At a time when Donald Trump is threatening to lead his nation to war, and making ugly noises about the freedom of the press.
At a time when neo-Nazis are on the march again.
The distinguished documentarian Marshall Curry thought it might be time for a cautionary tale.
And remind Americans of the night in 1939, when 20,000 Nazi supporters descended on New York's Madison Square Garden.
After finishing his short documentary, Marshall Curry had this to say about what happened that Nazi night.
“The first thing that struck me was that an event like this could happen in the heart of New York City, a city that was diverse, modern, and progressive even in 1939."
“It really illustrated that the tactics of demagogues have been the same throughout the ages. They attack the press, using sarcasm and humor. They tell their followers that they are the true Americans (or Germans or Spartans or…). And they encourage their followers to “take their country back” from whatever minority group has ruined it.”
And all I would add is this:
During the election campaign, Trump's first wife revealed that he used to keep a copy of Hitler's speeches on his bedside table.
But still they made him president. Now he's threatening to kill us all.
And those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it...
14 comments:
I wouldn't put much stolk in what his first wife says, it's tingled with bitterness.
Drumph has always has been fascinated by autocrats and demagogues, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was a Hitler groupie. What kind of president likes organizing one rally after the other even after he was elected?
A German soccer team actually kneeled in solidarity with our national anthem protestors. You know America has failed when Germany is the one telling us to knock off the facsism and racism. The GOP can drop any pretense of being "respectable conservatives" at this point. So can your Crappers, who have clearly and unapologetically demonstrated their willingness to be fellow-travelers with the alt-right. "Loyal" opposition nothing: they're not loyal to the Queen, they're loyal to Trump and whoever his dark-money paymasters are. For all the hemming and hawing that cons do about their ridiculous conspiracy that Justin bows to Mecca, Scheer and his ilk kneel in the direction of Mar-a-Lago, and thus Moscow by proxy. Nothing but traitors and enablers who are "just following orders."
Would that they all end up at a Nuremberg Trial in the Hague, the Allies (Germany, France and Canada -- England too if they turf Thatcher II) take over the USA, and both the GOP and Crappers get disbanded and disallowed like the Nazis in Germany. Hopefully Hair Dumpsterfire ends up in Steve Bannon's moldy basement eating "the best chocolate cake" laced with who-knows-what as his last meal, just like his hero. Make it Bavarian Chocolate Cake for good measure.
You don't have to rely on or single out Ivana's statements alone. You need only look at Trump's rhetoric and that of the NSGOP, and how it eerily mirrors their predecessors in 1930s Berlin. Eliminate the safety net because "Arbeit macht frei." Paul Ryan calls poor people "takers"; Reagan called them "welfare queens"; Hitler called them parasites. Replace the word "Jew" in anything Trump has said about Mexicans and Muslims and it's the same inflammatory hate speech.
But as for his and the rest of the alt-right's deflection that they can't be "Nazis" if they have Jews on their side (like Kushner and Miller), well, even Hitler had his share of useful idiots in prison kapos and the Stern Gang. Israel itself under Netanyahu (Jared's "surrogate uncle") has become that which they claim to hate most, and justify their existence based on: a xenophobic, ethnonationalist would-be empire genociding the Palestinians and using their historic oppression as an excuse. Bibi's own son tweeted out hooknose memes and Hitler quotes about "globalist" boogeyman George Soros right after Charlottesville. It took forever for Bibi himself to make any statements at all -- and when he did, they were reluctant and wishy-washy at best. That doesn't sound like someone who's concerned about racists to me.
99 44/100 percent of the Trump GOP and their high-level acolytes (including the Likud) are Nazis, pure and simple. The rank-and-file voters are useful idiots for a racist party of "Gott mit Uns" theocrats, whether they consider themselves "racists" or even know what the word "theocrat" means or not.
A time will come in the future when The Art of the Deal is studied as a white-nationalist polemic much the same way as The Turner Diaries, David Duke's memoirs, Anders Breivik's rambling manifesto, and Mein Kampf itself. Leave it to a guy named Drumpf who's obsessed with purity and thinks "some" of the Charlottesville Klan klowns are "very good people" to Make America Germany Again.
Despite Curry's contention, I have never encountered humourous or sarcastic attacks on the press by the "us-vs-them" crowd. It's always threatening, and more often than not, violent. To these types, the media is always controlled by (pick your poison), an institution to be curtailed, imprisoned or eradicated.
b_nichol
I found that footage stunning, it makes you wonder what might have happened in the U.S. and Britain if the Nazis had won the war. Also since Fred Trump was arrested at a Klan rally in 1927 I wonder if he was there.
it was as you point out 1923, not even Sheer remembers this as fondly at 1936
hi Gyor...your misogyny is showing again. I don't need to hear from anyone to know that Donald Trump walks like a Nazi sympathizer or quacks like one. His comments in the aftermath of Charlottesville made that only too clear. And as Marshall Curry points out, what's interesting about that doc is what it says about the modus operandi of demagogues. And if it happened once it could happen again...
hi anon 2:14...yes, very well said. Trump is floating in a Nazi swamp, and when you have groups of his supporters marching around with forces chanting "blood and soil" or "the Jews won't replace us" it's obvious we have a Nazi problem. I used to think of America's pre-war Nazis as nothing more than clowns. But after seeing that doc, I can see what a threat they might have become. And I'm so glad that Americans, Canadians, and so many others smashed their little Reich into pieces. However, clearly there is some work to do before we can bury them forever...
hi anon...yes, that's a good point. I don't recall any other presidents having noisy election-style rallies after they were elected. Watching that whiny Nazi in the doc playing to the lower instincts of the crowd, reminded me of the way Drumph behaves when addressing his deplorables. And since he worships people like Putin or Duterte, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he had a hot groupie love going for the ghost of Adolph Hitler...
hi anon...yes, I saw that and I was very impressed, especially since the city where that team plays has a lot of refugees and immigrants. And I feel the someway you do about our alt-right Cons. They couldn't be a more alien party, and their values are not mine, or the values of this country. If our Con media was less biased or more in touch with reality, they'd be pointing this out themselves. I caught some of Herr Bannon's speech to the religious fanatics at the so-called Values Summit, and all that grubby fascist needed was a Nazi uniform to complete the picture. My parents would never let Trump into our castle in Scotland, but if they saw Bannon coming up the driveway, I'm pretty sure they call the police. And so would I...
hi b_nichol....no, humour and sarcasm seem to have gone the way of the Dodo in the U.S. these days, as they have to a slightly less extent in Canada. I try my best to be as lighthearted as possible when criticizing my political opponents, but as the situation get grimmer and grimmer, trying to be humorous is getting harder and harder...
hi anon...yes it was a bizarre scene, and when that protester was mugged after getting on to the stage, it became really sinister in a hurry. It seemed those pathetic Nazis were really concerned about the safety of their phony Fuhrer. I was glad to see that Fritz Kuhn was eventually imprisoned, and like all good Cons, the charge was embezzlement. However I doubt that Fred was there, because a year or so later he was making a future selling buildings to the U.S. navy...
20K NAZI supporters in Madison Sq. Gardens in 1939, well in this century they all got together and elected a NAZI TO THE presidency of the U.S.A. Not much has changed. We saw what happened in Charlotesville and it will happen again. Trump suggested team owners fire players who exercise their First Amendment Rights. Its all coming back.
There really isn't much difference between circumstances in Germany pre 1939 and the U.S.A. this century. the average working person has seen their wages decline, social safety net decline, etc. All Trump has to do now is start a war and all will be good in the U.S.A. Of course this time the war starts Trump might find he is at the loosing end. None of the NATO countries will be running to assist.
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