Nazism
Then and Now
Back
in Germany in the 1930s, my father had a second cousin who drove a taxi. He was
a Jew and a Communist. One day some Nazi cab drivers beat him to death. No one
did anything about it: it was OK to murder Communist Jews in those days.
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| Nazi Brownshirts at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin |
I
remembered this story while thinking about the events in Charlottesville, Virginia
last weekend (August 13, 2017), where there was a legal demonstration by American
Nazis and their sympathizers. The demonstration was ostensibly to protest a
decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Southern slaveholder and
rebel who led the Confederate Troops against the legitimate government of the
United States in the American Civil War of 1861-65. There was also a
counter-demonstration. One of the Nazis drove a car into the crowd of counter-demonstrators
and killed Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old woman. Nineteen other people were
wounded, including one young man severely beaten around the head. On August 13
it was reported that five people were in critical condition in hospital.
But
you might say there’s no equivalence between Nazism in Germany in the 1930s and
Nazism in the US now. There’s still a free press and free speech in the US, and
many people denounced the white supremacist and anti-Semitic marchers. The man
who drove the car was arrested (though I’m not sure about the people who beat up
and injured the other 19 people). Even President Donald Trump (sort-of)
denounced the Nazis, though he claimed there were good people on both sides. That’s
hard to believe if you watched (admittedly liberal, anti-racist) CNN, and saw
footage of protesters shouting “blood and soil” (a slogan from 1930s Nazism)
and “Jews will not replace us!” (I’m not sure what the latter slogan meant).
But
there is a kind of equivalence between German and American Nazism. With all the
other stuff going on, we forget that the unarmed counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville
were extremely brave people. They faced a group of heavily armed men carrying assault
rifles; Virginia is an “open-carry” state, where citizens can legally carry weapons.
According to an African-American pastor whom I saw last night on CNN, they also
carried improvised weapons such as bottles filled with urine and cans with
concrete. So as shocking as events in Virginia were, we should be grateful that
nothing worse happened. One or more of the Nazi terrorists could easily have
started firing and killed scores of people.
The
US has two sets of laws that would be inconceivable in any other Western democratic
state. The first is gun laws that permit practically anyone to buy outrageously
dangerous weapons. The second is unrestrained freedom of speech laws. In Canada,
if people shouted racist and anti-Semitic slogans at a demonstration, they
could be charged under hate-speech laws. Laws prohibiting late speech are also
permitted by the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, a Convention that the US originally opposed because it would
have prohibited some of its racial segregation laws. I am a strong supporter of
freedom of speech, but I also support hate-speech laws.
Some
of the white supremacists wore white robes reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan. Others
wore military-style clothing. All of this was legal. To me, this looked like
armed private militias, which are against the law in most countries. That the
US tolerates such armed militias suggests a further resemblance to Nazi
Germany. Hitler’s militias started making trouble in the 1920s, and by the
1930s many people tolerated them.
I
am not suggesting that the US is likely to become a Nazi state. I am suggesting
that the new, proud and public Nazism we saw last week reflects a President and
Administration who—if they are not white supremacists themselves—certainly seem
to sympathize with those who are. The President denounced white supremacists
and the KKK in what appeared to be a scripted speech on August 14, but then
reneged on his denunciation the next day.
Probably his Jewish daughter and son-in-law had pressured him to say
something he didn’t really believe.
When
he reneged on his condemnation, Trump asked, “who’s next?” If we remove statues of Robert E. Lee, he
asked, will people soon want to remove statues of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, early US Presidents who were also slave owners? Perhaps that’s a good idea. Alternately, all
statues of former slave-owners, or buildings built by slaves, or universities
funded by slave-owners, should have plaques placed on them, explaining their
relationship to slavery.
I
am not one of those Canadians who goes around flaunting moral superiority to
Americans. To the contrary, I support all those American liberals who find
themselves having to defend freedom of the press, racial equality and other liberal
values against the extremist and possibly Nazi-sympathizing individuals who
currently inhabit the White House.
Even
worse are those Republicans who don’t hold white supremacist or anti-Semitic
views, but who support Trump because he promises to lower their taxes. Just as
in Germany, it’s not only the disenfranchised working class that supports
Nazis. Many of Hitler’s supporters were rich, upper-class people who wanted to
protect their property and privilege against the Communist threat. There’s no
such threat in the US, but there are still a lot of rich people who want to
become even wealthier than they already are.
This
shameful behavior by Republicans is even more a threat to American democracy
that the horrible Nazis who demonstrated in Charlottesville last weekend.
