Today, on the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, I’m genuinely pessimistic that this nation learned – or can learn – one of the most important lessons of the war.
Indeed, it seems that there are those in our society who really don’t want this country to learn it.
Words like “Fascist” and “Brownshirt” have been overused, mainly but not quite exclusively by the left, over the past 4-5 decades One might even say they’ve been devalued, if you’re conspiracy-minded.
In light of events this past week, they need to be re-valued, and Americans need to get a quick education in political history.
Alliance Für A Better Deutschland: With the collapse of the Weimar Republic, German politics returned to a state that hadn’t been seen since the chaotic late teens and early twenties; political parties retained private groups of thugs to harass, intimidate, and attack political opponents’ demonstrations, meetings and events.
And it wasn’t just eggs and water bottles; in the ’20s, German parties enlisted Freikorps, groups of armed World War I veterans who fought gangland battles and, in some cases, pitched military engagements in the streets of German cities.
The biggest participants were the Communists and and, to a lesser degree, the Socialists on what’s conventionally called “the left”, and their opponents (called “the Right”, although the sought to govern scarcely less as authoritarians and totalitarians than did their opponents), of whom the National Socialists (the Nazis, of course) became the leader.
Like I said, it got bloody . On July 17 1932, “Bloody Sunday”, Communist “direct action” activists attacked a Nazi rally in Altona, Germany, killing 18; revenge and counter-revenge played out across Germany afterwards, as it had before.
Altona in the wake of Bloody Sunday
This was one of many events that framed the Nazis final ascent to control of the country six months later.
“Brownshirts” – the official name was Sturmabteilung, or “Assault Detachments” – and members of Stahlturm (Steel Helmet, a Nazi veterans group) burn Weimar flags as the Nazis assume control of the Reichstag, or Parliament. The evening, and the coming months, saw more pitched battles in the streets between party thugs, before the government moved on to more decisive means.
Not only have Americans living today never seen such a thing – groups of thugs acting as a direct action wing of political parties – but in fact the little information they have about this is pollyannaish in the extreme. It wasn’t just Germany, it didn’t end 80 years ago, and it can happen here.
In Poland in 1980,
Polish “riot police” – thugs with shields – take down an enemy of the state in 1981.
In Panama in the late eighties,
Manuel Noriega’s “Dignity Battalions” – a make-work program that put thugs to work attacking dissidents and protesters.
in Iran in 2008,
Basiji assaulting Tehran University, putting down the uprising in 2008 (with the tacit support of Barack Obama).
And here in the US, today:
Thugs, likely with the support of liberal plutocrats with deep pockets, attack a Trump rally last week in San Jose. As usual.
There’s precious little difference between the people above and the people below:
And I don’t know that I trust Americans to know this anymore.
Politics + force = where horrible things come from.
History would be an antidote to what’s happening — if it weren’t for the fact that those aligned to the thugs are those who control the teaching of history to the masses.
Not only have Americans living today never seen such a thing – groups of thugs acting as a direct action wing of political parties – but in fact the little information they have about this is pollyannaish in the extreme.
You did qualify it with “living today”, but it would be remiss not to mention KKK.
Also, add to the mix thought police as in Twitter/Facebook/Microsoft/YouTube alliance and parallels are even more stunning. Not that left is capable of learning form history.
Or in Spain leading up to the Spanish Civil War. The Socialists, Communists and Anarchists (there really was an Anarchist party and movement in Europe in the first part of the 20th century) confronted the old-line “traditionalists/monarchy” (IIRC, they weren’t called “Nationalists” until Franco invaded the mainland). The Church, while philosophically more attuned to the left, was too identified with the right after all the centuries, and it discovered its only security was with the right. When the war broke out, some of the first people the Popular Front arrested were the Socialists ostensibly on their side – along with burning monasteries and killing priests and nuns. The right had it’s own firebrands and leaders.
Ultimately, of course, they all did what Europeans have always done – kill each other. (The incessant wars in Europe and resulting economic disruptions was one of the biggest reasons why people emigrated to America). We have this image of Europe as so civilized and well-cultured, but that’s not their history. The “American Experiment” was the hope and alternative, that ballots could outweigh bullets, and that politics – while it “ain’t beanbag” – could replace outright violence. The experiment is failing, and it’s largely because of the same people that made it necessary in the first place. The sad irony is that few recognize this.
JPA is right!
The KKK has always been the militant(terrorist) wing of the Democrat (Progressive) Party.
The old brand has lost its sheen in recent years so the Democratic KKK/Brownshirts are currently in the process of rebranding.
“We have this image of Europe as so civilized and well-cultured, but that’s not their history.”
We taught them civilization at gunpoint, starting 72 years ago today.
JPA:
We have this image of Europe as so civilized and well-cultured, but that’s not their history.
Oh, the parallels in public discourse are unmistakeable.
I’m talking specifically about physical coercion.
We have this image of Europe as so civilized and well-cultured, but that’s not their history.
That was NW and I agree with his entire sentiment whole-heartedly.
Q: Are we doomed to repeat history? My son-in-law (a progressive) believes Obama’s true legacy will be establishing a permanent welfare state. I didn’t argue with him on that point. My son-in-law says at the end of this great social experiment there will be two America’s: a working class and a welfare class.
Why? – because of the One World Order, the proliferation of automated labor and the evaporation of borders.
It’s pessimistic, but it’s not far from becoming true. I wanted to object, but really couldn'[t.. I hope he;s wrong, but I cannot say, definitively, that he is.
the proliferation of automated labor
Speaking of refusing to learn from history – industrial revolution, computerization, all resulted in displacement and an upgrade of labor and living conditions, not reduction. The automation argument is a straw man used as a crutch by those who want to usher in a golden age of sitting on the coach in a converted attic above their parent’s garage while thinking up another grievance against “the man”.
Stink: haven’t many conservatives been pointing out for decades that the working class is not going to accomodate the welfare class forever? That at a certain point, people aren’t going to work to support children they did not have the pleasure of helping to conceive?
I take it your son-in-law hasn’t read much about the fall of Rome, has he?
http://therightstuff.biz/content/images/2015/07/nbpp_intimidation.jpg
What the nazis believed, and what they taught the German people, is that their highest identity was as a German. The German part of them was authentically them, everything else they were — rich, poor, educated, ignorant — was secondary to their identity as a German and was a result of their being German. They had been exploited and oppressed, their legitimate expression of German-ness was spat on and despised by other ‘races’. Their place in the sun had been denied them by non-Germans.
The only rational reaction to this state of affairs, the only legitimately German response, was war against the other ‘races’. Just as their only identity was an expression of German-ness, the only identity of the other races the Germans could ever experience first hand was their desire to oppress the Germans. There could never be peace, only temporary cease fires and shifting alliances with other races. There was no such thing as a common human identity. A man who believed in a brotherhood of man might as well believe in a brotherhood of sheep and wolves.
Change ‘German’ to Black, Hispanic, Gay, or even female and you understand Critical Race Theory, the guiding philosophy behind Black nationalism, la Raza, and ‘gender activism.’ Critical Race Theory began to be taught in humanities programs and law schools in the early ’80s — the period when Obama and Loretta Lynch attended law school. In critical Race Theory, the enemy that must be defeated isn’t the Jews, it is White Supremacy. Any person who opposes the agenda of the racial activists is a white supremacist, or is expressing white supremacism. Other than the skin pigment of the characters, there is virtually no difference between the world view of David Duke and the worldview of Ta Nahesi Coates.
The small l libertarian in me notes that all politics is about force; the trick is to use force only for the things that matter. We are forgetting about what matters–forget safety, let’s open up the bathrooms.
Say what you will about Nazis, they were still some damn snappy dressers.