Now Is The Time To Act Against Trump’s Evil Or It Will Be Too Late
We are at a time that will define the nation’s future while trump is stationing thousands of soldiers at the Mexican border to keep the “poison” brown people out of the country.
It is a time when trump plans to build concentration camps to detain brown people while they are separated from families and tossed out like yesterday’s trash.
It is a time when trump threatens nations with crippling trade tariffs if they don’t bend to his will and help his shameful effort to foster white superiority in the U.S.
It is a time when trump’s actions are designed to frighten people of color from even trying to emigrate to the U.S. leading many immigrants who are American citizens to flee the country in fear.
It is a time when terrified families are awakened to a slamming door only to watch men in black uniforms with M15 assault rifles and no warrants, spiriting away their husbands, without a word.
It is a time when people fear the black shirts, this time they are ICE agents though they are just as horrifying as Hitler’s brown-shirted Nazi Storm Troopers.
It is a time when trump presses his sycophantic lawmakers to defy the Constitution and prohibit American-born children from gaining citizenship.
It is a time when trump has ordered that transgendered people may not serve in the military as part of his war against transgendered people and much of the LGBTQ community.
It is a time when trump is purging the government of perceived enemies, including all Justice Department lawyers who worked on the various cases against him, while demanding that his subjects vow loyalty or face dismissal.
It is a time when trump threatens to imprison the “communists, Marxists, and radical Democrats” while he courts the uber rich, promising to help them in exchange for their money.
It is a time when trump and his underlings are plotting to keep him in office permanently.
It is a time when trump is threatening to seize sovereign nations.
It is a time when a movement grows among the right wing to further deify trump by carving his image on Mount Rushmore.
At times like this it is appropriate to “Never Forget” and to commemorate Monday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp at Auschwitz, Poland. It is a time to sound a call for those who oppose the growing fascist threat in the U.S. and persecution of any people or group because of their skin color, race, religion or politics.
Remember the immortal words of the great Nazi opponent and cleric Martin Niemöller, who warned the world in 1946:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Niemöller was decrying how he and other German intellectuals and clergy had, through their silence, collaborated with the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets. The quote reflects the dangers of complacency and the importance of speaking out against injustice, even when it doesn’t directly affect us.
Niemöller’s words could be compared with the trump plan to deport millions of immigrants. While the comparison is not exact, it remains a forceful warning about the results of not being vigilant and not advocating for the rights of all individuals, regardless of their status or background.
To paraphrase Niemöller’s words:
“They came after the immigrants from Mexico but I did not speak out because I am not an immigrant.
They came after transgendered people but I kept quiet because I’m not transgendered.
They came after the Communists and the Marxists and the leftists, but I did not object because I am neither.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Is it too soon to draw too many parallels between the silence over the immigration raids and the persecution of transgendered people with the silence before and during the holocaust? Are comparisons an insult to the millions of victims of the Holocaust? Is it time to say never again? Or is it too late?
The vilestf thing that trump is doing is that he is turning millions of Americans against each other, whether it is because of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation or their politics. Turning people against each other or for each other is not a new tactic for retaining power. Carl Schmitt, a German political scientist and member of the Nazi Party, wrote about the “friend-enemy distinction” in his 1932 book “The Concept of the Political.” Schmitt wrote that a political community can only survive when it is clear about who is a friend and who is the enemy, which fits trump perfectly.
Trump shows no emotions as he portrays himself in terms of his power. As Benjamin Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor, wrote, “When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins.”
N.Y. Times columnist David French wrote that “Because our civics depends on our ethics, we should be teaching ethics right alongside civics. Sadly, we’re failing at both tasks, and our baser nature is telling millions of Americans that cruelty is good, if it helps us win, and kindness is evil, if it weakens our cause. That is the path of destruction. As the prophet Isaiah said, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.’”
But first, the lessons of the heroism of two young, Nazi fighters, Sophia Scholl and her brother, Hans.
Sophia Scholl was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active in the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. Scholl and her brother, Hans, were convicted of high treason and beheaded on Feb. 22, 1943, after distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich. Sophia was 22 and her brother was 23.
Else Gebel, a communist member of the German resistance to Nazism, was a cellmate of Sophie Scholl in the Gestapo headquarters in the Wittelsbacher Palais of Munich before Scholl’s execution. Gebel recalled Scholl’s last words:
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause… It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted.”
As World War II was unfolding, opposition to the Nazis in Germany was expanding in small pockets. The best-known resistance group was “Die Weisse Rose” (“The White Rose”). Run by a small group of university students in Munich, the group made and distributed anonymous leaflets which called on intellectuals and professionals to unite and stand against the Nazi regime. The leaflets used passages and ideas from classic texts, including the Bible, philosophical works and German poets.
The Gestapo was in a furious frenzy and spent weeks searching for the creators of the White Rose pamphlets. In February 1943 a tip-off led to the arrest of three students, including the Scholls. In just six hours, the three young resisters were interrogated, tortured, tried and executed. In coming weeks, the Gestapo arrested and executed more members of the group. The last White Rose pamphlet was obtained by the Allies who printed it in bulk and dropped the pamphlets by air all over Germany.
Opposing the Nazis was dangerous to use a monstrous understatement. Regardless, the six years before the war saw significant anti-Nazi criticism, dissent and resistance. Much of the dissent was done furtively because of the Nazi police state and the broadening powers of enforcement agencies like the Gestapo. Further complicating the resistance was that many Germans approved of the Nazi regime’s decisive leadership and economic successes and were willing to turn in dissenters.
The Nazi regime was popular with too many Germans to incite any kind of counter-revolution but several resistance groups formed from the remnants of political parties, which were disbanded by the Nazis in mid-1933. Industrial workers and former trade unionists were among the opposition while universities were important sources of anti-government criticism and protest. Catholic and Protestant churches opposed Nazi ideology and some sheltered Germans who were persecuted by the regime.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was Germany’s largest non-Nazi political group and the largest source of resistance until 1933 when it was declared illegal and forced to disband. The party leadership, which called itself Sopade, then fled to Prague and continued to operate in exile.
Many SPD members stayed in Germany and formed an underground resistance group called “Roter Strosstrupp” (“Red Strike Troops”). By late 1933 the group had around 3,000 members. They produced a newspaper reporting on Nazi abuses of power and calling on a workers’ uprising to overthrow the regime.
Opposition to Nazism also came from members of the German Communist Party (KPD). Before the Nazis took over, the German Communist Party (KPD) was the largest communist party outside Soviet Russia, with more than 350,000 members. Hitler claimed the KPD started the fire at the Reichstag office and he ordered that party offices be raided and thousands of KPD members were arrested and hauled before Nazi courts or detained in concentration camps.
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on February 27, 1933, on the home of the German parliament in Berlin. Four weeks later, Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was arrested for the arson and the Nazis used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government. Hitler was able to induce President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communists. The fire lit the blaze of Hitler.
Despite the violent persecution, more than 30,000 KPD members continued with underground resistance, publishing “Die Rote Fahne” (“The Red Flag”), the KPD’s official newspaper since 1918. The KPD underground published millions of anti-Nazi leaflets and pamphlets between 1933 and 1935, focusing on Nazi mistreatment of German workers.
Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag said in an interview on Feb. 22, 1993, that the White Rose rebels were “possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the twentieth century … The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I do not know why.”
Before he was executed, Hans School explained the horrors of living in Nazi Germany.
“It is certain today that every honest German is ashamed of their government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children, when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes — that infinitely outdistance every human measure — reach the light of day.”
Niemöller
Niemöller was a conservative and like most Protestant clergy during the rise of the Nazis, he welcomed Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, believing that it would bring a national revival.
He was a naval veteran of World War I and was an acknowledged anti-Semite. After the war, he was ordained a Lutheran pastor on June 29, 1924, and studied Protestant theology. But his support for Hitler was strong. In his autobiography, “From U-Boat to Pulpit,” published in 1933, he hailed Hitler for beginning a “national revival.” Niemöller’s autobiography received positive reviews in Nazi newspapers and was a bestseller.
In a fortunate twist of fate, the future cleric volunteered in September 1939 to become a U-boat commander but his offer was rejected.
Niemöller’s philosophy evolved and he was one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches, in part because he believed the Nazis’ institutional anti-Semitism was incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity.
Niemöller was first targeted by the Nazis for his opposition to the “Aryan paragraph,” which was a clause in the charters of most organizations, corporations or real estate deeds that reserved membership or right of residence solely for members of the “Aryan race” and excluded any non-Aryans, particularly those of Jewish and Slavic descent. The rule was common in public life in Germany and Austria from 1885 to 1945.
The Nazi regime’s reaction was quick and relentless, with almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers arrested. For opposing the Nazis’ state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He escaped execution and after his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis.
In 1945, Niemöller refuted his earlier nationalistic beliefs and helped to create the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, a declaration issued by the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany that confessed guilt for its tepid role in opposing the Nazis and the Third Reich.
Niemöller later wrote that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis was the turning point in his life. Leo Stein, a former concentration camp cell mate, was able to flee the camp and emigrated to America. In 1941, Stein wrote about what Niemöller said as to why he ever supported the Nazi Party.
Niemöller said that he had met with Hitler in 1932, shortly before he became chancellor. He said the fuhrer offered promises but later betrayed him.
According to Stein, Niemöller said that “Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: ‘There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany.”
“Hitler’s assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me,” Niemöller said.
In 1961, Niemöller became president of the World Council of Churches. In 1966, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. Niemöller died in 1984, at the age of 92.