People are not educated about history, yet pass around strong opinions, parroting details they clearly didn’t know the day before. Where did they get them? Revisionist propaganda has been around forever, often skewed one way, then the other. Fake experts (most news commentators) or even those so fringe they can’t get air time, create a story people want to hear and the masses lose their minds over things that, in fact, did not happen. Instead of warn us, the intention is to scare us into following them.
For example, people have made all sorts of stories about the Fall of Rome, each crafted to push that their demise was the result of policies or social practices similar to the political party or social sentiments they are opposed to. It’s clever in its hand-picked parallels, leaving the reader to think they had an “aha!” moment on their own. To those who actually study it, most of these contrived comparisons are laughable, being either entirely false or not comparable from such a different time and dynamic.
The recent volley is warning Americans that recent events and agendas are similar to Hitler’s rise to power. And they would be correct if they weren’t aiming it in the wrong direction. Fear of Hitleresque consequences is prime real estate for such folly, the penultimate example being him taking away people’s guns … which he actually didn’t. So let’s review the current common formula.
This new template for understanding American politics combines Hitler’s rise and the Red Scare, or at least vague notions of Marxism mixed with the age-old fear of “destroying America from within.” But instead of listing as tactics the undermining of its institutions, such as education and professional fields such a medicine, these are actually attacked as part of the threat. But the overall contradictions are much more disturbing. The two focal areas comparing today’s America to 19030’s Germany are dividing the nation via race, and defunding the police.
Race is where things get a bit jumbled. Communist nations tended to come to power with promises of equality for women and those of varying ethnicities, arguably as a means to garner support against an unfair system. First we must note the “theorists” here don’t see America as unfair. They believe the accusations and perception of racial disparity is a tool to divide. BLM is a weapon to cause anarchy, chaos, and collapse. And it would seem that way if you only read one side of the news. After all, “they” are the ones burning buildings, on the giving instead of receiving end of some ongoing Kristallnacht.
But that’s not what Hitler did to come to power, remembering that communist egalitarianism was anathema to him, even more than Jews and homosexuals. It wasn’t the minorities that instigated revolution or looted stores. There was no demand or promise for equality on his part. Hitler played everyday Germans as the real victims and those who protested being second-class citizens were seen as a threat to public unity. Over time, they were marginalized by a million little laws. And all these groups became the existential threat to Germany and it’s way of life in the rhetoric of the People. That’s how Hitler and others played it, patriotic Germans danced to it, and a similar tune plays today.
The meme-world’s version of history goes further. America will be turned over to dictatorship through lawlessness. After all, Hitler knew he had to get rid of the police and so he defunded or disbanded him as part of the master plan. And that’s how it played out. Just kidding. Police were instrumental in his Law and Order platform. Racial unrest? Economic unrest? Police were the perfect available solution, supported patriotically by every good German. All that had to be done was bring them into the fold ideologically. (The unintended, yet interesting parallel to America is the infiltration of White supremacists in law enforcement and police unions recently endorsing candidates.)
So what of the Brownshirts and similar groups? The aforementioned template makes the amorphous bogeyman “Antifa” out to be this force. This is, well, bizarre. The Brownshirts were extensions of the police to counter such forces, akin to the “Proud Boys” and how “patriot” militias are placing themselves in America. The whole “Back the Blue” movement is slowly taking on bits of the colour of law enforcement, not merely rallying sentiments but as an active, sometimes violent counteroffensive to the entire civil rights movement. And while a Jewish millionaire is blamed to be behind all this unrest, there is no reason to think he is trying to become president. On the other hand, these wannabe-police are unabashedly and fervently behind the actual president.
And the ideology parallels are also reversed and chillingly dead on. Hitler didn’t come to power on a platform of being anti-German or turn it into some imported version of utopia. He didn’t want unrest or anarchism or racial strife. Just the opposite. He wanted to return Germany to its glory days, one they could all be proud of. His cry was Germany first. He was able to rebuild the economy, not apologize to the world or anyone, and let Germans hold their heads high, not get mired in past transgressions or defeats. This is not the Germany of some “antifa” or radical civil rights plot. This is the Germany of a simple message of law and order over justice, and economic prosperity over all else.
Even with hindsight, so many of us would vote today for a figure like this and have him save us from this fantastical enemy within. In fact, we may even reelect him.