On Epiphany, terrorists breached our nation’s Capitol Building while Congress was in joint session. They intended to overthrow our leaders, disrupted the final step in our free and fair elections, vandalized our seat of government, chanted for the execution of Vice President Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So far, six people have died.
These were no ordinary protests. Peaceful protest is a hallmark of our constitutional system that guarantees a right to free speech. This was not that; this wasn’t even a peaceful protest where some outlier broke a window or set a garbage can on fire. This was an insurrection, fueled by the demented railings of our delusional President, who, surrounded as always by sycophants, drank champagne and watched on television.
I have, since his campaign began in 2016, compared Trump’s tactics to those of Adolf Hitler in his rise to power in 1930s Germany. I do not do that lightly. Hitler was a beast, and careless comparison to him must be avoided. I don’t believe I am being careless or reckless in drawing the parallels.
Among my reading last year, I read Peter Fritzsche’s history, Hitler’s First Hundred Days, subtitled “When Germans Embraced the Third Reich.” Dr. Fritzsche is professor of history at the University of Illinois and has written extensively about Germany under Hitler.
His thesis, in compelling story-telling detail, is that fascism takes over slowly at first, and then quickly. One hundred days was not a lot of time for the final push, but the ground had been plowed and the seed had been sown over a decade or more. Still, he notes, “a total fascist state that was highly contested and rather improbable was widely accepted and broadly realized one hundred days later.”
Hitler played on the peoples’ fear and frustration, the national embarrassment of Germany’s defeat in WWI, the country’s economic struggles, and always, always, the need for a scapegoat. Hitler was a pathetic and pitiful man, but one with a grudge and a desire for power. With rallies created by him to honor him, by promising to make Germany great again, egging on the people to commit violence against each other, and by delineating the “perfect” Germans while demonizing all the rest, he turned a country to himself, either exiling or murdering anyone in his way, and slaughtering millions who were of no use to him or who didn’t fit into his ideal society — Jews, but also people with disabilities, poor people, non-white people, gay men and lesbians, political thinkers, trade union members. He required allegiance above all, allegiance only to himself, under the guise of German patriotism.
It’s personal for Fritzsche; he describes how Nazism split his own family, divisions that linger in the present. But he notes in the postscript: “The past also lives on because what was supposed to be behind us suddenly appears up ahead on the right.”
Among many graphic depictions, Fritzsche cites the entries from personal journals of folks who lived through the times:
If you listened, you could hear the brutal slogans of the Nazi marchers — “The Republic is shit,” “Jews, drop dead!” — and the song about “Jewish blood spurting from the knife.” But as one observer remembered many years later, “Who took that seriously back then?”
We have seen some ugly stuff this past week, the culmination of a growing ugliness that began with a campaign five years ago predicated on rapist Mexicans, dangerous Muslims, and women who exist to be grabbed. This president, enabled by his party, has narrowed the definition of who can be a good American and what it means to be patriotic.
We are, I believe, (and I’m not alone), in the throes of a fascist movement that is threatening to undo our nation and change our lives forever.
We can also be certain that this didn’t happen just now, just in this Administration. The ground was plowed in our country from its founding; the seeds were sown constantly along the way — with genocide and land theft, with the enslavement and sale of humans, with policing invented as way to control people of color and feed an increasingly ravenous incarceration system, with an economic system built on exploitation and a political system built on white supremacy and wealthy, white male dominance, with broad white collusion. This president isn’t alone in his commitment to it: every previous president, with every single Congress, has weighed the costs and determined that the system must remain.
This president merely stands out for his public and unrepentant desire to stoke the fires. This president has not bothered even to pay lip service to an equitable world. Which perhaps gives us what we have needed for a long time: a view of reality we cannot spin nor sweep away — authoritarianism with an open door to the psyche of the angry white masses, and a moment when “reasonable” white people finally perceive we, too, have something of substance to lose (as if the humanity and well-being of others wasn’t enough motivation).
Fascism, we know, is a hard right political orientation. It is led by an autocrat ruling in a totalitarian way, and using the tools of capitalism, militarism (including militarized law enforcement) and racism to have its way, to do its evil bidding.
And this is where I pause to remind us of the Jesus agenda: a world where everyone has enough, of non-violence and anti-occupation, of welcoming strangers and embracing those who are different. The exact opposite of fascism in every way.
As the mob gathered Wednesday, there were folks wearing Jesus shirts, and we know this President and his party have been bolstered all along by a certain segment of folks who call themselves Christian. They are not Christian; the way they are advocating is not Jesus’ way. You cannot look at their platform of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, exclusivism, exploitation and hoarding, and think for a moment that it bears any semblance at all to the vision of Isaiah and the prophets, the vision lived out by Jesus. (Do you remember at Charlottesville the chant “Jews will not replace us”?) This is not Christianity. This is, in fact, the empire that Jesus loathed and taught us to resist.
The people of Germany in the 1930s barely saw fascism coming before they were drowning in it. The churches were led sleepily into complacency, just minding their spiritual business rather than paying wider attention, but then commandeered by Hitler’s own leaders. The clergy liked some of Hitler’s policies, or didn’t want to make a fuss, (perhaps because the church shouldn’t be political?) and went along with him. Because when you’re in for a penny, it becomes so easy to be in for a pound, I guess.
It is vital that we see what is ahead and that we speak clearly, unequivocally, about what it means to be the Church. I don’t mean “be the church” banners that speak inoffensively about loving our neighbors and caring for the earth; I mean getting specific about race, economics and militaristic power — even when we know it will cause friction or discomfort. Even if it means clergy have to have our resumes updated and our stuff packed.
Look around: Trump signs are everywhere, more violence is planned by the far right. More than 74 million people voted for another term for this damaged man and his abysmal worldview. According to Forbes, only 20 percent of Republicans “strongly disapprove” of his actions Wednesday; 77 percent want him to finish his term.
We are on a bad path. Black, Indigenous and other People of Color have been trying to tell us forever how out of balance our system really is. People living on the economic edge have been trying to tell us. We haven’t heeded their voices; can we find urgency now, post-insurrection? Can this be our moment of finally coming to grips with what ails us?
I look forward to ways we may serve the cause of shalom, mending the world together.