Don’t want to write much this morning. Oh, I could. There’s a lot that needs to be said by all of us in light of what is taking place in a number of American cities right now. We’re at a point of becoming which that I have dreaded since I was child of about nine or ten years old when I first encountered a book on the rise and fall of Hitler, becoming aware of the horrors of Naziism. The mass murders and concentration camps. Families hiding in attics or other hidden spaces or fleeing for their lives. The Kafkaesque show trials. There’s a dream I had from that time that still haunts me, not for any explicit violence but for the horror it implied.
I was already aware of this when my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Bryant, showed our class the films of the Allied Force’s liberation of the Nazi death camps as well as some of the Nazi footage from these camps. The sight of the emaciated prisoners and the piles of corpses being bulldozed or chucked into mass graves was a lot to take in. My memory of the blank horrified looks on the faces of my classmates and the sobbing of many of the girls in that class still is with me. Mrs. Bryant was a stern, strong, no-nonsense Black woman who wanted to make us aware of what can happen when ignorance and hatred run wild. For what I think might be the bravest thing any of my teachers ever did, she would most likely be fired for that today, unfortunately.
As a result, my radar for Naziism has been up since I was very young. I soon realized that it was not eradicated as when it came to a supposed end at the end of WWII in 1945 nor would not reappear in the same form. As the saying goes, history doesn.t repeat itself but it does rhyme.
No, it went underground, shunned by the world. But as time passed and the surviving witnesses to the rise and fall of the Nazis and Fascists of the 30’s and 40’s began to die off, it began to stir and become more and more active as the horrors of that era faded in our collective memory. And when it full reappeared. it was with the lessons of its history learned. It’s been 80 years now since the end of WWII and during its hibernation it has studied its earlier mistakes so that they would not be repeated.
They would also have the benefit of far greater advanced technology. They now have a greater ability to track, move, and kill people than they did in their earlier form. And for as great as the Nazi propaganda machine was in its time, it did not have the far-flung reach or infiltrative power of the modern nazis’ influence in worldwide mass media and social media.
All they needed was an opening in order to fully reemerge, a favorable situation in which they could take control. Over the past forty-five years they have worked to create this environment, slowly infiltrating and expanding to exert control of boardrooms, law enforcement, and the halls of government.
They know this is their time, perhaps their best opportunity to fulfill their dream of a 1000-year Reich.
What I have feared for well over fifty years seems to be at hand.
I take some consolation in the fact that it is still a deeply flawed movement, one that depends on the ignorance and blind obedience of its followers who it needs to in order carry out its agenda. Having enough minions of capable intelligence is a fatal vulnerability. It has a level of inherent stupidity in its lower ranks (well, there’s lot in its higher ranks as well) that makes it predictable and defeatable, despite its modern technological additions.
Like all past attempts at authoritarianism, it fails to fully consider the intelligence, imagination, and creativity of those who will stand against it. From what I can see, that is a lesson they still have not learned.
Damn it. I didn’t want to write this this morning. It’s not what I want to do or even think about right now. I just felt that I needed to air it if only for myself. A lot of people have seen this coming for decades and have been called crazy and deluded or have been totally ignored. Even though I am not as vocal as I might be, I have been both ignored and have received plenty of emails over the years calling me crazy, deluded, and even hateful because my words offended their brand of hatred.
Maybe they were right, but given what we are now seeing, I don’t think so.
I don’t know where this is going. They have fully reemerged and they are not going back into the ratholes where they have been festering for the past 80 years without a struggle.
They see this as their moment.
We must make it ours.
Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music from of all people Chumbawamba. Best known for their infectious Tubthumping in the 1990’s, they have a long history of controversy and antifascist, social justice advocacy. This song, The Day the Nazi Died, was written in 1990, just a few years after Rudolf Hess, the last of the Nazi leadership convicted at the Nuremberg Trials, committed suicide at Spandau Prison in 1987. He had been the sole prisoner at the infamous prison for over 20 years, which was torn down soon after his death. This song points out that though the last vestiges of the Nazis from WWII were gone, the underlying beliefs were still in place and, in fact, growing. This song pointed out how those who held these beliefs were moving up in the corporate world and that of government, just waiting for their moment.
It seems pretty prescient today, 35 years later.
Redtree Times 