by Scott Gilbert
As I was growing up as a young man, I lived in a household where my mother had post-traumatic stress disorder. She was a holocaust survivor.
The family of Anne Frank and Otto Frank were close friends of my grandparents’ family. My grandfather was arrested in 1933, and the rest of the family moved first to Paris and then to Amsterdam, fleeing the new regime of the fascist government of Hitler and the Nazis. By that time, many people felt there was no way to oppose Hitler because he was already in power. I read The Diary of Anne Frank as well as other books and novels from that period of time. I made a promise to myself and anyone who would listen and say “Never Again.” That I refused to be what is now coined in the phrase, “a Good German.”
I started to study history, fascism, and, in particular, Nazi fascism. More recently, I read an excellent definition of fascism, “Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive ‘traditional values’. Fascism feeds on and encourages the threat and use of violence to build a movement and come to power. Fascism, once in power, essentially eliminates traditional democratic rights. Fascism attacks, jails, even executes its opponents, and launches violent mob attacks on ‘minorities”. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ‘40s, fascism did all these things.”
Hitler did not just come to power, there was no military coup. Germany was a democratic country with elections and Hitler was appointed chancellor through “due process”. Hitler started his rise in 1919 with the Nazi party. In 1923, he attempted a military coup with General Ludendorff that failed, he was jailed, wrote Mein Kampf, and fascism continued to rise.
The political tenor was consolidating, though not solidified, for the Nazis.
Hitler did not win a plurality in the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, on March 5th, 1933. He won 43.9 percent of the vote at the time. The Nazi party did not yet have control. As an example, of the 11 people in the cabinet, only 3 of them were Nazi Party members. The other 8 were not. There were 196 Nazi Party members in the Reichstag, which only represented 33 percent. Hitler had not yet consolidated power. Only through backroom dealings with the Catholic Party, the Liberal Party, and the Nationalist Party was he able to come up with enough votes in the Reichstag for Hitler to become Chancellor and de facto leader of Germany. The German government then voted and changed the German constitution giving Hitler dictatorial powers, and the German courts went along with this.
Then, events started to accelerate from the burning of the Reichstag, controlling media, outlawing opponents, up to 1938, and the infamous Kristallnacht.
This is critical for people to understand: HITLER HAD NOT YET CONSOLIDATED POWER. Let me repeat: HITLER HAD NOT YET CONSOLIDATED POWER. This consolidation of fascist power took time: an attack, then this “normalized”, pass a law, then this gets “normalized”, demonize a section of people, then this gets normalized. This is how fascism develops.
Look at today and the patterns of Trump. He has been a fascist from the getgo. He demonized Black youth such as the Central Park 5 demanding the death penalty for them 1989—yes, 28 years ago, in a full page ad in the NYT. After spending years in jail and later found innocent, Trump said, “Maybe hate is what is needed if we’re gonna get something done”. There has been an ascension of fascism for years in the United States that is consolidating around the Trump/Pence regime.
Today, in the U.S., Trump is actually being able to hand pick his whole cabinet, and we need to seriously look at who these people are. I was reading an article online recently about General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, now the Secretary of Defense, who said, “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” Or what Steve Bannon, said, “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy”; “Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?”; “Gay rights have made us dumber, it’s time to get back in the closet.”; “Hoist it high and proud: the confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage.” It is this kind of thinking that is in the top tier of this country’s leadership that is very frightening: gay-bashing, misogyny, and racist ideology…
Hitler was able to bring together different peoples who felt they needed to make Germany great again. Claudia Koonz, who has written a book about this called The Nazi Conscience, actually coined the phrase “Ethnic Fundamentalism.” What she is saying is that the two key elements that Hitler brought together were Christian fundamentalism and ethnic nationalism—national is a cornerstone of fascism.
Hitler wanted to, and fed on the concept, of bringing Germany back as a prominent imperialist nation, to “Make Germany Whole Again” for the German people. Hitler grabbed onto this hard. Step back a minute and look at this—the striking parallel with Trump’s expression “Make America Great Again” and Hitler’s expression “Make Germany Whole Again.”
The Nazis used these two components to make Germany, as I said before, “Whole Again.” Look at the parallels today in what is being pushed for here in the U.S. One, the rise of the Christian fundamentalists and Christian fascism. Mike Pence is a perfect example of this type of thinking. He wants to put this into practice when he talks about “embracing a culture of life in America”—a Christian fundamentalist culture with all its oppressive machinations. Two, the attacks on different sections of people in this country. The mass roundups and deportations of Hispanics and others who are labeled “illegal” simply for the crime of coming to this country to work and survive in this country, the killings of these people on the borders by the U.S. version of Hitler’s storm troopers, the Minutemen. The killings of people of color, mainly Black, with impunity, now that new laws exist such as “Stand Your Ground.” The rise of the KKK and other neo-fascist groups here in the U.S. So, again, the parallel is the attacks on different sections of people in the United States that have been on the rise to what happened in Nazi Germany with the attacks on different sections of “undesirables.”
Another parallel is, I’ll quote Richard Spencer, a white supremacist and ideologue who popularized the term “alt-right” at a Neo-Nazi panel discussion in Washington, DC, on November 19th, 2016, just days after the elections, “America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.” And he also said that in the era of president-elect Donald Trump whites “were awakening to their own identity.” These are very noteworthy and staggering statements for someone to say easily in 2016, and not to have many people or the mainstream media confronting that. What does Spencer mean when he says “us”? He means “Good Americans”—the Aryans of the United States. That is exactly what Hitler was saying back in the ’20s and early ’30s—that the Nazis were going to “Make Germany Whole Again.” So when Hitler used the phrase, he even talked about loving the people. A lot of times Hitler sounded middle of the road to even progressive, when, in fact, he was only talking about the Volk, he was only talking about the Aryan people. Everyone outside of that was the enemy. You listen to Donald Trump talking about building a wall, having a Muslim registry—these are extremely serious steps in trying to control sections of people in the United States. I do not think it has become a parallel yet, but the similarities are compelling and everyone needs to take his statements seriously.
Hitler said what he was going to do while rising to power. Then, he fulfilled his promises leading Germany to World War and the “Final Solution”. But that is the point: The “Final Solution” was NOT in 1933, it was in 1942. Fascism develops in stages.
Depending on where Hitler spoke, especially once he came to power in late 1932 before consolidating fully, and I’m going to read here, I’m going to quote: “Attired in a white shirt, tie, and black suit with a discrete swastika lapel pin, Chancellor Hitler fulminated about hostile foreign powers, the Bolshevik menace, the cultural decline and spineless liberals. Exuding ethnic fundamentalism, he said barely a word about Jewry. Many observers approvingly commented that Hitler had mellowed.” Does this not sound like what some of these leaders and media pundits are saying about Donald Trump? That he is mellowing? That Trump is becoming more “presidential”? Where is the large outcry of the horrors of the bombings of Syria & Afghanistan? Where is the large outcry about ripping apart of Latino families?
Again, this is very, very scary stuff.
Today, we have a similar type of situation that the German people faced in 1933. Are we going to wait for the Trump/Pence regime to consolidate power, or are we going to step up and say NEVER AGAIN!?
Are we going to wait for the time where we cannot even have a press conference like this because it was outlawed by an executive order, or are we going to step up and say NEVER AGAIN and Drive Out the Trump/Pence regime!
Today, we are remembering all those people that died or were affected by the Holocaust. If this Museum of Jewish Heritage is to mean anything, we must stop the attacks on our immigrant sisters and brothers, we must stop Islamophobia, we must stop the attacks on women so they do not become “breeders” as they did in Nazi Germany. We must stop all of fascism.
Trump is talking about deporting 11 million people, many who will end up in a country where they will be killed.
We cannot have another Holocaust museum with different faces but the same reasons for genocide.
After the Holocaust, millions said, “Never Again!” If “Never Again!” is going to mean anything, it has to mean something now – when immigrants, Muslims, and people all over the world are being threatened by the Trump/Pence regime in the most militarized country on earth.
Never again will we allow another Holocaust to happen to any other people.
In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.
Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime!
Scott Gilbert’s mother and grandparents were Holocaust survivors.