"Germany is an easy country to be in. The people are friendly. The bars and bakeries are lovely. The cities are a potent mix of cultures: Cologne baklava, the kebabs of Essen, the mind-bending schnitzel-overload of the Munich cafe scene, schnitzels the size of stingrays, schnitzels that will haunt you.
An abiding lesson of the Hitler years that many of us seem now inclined to forget, to our shame and peril: Good people, friendly people, nice people, civilized people, religious people, churchgoing people are capable of committing great evil. And all the more so when they assume, without thinking at all, that God is on their side and that they are nice, innocent, and well-meaning.
"The Trumpian revolution … seems to be the product of decadent boredom commingled with casual nihilism.
Circumstances for our revolutionaries have never been better. They are so flush that they parade on their boats. And fly upside-down flags outside of their million-dollar suburban homes."
"[Philosopher Bettina Stangneth is] not convinced that Germans have faced the worst fact about the Nazi period: not the ignorant masses, but the educated elites were the driving forces behind the regime.”
~ Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019), p. 55.
“People voted for Hitler as they voted for Putin and Trump, because they didn’t want to give up their own privileges. This isn’t a matter of ignorance. They understand exactly the price of enlightenment: that the equality of humankind means the equality of humankind, and not only after I’ve secured my own comfort."
“What had come out on top in Germany might occur in darkest Russia or the Balkans, but surely not in their law-abiding country. What had happened? That was the question raised on all sides, but no one had an answer.”
~ Joachim Fest, Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood, trans. Martin Chalmers (NY: Other Press, 2012), p. 100
“‘Why do these easy victories of Hitler’s never stop?’ he [Fest’s father] asked one evening after a pensive listing of events. And why, he asked on another occasion, was this mixture of arrogance and hankering for advantage breaking out in Germany, of all places? Why did the Nazi swindle not simply collapse in the face of the laughter of the educated?"
"On another occasion he [Fest’s father] spoke of the main error that he and his friends had fallen victim to, because they had believed all too unreservedly in reason, in Goethe, Kant, Mozart, and the whole tradition which came from that. Until 1932 he had always trusted that this tradition was proof enough, that a primitive gangster like Hitler could never achieve power in Germany. But he hadn’t had a clue."
"One of the most shocking things for him had been to realize that it was completely unpredictable how a neighbor, colleague, or even a friend might behave when it came to moral decisions”
“Hitler had made it to the chancellery in a brokered deal that conservative elites agreed to only because they were convinced they could hold him in check and make use of him for their own political aims. They underestimated his cunning and overestimated his base of support, which had been the very reason they had felt they needed him in the first place."
~ Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (NY: Random House, 2020), p. 82
"At the height of their power at the polls, the Nazis never pulled the majority they coveted and drew only 38 percent in the country's last free and fair elections at the onset of their twelve-year reign. The old guard did not foresee, or chose not to see, that his actual mission was 'to exploit the methods of democracy to destroy democracy.’
By the time they recognized their fatal miscalculation, it was too late."
"Hitler had risen as an outside agitator, a cult figure enamored of pageantry and rallies with parades of people carrying torches that an observer said look like ‘rivers of fire.’ Hitler saw himself as the voice of the Volk, of their grievances and fears, especially those in the rural districts, as a god-chosen savior, running on instinct. He had never held elected office before.”
"There is, however, a difference between ‘not seeing’ and ‘not knowing’. And after Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, there could be no possible excuse for any foreign traveller to claim that they did not know the Nazis’ true colours."
~ Julia Boyd, Travelers in the Third Reich, The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945 (NY: Pegasus, 2018), pp. 372-3
Perhaps the most chilling fact to emerge from these travelers’ tales is that so many perfectly decent people could return home from Hitler’s Germany singing its praises. Nazi evil permeated every aspect of German society yet, when blended with the seductive pleasures still available to the foreign visitor, the hideous reality was too often and for too long ignored."
A far-right former Israeli lawmaker who quoted Adolf Hitler while discussing the takeover of Gaza and expulsion of Palestinians is scheduled to speak at an event hosted by the #Australian Jewish Association this week.
Moshe Feiglin will speak in an online event called Israel 2024 and Beyond on Wednesday evening,
In a video shared recently on social media, #Feiglin said: “As #Hitler said, ‘I cannot live if one Jew is left’. We can’t live here if one ‘Islamo-Nazi’ remains in Gaza.”
"In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler's conduct? In a society that feels complete impunity due to #Americas protection," one foreign policy expert said.
“We are not guests in our country. This is our country, all of it. As #Hitler said, ‘I cannot live if one Jew is left’. We can’t live here if one ‘Islamo-Nazi’ remains in Gaza.”
Moshe #Feiglin, leader of #Zehut, an ultra-nationalist religious party
Can someone who speaks #Hebrew verify translation of this #ShiTwitter post? I don't know the account (not on that platform for years) and don't trust anything coming from there, especially something this outrageous and unbelievable.
On @N12News Israel's most watched news show, former #Likud MP Moshe Feiglin invokes Hitler to justify Gaza resettlement:"As #Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left,' we can't live here if one 'Islamo-nazi' remains in #Gaza."
“He channels his brutality into humbling their pride, crushing their freedom of conscience, diminishing their individual merits and transforming his supporters into flunkeys stripped of all dignity. Like all dictators, #Hitler loves only those whom he can despise.”
Today in Labor History June 4, 1939: The U.S. blocked the MS St. Louis from landing in Florida. The ship carried 963 Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazis. Canada also refused. As a result, the ship was forced back to Europe. Over 200 of its passengers ultimately died in Nazi concentration camps. The ordeal is also known as the Voyage of the Damned. This event has been depicted in numerous books, including Julian Barnes’s novel, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989); Bodie and Brock Thoene's novel Munich Signature (1991); and Leonardo Padura's novel Herejes (2013). Cordell Hull, who was Secretary of State at the time, and who led the fight to turn the refugees away, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1944. It was one of the worst Nobel prizes ever awarded (along with Henry Kissinger (1973), who facilitated bloody dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, genocides in Bangladesh and East Timor, and carpet bombing of Cambodia. Or Elihu Root (1912), the U.S. Secretary of War who oversaw the brutal repression of the Filipino independence movement. And let’s not forget Shimon Peres, Yitzak Rabin and Yasser Arafat (1994), who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize despite their histories of human rights abuses. Or Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). Or Mikhail Gorbachev (1990), who sent tanks into the Baltic republics less than a year after winning his “peace” prize, killing numerous civilians. Or Barack Obama (2009), who began assassinating civilians with his drones and arresting more immigrants than his predecessor, George W. Bush, not long after winning his Nobel. Or Woodrow Wilson (1919), an outright racist and apologist for slavery, who sent troops to occupy Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and to “intervene” in Cuba, Honduras and Panama, and who oversaw the Palmer raids that led to over 10,000 arrests and over 500 deportations of union leaders, peace activists, socialists and anarchists. Or Menachem Begin (1978), who four years after receiving his “peace” prize launched the bloody invasion of Lebanon, and who refused to fire Ariel Sharon, even after the Kahan Commission found Sharon culpable for the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
When the slaughter finally stops in Gaza, perhaps they’ll give Biden a Nobel Peace Prize “for bringing peace” to Palestine. They might even include Netanyahu, for “going against the right wing of his government” and signing onto the peace plan.
Today in Labor History June 4, 1932: Chilean politicians and the military carried out a coup d'etat, installing Marmaduke Grove, who declared Chile a "socialist republic." However, workers were given no means to participate. The Communist Party and many unions opposed the new government because it was run by the military and not by the workers. However, the “socialist” government did temporarily halt evictions and ordered the “Caja de Crédito Popular” to return tools and clothes that workers had pawned there. They also pardoned everyone who participated in the Sailors' mutiny of 1931, when enlisted men rebelled against their officers and the state. Furthermore, they provided free meals to the unemployed. Twelve days later, the military ended the "workers republic." That same year, Farabundo Marti led a short-lived, but successful communist revolution of indigenous peasants in El Salvador. It was violently suppressed by General Martinez a few months later in La Matanza, a genocide of up to 40,000 mostly indigenous people. Martinez then became the first head of state to officially recognize Hitler as leader of Germany.
@rbreich #GOP... the same people rallying around a #ConvictedFelon to be their Party nominee who quotes #Hitler and promised to be #DictatorOnDayOne just b/c he slanted the #SCotUS to its current mess... would go "scorched Earth" to protect it.