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Now that dehumanization of the first "internal enemies" (Muslim, black, Hispanic & LGBT Americans) is accepted by its base, GOP fascism comes for Jewish people.
Trump's "Your Prime Minister" speech signals they've shifted into the beginning of 2nd phase. https://twitter.com/chargrille/status/1006102537437474816
Trump's "Your Prime Minister" speech signals they've shifted into the beginning of 2nd phase. https://twitter.com/chargrille/status/1006102537437474816
Read "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945" by Milton Mayer & tell me you don't recognize yourself, your friends, your country.
"What no one seemed to notice...was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people."
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"What no one seemed to notice...was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people."
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people..."
"...could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security...each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance."
"And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."
It is well underway.
This woman would have been one of Hitler's #WillingExecutioners.
https://twitter.com/politvidchannel/status/1107733471558983680
It is well underway.
This woman would have been one of Hitler's #WillingExecutioners.
https://twitter.com/politvidchannel/status/1107733471558983680
"You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
"The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway."
"The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway."
"I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men...Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’..."
"...and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?"
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop."
"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle...must some day lead to,
..one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."
"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? ... Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ "
"But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might."
"Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better."
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next."
You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?Well, you are not in the habit of doing it
"And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy."
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy."
"One hears no protest, and certainly sees none...In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, & you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end..your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations...organizations themselves wither."
"Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what?"
"It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes."
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes."
"If the last & worst act of the...regime had come immediately after the first & smallest...millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33.
"of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the 100s of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B...if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C?
"And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy..."
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy..."
"some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, & you see that everything...has changed...completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all.
"The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.
"Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God."
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part."
"On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined."
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing)."
"You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood." "You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."
"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles...Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero..."
"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him..."
"the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death."
"But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."
"Once the war began...resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’"
"Goebbels was very clever...continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty." https://twitter.com/Harlan/status/1111744475582418946
For almost a decade I studied the rise of fascism in interwar Europe, specifically in France & Germany.
I am telling you that it IS happening here.
I am telling you that it IS happening here.
We passed Genocide Stage 4 (Dehumanization) a year ago. Let our govt kidnap Hispanic children from their parents, & abuse them.
Hours or days after Trump called immigrants animals from WH, a CBP agent called 7 yo child & his dad "stupid f***ing animals." https://twitter.com/IAmAmnaNawaz/status/1113895190333480961
Hours or days after Trump called immigrants animals from WH, a CBP agent called 7 yo child & his dad "stupid f***ing animals." https://twitter.com/IAmAmnaNawaz/status/1113895190333480961
