Jesus, this is a long and angry post. Sorry guys.I suspect it's that Hitler was infamous for borrowing blood and soil rhetoric from Martin Heidegger, and at the moment, it feels like Trump is doing so also. Something to remember is that the German genocide was not something talked about explicitly in addresses. So-and-so made it clear who the "enemy" was, the "enemy" got registered, and then people started disappearing. That was that.
Something to think about is that the Holocaust was partially funded by Rockefeller money, the gas chamber plans were drafted in this country, and Hitler is on record praising the foundational work of the social darwinists here. That genocide was partially our genocide. It was not set in motion here because the US was seen as not having the logistical fortitude to kill people in mass (frankly, the country was just too damn big), but this country did perform forced sterilizations for a long time, use black people in medical experiments against their consent and without informing them (notably, for example, Henrietta Lacks), and so on and so forth.
If we, say, forced undocumented Mexicans to build internment camps and a wall as payment for their time in the US before deporting them, throw in the "disruptive" protesters and dissidents and registered "terrorist threat" Muslims "in order to protect our right to free speech," and then just happen to have a number of water safety accidents involved with them, would anyone be
really surprised?
The situation now is not the same as it was back then. US infrastructure in general is much improved, and we have a social climate that likes very much to argue from a basis of biological determinism. The atmosphere was already ripe to blow, and now here's a fire.
I don't think saying "he
is Hitler" is helpful or true. But saying: "He's running on a fascist platform, and the kind of fascism looks most like 1930s Germany, and prominent US thinkers and businessmen were known to be a partial architect of what happened there; there's space for it in our mode of thinking" can help us figure out what to do, and what to watch for, next.
It's not likely, for example, to have a "cultural revolution" here, because the country is already so populist and lowbrow in its culture and entertainments. Mass slaughter in the name of returning to greatness follows the Christian "fall from Eden" rhetoric. Has it happened yet? No, as long as we're not talking about what our increasingly militarized police force is already doing... to
certain people.
Not everything is going to look exactly the same. A sequel isn't the same old book a second time. But there are harmonies.
And not just that--lots of these problems can go along without becoming violently toxic for a long time. They aren't a big deal. However, when Trump says he's going to build a wall and start a registry, I believe him. And
that move is the start of some very hot water. You can't say "it's the same old thing" anymore.
It's not "just" racism. It's not "just" voters in certain districts being disenfranchised. It's not
just a gender balance that's so off that the UN is sending folks in to investigate and being
legitimately horrified. It's not just water crises. It's not just "right to discriminate" laws against LGBT people being passed in Missouri and Kentucky. It's not just the enormous number of abortion restrictions being passed in the past four years. It's not just the rise of the Tea Party and the religious right.
Now it's something else.
And for any of you who are saying--"I'm so tired of the status quo that I'll vote to disrupt it regardless of whether it brings fascism to this shore"--I'll say also: Are you ready to be conscripted and pressed into somebody else's murder? I would invite you to read
The Drowned and the Saved and see whether you can stomach it. Read
A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova and see if you can stomach it. Read
Poetry After Auschwitz. Watch
Shoah and
Numbered.
Give the younger set copies of
Code Name Verity and
Rose Under Fire; and tell them which side you'd like to be on.
Hell, there are a number of documentaries about the effects of the drone wars in the Middle East
right now. Go on--watch them.
Hell, I know at least one person on this board who survived a genocide and talked about it here. I wouldn't badger them about it which is why I don't mention him by name, but you can read what's already been said and see if that's what you
really want.
Anyone who invites in the specter of lurching bleeding death has a responsibility to look it in the fucking face, instead of saying "No further corruption is possible--there's nothing here worth saving--I abandon the way of hope. LOL, let it burn. It will be
fun to watch."
So if you think it's fun to watch, then I invite you, sincerely--
GO AND FUCKING WATCH IT. See if it's fun or not.
I'm not trying to say "A is exactly like B." Rather to say: "There is a productive comparison to be made between A and B. Get ready to protect somebody. I hope to god it's not necessary."
Why isn't he building a wall on the Canadian border, eh?
Political dissidents haven't started fleeing yet.
Also--just as a reminder--for years there's been more South Americans going
out than
in. This is known. The women and girls coming in are at an 85% likelihood to be raped on the way. The border camps we have going have blatant human rights abuses. People are still coming, because the thing they're fleeing from is worse. I don't think it's going to make anything better, to build this wall.