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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis piece is kind of chilling -When It's Too Late To stop Fascism, according to Stepnen Zweig
The Austrian émigré writer Stefan Zweig composed the first draft of his memoir, The World of Yesterday, in a feverish rapture during the summer of 1941, as headlines gave every indication that civilization was being swallowed in darkness. Zweigs beloved France had fallen to the Nazis the previous year. The Blitz had reached a peak in May, with almost fifteen hundred Londoners dying in a single night. Operation Barbarossa, the colossal invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, in which nearly a million people would die, had launched in June. Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, roared along just behind the Army, massacring Jews and other vilified groupsoften with the help of local police and ordinary citizens.
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And still Zweig have might noted that, as of today, President Trump and his sinister wire-pullers have not yet locked the protocols for their exercise of power into place. One tragic lesson offered by The World of Yesterday is that, even in a culture where misinformation has become omnipresent, where an angry base, supported by disparate, well-heeled interests, feels empowered by the relentless lying of a charismatic leader, the center might still hold. In Zweigs view, the final toxin needed to precipitate German catastrophe came in February of 1933, with the burning of the national parliament building in Berlinan arson attack Hitler blamed on the Communists but which some historians still believe was carried out by the Nazis themselves. At one blow all of justice in Germany was smashed, Zweig recalled. The destruction of a symbolic edificea blaze that caused no loss of lifebecame the pretext for the government to begin terrorizing its own civilian population. That fateful conflagration took place less than thirty days after Hitler became Chancellor. The excruciating power of Zweigs memoir lies in the pain of looking back and seeing that there was a small window in which it was possible to act, and then discovering how suddenly and irrevocably that window can be slammed shut.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-its-too-late-to-stop-fascism-according-to-stefan-zweig?intcid=mod-latest
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)(George Santayana)
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)barbtries
(28,810 posts)911 played right into their fantasy. and away we went.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)Our intelligence services which he constantly derides seem to be doing a good job of preventing large scale, organized attacks.
yodermon
(6,143 posts)(although not really; one is treason, the other is not); either way the response of this cabal will be terrifying and that is what keeps me up at night.
iluvtennis
(19,868 posts)Javaman
(62,532 posts)mountain grammy
(26,642 posts)colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)And you non foaming at the mouth republicans, join people like Rick Wilson and Charles Krautheimer of all people in fighting this with all we have. This is not normal, we fought WWll to eradicate it in Europe.
Among other things we have to go hard after right wing propoganda on TV and Radio...Especially Fox and their ridiculous fair and balanced promos. The harm they have caused is hard to overestimate. They have turned millions into right wing talking point zombies who are fed right right slant from dusk to dawn.
Hate cannot prevail and if we do not fight hard now it may be too late.
dlk
(11,574 posts)Make no mistake, Trump is the embodiment of today's Republican Party ideals. It's not just him.
jmbar2
(4,902 posts)Much of the current chaos is straight out of the Dominionist playbook. They've worked for thirty years to get their folks at the top of the "Seven Mountains" of power. All of the current bad policies are straight out of their playbook, and they are almost there. They have legions of stealth adherents and believers in the Republican party. We need to more mainstream Christians to step up here. You are the only ones who can make the Biblical case for why they are wrong.
If you want to learn more, check out Theocracywatch.org for a good summary of Dominionism and how they took over the Republican Party.
byronius
(7,398 posts)No way. Not going to happen. Not here.
LudwigPastorius
(9,164 posts)Yeah, but he's got four years and is massively and cluelessly incompetent.
I'm shuddering right now.