same basic structure in their rethoric which unfortunately keeps working through the decades (centuries?).

1) You, the audience, are the best, you're perfect, anyone who wants you to change or adjust is an evil tyrant.

2.) But evidently your life isn't perfect. This is the fault of THEM. (Never, ever, is it the slightest bit your responsibility.) THEY are a mixture of external bogeymen and within-the-society scapegoat. THEY have absolutely no redeeming features and so you don't have to consider talking or negotiating or what not - THEY just deserve to be squashed. Punishing THEM will also magically solve whatever problems your society currently has.

3.) Of course, the squashing and punishing of THEM cannot be done with those lame old laws already existing. On the contrary, these have to be gotten rid off. Any attempt to restrain the punishment and squashing of THEM is clearly treason anyway.

4.) The glorious movement you, you wonderful person, are now a part of is led by the best leader ever. If he doesn't deliver all you want from him immediately, well, he's punishing both the weak traitors and the evil brutes for you, and isn't that the best part anyway?


Meanwhile, any half way responsible take on political situation basically has to start with "it's complicated", analyze and use "maybe it's this way, but maybe there are also other factors" type of qualifications, and any policy of a democratic government is by nature of the government a compromise. Meaning you always leave some disappointment in your electorate. And in an age with an ever shorter attention span, where the majority of people are not bothering with reading or listening to longer explanations anymore and just want short and punchy reassurances, this is possibly more dangerous a fertile ground for the transition of a Republic to a totalitarian state than Germany of the early 1930s was.

Not least because Germany, not as the Kaiserreich nor as the Weimar Republic nor even as the Third Reich, was ever the most powerful state of the world, with the largest miilitary and economic might. The fact the US won't be this for much longer anymore if things continue the way they are going isn't a comfort, because then it will be China.) It did a lot of damage when ruled by evil people anyway. But it had at no point the type of power the US has right now. This is not a comforting thought, either.

Lastly: in school, we were taught that a problem the Weimar Republic had was that there weren't enough republicans with a small r in it, that the Empire had conditioned its subjects to a strictly hiearchical society, that as opposed to England Germany hadn't had a centuries long transitonary period between absolutism and parliamentary rule, let a centuries of a Republic with the resulting self-understanding the way the uS has. On the one hand, I am a bit more sceptical on tha last part now. I mean, I always knew that The West Wing wasn't reality tv, but I didn't think The Handmaid's Tale was, either. Especially with the Nixon precedence, where the Republicans did turn against their blatantly caught at wrong doing President instead of removing their spine and denying he could have possibly done something wrong, I did believe the whole checks and balance thing I had learned about in school did work. For enlightened self interest reasons if not for moral reasons, because who would want their career to depend on the whim of a despot with more self control than a toddler? But no. On the other hand, see above. I only wish we would have had so much visible protest and opposition to horrible injustices in the 1930s as I see every day happening in the US. The Weimar Republic ceased to be within three months of Hitler becoming Chancellor, basically. By autumn, the transformation into hardcore dictatorship was complete. Whereas the US is still a Republic. If you can keep it.

The other days