If you read “The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany” by Thomas Childers you will begin by seeing a 1927 Germany that looks much like any United States’ city. Ordinary people going about their business each day. We see people taking transportation to go to work, walking in parks with friends, shopping, and taking their children to playgrounds and other amusements. However, in just six years those same people would be waving swastika flags and shouting “Heil Hitler!” Those same people would stand idly by while Jewish businesses are smashed and burned. The police would force Jews to clean dirty streets with toothbrushes.
Trains that took people to work and on vacation became transportation that carried Jews and “undesirables” to extermination camps.
Could this happen in America?
I will quote Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi:
“It happened , therefore it can happen again. It can happen everywhere.”
- Have we not heard the increasingly controlling Left call for Trump-supporters and conservatives being sent to re-education camps?
- While we don’t have book-burnings yet, aren’t we seeing books and media being removed from library shelves, classrooms, and streaming services?
- Are we not seeing our public schools becoming indoctrination camps with a strong emphasis on socialism and alternative lifestyles?
- Do we see media and Big Tech increasingly censoring conservative voices and promoting cancel culture?
- Is references to God, the National Anthem, and the Pledge of Allegiance rapidly disappearing?
Language changes on a near daily basis. A word with one meaning today might have a completely different meaning tomorrow. And, if you continue to use today’s meaning you are heartily condemned as being a denier or racist.
Oakland, California is providing a “guaranteed income” to low income families only if you are not caucasian while true racism is now becoming acceptable and desirable.
Our present president is now proposing a $4-trillion spending bill that euphemistically claims to be for infrastructure but, in reality, only about 15% of it is going toward infrastructure. The other 85% will be used to increase the power of government at the expense of the private sector.
I have a good friend who was once a well-known personality in Soviet Russia. She has since escaped and relocated in the United States. She tells me that she is always horrified when Left-wing friends tell her how wonderful socialism is. She lived through the real story. Anyone who thinks all of this is good needs to study the history of Germany’s Hitler, China’s Mao, and Russia’s Stalin and Lenin.
But to quote what George Santayana famously wrote in 1905:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
Your essay, Charles, is frighteningly all too real. Especially frightening, is that anyone who points to this history and tries to warn and remind where this leads…is either ridiculed or shut down.
It’s a shame that this is already happening hear now. If we don’t do something about this quickly,we will be just like other countries that are socialist. Our current president is very hard to move us towards this.
I’ve said it before that’s what I’m seeing reminds me of what started in Germany when Hitler took over and that’s exactly what you’re pointing out Charles.
And those who remember the past are doomed to watch others repeat it.