Every parallel to the rise of fascism in Germany is here in America. I speak from someone who, in his youth could not understand how the rise of fascism could have happened so he took a college history course on Germany that covered just the interwar years. Even guided by an excellent professor, it still was hard to understand how people were so easily duped. If I still had my course notes, I am sure that every box was checked even before TFG took office. Now we are seeing v2.0, more extreme than the original. (And, as happened in Germany TFG believed himself a victim just as Hitler saw himself a victim to the failed Beer Hall Putsch, and he also had a 2.0). The rethuglican party is dead. It now is the AFP, the American Fascist Party. If those in the real news world still want to have a job in 2025, they best be calling them out every day.
Dear Mark In Co., Thank you for sharing your own path to better understanding our shared human nature. Nothing in Nazi culture was, is or will be "New under the sun." Human nature possesses terrifying range. Fortunately each of us and our collectives can more often than not learn to make corrections.
While being a child of Holocaust survivors with an aunt and maternal grandfather who did not make it out of the camps, I got a good background education in school and indirectly from other friends of family on those aspects of history, even if my own parent survivors and maternal grandmother were not very forthcoming with the stories of when their childhoods ended prematurely in their storybook mountain villages of Carpathian life on my mother's side and Tatra Mountains more rugged life on my Slovak survivor Dad's side of early 20th Century life.
However, 2 books that I got to rather late in my education gave me insights into the connections between American culture that would be me and my sister's fate, blessed to grow up here, yet in a land and majority culture that contributed so much to Nazi Programs via the 19th and early 20th Century of international science becoming fascinated with what we now know to be the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Thankfully, German scholar Stefan Kuhl, back in 2002 published in English on Oxford Press his slim volume with a treasure trove of primary source documented footnotes The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism.
Even more thankfully, while it is carefully documented and notated in an addendum at the back, the narrative flows like the most interesting chat you ever had with a very curious chap at a pub. The revelations come fast and furious each time I re-read it to better grasp why our American culture seems to be hell-bent, and Israel is Aazazel-bent on repeating such globally destructive human patterns that have been triumphed over in our past. While institutional corruption and a lack of appreciation (in real time) for good muck-raking journalism are recurring themes in this tragic his\herstory, the elements that push human nature to pursue its worst impulses become more grasp-able in ways I hope we can apply before End Times.....
The other text is called "Hitler’s American Model
The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law"
The introduction is also fluidly written and requires no specialized language skills to grasp. Such a shame there is no room for Public Intellectuals in our broadcast media lives here in Pay2Play United States of Amnesia. Don't let these texts remain silo'd in academia. We all need to be challenging ourselves and our policy-makers and representative legislators to what humanity of recent generations has learned at such a terribly high cost.
Thank you Deano for being the Progressive warrior you were born to be!
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
And here we are! Magamemnon has singlehandedly created his own inexplicable version of what I like to call "Twistory." The recipe is simple; one part BS and an unlimited supply of yellow journalism to drown it all in. The Progressive voices are squelched into white noise, while the MSM bullhorn sounds off like a Civil Defense siren; except the clarion call is blaring for democracy to fall.
The corporate MSM oligarchs are to blame for it all. Truth is immutable, only if one is cognitively resonant enough to perceive its value beyond being used as a political tool for the obfuscation of all fact based knowledge!
Vote BLUE until you're Red, White and Blue in the face or suffer the CONsequence!
*Electoral College shenanigans not included. Remember, two of the most hideous "POTI," ever, Bush and ⸸Rump stole their way into our House, along with three other "POTI" perps! See below:
What is very clear to me is that we must not allow the position of President to be protected from incitement of sedition, allowing them to pardon high level criminals at their whim and and other barriers that protects the king, I mean, the President from being held accountable. I realize that there may be times when they need to be protected but waving a magic wand should not be an option.
The fact that trump is allowed to endanger groups of people is a stunning failure of our system. I’m more concerned with the fact that NOTHING is done to trump despite terroristic threats and the attempted deadly coup he incited.
Why are we ALLOWING books to be banned without masses taking to the streets! Why are we letting a woman chance arrest for trying to get an abortion due to an unviable pregnancy?
THE SINGLE biggest danger has been right wing ownership-monopoly of the airwaves. The numerous lies and threats allowed to breed there has brought us to this.
The US perfected doing the same thing in Central, South America and Iran among others. There is so much the public does not get told. We no longer have a free press. The First Amendment is fully ignored by the (follow-the-constitution-in Founder’s original-form-group) A silly concept when our founding members are the ones who amended their Constitution.
The RepubliCons have given us a country where middle class has been disappearing. Everyone is too busy with the stress of living life to have the luxury of time & effort for protest!
The people of this country must see justice - the imprisonment of trump for life, or the message is that WE do not matter.
Thanks Dean...some really great writing and comments! Happy to have found a place with really smart people writing so eloquently and I’m learning so much...thank you all!
Not just a struggle for democracy but also survival globally, esp with the planet-killing ideologies of those on the right. Steven Pinker’s a smart guy but seems to minimize the fact that we’re now at or very near a steep inflection point, a hinge of history, and it’s not just us but global. It’s like the Krell from Forbidden Planet who advanced enough technologically to let their basest instincts destroy them with ease. Seems like an apt comparison and you can see the Monster from the Id-type phenomenon rising up all over the world, as though it had always been there but submerged and wanting so desperately to break through. And now it has, so the battle lines must become more clearly drawn and it’s past the time to pick a side to be on, and continue to work as though our very lives depended on it...all of them.
I’ve been unsurprised by all of the MAGA trolls and Trump’s flying monkeys spreading all their “whataboutisms” regarding POTUS Biden. It staggers the mind that these once innocent minds have been put through a wash that’s left their minds empty of reason and bereft of critical thinking skills and rationality. I forgot to mention the sadness they lack in having no comprehension that their news sources and beliefs are dictated to them and that they are lazy “f*cks” and think being educated is stupid. It’s a collective of idiots who then shun the educated so they can feel superior.
Most Americans know nothing about Europe between the wars and what led to Hitlers rise and fall and the deaths of millions including Americans. The disturbing arrogance of the ignorant will forever deeply sadden me.
That arrogance, is the fuel bottled up in can of fascism that is being sprayed in the eyes of the ignorant and the comatose (anti-woke). Donald Trump and MAGA are the match that will turn that spray into a dragon that will destroy this country.
Danger Will Robinson! Our media is normalizing him with an almost avuncular pandering to his base.
Lastly, it’s sad that we Americans have such abundance… have you walked into a Target or Walmart and seen ALL the selection? So much film, cars, television, cosmetics, gadgets, food, sports merch to buy, guns to buy, and yet so many-shrug off the abundance and say the country is being destroyed. Not because it is but because of power. Why have a democracy when Black & Brown people have a say?
Thanks MAD...just one more thing; how many days will pass before it’s just ‘normal’ for Drumpf to be ‘riffing’ on Adolf, so normal that the media stops being bothered by it? Stops even reporting on it? I’m gonna make a loose bet that by New Years Day, it won’t even be mentioned. He will have moved on from ‘camps’ to ‘extermination sites’ and there will be 70 million Americans in red hats nodding their heads and screaming madly in favor of it - many of whom don’t realize that at some point, they will be heading through the gates as the latest ‘out group’ when MAGA starts running low on fuel for their fire ....
I do grow a bit weary of comparing Trump to Hitler. Trump has significant cognitive and emoti9onal issues. While Hitler was similar, he at least had the infamous Treaty of Versailles as an early justification. Even Maynard Keynes predicted that foul times would cme as a result of these terms. In the U.S>, the main problem, besides bigotry, stpidity, and hate, the 3 wealthiest own more than all of the rest combined. (Exact figures are not available).) Back then, we had Japanese in camps - today Hispanics?
I think it has become clear that what Trump is doing with the fascist rhetoric is grooming his followers--and the rest of us too--to surrender to the brutality of his next Putsch.
From the outside looking in the USA appears to be sleep walking into becoming a a giant boil on the arse of humanity and unfortunately I don’t think there’s any way back.I traveled there the last time 30 years ago and I can’t remember it being so depressingly depraved.Maybe I just never noticed,as everyone I met was friendly and seemed normal but nowadays I wouldn’t go there in chains.I don’t really care what they do to each other but unfortunately the rest of us have to keep an eye on the latest lunacy being spouted by some old ,fat,rancid,orange POS as we are all in a sense trapped in the same boat 🤯
Every parallel to the rise of fascism in Germany is here in America. I speak from someone who, in his youth could not understand how the rise of fascism could have happened so he took a college history course on Germany that covered just the interwar years. Even guided by an excellent professor, it still was hard to understand how people were so easily duped. If I still had my course notes, I am sure that every box was checked even before TFG took office. Now we are seeing v2.0, more extreme than the original. (And, as happened in Germany TFG believed himself a victim just as Hitler saw himself a victim to the failed Beer Hall Putsch, and he also had a 2.0). The rethuglican party is dead. It now is the AFP, the American Fascist Party. If those in the real news world still want to have a job in 2025, they best be calling them out every day.
Great points Mark!
Dear Mark In Co., Thank you for sharing your own path to better understanding our shared human nature. Nothing in Nazi culture was, is or will be "New under the sun." Human nature possesses terrifying range. Fortunately each of us and our collectives can more often than not learn to make corrections.
While being a child of Holocaust survivors with an aunt and maternal grandfather who did not make it out of the camps, I got a good background education in school and indirectly from other friends of family on those aspects of history, even if my own parent survivors and maternal grandmother were not very forthcoming with the stories of when their childhoods ended prematurely in their storybook mountain villages of Carpathian life on my mother's side and Tatra Mountains more rugged life on my Slovak survivor Dad's side of early 20th Century life.
However, 2 books that I got to rather late in my education gave me insights into the connections between American culture that would be me and my sister's fate, blessed to grow up here, yet in a land and majority culture that contributed so much to Nazi Programs via the 19th and early 20th Century of international science becoming fascinated with what we now know to be the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Thankfully, German scholar Stefan Kuhl, back in 2002 published in English on Oxford Press his slim volume with a treasure trove of primary source documented footnotes The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism.
Even more thankfully, while it is carefully documented and notated in an addendum at the back, the narrative flows like the most interesting chat you ever had with a very curious chap at a pub. The revelations come fast and furious each time I re-read it to better grasp why our American culture seems to be hell-bent, and Israel is Aazazel-bent on repeating such globally destructive human patterns that have been triumphed over in our past. While institutional corruption and a lack of appreciation (in real time) for good muck-raking journalism are recurring themes in this tragic his\herstory, the elements that push human nature to pursue its worst impulses become more grasp-able in ways I hope we can apply before End Times.....
The other text is called "Hitler’s American Model
The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law"
by James Q. Whitman
Princeton University Press
https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/Hitler%27s%20American%20Model%20for%20NYU.pdf
The introduction is also fluidly written and requires no specialized language skills to grasp. Such a shame there is no room for Public Intellectuals in our broadcast media lives here in Pay2Play United States of Amnesia. Don't let these texts remain silo'd in academia. We all need to be challenging ourselves and our policy-makers and representative legislators to what humanity of recent generations has learned at such a terribly high cost.
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere
I tip my hat to you.
Thank you Deano for being the Progressive warrior you were born to be!
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
And here we are! Magamemnon has singlehandedly created his own inexplicable version of what I like to call "Twistory." The recipe is simple; one part BS and an unlimited supply of yellow journalism to drown it all in. The Progressive voices are squelched into white noise, while the MSM bullhorn sounds off like a Civil Defense siren; except the clarion call is blaring for democracy to fall.
The corporate MSM oligarchs are to blame for it all. Truth is immutable, only if one is cognitively resonant enough to perceive its value beyond being used as a political tool for the obfuscation of all fact based knowledge!
Vote BLUE until you're Red, White and Blue in the face or suffer the CONsequence!
*Electoral College shenanigans not included. Remember, two of the most hideous "POTI," ever, Bush and ⸸Rump stole their way into our House, along with three other "POTI" perps! See below:
https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote
“SHARED”...DO THE SAME!
What is very clear to me is that we must not allow the position of President to be protected from incitement of sedition, allowing them to pardon high level criminals at their whim and and other barriers that protects the king, I mean, the President from being held accountable. I realize that there may be times when they need to be protected but waving a magic wand should not be an option.
The fact that trump is allowed to endanger groups of people is a stunning failure of our system. I’m more concerned with the fact that NOTHING is done to trump despite terroristic threats and the attempted deadly coup he incited.
Why are we ALLOWING books to be banned without masses taking to the streets! Why are we letting a woman chance arrest for trying to get an abortion due to an unviable pregnancy?
THE SINGLE biggest danger has been right wing ownership-monopoly of the airwaves. The numerous lies and threats allowed to breed there has brought us to this.
The US perfected doing the same thing in Central, South America and Iran among others. There is so much the public does not get told. We no longer have a free press. The First Amendment is fully ignored by the (follow-the-constitution-in Founder’s original-form-group) A silly concept when our founding members are the ones who amended their Constitution.
The RepubliCons have given us a country where middle class has been disappearing. Everyone is too busy with the stress of living life to have the luxury of time & effort for protest!
The people of this country must see justice - the imprisonment of trump for life, or the message is that WE do not matter.
Those who could end this by using Section 3 of the 14th amendment, Won't. And we must ask ourselves WHY.
I just don't get it. Why would America want to be an Authoritarian country?
They aren’t Neo-Nazis. They are Nazis. There’s nothing new about them.
Thanks Dean...some really great writing and comments! Happy to have found a place with really smart people writing so eloquently and I’m learning so much...thank you all!
Thanks Jeff!
Not just a struggle for democracy but also survival globally, esp with the planet-killing ideologies of those on the right. Steven Pinker’s a smart guy but seems to minimize the fact that we’re now at or very near a steep inflection point, a hinge of history, and it’s not just us but global. It’s like the Krell from Forbidden Planet who advanced enough technologically to let their basest instincts destroy them with ease. Seems like an apt comparison and you can see the Monster from the Id-type phenomenon rising up all over the world, as though it had always been there but submerged and wanting so desperately to break through. And now it has, so the battle lines must become more clearly drawn and it’s past the time to pick a side to be on, and continue to work as though our very lives depended on it...all of them.
I’ve been unsurprised by all of the MAGA trolls and Trump’s flying monkeys spreading all their “whataboutisms” regarding POTUS Biden. It staggers the mind that these once innocent minds have been put through a wash that’s left their minds empty of reason and bereft of critical thinking skills and rationality. I forgot to mention the sadness they lack in having no comprehension that their news sources and beliefs are dictated to them and that they are lazy “f*cks” and think being educated is stupid. It’s a collective of idiots who then shun the educated so they can feel superior.
Most Americans know nothing about Europe between the wars and what led to Hitlers rise and fall and the deaths of millions including Americans. The disturbing arrogance of the ignorant will forever deeply sadden me.
That arrogance, is the fuel bottled up in can of fascism that is being sprayed in the eyes of the ignorant and the comatose (anti-woke). Donald Trump and MAGA are the match that will turn that spray into a dragon that will destroy this country.
Danger Will Robinson! Our media is normalizing him with an almost avuncular pandering to his base.
Lastly, it’s sad that we Americans have such abundance… have you walked into a Target or Walmart and seen ALL the selection? So much film, cars, television, cosmetics, gadgets, food, sports merch to buy, guns to buy, and yet so many-shrug off the abundance and say the country is being destroyed. Not because it is but because of power. Why have a democracy when Black & Brown people have a say?
Thanks MAD...just one more thing; how many days will pass before it’s just ‘normal’ for Drumpf to be ‘riffing’ on Adolf, so normal that the media stops being bothered by it? Stops even reporting on it? I’m gonna make a loose bet that by New Years Day, it won’t even be mentioned. He will have moved on from ‘camps’ to ‘extermination sites’ and there will be 70 million Americans in red hats nodding their heads and screaming madly in favor of it - many of whom don’t realize that at some point, they will be heading through the gates as the latest ‘out group’ when MAGA starts running low on fuel for their fire ....
You’re spot on Mr. Dwyer, I believe the future name of MAGAts will be the “Good Germans.”
Their cries will be heard as apocryphal; “We didn’t know!”
How quickly we went from normalcy to madness and 70 million voters went along with it in 2020.
I do grow a bit weary of comparing Trump to Hitler. Trump has significant cognitive and emoti9onal issues. While Hitler was similar, he at least had the infamous Treaty of Versailles as an early justification. Even Maynard Keynes predicted that foul times would cme as a result of these terms. In the U.S>, the main problem, besides bigotry, stpidity, and hate, the 3 wealthiest own more than all of the rest combined. (Exact figures are not available).) Back then, we had Japanese in camps - today Hispanics?
If Trump stopped quoting Hitler we would stop comparing him to the Nazis. Anyone saying calm down is gaslighting us. Period.
As an observer from Canada I am not surprised one iota
I think it has become clear that what Trump is doing with the fascist rhetoric is grooming his followers--and the rest of us too--to surrender to the brutality of his next Putsch.
Every day. I can’t even believe we are discussing this.
Unfortunately not the first time a fascist movement has attempted an overthrow of our Democracy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s
From the outside looking in the USA appears to be sleep walking into becoming a a giant boil on the arse of humanity and unfortunately I don’t think there’s any way back.I traveled there the last time 30 years ago and I can’t remember it being so depressingly depraved.Maybe I just never noticed,as everyone I met was friendly and seemed normal but nowadays I wouldn’t go there in chains.I don’t really care what they do to each other but unfortunately the rest of us have to keep an eye on the latest lunacy being spouted by some old ,fat,rancid,orange POS as we are all in a sense trapped in the same boat 🤯