It has become a universal “truism’, a bedrock principle of modern political discourse that we must not make any comparisons whatsoever to the Nazis. “Nothing is like the Holocaust” goes the universal demand, so don’t even think of drawing any parallels between whatever is going on now and Nazi Germany. Anyone who dares to do so has their moral compass ridiculed and their opinion “cancelled”, and any calls for unity automatically disregarded. One doesn’t have to be Jewish to find any whiff of such comparison offensive.
Fair enough, for the sake of intellectual and historical honesty and perspective, and, more importantly, on what should be universally and obvious moral grounds, no one should, or even really could, minimize or trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust.
That injunction should not prevent us, however, from understanding what can and could happen in our modern world with reference to what happened back then. If we cannot actually learn from the past, then we really may be doomed to repeat it. And we cannot learn from it if we are not allowed to openly look at it. So, while it is in some measure true that “nothing is like the Holocaust”, I submit that it is not at all true that nothing is like the way Nazism subverted and destroyed the German democracy. We ignore to our peril the opportunity to apply what we could have learned and should have learned to what could happen right here and right now.
To learn from the comparison we should not focus our attention on what happened in hidden camps in German occupied Poland, between late 1941 and mid 1945. We should look instead at what was happening in broad daylight in Germany in 1923, twenty years earlier. That is when Hitler was bringing into being and force his own peculiarly totalitarian form of government by marshaling the violent force of his followers. That was the time of his initially failed coup, his Munich Beer Hall Putsch and the development of his SA ‘Storm Troops’ to disrupt and subvert the normal elective processes.
Hitler told his followers that in fact they were the real victims. He made them believe that it was both their right and their duty to use whatever means necessary to take back what was rightfully theirs, he said, and which had been stolen from them.
Germany was being treated very unfairly, he maintained. I think some scholars might wonder if this argument has some merit. Germany, some argue was forced to bear an inordinate burden for what was in many ways the shared responsibility of many nations for entering that war.
What is less true, though, but more germane to our present concern, is the connected and then often cited assertion, by pro-Nazis, that Germany had not legitimately lost the First World War. Not on the battlefield. German territory was never invaded, after all. Many Germans believed that Germany had been “sold out”. They had been cheated, so his argument went. Germany’s economy, the Nazis said, had been shattered by traitors within, and by international banks without. (Guess who those might have been?).
Hitler and to this day some proto-nazis have made the argument, which many heard and supported with glee, that a fraudulently defeated Germany had been betrayed by certain specific traitorous ‘others’, who had conspired with a completely hostile and dishonorable circle of enemy states to rob Germany of its rightful place.
Modern scholars would, one hopes, find this assertion untrue, the claim that Germany had been cheated out of its rightful First World War victory by the communists, globalists and Jews who had sold it out from within. We might call such an inflammatory assertion a “Big Lie”. But tens of millions came to believe it, and still do. And, so, the argument would go, if a normal peaceful democratic process was not properly honoring their ’Truth”, if they had “no one to go to” as one of our present day ‘protestors’/insurrectionists argued on tape, why should they not have the right to take to the streets? To do whatever was necessary. To enforce their just rights. With force if necessary. By fighting like hell. Trial by combat. And to silence the voices of those who would argue.
This is exactly the playbook Hitler used, to argue his followers had been wronged, that they had the right to any recourse, then silencing dissent first by force in the streets, then in the Reichstag, finally using the ballot box to grant him the emergency powers he needed to end democracy.
Is it possible to see parallels? Are we permitted to look at the possibility that there might be parallels? And that we could learn from them?
Start with the assertion that their just victory had been stolen. Let’s see if we can find any parallels between what is happening now, and Joseph Goebbels technique of the Big Lie. Trumpists have continued to assert that Biden had not legitimately been elected president.
Well, the United States of America has a process by which we choose our leaders.
Leaders are not monarchical, or hereditary. They are not chosen, in Giuliani’s words, in “trial by combat”. They do not rule by divine right. Leaders are elected by the people.
The United States of America has developed, systematically and universally, over its near two hundred and fifty year history a series of processes, procedures, norms and standards by which we run our elections. The details of those procedures differ from state to state, as ‘states rights’ is in our DNA, but each state has clearly delineated its own procedures. Each state empowers, as it has done for our entire nation’s history, election officials, supervisors and government entities to conduct and ensure the electoral integrity – Secretaries of State, Governors. It differs by state.
Once the votes have been counted, as done in each state and by law, history, and tradition, they are certified officially by the state. Elections are not determined by the networks calls, but the AP has accurately reported the results of the votes every election since 1848. Still, they are not official until certified. But once certified, it is the role of the Congress simply to report the counts, and codify those counts.
The process is, and has been, for this near quarter millennium of our history, considered sacred to our nation.
Now, it is always possible that one candidate or the other may feel that the rules, even supervised, guarded, and processed by the best and most noble of state officials, did not work in a particular case and that the results were false. Such an opinion is their right. If they feel ’cheated’, they have a recourse. This is a recourse granted to every citizen. They can sue in our nation’s 250 year experienced court system.
Even if suits have been adjudicated, as they were in this case, by dozens of courts, more than sixty at last reported count, if the party claiming that they have been aggrieved still feels so, they can appeal the courts decision. And if they disagree with the appeals court’s decision, they can appeal that decision to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court then, as it has for hundreds of years, will choose to hear, or choose not to hear, or rule on the matter. The Supreme Court’s decision is the final check, balance, and certification. And always has been.
Once the vote has been counted, reported, recounted, certified by the supervisors, and then in the state houses, and any challenges adjudicated, reached the Supreme Court and the matter concluded, then the results are final.
This is the way the United States of America chooses its leaders.
Joseph R Biden Jr is the elected president of the United States, not because the dems say so, or the left says so, or the ‘libtards’ say so. Joseph R Biden Jr is the elected President because the United States of America says so. In exactly same way as the United States has ALWAYS said who its president was.
To say otherwise, at this point, is a BIG LIE. By definition, by the way the USA chooses its leaders, Biden is the President- Elect.
You may not like it. But if you try to disrupt the accepted electoral process by which the United States of America certifies its elections, then you are trying to disrupt the United States.
So is there a real difference between brown shirts trying unsuccessfully to topple the elected German government in 1923 Munich and right wing extremists beating defenders, even the police with sticks and bats and fire extinguishers to unsuccessfully topple the duly elected American government?
History showed us that the Nazis used their temporarily failed coup to regroup, and double down on their message and their techniques, that they ultimately prevailed at the ballot box, used their combination of raw force and persuasion and lead the world into nightmare.
We do not have to do that. We can turn back from this abyss.
To turn away from this ugly abyss would mean to reaffirm, not by party, but together in unity as a nation, that when push comes to shove, as it has done a week ago today at the Capitol, we will reject the actions which can, in my opinion, rightfully be compared to Nazism, and come home to America.
It is time for any one who even wants to pretend to love this country and what it stands for to stand up, affirm that the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS CHOSEN ITS PRESIDENT, to utterly reject and condemn the use of violence, force and lies to deny it, and to pledge, if not to actively support the new President, then at least to accept and affirm the legitimacy of the new administration. To work, either for or against its agenda, in the accepted political means of doing so. In the way in which we have always done.
Next, to affirm the sanctity of our systems, our processes. To strive to continue to improve them, yes, but not to denigrate them as worthy of attack. The elections are not fraud. The other party are not the enemy, news is not fake, the press is not the “enemy of the people” and your country has not been stolen because you voted for the person who did not win this time.
I hated that Donald Trump had been elected president. I yearned to elect another president at this very next election, and did what I could to comment on, criticize and condemn the actions of his which I thought were antithetical to our nation’s values.
Trumps first impeachment (doesn’t that sound strange, Trumps ‘first’ impeachment?) was not because he had been elected president. It was because as president he was alleged to have committed crimes and misdemeanors. I say ‘alleged’ because he was acquitted. So he remained, according to our nations laws, norms, procedures and practices, president.
I was not happy that he was still president.
But I never denied that he was, in fact, President.
And I never advocated or encouraged or hinted for the use of force to stop him.
Because I would prefer, if I can avoid it, not to be compared to the Nazis.