It can absolutely happen here! I have been involved with protests and demonstrations and will continue to do so for as long as I can in addition to becoming more politically active. As a dual national I am grateful that I have the option to take my family to a safe zone in Germany. Now both my nations have seen the rise of a demagogue to power. One nation realized its mistakes too late, this nation has the chance to turn it around if it has the courage, wisdom and strength to do so.
I grew up in Worms Germany the product of a German native and an American soldier. I lived in the US and in Germany due to my dual heritage. When fifteen I interviewed all my German relatives to find out why the Nazis rose to power and why didn’t they try to stop it. I came away from this youthful research with some simple answers. It was because a lot of seemingly ordinary and good people really believed that to be white and blue eyed was better. We can argue all the complicated reasoning behind the politics of it but it boils down to what ultimately happened; neighbors turning in neighbors, families turning in family members, people remaining silent as they watched their neighbors, coworkers, family and friends being hauled away, hate crimes being ignored, people looking the other way when they happened. All the while people sat around saying well it will get better, they wouldn’t possibly go that far, this will stop soon, maybe its better like this anyway. For every individual and freedom that was hauled away the realm of acceptability became bigger and bigger until it became perfectly okay to line people up for miles and miles, to strip them of their clothing, belongings and dignity, to gas them to death, to murder men, women and children, mainly people of the Jewish faith, but also communists, gypsies, gays and the disabled and to burn their precious sacred human bodies in brutal ovens that belched black, thick smoke across the land for miles and miles for everyone to see and point to while they continued to buy their milk and bread.
And it all began with an unapologetic, angry, anti-social racist leader with an axe to grind and a blindness to hate crimes. Sound familiar? One of my relatives was Gypsy she still is branded with her Auschwitz number, another relative went to pick up her learning disabled daughter from school one day and arrived to an empty school, she never saw her daughter again. My grandmother was forcibly sterilized after one child, my mother, because she had fainting spells so was not considered physically fit enough to bear a child worthy of the Aryan race. In Nazi Germany, abortions were illegal and the penalties for providing an abortion to an Aryan woman was a capital offense, unless the fetus was deformed or disabled or the mother was considered unfit and then an abortion could be forced upon the mother. My grandfather was arrested for spitting on a Nazi lapel pin. My grandmother was forced to walk through city hall all day long stopping in every office to say “Heil Hitler” because she had forgotten to address a soldier in a nazi uniform properly on the street. And these things were nothing compared to what happened to their Jewish friends, neighbors and coworkers. In Nazi Germany the jailing of political opponents was common. In Nazi Germany hate crimes were sanctioned. In Nazi Germany the media propaganda machine was well oiled and polished, in Nazi Germany artists, celebrities and writers had to help the propaganda machine or were jailed. In Nazi Germany liberal leaders were powerless, in Nazi Germany business was an active participant, in Nazi Germany Christians and Christian churches were complicit and outright supporters. If you don’t think it can happen here, think again, it’s already beginning.
And as we saw from another article on Daily Kos this morning from the uber driver in Boston that elders in German are sounding the clarion call and wanting their children to come home from this broken and scary America.