America 1933

This is a slightly edited repost of an essay I wrote not long after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. In light of Trump's recent rant in which he called neo-Nazis and other white supremacists simply decent people lawfully demonstrating, I'm reporting it here. Some of the specifics have changed since i wrote this essay. Trump is now President, not President-Elect. I haven't heard more about a Muslim registry. Those changes however don't change the substance or the truth of the text. Today even more clearly than in November of last year we are living in America 1933.

The American fascist Donald Trump is President-Elect of the United States of America. Next January he will succeed Barack Obama in the highest office in our land. I have already expressed my anger and rage at that result in this blog, but I can’t stop being affected by it. Today one parallel in particular won’t leave my mind. It is the parallel, or at least the possible parallel, between Germany on February 8, 1933, nine days after Hitler became Chancellor, and the United States of America today, nine days after Donald Trump was made President-Elect. Of course I know that the parallel isn’t perfect. I am a professionally trained historian, so I get it that there are never perfect parallels between different places and different times. Still, one recent bit of really bad news out of a band of right-wing zealots Trump is installing around him is that they are planning to create a “registry” of American Muslims. I don’t know if the Nazi’s first act against Germany’s Jews was a registry, but it wasn’t the death camps. Those came later. They came as the logical conclusion of a policy of hatred and discrimination that began much more innocently. When I heard about Trump’s proposed registry of Muslims my first thought was: What’s next? Yellow crescents? If you don’t get that, go look up the yellow Stars of David the Nazis forced Jews to wear. In February, 1933, Germany was just starting to deal with Hitler and the Nazis. In November, 2016, we are just starting to deal with Trump and his followers.

Some people know how I have reacted to the election of Donald Trump as president. Readers of this blog know. And people say to me: Give him a chance. We don’t know yet what he’ll do. Get over it, we’ve had bad presidents before. And I think: Is that what the Germans who didn’t like Hitler should have said in February, 1933? Should they have said don’t worry, the worst won’t happen? Of course not. Part of the problem was that far too many Germans said things precisely like that. There’s a powerful scene in the movie version of the musical Cabaret. The setting is an outdoor German beer garden on a beautiful day somewhere outside Berlin. Ordinary Germans of different ages are sitting peacefully enjoying the sunshine and good German beer or white wine. A young man stands up. He’s wearing a Nazi uniform of some sort. He is the model of supposed Aryan racial perfection, tall, blond, and handsome. He starts to sing in a beautiful, trained high tenor voice. One by one the people in the beer garden stand and sing with him. First the young, then nearly everyone. As he ends his song he gives the Nazi salute. His song has a refrain:

O Fatherland, Fatherland, give us a sign.

Your children are waiting to see.

A future will come when the world is mine.

Tomorrow belongs to me.

Only one old man remains seated. He drops his head in despair. The English character Brian says to the German character who is with him witnessing the scene “Do you still think you can control them?” The German character shrugs his shoulders and drives away. We know what happened. We know decent people didn’t control them. World War II happened. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau happened. Stalingrad and the blockade of Leningrad happened. D-day and the Battle of the Bulge happened. Does tomorrow belong to Trump and the right-wing, racist fringe in our country? To the so-called alt-right? To the KKK? To the deniers of climate change? Will we just shrug our shoulders and drive away? Will we get over it? Will we give him a chance like the Germans gave Hitler a chance? I can only pray that we won’t.

I don’t think Trump and his band will create an American Auschwitz for Muslims. I don’t think they’re that bad, but I do know that one of Trump’s people cited the internment camps for Japanese Americans at the beginning of World War II as a precedent for a registry of Muslims today. I do know that Trump has said we should ban all immigration by Muslims. I know that he considers all Muslims to be suspect because there are terrorists who say they are Muslims regardless of how badly they violate the basic tenets of that faith. I know that Trump has called immigrants from Mexico rapists and murderers. I know that he scapegoats Muslims and immigrants much the way Hitler scapegoated Jews. And I’m supposed to get over it? I’m supposed to give him a chance? I’m supposed to think it won’t be that bad?

I’ve heard all of that, and to all of that I shout a loud and vehement No! No, now is not the time to get over it. Now is not the time to give this American fascist we’ve elected a chance. Now is the time to work to prevent the worst, not just to sit around thinking the worst won’t happen. I’ve said before in this blog that now is the time for anger and rage. It is, and it is time to turn our anger and our rage into action. I don’t know yet what action (although as a Christian I am convinced it must be nonviolent action), but it sure seems that we are America 1933. We are where Germany was at the beginning of Nazi rule. No, I don’t think Trump is as bad as Hitler; but Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons. Hitler didn’t have a planet on the brink of irreversible climate change. Trump does. He may not be as bad as Hitler, but his potential for causing irreparable damage to God’s earth and her people is far greater than Hitler’s was. So America, wake up. It’s 1933.