Beware: Fascism Is Coming To America
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by David. P. Greenberg
My Great Aunt was a survivor. When a Jew uses that word, it doesn’t mean a strong woman or someone who overcame adversity. It means she had a tattoo on her forearm, and her heart was still beating on May 7th, 1945.
The little I know of her story is that she was a teenager blessed with exceptionally good looks, who found herself – alone – in Auschwitz. A low-ranking German soldier saw her standing in the “Einsatz Behandlung” line, and at great personal risk, snuck her under a train-car. She hid there, lying face down in the freezing cold until nightfall when she was smuggled onto an outgoing train. From there she made her way to Switzerland.
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America was not accepting Eastern European refugees at that time, and if my family hadn’t been obscenely rich, she wouldn’t have been allowed to emigrate. They lobbied, bribed and did whatever else was necessary, to bring her here. She became a citizen and worked every day for the rest of her life. She died in 1980.
Were she here, today, she could tell you a thing or two about Fascism.
In 1938 Germany annexed Austria. Though many considered it an invasion, no shots were fired, and the annexation went through peacefully. Hitler’s justification was that the Austrian people considered themselves a part of Germany, going back as far as the Pan-Germanist movement of the 1880s.
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The problem was that this annexation was in direct violation of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. Hitler didn’t really care about the will of the Austrian people. What he cared about was the reaction he’d get from France, the U.K., and America – the Tripartite that had imposed the treaty on Germany in the first place. If they did nothing – which they did – he would be free to continue his plans for “Lebensraum.”
This “Muslim Ban” has nothing to do with Muslims. It has nothing to do with national security. We can get distracted and argue about which countries are not included in the ban. We can debate about the humanity. We can hope that the courts, the Attorney Generals, and the Governors can block the action. But in truth, all Trump is doing is pushing the envelope. He’s crossing the line in the sand and waiting to see what we do. This is his Anschluss. If we do nothing – or if he continues to ignore what we do – he will take that as tacit permission to do anything he wants.
This law is his first move towards Fascism. And as a rabid anti-Fascist, I implore you. Don’t get distracted and don’t get bogged down in trivial details. See this as what it is. Fight this as you would fight nothing else. This isn’t just wrong because of what we can see – but because of what we can’t.
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I am Jewish and proud of it. I had family die at Auschwitz and Treblinka, a great aunt and great uncles respectively. I don’t normally make comparisons to Hitler’s Germany but the elevation of Trump to the highest office in the land has changed my view.
Exactly. In fact, many have called me out, citing an older policy of never comparing an American politician to Hitler. If I didn’t think this was absolutely necessary, I wouldn’t say it. Every day, I see more commonality between the two. And often, I feel like the only one who’s seeing it. I feel like that guy in “Jaws” who was yelling, “Get out of the water!”
It’s coming. You are right David. The Deplorables are even putting TRUMP flags on their vehicles, and intimidating all those who disagree with them.