Blogpost # M.72 LEFT AND “REICH”

In further and definitive support, we would proffer our principled disdain for aphoristic “wisdom” as our thematic example of the common chestnut: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.” The implied message of this tired admonition is that the knowledge of past mistakes enables their informed avoidance. In such quotation, as is universally the case with aphorisms, there is a notable conflict between the facilely expressed, pseudo-wisdom, and empirical experience.
Nowhere is this critical observation more instructively cogent than in the contemporary right-wing, MAGA efforts directed at replacing our democratic form of government with an authoritarian, religiously inspired, Nazi-like polity, analogous to the 1930’s corruption of the democratic Weimar Republic in Germany, (1919 -1933) to Hitler’s appalling and horrific Third Reich. Modern history tells us that Adolph Hitler used his demagogic, albeit neurotically, egocentric skills to exploit the general economic grievances of his hapless Nation to achieve dictatorial power [ N.B., not merely for “one day,” as enunciated by our own contemporary Orange-dyed egocentric and neurotically amoral demagogue.]
In our view, an enlightened comparison of the eternal mistakes of the past, accompanied by their consequent tragedy and societal suffering and the factual replications of the same, metaphysically, are not founded in the failure to learn from historical experience but rather, as the eternal perpetuation of unremitting flaws in Man’s innate psyche. Our often repeated panacea would be Man’s achievement of personal enlightenment and self-improvement; not, necessarily in perusing history.
Our thematic apprehension consists in the eminent possibility of a catastrophic transmogrification of our desirable Democratic Republic to an authoritarian dictatorship by the pronounced, “one-day” dictator and his cultish acolytes by sowing our free American society with the fast growing and invasive seeds of totalitarianism. We are of the worrisome opinion that not enough mainstream citizens, notably inclusive of the unthinking, suicidal MAGA lemmings, are sufficiently aware of that alarming eventuality and its effects upon his personal life and liberty (ref. earlier blog “LEMMINGS”). Our deep concern resides in our fear that contemporary minds seem to be ill- equipped to embrace the dire realization as to how easily democracy could thus disintegrate, which inability is destined to lead to tragic regret.
Indeed, fascism, known to be not an uncommon the history of Europe is, by no means a novel political pathology in America. As illustration we would cite the Jim Crow Laws of the American South, the Ku Klux Klan, the exponential rise in America’s nativist and xenophobic hostility, the 1936 German Bund, the past widespread and pernicious anti-Semitic influence of Father John Coughlin, Charles Lindberg, a Nazi sympathizer, the internationally famous architect, Philip Johnson, the poet, Ezra Pound (supporter of Mussolini), Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the “American Nazi Party, and too many other notables, numerically far outweighed by an uncountable population of today’s right- wingnuts. One might, relevantly, refer to the fear-inspiring novel by Sinclair Lewis, “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE,” to comprehend the novelist’s warning that it, definitively, “can” happen here.
Readings in the relevant contextual area on the subject of fascism, reveal that a great many notable political scientists and historians (Ex. Griffin and Payne) authoritatively maintain that the term “fascist” is appropriately accurate to describe the politics of Donald Trump. The latter, the would-be dictator, uses classic fascistic techniques to win over and excite his large base in eroding liberal rights. In 2017, visiting Hamburg, Germany, Trump publicly and ominously stated, “Hitler did a lot of good things.” In 2022, President Joseph Biden referred to the Trump, MAGA agenda, as “semi-fascist.”
Trump’s signature red baseball caps, emblazoned with the prominent white letters, “MAGA,” dutifully worn by a sizeable multitude of visible Trump supporters, is an abbreviation of his tactically, deceitful meme, “make America Great Again”; and an understood and implicit intra-cult, dog whistle message, stating, among other pernicious, anti-American sentiments, personal affirmation of Trump’s Nazi-style, racist anti-Muslim, and Mexican border wall xenophobic propaganda.
It is our present intended theme and earnest desire to convey the realization and clear-sighted understanding that in the next Presidential election, there is singular existential significance to the endurance of our Republican Democracy, relative to who America votes against, rather than who he affirmatively votes for.
-p.