Rising fascism in the US

Fine.

1) What year do you think these parallels started?

2) What period in US history could you not draw such parallels?'

3) What period in the history of any country in the World could you not draw parallels with any other period of any other country.

Parallels are easy to draw. You start with a political narrative you want to push, and then cherry pick "facts" to make them fit and ignore any facts that don't fit the narrative.

I can draw the same number of parallels between what's happening to day, and the epic of Gilgamesh of you want ("Build that Wall").

It is a bogus game.

The economic revival of the mid-1920s enabled the introduction of social reforms and better standards of living. The SPD re-introduced and overhauled the Bismarckian welfare state, providing protection for the young, the aged, the unemployed and disadvantaged. The 1922 Youth Welfare Law declared that every German child had the “right to education, spiritual, physical and social fitness”; the government responded by creating institutions and social workers to accommodate children who were illegitimate, homeless, abandoned or at risk. Further legislation in 1923 and 1927 established relief for those out of work. The Unemployment Insurance Law (1927) required workers and employees to make contributions to a national scheme for unemployment welfare. Other reforms provided benefits and assistance to war veterans, wives and dependents of the war dead, single mothers and the disabled.

Weimar governments also attempted to address a critical shortage of housing in many parts of Germany. Article 155 of the constitution declared that the state must “strive to secure healthy housing to all German families, especially those with many children”, so the government initiated several visionary programs. It employed architects and planners to devise ways of alleviating housing shortages. Government investment, tax breaks, land grants and low-interest loans were also used to stimulate the building of new houses and apartments. Between 1924 and 1931 more than two million new homes were built, while almost 200,000 more were renovated or expanded. By 1928, homelessness has been reduced by more than 60 per cent. There were also improvements for ordinary German workers, who benefited from increases in the real value of wages in each year after 1924. In 1927 real wages increased by nine per cent and in 1928 they rose by a further 12 per cent, making Germany’s industrial workforce the best paid in Europe.

The Weimar economic miracle did not benefit everyone. The Mittelstand (middle class) found little joy in this alleged ‘golden age’. Bankrupted by the hyperinflation of 1923, the professional middle classes – managers, bureaucrats, bankers and clerks – did not enter the ‘golden age’ in a position of strength and failed to benefit from most of its changes. White collar workers did not enjoy the wage rises of the industrial sector, nor could they always access the benefits of the Weimar welfare state. By the late 1920s industrial sector wages had drawn level with those of the middle class – and in some cases exceeded them. While unemployment fell generally, it remained high amongst white collar professions. Government documents from April 1928 reveal almost 184,000 middle-class workers seeking employment – and almost half of them did not qualify for unemployment relief from the state.

These conditions fuelled middle class resentment and a perception the SPD-dominated government was favouring the working classes at the expensive of the Mittelstand – once an admired and respected part of German society. Some claimed this was intentional, a subtle form of class warfare to impose “socialism by stealth”. Unlike the workers, who were represented by the SPD and KPD, the middle classes had no obvious political party to turn to. Little wonder that by the late 1920s, the NSDAP was able to tap into this pool of middle class resentment and disenchantment.

How far can media undermine democratic institutions and how persuasive can it be in assuring public support for dictator policies? We study this question in the context of Germany between 1929 and 1939. Using quasi-random geographical variation in radio availability, we show that radio had a significant negative effect on the Nazi vote share between 1930 and 1933, when political news had an anti-Nazi slant. This negative effect was fully undone in just one month after Nazis got control over the radio in 1933 and initiated heavy radio propaganda. Radio also helped the Nazis to enroll new party members and encouraged denunciations of Jews and other open expressions of anti-Semitism after Nazis fully consolidated power. Nazi radio propaganda was most effective when combined with other propaganda tools, such as Hitler’s speeches, and when the message was more aligned with listeners’ prior as measured by historical anti-Semitism.

I think Trump is an American fascist. Racist, violent, populist, ultracapitalist, and militarist. He is precisely the sort of tyran wannabe that the founders were afraid would come in the future. He's why you have all these counter powers and checks and balances. So far the system is holding him in check pretty well, but it's not over until the fat asshole sings...

Here in Rome, communists and fascists still beat up one another in street battles

ROME—Calls mounted rapidly Monday from populist and other opposition leaders for quick elections in Italy, seeking to capitalize on Premier Matteo Renzi’s humiliating defeat in a referendum on government-championed reforms.

The president, though, told Renzi to stay in office a bit longer until a critical budget law is passed. Some officials say parliament could pass that law as soon as the end of the week.

“With the referendum vote, the Italians have expressed a clear political signal — the desire to go as soon as possible to elections,” wrote Vito Crimi and Danilo Toninelli, two of the top leaders of the populist, anti-euro, 5-Star Movement in a piece accompanying the blog of Movement founder, comic Beppe Grillo.

Since the Italian president tries to ensure parliament can carry out its full five-year term, analysts expect that Mattarella will appoint a transition government to draft a new election law that could satisfy parties worried the way the rules now stand, their forces might be at a disadvantage...

...Among the names touted to head it are Renzi’s finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan; the president of the Senate, former anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso; and Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

European partners sought to downplay the risk for the common euro currency and European unity.

“This is a crisis of government, not a crisis of state, and it’s not the end of the West. But it’s certainly not a positive contribution against the backdrop of the crisis in Europe,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Athens.

Investors had been anticipating Renzi’s defeat for several days, and had sold off Italian stocks and bonds. Monday’s sanguine market reaction can also be attributed to the fact that Italy’s markets indirectly enjoy a big backstop from the European Central Bank.

It is interesting your hype about "fake news". The reason that Trump uses the term "fake news" is because liberal did first. Obama used the term long before Trump did... Trump just shot it back at him. It became an applause line because people liked it.

- and in fact did exactly what I predicted you would, so I'm just going to downvote and ignore you like I do the other fools

The real issue to me is Free Speech.

It shouldn’t take a lawyer to note that any action to challenge “licenses” on this basis would be unconstitutional. It’s Civics 101: The First Amendment protects press freedom, and that protection is easily broad enough to encompass any effort to silence journalists simply because the president believes their work is “partisan, distorted and fake.” Yet, incredibly, across the country rank-and-file Republicans react to such messages not by rebuking Trump but by trying to find a way to rationalize or justify them. Many go even further, joining Trump in his attacks regardless of their merit. These folks are degrading their political character to defend Trump, and the damage they do to their own credibility and their party’s in the process will endure long after he has departed from the political scene. Trump is stoking a particularly destructive form of rage — and his followers don’t just allow themselves to be stoked, they attack Trump’s targets with glee. Contrary to the stereotype of journalists who live in the Beltway and spend their nights at those allegedly omnipresent “cocktail parties,” I live in rural Tennessee, deep in the heart of Trump country. My travels mainly take me to other parts of Trump country, where I engage with Trump voters all the time. If I live in a bubble, it’s the Trump bubble. I know it intimately. And I have never in my adult life seen such anger. There is a near-universal hatred of the media. There is a near-universal hatred of the so-called “elite.” If a person finds out that I didn’t support Trump, I’ll often watch their face transform into a mask of rage. Partisans are so primed to fight — and they so clearly define whom they’re fighting against — that they often don’t care whom or what they’re fighting for. It’s as if millions of Christians have forgotten a basic biblical admonition: “Be angry and do not sin.” Don’t like the media? Shut it down. Don’t like kneeling football players? Make them stand. Tired of American weakness overseas? Cheer incoherent and reckless tweets as evidence of “strength.” The result is a festival of blatant and grotesque hypocrisy. Republicans are right now in the process of demanding that every Democrat and every progressive celebrity of any consequence denounce Harvey Weinstein. Yet when Donald Trump faced serial accusations of sexual assault after being caught on tape bragging that he liked to grope women, many of these same members of the Republican base were furious at those conservatives who expressed alarm. When serial sexual-harassment allegations claimed the careers of Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, many of these same members of the Republican base accused the media of “taking scalps.”

On a vast scale, members of the Republican base are defending behavior from Trump that would shock and appall them if it came from a Democratic president. There is of course always a measure of hypocrisy in politics — partisanship can at least partially blind us all. But the scale here beggars belief. Republicans never would tolerate a Democratic president’s firing an FBI director who was investigating the president’s close aides and then misleading the American people about the reason for that firing. They would never tolerate a Democratic president’s specifically calling for unconstitutional reprisals against his political enemies. They would look at similar chaos and confusion in a Democratic White House and fear a catastrophe. Even worse, Republicans are — to borrow my friend Greg Lukianoff’s excellent phrase — “unlearning liberty.” For example, for many years conservatives focused on ways to protect free speech, an essential liberty under attack from intolerant campus leftists and a larger progressive establishment that labeled dissent as “phobic” or bigoted. Now? Republicans defend Trump’s demands for terminations and economic boycotts against football players who engage in speech he doesn’t like. “Well, it’s not technically illegal,” they say, knowing full well the chilling effect such language will have and knowing full well that they would be howling in anger if President Obama had ever expressed a similar desire to squelch, say, Tim Tebow’s prayers. They know full well that they condemn progressive corporations who use their economic power to squelch dissent. Republicans even defend direct calls for unconstitutional reprisals against members of the press. “He fights,” they say. And they relish the liberal tears. It’s been said countless times because it’s true: Politics and law are downstream from culture. For the sake of short-term political victories — for the sake of protecting a single American president — Republicans have shown themselves willing to help change the culture to one that declares, with one voice (Left and Right), “Free speech for me, but not for thee.” Unless the GOP base changes course — there’s still time, by the way — and demands that its president embody the constitutional values that are supposed to define the party, the degradation of our culture and of long-standing respect for the Constitution will outlive even the memory of any given political debate. News cycles come and go. Presidents come and go. The Constitution — and the culture of liberty it is supposed to protect — must remain. Is it worth unlearning liberty to defend Trump’s tweets? Millions seem to think so. Millions are wrong.

Fine with me, but the real threat to free speech in the US is Trump and his ilk, not a bunch of kids at Berkeley...

How Should We Protest Neo-Nazis?
Lessons From German History

We have an ethical obligation to stand against fascists and racists in a way that doesn't help them.

October 10, 2017 by The Conversation US

Laurie Marhoefer, University of Washington

After the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, many people are asking themselves what they should do if Nazis rally in their city. Should they put their bodies on the line in counterdemonstrations? Some say yes.

History says no. Take it from me: I study the original Nazis.

We have an ethical obligation to stand against fascism and racism. But we also have an ethical obligation to do so in a way that doesn’t help the fascists and racists more than it hurts them.

History repeats itself

Charlottesville was right out of the Nazi playbook. In the 1920s, the Nazi Party was just one political party among many in a democratic system, running for seats in Germany’s Parliament. For most of that time, it was a small, marginal group. In 1933, riding a wave of popular support, it seized power and set up a dictatorship. The rest is well-known.

It was in 1927, while still on the political fringes, that the Nazi Party scheduled a rally in a decidedly hostile location – the Berlin district of Wedding. Wedding was so left-of-center that the neighborhood had the nickname “Red Wedding,” red being the color of the Communist Party. The Nazis often held rallies right where their enemies lived, to provoke them.

The people of Wedding were determined to fight back against fascism in their neighborhood. On the day of the rally, hundreds of Nazis descended on Wedding. Hundreds of their opponents showed up too, organized by the local Communist Party. The antifascists tried to disrupt the rally, heckling the speakers. Nazi thugs retaliated. There was a massive brawl. Almost 100 people were injured.

I imagine the people of Wedding felt they had won that day. They had courageously sent a message: Fascism was not welcome.

But historians believe events like the rally in Wedding helped the Nazis build a dictatorship. Yes, the brawl got them media attention. But what was far, far more important was how it fed an escalating spiral of street violence. That violence helped the fascists enormously.

Violent confrontations with antifascists gave the Nazis a chance to paint themselves as the victims of a pugnacious, lawless left. They seized it.

It worked. We know now that many Germans supported the fascists because they were terrified of leftist violence in the streets. Germans opened their morning newspapers and saw reports of clashes like the one in Wedding. It looked like a bloody tide of civil war was rising in their cities. Voters and opposition politicians alike came to believe the government needed special police powers to stop violent leftists. Dictatorship grew attractive. The fact that the Nazis themselves were fomenting the violence didn’t seem to matter.

One of Hitler’s biggest steps to dictatorial power was to gain emergency police powers, which he claimed he needed to suppress leftist violence.

The left takes the heat

In the court of public opinion, accusations of mayhem and chaos in the streets will, as a rule, tend to stick against the left, not the right.

This was true in Germany in the 1920s. It was true even when opponents of fascism acted in self-defense or tried to use relatively mild tactics, such as heckling. It is true in the United States today, where even peaceful rallies against racist violence are branded riots in the making.

Today, right extremists are going around the country staging rallies just like the one in 1927 in Wedding. According to the civil rights advocacy organization the Southern Poverty Law Center, they pick places where they know antifascists are present, like university campuses. They come spoiling for physical confrontation. Then they and their allies spin it to their advantage.

I watched this very thing happen steps from my office on the University of Washington campus. Last year, a right extremist speaker came. He was met by a counterprotest. One of his supporters shot a counterprotester. On stage, in the moments after the shooting, the right extremist speaker claimed that his opponents had sought to stop him from speaking “by killing people.” The fact that it was one of the speaker’s supporters, a right extremist and Trump backer, who engaged in what prosecutors now claim was an unprovoked and premeditated act of violence, has never made national news.

We saw this play out after Charlottesville, too. President Donald Trump said there was violence “on both sides.” It was an incredible claim. Heyer, a peaceful protester, and 19 other people were intentionally hit by a neo-Nazi driving a car. He seemed to portray Charlottesville as another example of what he has referred to elsewhere as “violence in our streets and chaos in our communities,” including, it seems, Black Lives Matter, which is a nonviolent movement against violence. He stirred up fear. Trump recently said that police are too constrained by existing law.

President Trump tried it again during the largely peaceful protests in Boston – he called the tens of thousands who gathered there to protest racism and Nazism “anti-police agitators,” though later, in a characteristic about-face, he praised them.

President Trump’s claims are hitting their mark. A CBS News poll found that a majority of Republicans thought his description of who was to blame for the violence in Charlottesville was “accurate.”

This violence, and the rhetoric about it coming from the administration, are echoes – faint but nevertheless frightening echoes – of a well-documented pattern, a pathway by which democracies devolve into dictatorships.

The Antifa

There’s an additional wrinkle: the antifa. When Nazis and white supremacists rally, the antifa are likely to show up, too.

“Antifa” is short for antifascists, though the name by no means includes everyone who opposes fascism. The antifa is a relatively small movement of the far left, with ties to anarchism. It arose in Europe’s punk scene in the 1980s to fight neo-Nazism.

The antifa says that because Nazism and white supremacy are violent, we must use any means necessary to stop them. This includes physical means, like what they did on my campus: forming a crowd to block ticket-holders from entering a venue to hear a right extremist speak.

The antifa’s tactics often backfire, just like those of Germany’s communist opposition to Nazism did in the 1920s. Confrontations escalate. Public opinion often blames the left no matter the circumstances.

What to do?

One solution: Hold a counterevent that doesn’t involve physical proximity to the right extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center has published a helpful guide. Among its recommendations: If the alt-right rallies, “organize a joyful protest” well away from them. Ask people they have targeted to speak. But “as hard as it may be to resist yelling at alt-right speakers, do not confront them.”

This does not mean ignoring Nazis. It means standing up to them in a way that denies them a chance for bloodshed.

The ConversationThe cause Heather Heyer died for is best defended by avoiding the physical confrontation that the people who are responsible for her death want.

Laurie Marhoefer, Assistant Professor of History, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.