Thursday, December 13, 2007

Reichstag Fire - Twin Tower Destruction

The similarities between the Reichstag fire in February, 1933 and the destruction of the World Trade Center had similar consequences, although fortunately for us. so far, George Bush's actions have been thwarted, somewhat.

In response to the fire, Hitler persuaded an old and weak but still much-revered Hindenburg "to sign emergency decrees that virtually ended all civil rights that the Weimar Constitution had granted." Nazi propaganda then whipped the population into conformity. The Germans had a word for it -- Gleichschaltung -- like many German words, not really translatable into English, but approximately meaning "coordination," literally, "putting into the same gear," an amazingly impersonal, mechanical word for the "elimination of all opposition, either by decree or murder."

The fire so suited Nazi aims that for many years people assumed it was the Nazis who set fire to the Reichstag -- as now people believe that our government in some way was responsible for the destruction of the twin towers -- but in fact a deranged Dutchman set the fire. No matter, the Nazis moved against the Communists and the Jews the way the Bush Administration moved against Muslims and anyone of middle-east ancestry.

The same yearning for a "healthy fascism," a "new religious commitment" made by "strong human beings in a united nation," as Fritz Stern describes the German yearnings that preceded Hitler, can be heard in all of the Republican candidates for President. What Bush started, others appear ready to continue, in even more radical terms.

We have lost habeas corpus, the right to privacy, the security of the ballot box, a free press of dispersed ownership. We are giving the government and its private contractor armies the right to jail and torture us in the name of protecting us from a different "ism" and a different race. The effectiveness of such a strategy and its sad results are clearly spelled out in German history, another nation that felt it had a special destiny, a German exceptionalism between East and West. We're right there, unless we can stop those who profit from promoting anxiety and fear. The Germans didn't find that possible. The odds may be against us as well.

Quotations are from "Dreams and Delusions, the Drama of German History," by Fritz Stern, 1987.

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