It's been a running thing between my brother and I for the last two years that, whenever Trump does something, to say "If you ever wondered how the Nazi's sold their ideas, well, now you know." From his wholesale demonization of an entire minority group from literally day one of his campaign, to his talk about how the press is the enemy of the people, to his promising to use official state power to go after the supposed enemies of "righteous" white conservatives, all of it has followed a very predictable pattern. He jumped the gun a little on concentration camps, but we all make mistakes when we're eager to get things done. Right now, we're in the period were the Administration is actively trying to expel immigrants from as many aspects of public life as they can- like purging the military of immigrant service members or having ICE find whatever pretext it can to strip naturalized citizens of their green cards so they can then be deported to countries they haven't lived in for decades.
For anyone still asking, "How could this happen here?" well, hate to break it to you, but the lines dividing America from the Reich were always much thinner than we've been lead to believe. For one thing, the U.S. was a direct model that the Reich copied on their way to gassing millions of people. The Jim Crow segregation laws were what the Nazi's used as a baseline for the Nuremberg Laws stripping Jews of their property, businesses, homes, establishing curfews and the ghettos they were then forcibly moved into. The eugenics movement that started in America provided the language of what a "pure" society looked like once it had been purged of all undesirables. And Goebbels learned most of the propaganda techniques he would use from American advertising. Considering how fervently America clung (then and now) to the idea that the only "real" citizens are the white ones, it's not too surprising that the Nazi's would find a lot to appreciate in a culture like that.
We've kept other aspects of fascism alive and well in our culture, too. The unquestioning, compulsory patriotism and fetishistic worship our military are both easily exploitable for anyone with Fuhrer ambitions. After all, how weird would it really be to for kids to say a pledge of allegiance to the flag and a picture of the Beloved Leader every morning? How strange is really to "force" public displays of national pride and servitude when the National Anthem plays before literally every single sporting event, and at almost every public gathering in general? Add to that the Republican party has spent the last 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act slowly but surely turning itself into a haven of white nationalism with its own media ecosystem that actively gaslights its consumers into believing that the "Mainstream Media" is merely a front for leftists to undermine their culture by letting the blacks, women, Mexicans, gays, and the (((globalists))) but they were safe now, safe to hear how the Feminazis, and the PC Police where all working to implement the gay agenda of a Islamic Communist New World Order. All in all, we were a country that kept itself primed to accept a fascist paradigm, all we needed was the right circumstances.
And then the 2008 crash happened. The pillaging of the middle class to feed the rich that started under Reagan and refined under the Clintons finally came due as all the credit funding the gambling racket that had become the housing market collapsed under its own weight. Suddenly there were millions of people jobless, homeless, and coming to the quick realization that the government would only give them half-hearted and poorly executed mortgage relief plans while it was busy dumping trillions into rescuing the banks that broke the world in the first place. With the economy so terrible for so long, I figured it was only a question of "When" Republicans would cough up something like Trump, not "If."
So, while America becoming the fascist hell-hole it secretly wanted to be is depressing but not all that surprising to me, what I underestimated was how strong the "civility" response would be. I mean, I've read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail a lot, had shaken my head at the false empathy King lays out when he talks about the White Moderate and how their council to the Civil Rights movement was to suffer their indignities until they, the White Moderates, deemed the appropriate time, place, and methods for black people to be treated as actual people. It made sense on an intellectual level that society would be made up of people who were complacent with the way the world was set up and didn't want to rock the boat because, hey, they got the perks of being automatically higher in social hierarchies and if they had to actually earn that spot, they might not be able to. Even then, seeing these people up close and personal is a hell of thing to behold.
What makes them so dangerous is that these are the people that autocratic and repressive systems depend on the most to sustain themselves, but they get to pass themselves off, both in their minds eye and to the public at large, as the voices of reason, people who are just trying to find a way for all the disparate pieces of society to come together and comprise on their differences. This is fine when you're trying to figure out what movie to go see or what kind of food you want for dinner, but when you have a group on one side saying, "we think immigrants are an infection that needs to be eradicated to keep our country pure" and the other is saying "This is literally how shipping people to gas chambers starts," it's somewhat... lacking.
Their plays at compassion are nothing more than cowardice, no exceptions. If you think that a woman who speaks for the administration who is taking people's children away by saying they're just going to give the child a bath, or that their children will be in a camp nearby where they'll be able to visit, then whisk those children away never to return- again, exactly the same thing the Nazi's did- if you honestly believe that the woman who defends and justifies the administration that does this suffers the same indignity because a restaurant wouldn't serve her, then your moral compass is downright pathetic. The separation policy- and the straight indefinite detention plan that replaced it- are monstrous things that makes anyone who supports them, carries them out, or defends them monstrous in turn if they weren't already. Hemming and hawing your way out of condemning those actions and those who champion them isn't a mark of highly developed sense of empathy, it's just complicity.
Part of this stems from how we're taught about the evils of the past, or, more specifically, the kind of people who perpetrate them. We’re taught that the Nazi’s or the racists in power during the Civil Rights Era were always cut from obviously evil cloth who used their power to stomp down all who would oppose them until finally, heroic virtue had its rightful triumph. The image of screaming crowds surrounding black children while they walk into school or the cheering crowds at Hitler’s speeches have all been used to make us think that the only people who openly support these things are the virulent, frothing hordes that we can then safely Other.
What gets left out is all the seemingly perfectly polite people who treated the denigration or extermination of entire sections of society as natural as the sunrise. They are otherwise perfectly sociable, naturally bigoted without any of the obvious stink that comes with say, marching around with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Again, these are the people oppressive regimes live and die by because, when push comes to shove, they’ll be the ones fighting to block any measure of progress or reform by tut-tutting protests as being too disruptive and how they’d be much more effective if people conducted their marches in such a way that they’d be easily ignored. Deep down, these people understand they benefit greatly from “the way things are” and that if they change, they run the risk of losing those benefits which they'd rather not do, thank you.
We've kept other aspects of fascism alive and well in our culture, too. The unquestioning, compulsory patriotism and fetishistic worship our military are both easily exploitable for anyone with Fuhrer ambitions. After all, how weird would it really be to for kids to say a pledge of allegiance to the flag and a picture of the Beloved Leader every morning? How strange is really to "force" public displays of national pride and servitude when the National Anthem plays before literally every single sporting event, and at almost every public gathering in general? Add to that the Republican party has spent the last 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act slowly but surely turning itself into a haven of white nationalism with its own media ecosystem that actively gaslights its consumers into believing that the "Mainstream Media" is merely a front for leftists to undermine their culture by letting the blacks, women, Mexicans, gays, and the (((globalists))) but they were safe now, safe to hear how the Feminazis, and the PC Police where all working to implement the gay agenda of a Islamic Communist New World Order. All in all, we were a country that kept itself primed to accept a fascist paradigm, all we needed was the right circumstances.
And then the 2008 crash happened. The pillaging of the middle class to feed the rich that started under Reagan and refined under the Clintons finally came due as all the credit funding the gambling racket that had become the housing market collapsed under its own weight. Suddenly there were millions of people jobless, homeless, and coming to the quick realization that the government would only give them half-hearted and poorly executed mortgage relief plans while it was busy dumping trillions into rescuing the banks that broke the world in the first place. With the economy so terrible for so long, I figured it was only a question of "When" Republicans would cough up something like Trump, not "If."
So, while America becoming the fascist hell-hole it secretly wanted to be is depressing but not all that surprising to me, what I underestimated was how strong the "civility" response would be. I mean, I've read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail a lot, had shaken my head at the false empathy King lays out when he talks about the White Moderate and how their council to the Civil Rights movement was to suffer their indignities until they, the White Moderates, deemed the appropriate time, place, and methods for black people to be treated as actual people. It made sense on an intellectual level that society would be made up of people who were complacent with the way the world was set up and didn't want to rock the boat because, hey, they got the perks of being automatically higher in social hierarchies and if they had to actually earn that spot, they might not be able to. Even then, seeing these people up close and personal is a hell of thing to behold.
What makes them so dangerous is that these are the people that autocratic and repressive systems depend on the most to sustain themselves, but they get to pass themselves off, both in their minds eye and to the public at large, as the voices of reason, people who are just trying to find a way for all the disparate pieces of society to come together and comprise on their differences. This is fine when you're trying to figure out what movie to go see or what kind of food you want for dinner, but when you have a group on one side saying, "we think immigrants are an infection that needs to be eradicated to keep our country pure" and the other is saying "This is literally how shipping people to gas chambers starts," it's somewhat... lacking.
Their plays at compassion are nothing more than cowardice, no exceptions. If you think that a woman who speaks for the administration who is taking people's children away by saying they're just going to give the child a bath, or that their children will be in a camp nearby where they'll be able to visit, then whisk those children away never to return- again, exactly the same thing the Nazi's did- if you honestly believe that the woman who defends and justifies the administration that does this suffers the same indignity because a restaurant wouldn't serve her, then your moral compass is downright pathetic. The separation policy- and the straight indefinite detention plan that replaced it- are monstrous things that makes anyone who supports them, carries them out, or defends them monstrous in turn if they weren't already. Hemming and hawing your way out of condemning those actions and those who champion them isn't a mark of highly developed sense of empathy, it's just complicity.
Part of this stems from how we're taught about the evils of the past, or, more specifically, the kind of people who perpetrate them. We’re taught that the Nazi’s or the racists in power during the Civil Rights Era were always cut from obviously evil cloth who used their power to stomp down all who would oppose them until finally, heroic virtue had its rightful triumph. The image of screaming crowds surrounding black children while they walk into school or the cheering crowds at Hitler’s speeches have all been used to make us think that the only people who openly support these things are the virulent, frothing hordes that we can then safely Other.
What gets left out is all the seemingly perfectly polite people who treated the denigration or extermination of entire sections of society as natural as the sunrise. They are otherwise perfectly sociable, naturally bigoted without any of the obvious stink that comes with say, marching around with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Again, these are the people oppressive regimes live and die by because, when push comes to shove, they’ll be the ones fighting to block any measure of progress or reform by tut-tutting protests as being too disruptive and how they’d be much more effective if people conducted their marches in such a way that they’d be easily ignored. Deep down, these people understand they benefit greatly from “the way things are” and that if they change, they run the risk of losing those benefits which they'd rather not do, thank you.
The other part of this comes from the White Moderates friends, the ones who go to the same clubs and dinner parties but who feel a stronger urge that Something Should Be Done when they watch the news. These are usually the people bemoaning the lack of civility because they don’t like seeing their social circle lumped in with the open bigotry of people in Make America Great Again hats. These are the people who have “Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice, everywhere” on at least one placard in their home or office and always told themselves that, if they ever lived through a time of moral crisis, they would no doubt be on the side of justice and freedom etc. etc. Now that they find themselves in the that position, they’ve found out that calling out the villainous Other means calling out their mimosa brunch clubs, suddenly standing up for the equality of all mankind against bigotry gets slightly awkward or, horror of horrors, possibly even rude.
So instead of living through that dreadful reality, they start chanting out America is and always has been a land of great compromise; we should all learn to see things from each other’s point of view to find the hallowed middle ground. They keep pushing this idea so that they never have to confront how they’re much more comfortable defending the despotic people than they ever wanted to believe. They think there’s some way to go back to the time where the subtle bigotries and quiet authoritarianism of their social circles could be easily ignored.
Except that’s not going to happen. ICE has already separated an American family by “accident” in their rush to be the new Gestapo, and the time will come where that isn’t a mistake anymore. Don’t brush off the idea that it would never happen because it already has. We’ve already been the land where one ethnic group monolithically ruled over everyone else through direct or state sanctioned violence and executions. Returning us to a time where the state would actively punish or suppress anyone who threatened the white hegemony was the explicit platform of candidate Trump which he’s spent the last year-and-a-half carrying that promise through. You can’t shut the door on that now that the people who wanted to live in that world again know it’s perfectly acceptable to demand it loudly and publicly with the hope that they’ll back off once they rediscover their alleged decency.
Yes, I know the policy was shut down by the courts, as was part of Trump's new plan to hold families together indefinitely. but these will be talked about as obstacles to be overcome by finding judges and Congressmen who will alter the laws so that they can punish these criminals as they deserve. When that moment comes, it'll come to cheers, it'll be made into a galvanizing force for the Republican base, which they will respond to. There isn't going to be a moment where they go "Wait, are we the baddies?" Anyone still riding the Trump train is in it for the long haul, wherever it takes them.
I’m sure someone somewhere will say that I should still give all these people the benefit of the doubt, but, what doubts am I or anyone supposed to have this point? Trump has been doing all his Trump things for three years; everyone by now has had a chance to figure out where they stand. If literal concentration camps aren’t enough of a warning bell that maybe we’re headed in a bad direction and that we shouldn’t be willing to extend so many good graces to the people who support that, I don’t know what will be. There aren't any complicated reasons or motives left for us to discover, there's just the question of what are we going to do.
My bet is that we'll try to sweep all this under the rug of hyper-partisan polarization so we can pretend there's nothing to worry about, or anything to do, because it's just the usual Democrats and Republicans, always calling each other names. We'll retreat into complaining about how the internet has made everyone so much more disconnected, more willing to be mean to one another rather than connect to find a compromise like we did in mythic days of yore. And then, when someone worse than Trump gets the nomination and possibly the presidency, we'll start to wonder all over again how our strategy of doing absolutely nothing to fix our problems could have gone so wrong.
I’m sure someone somewhere will say that I should still give all these people the benefit of the doubt, but, what doubts am I or anyone supposed to have this point? Trump has been doing all his Trump things for three years; everyone by now has had a chance to figure out where they stand. If literal concentration camps aren’t enough of a warning bell that maybe we’re headed in a bad direction and that we shouldn’t be willing to extend so many good graces to the people who support that, I don’t know what will be. There aren't any complicated reasons or motives left for us to discover, there's just the question of what are we going to do.
My bet is that we'll try to sweep all this under the rug of hyper-partisan polarization so we can pretend there's nothing to worry about, or anything to do, because it's just the usual Democrats and Republicans, always calling each other names. We'll retreat into complaining about how the internet has made everyone so much more disconnected, more willing to be mean to one another rather than connect to find a compromise like we did in mythic days of yore. And then, when someone worse than Trump gets the nomination and possibly the presidency, we'll start to wonder all over again how our strategy of doing absolutely nothing to fix our problems could have gone so wrong.
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