{"id":28268,"date":"2023-09-05T12:44:45","date_gmt":"2023-09-05T19:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=28268"},"modified":"2023-09-05T12:44:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T19:44:46","slug":"the-scariest-book-ive-read-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/09\/05\/the-scariest-book-ive-read-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"The scariest book I\u2019ve read this year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ has lessons for us all\u2014right now<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By BRUCE MIRKEN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUGUST 31, 2023 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Share on Facebook<\/a> Share on Twitter<\/a> Share on LinkedIn<\/a> Share on Reddit<\/a>Share on Email<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately, I find myself being continuously unnerved by things I read in books written decades ago. Until I read \u201cParable of the Sower\u201d<\/a> earlier this year, I had no clue that back in 1993, author Octavia Butler envisioned a climate change dystopia in which the US elects a right-wing authoritarian president who campaigns on the slogan, \u201cMake America Great Again.\u201d More recently, I\u2019ve been reading William L. Shirer\u2019s \u201cThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,\u201d with the distinctly queasy feeling that I\u2019m looking at a textbook on contemporary American politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, yeah, I know. Nazi analogies are the third rail of political discourse,\u00a0Godwin\u2019s Law<\/a>, etc., etc. All that stuff. Fine. But let me humbly suggest that, should you have doubts, please find yourself a copy of \u201cRise and Fall\u201d and read through all 1,000-plus pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, it\u2019s too easy to make Nazi analogies .. but it\u2019s also scary.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in 1960, Shirer\u2019s book has a few passages that will make modern readers cringe, like the references to \u201chomosexual perverts\u201d in the early Nazi organization. But mostly, \u201cThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich\u201d serves as a reminder that, as the saying goes, history doesn\u2019t exactly repeat itself but it sure as hell rhymes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like Trump and his MAGA adherents, the Nazis were never a majority in Germany before taking power. Indeed, they never even came close to winning a majority in a national election \u2014 the best they ever did was just 37 percent of the vote. And yet take power they did, quickly wiping out their internal opponents (often literally, not metaphorically) and rolling over the international community\u2019s feeble efforts to rein them in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we watch the January 6 conspiracy case unfold, it\u2019s interesting to look back at Hitler\u2019s early attempt at a violent overthrow of the German state. The 1923 \u201cBeer Hall Putsch,\u201d as it became known, failed spectacularly, and Hitler was tried for treason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Germany\u2019s lenient court procedures allowed him to dominate the proceedings, essentially letting the future dictator put the feeble Weimar Republic on trial and turn the proceedings that should have ended his political career into a propaganda triumph. He was given a brief prison sentence (during which he wrote \u201cMein Kampf\u201d) and emerged from the process stronger than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US trial rules should curb Trump\u2019s behavior in the courtroom. But he\u2019s already shown he\u2019s both willing and able to turn his social media megaphone into a platform that seems every bit as effective at amplifying his message\u2014attacking prosecutors and judges<\/a>, rousing his rabid supporters and at least implicitly threatening witnesses<\/a>. He\u2019s cleverly leveraging his unique position as a former president and current candidate in an effort to turn a case about a criminal conspiracy into one about the First Amendment and free speech. It seems unwise to assume that a conviction and short prison term would end Trump\u2019s political career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hitler, of course, had the S.A.\u2014the notorious \u201cbrownshirts\u201d\u2014 who busted up meetings of anti-Nazi groups and beat up opponents. The MAGA movement has nothing quite that large and organized (though groups like the Proud Boys certainly have potential), but Hitler didn\u2019t have social media. Trump and assorted alt-right types have effectively used social media to send mobs after a variety of victims, including medical facilities providing care to transgender patients, Georgia election workers who did absolutely nothing wrong, and\u00a0honest election workers<\/a>\u00a0all over the country. One estimate last year indicated that\u00a0one third of poll workers and election officials<\/a>\u00a0had left their jobs due to fear and threats. There\u2019s no longer any doubt that these social media posts\u00a0inspire political violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What jumps out again and again from Shirer\u2019s account is how consistently the non-Nazi factions, from the Communists and Social Democrats to traditional conservatives, underestimated Hitler. They underestimated his ruthlessness. They underestimated his willingness to lie about everything. They underestimated his eagerness to make agreements and break them the instant it was convenient. They underestimated his skill at driving the national narrative and controlling the conversation. They continually behaved like they were dealing with a normal politician, one who would keep a reasonable number of his promises and, while perhaps pushing the boundaries of normal politics, would mostly stay within them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time they realized they were dealing with nothing of the sort, a great many of them were in concentration camps or dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parallels between Nazi Germany and the contemporary USA don\u2019t end with Trump. I hadn\u2019t realized how quickly and ruthlessly the Nazis took over German education and rewrote the curriculum, from grade school to the university level. Once-proud institutions of learning became factories for indoctrinating young people with the Nazis\u2019 crackpot racial theories. Today, all across the country, right-wing school boards and state officials are rewriting curricula and clamping down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, restricting the rights of LGBTQ students, yanking books from library shelves and shutting down everything they consider \u201cwoke.\u201d They\u2019re pursuing anti-trans policies increasingly and accurately described as genocidal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distance between \u201cslaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit\u201d<\/a> and \u201cArbeit Macht Frei\u201d may be less than we like to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won\u2019t bore you with a list of all the recent Republican\/MAGA assaults on democracy and personal freedom \u2013 The Philadelphia Inquirer\u2019s great Will Bunch<\/a> recently provided a good summary. But I will point out Bunch\u2019s closing paragraph, which needs to be screamed from the rooftops:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time, \u201c<\/em>Bleeding Kansas<\/em><\/a>\u201d was a warning to America \u2014 harbinger of a civil war to come. It doesn\u2019t have to be that way this time around. But we won\u2019t succeed until we\u2019re clear-eyed that nearly half of Americans hate who we\u2019ve become, hate democracy when they no longer can win, and will embrace violence to get the results they can\u2019t get at the ballot box.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where Shirer offers a lesson we might do well to heed. The Nazis were a minority in Germany, but the anti-Nazi majority was splintered, with each faction pursuing its own goals and failing to grasp the need to join together against Hitler. As Shirer puts it, \u201cThe cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.\u201d After Hitler took power, the same phenomenon repeated, as he successfully played western European nations off each other, and they missed multiple chances to strangle Nazi Germany before if built up a military capable of fighting \u2013 and nearly winning \u2013 World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t have the parliamentary system Germany did, with support split among roughly half a dozen parties, but we do have budding third party efforts from the supposedly centrist No Labels<\/a> and the theoretically leftist Cornel West. Well-meaning voters tempted to support one or the other might want to ponder why No Labels seems to have so many far-right donors<\/a> and why West seems to spend a lot of time flirting with ultra-right-wingers<\/a>, including Ron DeSantis. Early polling suggests that these third party candidates, though they have zero chance of winning, could siphon off enough votes<\/a> to determine the who wins the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy \u2014 and necessary \u2014 to complain about the Democratic Party\u2019s myriad failures and inadequacies; I did it myself recently about the Democrats\u2019 refusal to reform the Supreme Court<\/a> when they had the chance  But in a system that\u2019s stacked against third parties, the 2024 election will conclude with one of two parties in control of the White House and Congress: the Fascism and Genocide Party or the Let\u2019s Not Have Fascism and Genocide Party. Those of us who see fascism and genocide as generally poor ideas might remember the things that the opponents of fascism got wrong 80-plus years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ has lessons for us all\u2014right now By BRUCE MIRKEN AUGUST 31, 2023 (48hills.org)  Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Share on RedditShare on Email Lately, I find myself being continuously unnerved by things I read in books written decades ago. Until I… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1023],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28270,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28268\/revisions\/28270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}