[Peace-discuss] Fascism

[Bob Illyes]

This is a response to Mort's posting regarding Hitler.

A while back, I spent some time with a friend who
specializes in fascism and has written a book on fascism in
South America. Both of her parents were in Nazi concentration
camps, so her interest is very personal. I ran by her my opinions
of the parallels of the Nazis and the current administration.
I hoped she would say something like "well Bob, there are
certainly a lot of formal similarities, but you miss a few
differences." Instead, she said "I agree with your analysis".
She went on to say that the only difference that she could see
was that the Nazis had genuine concern for the poor, which was
lacking with the neocons.

I've spent enough time in Germany and England to know that
Germany feels very much like the United States and England feels
alien. Of course, I'm typical of the midwest and of largely
German ancestry, so one should take this observation with a grain
of salt. Is the US-German connection bad? I don't think so. We
must not forget that the Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch), the
Mennonites, the Amish, the members of the Amana Colonies, and
many more folks who disliked war and respect democracy were
German by origin.

There is no real question regarding the intentions of Bush and
his friends. Like Kaiser Wilhelm (Kaiser is German for Caesar),
these guys intend to found a new Rome and have said so. But first
they must destroy the Republic, as Julius did in Rome. There is
little doubt that this is their intention. But can they pull it off?

German democracy was fragile at the time the Nazis took it over.
The first all-German parliament met in Frankfurt in 1848 or so (at
Saint Paul's Church, I think). Their flag was that of modern Germany,
first flown at that time. They offered the King of Prussia
the position of constitutional monarch for all of the German
states. He declined. Instead, he deliberately started a war with
France, used it as an excuse to argue that the German states had
to stick together lest France destroy them, and made himself
emperor. There were a few good points in what happened. Prussia had
public education before the United States. There was a tradition
that not even the King was above the law. The Bundestag (Parliament)
was set up. But as usual, the progress was incremental, with only
enough power being given to the people to keep them off the backs
of the Kaiser and his chums.

At the end of World War One, Germany almost went communist. Communists
occupied the government buildings, and were finally evicted by
returning army veterans who painted swastikas on their helmets (I
have no idea of why they chose this symbol) to indicate that they
were not regular army, but acted on their own. A republic was
reestablished, but what was going on just below the surface was
scary. The veterans who had evicted the communists did not put their
guns away. Germany had large, armed militias. The depression pushed
them over the top. Hitler was elected and then seized nearly absolute
power via the support of the militias. Hitler declared the Third
Reich (Empire) which was to last a thousand year, at least.
Something else happened, as we all know.

We don't have the large armed militias. We have a much older republic.
We have a long history of democracy that predates the revolution. So
I don't think the New American Century guys are going to succeed in
their intentions. But we should be worried nonetheless, or they will
have what they want. Our Achilles heel is the free press, which
is what they are going after with great effectiveness and which I
think we must at all costs defend.

The other thing we must watch out for is parallel government. The
Nazis did not actually eliminate the constitutional government. Instead,
they set up their own "courts" and prisons. If they didn't like you,
one of the safest places you could be was in jail, where you had
protection from judges and the police. But once you left jail, they
snapped you up and put you in a concentration camp, where you were at
their mercy. If you look at what we are doing with Guantanamo and
"extraordinary rendition", the parallel is truly creepy.

Bob