So many people seem deeply invested in the idea that any form of street fighting or "paramilitarism" puts the US on the "path to Weimar," which is neither an accurate description of how these things have operated in the US or in Weimar Germany.

There were roughly 3 periods of violence in Weimar Germany, the first was actual low-grade civil war, with insurgents, counterinsurgents, attempted revolutons and putsches. Second two had a "contained" and then escalated pattern of street violence by party paramilitaries.

By any conceivable metric of violence the first phase of Weimar was the worst, and it was also the height of armed left wing mobilization, KPD leadership would never fully commit to prioritizing the street fight over less violent forms of political mobilization after that.

The development of paramilitary appendages to primarily nonviolent street mobilization was an outgrowth of the political conditions set by that initial crisis of legitimacy. This activity did not *cause* the right's disdain for the Republic or the left's mistrust of the center.

Anyway, if people think highly disorganized vigilantism, or loosely organized street fighting groups which is still far from the levels of violence or organization in the '50s-60s, '10s-20s, etc, are "Weimar," then the US has been much further down that road many times before.

Many European countries had some kind of quasi-paramilitary mode of street politics in the interwar period, most of them did not go "Weimar" either.

If you wanna think about factors that *create* Weimar-like crisis - probaby better to think about RW refusal to accept legitimacy of center-left led democratization during a period of humiliation, right/center panic about ability to counter disaffected left mass mobilization etc

Anyway another reason to be suspicious of "Weimar" analogies is they're very often used to justify the kinds of policies to repress extremism on "both sides" that center left & right tried and usually horribly mismanaged, which basically made fascism of some type the only option

Nobody's ever like "because of the dangers of Weimar like politics, we should avoid brutally repressing protesters like at Blutmai, or the bad strategies for managing the legislative process of Hindenburg/Brüning/etc"