I am hearing stories from friends who tell me in recent days that they know people being fired from their jobs for having attended the Trump rally on Wednesday, or their businesses have been attacked in some way. And last night among other insults, Big Tech has conspired to take down Parler, an alternative to Twitter that just banned Trump forever.
Another friend said, “it is all happening much faster than we expected.” “It” being the totalitarian impulse to silence all opposing voices.
So Dennis Prager’s commentary at Townhall comes as America’s crisis ramps up (hat tip: Cathy):
I Now Better Understand the ‘Good German’
As my listeners and readers can hopefully attest, I have been on a lifelong quest to understand human nature and human behavior. I am sad to report that I have learned more in the last few years, particularly in 2020, than in any equivalent period of time.
One of the biggest revelations concerns a question that has always plagued me: How does one explain the “good German,” the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German, who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime?The same question could be asked about the average Frenchman during the Vichy era, the average Russian under Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and their successors, and the millions of others who did nothing to help their fellow citizens under oppressive dictatorships.
These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet German, Russian, etc. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.
What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter).
The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.
The same holds true for the acceptance by most Americans of the rampant censorship on Twitter and all other major social media platforms. Even physicians and other scientists are deprived of freedom of speech if, for example, they offer scientific support for hydroxychloroquine along with zinc to treat COVID-19 in the early stages. Board-certified physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who has saved hundreds of COVID-19 patients from suffering and/or death, has been banned from Twitter for publicizing his lifesaving hydroxychloroquine and zinc protocol.
Half of America, the non-left half, is afraid to speak their minds at virtually every university, movie studio and large corporation — indeed, at virtually every place of work. Professors who say anything that offends the left fear being ostracized if they have tenure and being fired if they do not. People are socially ostracized, publicly shamed and/or fired for differing with Black Lives Matter, as America-hating and white-hating a group as has ever existed. And few Americans speak up. On the contrary, when BLM protestors demand that diners outside of restaurants raise their fists to show their support of BLM, nearly every diner does.
So, then, who are we to condemn the average German who faced the Gestapo if he didn’t salute Hitler or the average Russian who faced the NKVD (the secret police and intelligence agency that preceded the KGB) if he didn’t demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for Stalin? Americans face the left’s cancel culture, but not left-wing secret police or reeducation camps. (At least not yet — I have little doubt the left would send outspoken conservatives to reeducation camps if they could.)
I have come to understand the average German living under Nazism and the average Russian living under communism for another reason: the power of the media to brainwash.
Much more here.
On a personal note, my grandfather died in a Hitler re-education camp in 1938 on my mother’s 13th birthday. He was a Catholic (Polish by birth), a small city bureaucrat, who had opposed the Nazi regime as it rose to power. My mother told stories of her sister (who died a few years after her father) of listening to the BBC from an attic room to get the news from the outside, fearful of course that her neighbors living in the adjoining apartments could hear her radio and turn her in.
Prager’s piece made me cry, not so much for my family then, the “good Germans,” but for all of us now, for a once glorious and free America.
God help us!
Can’t disagree at all. Have thought the same for years. WE are our own worst enemies. For starters, there really is something substantive and meaningfly we can each do to reverse, or at least to check, the Marxist assault on our Liberty. We must each solemnly pledge that we will conscientiously and unfailingly resist PC at every turn. PC is the poison which permits our own self-destruction. Going foreward, we must commit to fearlessly speaking openly, honestly. Don’t surrender the high ground which free speech affords us to the authoritarians. Exercise that right proudly, boldy and without hesitation or fear of reprisal or intimidation. Stand tall. Speak truth to power.
Wow, Ann, your family history is amazing and I thank you for sharing it with us. No wonder you have given so much of your time and resources to making “good Americans” aware of anti Judeo-Christian socialism, communism, Islam, and all fascist ideologies that seem to have finally taken down America as we know it was meant to be. Parler goes down tonight; I’ve linked your blog there numerous times, hoping to increase your viewers. I want to stay abreast of news and events and not sure where else to go. Unfortunately, the 🍎 phone is my connection to the rest of the world. I appreciate your understanding and information so much.
Thanks Ann for posting this which I will send out. I am in the temporarily “safe” position of being retired so I can do this, I can send out emails without losing my job. Speaking out however, has cost me lifelong friends and beloved relatives, who no longer want to hear from me. I am 74 and I now have no younger relatives that I can depend on, if I need any physical help in the future. Many of my friends, my age, keep quiet around their children and grandchildren, so that they will continue to visit them. I do not wear a maga hat or put a sticker on my car, for fear of physical harm from hostile strangers. I have been active in politics all my life, and I don’t see a path forward just yet, but I have hope that we will, 75 millions of us, find a way.
That comment really resonates especially today. Increasingly children are turning their backs on parents.
At this point, there is but one team: The Antifascist fascists have seen to that. Impressively, all while they cry about “democracy” dying under Trump — while overtly wanting what we all want: One-party rule. They were just smart enough to be working on that for about 100 years since the bolshies murdered the czar and his ministers in cold blood. Who killed the Kennedys, indeed.
So if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Imagine if the reds (no, not those reds, but the Trumper reds) joined side by side with the Burn Loot Mob crews and looted and stole from corporate outposts “in solidarity and justice and wokeness and allyship” amen (and awomen).
Next on the docket for you:
• Having to say a pledge of BLM Uber Alles before taking any new job.
• Committing, in the name of justice, to giving 10 percent of your wages to your blue colleagues (not that color, but, you know)
• Committing, in the name of justice, to never accepting or expecting a promotion at work over POCs
• Paying an extra 10 percent on your federal tax forms for the reparations taxes/fund that will come, without opposition, from the Dem-controlled District of Communism
• Race rules that include not being able to marry another white person and not allowing all-white families (separately them if need be and seeding them with the refugees Ann writes so tirelessly about). Gotta break that supremacy thing, you know.
• Billeting of BLM troops in random homes to police the DQ (diversity quotient) in every dangerous rural town and affluent suburb
Oh, does this all sound race-based to you? It is. The dumb whites who have built wealth for generations and are now allowing their children to piss it away don’t know that yet.
Now is the time to take full stock of what you have, who you are, with whom you associate and where you’re going to be. It might not be in this country. If you have children or relatives who think Trump inspsired an insurrection, you have no cause for further contact with them. Provide nothing for them — monetarily or emotionally. You are on your own, with the other 75 million or so of us. Plan and work accordingly, ever day. Your life and the lives of any younger kin in your family desperately depends on it.
So what do we do?
Forced support for a entity has been going on in this country for a long time.
If a politician did not sign a paper supporting Israel, then their career was
ruined. Ask Cynthia McKinney.
I wonder if the ONLY thing that can save us at this point is massive civil disobedience. I think it will still have to get worse in order for even solid Dems to say “this is wrong!”
I don’t think they are there yet. Their hatred of Trump was too strong and they are probably enjoying the examples of fascism so far. Pelosi seems hellbent on pushing them to the point where Dems will rise up and join us sooner rather than later.
I appreciate your emails greatly. I have a group of friends with whom I tried to share this post. We have a Facebook group where we share. I have tried to send four of the emails you sent but they were all blocked. Have other people on your email list had the same problem? If you have a work around I would love to use it. Thank you for all you do to keep us aware of what is really going on.
Jane Walker
Hi Jane, it is no surprise. I think facebook is using some algorithm for key words. So you can try posting again just putting in the link and saying something benign about it. See what happens. But, sadly they are working every angle to silence us.
If anyone else has the same problem let me know.
Most people don’t understand how quickly the Nazis were able to lock down society—from what I understand, it took them less than a year and a half to get things almost completely tied down. They had representation in just about every facet of life, instituted by law, and it was impossible to start your own group or associate with a group of any significant size without some sort of government representative present. The Nazi movement as a whole had been brewing for some time, but the take-down was very fast, at which point everyone was scared to say a word or try to do anything about it.
But we are not pre-WWII Germany. German society, as a whole, was very structured and orderly, almost like a caste system and people, in general, were used to taking orders. There were also the issues with their economy and the resentment of losing WWI that came into play, helping the Nazi’s drum up support. The entire region had been relatively war-like and unstable for some time, even prior to WWI, so it wasn’t a big shock to the collective system slipping back into that mode. There was a lot of groupthink and trust ingrained in that society that we don’t have. On the other hand, the average German of that time was more likely to have some morals, attend church, etc., while our society is Babylon. We can look back and see what those relatively moral German people wound up doing—just imagine what the decadent slobs in this country are cable of.
Ann — another fascinating book regarding “good Germans”: They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45, by Milton Mayer. The publisher has made chapter 13 available online at https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
Thanks, will check it out.