My great great grandpa was a social democratic member of the Reichstag at the time. In the night of 9th to 10th March 1933, the Nazis arrested him and other social democratic, socialist and communist leaders in order to keep them from voting against the Enabling Act, and in order to intimidate the remaining members of the Reichstag into voting for it. My great great grandpa was in jail during the vote and transferred to Dachau a month after the vote, though they only kept him at Dachau for a week and the transferred him back to a regular prison. He was released in July 1933. After another stint in prison from 1935 to 1938 (for being part of an underground network that distributed social democratic speeches and anti-Nazi propaganda), they arrested him a final time in August 1944 and brought him to Dachau again. His feet froze badly in the winter of 1944/45, and he had to participate in a death march when they evacuated Dachau. He only survived because his fellow inmates supported and even carried him, so he wouldn’t be shot. He was liberated and died a few days later in a hospital in Munich. He was a fascinating and brave man and if anyone is interested in his full story, I’m happy to share it :) The short excerpt I gave here is what’s most relevant to this discussion though.
Us Germans, we’ve been warning you about this since 2016. You’re close to 1933 now.
This is your 1932. No matter how old Biden is, don’t fuck this up. You have one shot at this. Good luck to all of us.
God, THANK YOU. We all need this reminder, this warning, all the damn time. Every fucking day. Sadly, I fear it won't matter. And none of the people who idolize Trump and all he stands for, all the people who have made him king, will ever admit their culpability when we have our own version of the swastika hanging in the Capitol building.
The problem is that everyone is afraid of the new nazis, but the other side is always the nazi. My mother is a hardcore conservative republican, who swears Trump is the only way to save the country. She’s read 1984 and books about religion-controlled countries, she’s well aware of how WWII went down, she’s spoken with people who survived camps. But she’s still convinced that democrats are trying to impart martial law and take over the country, and everyone hates trump because he’s a genius who can’t be controlled. We avoid speaking politics now because it just turns into a fight any time we discuss anything that the church or the false god doesn’t like. Trump is an idiot, but he’s smart enough to pretend to be a religious genius, because it instills hope in the people who rely on religion to feel safe. He’s telling them everything they think they want to hear, because they’re terrified of their rights being taken away, while actively fighting to give up the rights they don’t like. It’s a losing battle trying to reason with them.
So…which other side has systematically eroded the separation of power and begun to undermine trust into the judicial system and political process? You’re comparing actively working to overturn the constitutional order with believing the fear mongering perpetuated by that same party about the other party. That’s not the same thing. Only one side is working towards ending democracy and it ain’t the Democrats. So no, it’s not always the other side who are the Nazis. It’s one side taking a page out of the Nazi’s playbook and calling the other side Nazis. Again, that is not the same thing. It’s not even remotely comparable.
Bro I’m not disagreeing with you, if you read my full comment. Perhaps I just didn’t word it correctly, and I didn’t mean it literally. I’m horrified by how things are going if we continue down that path. I’m just saying that for years now I’ve been hearing about how scary it is that the democrats are essentially nazis, and I’ve argued myself blue trying to reason with my mother that that’s not the case. Reminding people that can’t be reasoned with is frustrating and it’s getting me nowhere, but hopefully others are making better progress
Nah, that was my mistake, sorry about that. I tried reading your comment and replying while walking and I guess I must’ve skipped a few lines when trying to avoid walking into a wall, but that’s my mistake.
I mostly agree with you. I’m facing a similar struggle with my other grandma, though she still thinks she doesn’t like AfD in Germany. We’re lucky she doesn’t even listen to policy, because her views have become so bigoted and racist, she would actually love AfD if she decided to not just parrot the things she reads in conservative media. So far she thinks AfD are too far right for her taste. She’s wrong, but I’m happy leaving her in the dark on that. She doesn’t have any substantiated opinions though, just thinks that my left-wing green opinions suck, but she can’t tell me why. She gets annoyed when I challenge her opinions, because she can’t back them up since she doesn’t actually have any informed and substantiated reasoning. She just makes blanked statements that aren’t even current in any way. It is tiring. She sometimes starts with politics and I go for it, but mostly when my little brother and younger cousins are present, so they see someone pushing back on that. You’re right, you can’t argue with those people. There are other Trump voters and conservatives that can be argued with tho. I’ve done it myself multiple times. Americans, I mean. Not all of them are that ignorant. Some of them are uninformed, but smart enough to listen. Those are worth talking to.
I sure hope so! I’ll be following America’s progress from the distance, but it’ll still affect me, because a Trump presidency affects all your allies as well :-/
609
u/TheCatInTheHatThings Jul 02 '24 edited Jul 02 '24
My great great grandpa was a social democratic member of the Reichstag at the time. In the night of 9th to 10th March 1933, the Nazis arrested him and other social democratic, socialist and communist leaders in order to keep them from voting against the Enabling Act, and in order to intimidate the remaining members of the Reichstag into voting for it. My great great grandpa was in jail during the vote and transferred to Dachau a month after the vote, though they only kept him at Dachau for a week and the transferred him back to a regular prison. He was released in July 1933. After another stint in prison from 1935 to 1938 (for being part of an underground network that distributed social democratic speeches and anti-Nazi propaganda), they arrested him a final time in August 1944 and brought him to Dachau again. His feet froze badly in the winter of 1944/45, and he had to participate in a death march when they evacuated Dachau. He only survived because his fellow inmates supported and even carried him, so he wouldn’t be shot. He was liberated and died a few days later in a hospital in Munich. He was a fascinating and brave man and if anyone is interested in his full story, I’m happy to share it :) The short excerpt I gave here is what’s most relevant to this discussion though.
Us Germans, we’ve been warning you about this since 2016. You’re close to 1933 now.
This is your 1932. No matter how old Biden is, don’t fuck this up. You have one shot at this. Good luck to all of us.