CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-Over a thousand books have been written asking why the Germans did not stop the Nazification of Germany in the 1930s.
After 9/11, many Americans demanded that moderate Muslims take action against “radical Islam.” Is it not logical to ask people who stand-by while thugs take over a government or a religion, “Why didn’t you do anything?”
The prominent German pastor, Martin Niemoller made one of the most widely quoted indictments of people who did nothing:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.
“Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.
“Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Implicit in Niemoller’s statement is that each individual’s safety rests in protecting the life and liberty of every other person. Niemoller is not the only person to note that silence is complicit in the reign of evil.
Many people attribute the saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing,” to Edmund Burke, the 18thCentury philosopher. The fact that Burke is habitually quoted testifies to our culture’s belief that good men cause evil by being silent.
How to Know Nazification is Occurring
There is no one way for a nation to become nazified. Few thinkers believe that mere authoritarianism is sufficient. In America, Nazification may begin with nothing more specific than a horrible departure from American norms of guaranteeing an individual the inalienable rights, of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and of Due Process.
Under Trump, many see an emerging Nazi system with simplistic solutions to long term problems. A major Nazi ploy is for a new leader to de-legitimize the media and former governments, while offering a quick pathway for a better tomorrow based on racism. That is the inherent promise of Trump’s America First and MAGA. Ominous as those aspects of Trumpism are, America was not actually shocked to life until Trump used his anti-Hispanic racism to take babies and children away from their parents and lock up the children in cages in far-away places. The similarities between the German Nazis’ carting off Jews to camps and separating Jewish parents and children was too unsettling for millions of Americans. The idea that “It can’t happen here” has become, “It is happening here.”
One would have to be an ignoramus not to recognize a parallel with the Nazi propaganda that Jewish criminals endangered all of German society and Trump’s racist lies about Mexican rapists and criminals pouring over the border to murder god-fearing American folk. For Trump, the danger is so great that he would abolish Due Process and deport people without judges or courts.
Perhaps, the definition of Nazification is the same as pornography. To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): I may not be able to precisely define Nazification, “But I know it when I see it.” In Germany, the camps began with Dachau in 1933 for mostly political prisoners. Nazification does not begin with the mass murders, but the mass incarceration of thousands of children means that the canaries in the mine shaft are dying.
Time to Stop Looking Away
What does one do when Stephen Miller or Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants to eat in your restaurant?
Are they like young “colored men” who wanted to eat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC in 1960? Segregation excluded them on the basis of their group membership, i.e. their race without regard to individual merit. No one asked the young men, “Are you a criminal or are you a college student who plans to become a doctor and save lives?”
On the contrary, the Trump Administration has high profile individuals who are promoting vicious Nazi policies. Neither Miller nor Sanders are mere employees. They are people who deny basic human rights. Before coming up with the sadistic separation of little children from their parents, Stephen Miller even dissed the Emma Lazarus poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty, and simultaneously disgraced his ancestors who came to these shores unable to speak English. There is no person more treacherous than a person who would betray his own grandmother for a bit of fame.
For months, the nation has had to endure Miller’s Goebbels-like racism and Sarah Sander’s lies to the American people. Sander’s behavior has become so egregious that she has become a co-Gaslighter along with Donald Trump.
Respect for Individual Inalienable Rights is the American Way to Combat Nazification
Liberal extremism in the pursuit of virtue is a vice. America is founded on the premise that everyone, including Hispanic toddlers, have individual inalienable rights. While it is un-American to accuse Hispanics of being rapists, murderers and drug smugglers, it would be un-American to exclude someone from a restaurant because they are a Republicans or because they are white.
Sarah Sanders is upset over a private citizen’s peaceful rejection of her Nazification of American life, but no one took Sander’s children away from her. No one locked her up without a “judge or court.” Rather, Miller and Sanders have been judged by their individual public actions over several months.
De-Nazification Requires End of Identity Politics
Respect for Individual Inalienable Rights has no room for Identity Politics. While America’s having respect for each person’s inalienable rights is expensive and time consuming, that is the purpose of our government. The Declaration of Independence states, “That to secure these [inalienable] rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” America should never promote Group Rights or White Supremacy or Identity Politics, movements that urge belief that people’s rights derive from their inclusion in some group. The incessant pushing of racist Identity Politics legitimizes the racism inherent in Nazification.
Oppose Nazification with RIIR
Respect for Individual Inalienable Rights requires that we single out the individual “Nazifizers” and root out similar policies on the Left side of the political spectrum.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
