When they Came for Me: A Story of Too Little, Too Late.

In a recent online discussion about the 1946 film The True Glory, a joint U.S. / U.K. account of the Second World War in Europe, the conversation was frequently interrupted by a small groups of disruptive writers. One was Russian, one American, One Spanish and one from the U.K.. What was interesting, and frightening is that they were all outright fascists, though some preferred the term Nazi.. Though they frequently sidetracked into debates between themselves concerning national or ethnic honour, reminding me most of the few recorded comments between Mussolini and Hitler -- that is to say, guarded pleasantries followed by chest thumping self aggrandisement -- these online fascists actually had a united purpose in disrupting the conversation. They each believed that historians are liars or misled propagandists, and that the Western Liberal tradition whose highest expressions are to be found in the principles of individual liberty, freedom of speech, and constitutional democracy, are by nature a kind of delusional misrepresentation of what people really want and need. To these writers the phrase "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," the triumphal, hopeful maxim of the French Revolution, "belongs on the trash heap of history."

Reading hundreds, perhaps thousands of words of contra-factual nonsense was difficult, and the exchanges often descended into acrimony and obscenities, but it was illuminating nonetheless, with an awful luciferian light shining brightly into the dark recesses of that aspect of humanity we would oft as not favour remain hidden.

Some Themes:

A Russian telling us, in almost mystical language of the manner in which the strengths of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Stalin are today incarnate in Vladimir Putin, a man he wrote, that would "again lead his nation across the world for glory and  greatness."

A Spaniard who decried the leadership lacking in his king, whom he described as a puppet in the hands of weak willed democrats and communists. His day would come.

The man from the UK who talked of anti-Shariah patrols in London, Liverpool and Manchester, aimed at enforcing a "proper English dress code". Their method was to tear scarves off Muslim women. He took great pride in a kind of foul inventiveness, for example, throwing rendered pork fat on shops doors frequented by Muslims, and then spray painting "Kosher" on the window. Some religious confusion there.

One of the American fascists, after first decrying the people's failure to rise up after the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, declared that "We finally have a man we can vote for in Donald Trump." I'll admit, after taking a predictable amount of heat from this gang of public enemies, I was greatly relieved when another discussant came back with this wonderful adaptation:

"When the Trump crowd insulted the Mexicans,
I remained silent;
I was not a Mexican.

When they 'punched the protesters' in the face,
I remained silent;
I was not a protester.

When they came for the socialists and "freeloaders,
I did not speak out;
I was not a "freeloader."

When they wanted badges for the Muslims,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Muslim.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."

I am no lover of war. I grew up during America's "war on communism" in Vietnam, listening to the daily toll of American dead on the nightly news - but never the names or even numbers of the Vietnamese dead. I have lived through an unending succession of pointless military engagements. I am deeply cognisant that we have now been continuously at war in the Middle East since 1991. I have actively organised and protested against many of America's wars, police actions and interventions, but nonetheless there are moments when there is no choice. 

There are times when nations, whether pure in their intention or not, must act. While I believe it is true that WW II set America on a reckless course of intrigues and misuse of state power - what some call "endless war and debt"  I also believe that WW II was fought for a purpose far larger than the profits of bankers and munitions manufacturers. The film's images of people in Paris and Brussels filling the streets, dancing and handing flowers to Allied troops as they marched are real, as were the pictures of concentration camps filled with the dead and dying.

Yes, we need to be critical and careful of our government's intentions. We should by all means not succumb to jingoism and the meaningless, deceitful rhetoric that dominates American political discourse. But borders cannot define the limits of our concern, nor our actions when authority falls into insanity and murderous barbarism, as it did in Germany and Italy in the decades between the two world wars.. The words of Martin Niemöller, offered in a 1936 talk, stand as a stark witness against those who would say "Stay at home. Mind your own business. Avoid entanglements."

"When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out."

"Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,

habe ich geschwiegen;

ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,

habe ich geschwiegen;

ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,

habe ich nicht protestiert;

ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Juden holten,

habe ich geschwiegen;

ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten,

gab es keinen mehr,

der protestieren konnte."

For those who do not know this work, its author, Pastor Niemöller, a conservative Lutheran pastor and supporter of the Nazi regime publicly denied to support a single paragraph of the Nazi orders on "racial purity:" the Arierparagraph, or in English "Aryan Paragraph," which refused membership to various organisations, including his Church to so-called "non-Aryans," in other words, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other the Nazis believed inferior.

In April of 1937 he was arrested for his protests against this paragraph. Though released by a court 8 months later, he was re-arrested on the day of his release and sent without trial to a concentration camp. He was freed eight years later from Dachau in May of 1945. Of the 2720 Christian clergy confined at that camp, Paul Berben ["Dachau, 1933-45"] reports that 1034 died while under confinement. That's a far better rate of survival than Jews and many other categories of the innocent sent to the camps, but those who died, no matter their faith and race, were not martyrs. We should not, and must not take that false comfort from their murders.

The camp victims did chose to die for their god. They died because people who were able to stand up against tyranny chose to live in blindness rather than see the truth. They died because friends and neighbors preferred to be deaf rather than hear what was being said in the rallies and over the radio, and they died because as a nation, the German people were struck dumb, choosing to silence their own beating hearts, rather than speak the truth.

The victims did not die for their religion or their convictions. They died because their friends and neighbors failed them.  The German people could have said no in 1929 when President von Hindenburg allowed Hitler's predecessor to gut their parliament and by rule by decree. They could have said "no,' in 1933 when Von Hindenburg named Hitler as chancellor. They again could have said no to the Nazis a year later when Hitler seized the presidency from the hands of the then dead President Paul von Hindenburg, without the pretext of legal authority, combining both the presidency and chancellorship. There were dozens of moments when the German people could have stopped the Nazi Party, and did not.  By late 1934 it was too late. Even had one of the dozens of assassination attempts succeeded, another Nazi would have taken Hitler's place. Why did every remedy fail? Apathy, fear, distrust of democracy, etc., etc. Tens of thousands of pages have been written on the subject, but all the conjecture leads to a single answer. When they still had sufficient power, the German people chose not to act.

Pastor Niemöller, after the war, renounced not only his earlier support for the Nazi party, but also his own anti--semitism. He spent most of the remaining days of his long life helping Germany and the world remember. I just hope that in 50 or 75 years, no one is writing about the ways in which Americans were blind, deaf and dumb in the face of the political catastrophe that has fallen on us in these early, yet terribly dark and frightening days.

DHH