#1932 German Elections

[tmarshconnors]

"History has its own way of dealing with individuals, as well as with nations."

Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk was a German national conservative, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as the chancellor of Germany in 1932, and then as the vice-chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934.

Born: 29 October 1879, Werl, Germany

Died: 2 May 1969 (age 89 years), Sasbach, Germany

Chancellor of Germany: Franz von Papen served as the Chancellor of Germany from June to November 1932. His tenure was marked by political instability and economic difficulties during the final years of the Weimar Republic.

2) Role in Hitler's Rise to Power: Von Papen played a crucial role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power. As Vice Chancellor under Hitler in 1933, von Papen and other conservative elites believed they could control and moderate Hitler's policies. This miscalculation contributed significantly to the consolidation of Nazi power.

3) Diplomatic Career: After being sidelined by the Nazi regime, von Papen served as Germany's ambassador to Austria (1934-1938) and later to Turkey (1939-1944). In Austria, he was instrumental in facilitating the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938.

4) Acquittal at Nuremberg Trials: Despite his involvement with the Nazi regime, von Papen was acquitted at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. The tribunal found insufficient evidence to convict him of war crimes, although he was later denazified by a German court and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp, a sentence which was soon reduced, and he was released.

5) Post-War Life: After his release, von Papen published his memoirs, "Der Wahrheit eine Gasse" ("Memoirs") in 1952, offering his perspective on his political career and the events of the era. He lived a relatively quiet life in West Germany until his death in 1969.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Die Sieghaften [The victorious.],” Simplicissimus. Vol. 37, issue 2, April 10, 1932. Cover page.

Two men converse about Adolf Hitler, riding a blinkered horse, and Alfred Hugenburg, riding an ass: “Man sieht es ihnen eigentlich gar nicht an, daß sie eine Niederlage erlitten haben.” "Sie wissen es la auch noch nicht, sie lesen doch bloß ihre eigenen Blätter" [“You don't really see that they have suffered a defeat.” "They don't know it yet either, they're just reading their own papers"]

[crazyintheeast]

Chappell Roan if she was in Germany in 1932: Ugh no I am not voting for Hitler ok .But moderates have some real problems and we need to hold them accountable . Anyway now let’s talk about all the problems of moderates especially how they treat trans people while barely mentioning Nazis even though Nazis want to outright kill not only trans but all LGBT people

And yes my uncle is Nazi politician so what? The real issues is not whether Nazis are about to come to power and commit unspeakable evil it’s that people should think for themselves and not listen to celebrities . Anyway I care so much about the issues guys , truly . Also remember fuck Nazis or whatever but moderates are problematic . You know what yeah let me ramble some more about why moderates are problematic because we need to hold them accountable. No I can’t wait a month until the election is over to talk about all the problems of moderates and it’s awful that you are trying to shut me up . 1932 German Chappell Roan fans : Omg yes go off Queen . Look at these white liberals bashing her for not being a slave to moderates . They should leave her alone . Moderates have to earn our vote . If the Nazis comes to power it would be the fault of moderates for being progressive enough and earning our vote . Omg Chappell is sad now ! See what you did you bully ! How dare you be mean to her just because she doesn’t condemn Nazis strong enough for your taste

[mapsontheweb]

German Presidential Election, 2nd Round, by District, 1932

[misfitwashere]

How to Stop Fascism

Five Lessons of the Nazi Takeover

Timothy Snyder

Jul 05, 2024

As the United States hovers at the edge of fascism, the history of Germany can help.

To be sure, Americans have other histories to ponder, including their own.  Some American states, right now, are laboratories of authoritarian rule (and resistance).  The American 1860s and American 1930s reveal tactics authoritarians use, as well as the weaknesses of the American system, such as slavery and its legacy. At those times, though, Americans were lucky in their leadership.  Lincoln and Roosevelt were in office at the critical moments.  And so we lack the experience of the collapse of the republic.

We can certainly learn from contemporary authoritarian success, as in Russia and in Hungary, which I have written about elsewhere.  Yet the classic example of a major economic and cultural power collapsing into fascism remains Germany in 1933. The failure of the democratic experiment in Germany led to a world war as well as the Holocaust and other atrocities.

Yet today a taboo hovers around anything concerning Hitler.  As soon as the collapse of the German republic in 1933 is evoked, American voices commence a fake lament — America is uniquely good so nothing about Nazis can ever apply, and/or Hitler was uniquely evil and so nothing concerning him is relevant.

To be sure, every person and every event is in some sense unique.  But history is precisely the interaction of individuals and situations which, seen in isolation, will appear unique.  The taboo on fascist history shoves people back to a turbulent present, leaving them feeling more helpless. It is an element of the fascist takeover.

The lessons from Germany that I present below are not at all new.  We have been trained by digital media to believe that only what happens right now matters.  But the people who intend to destroy the American constitutional republic have learned from the past.  One of the basic elements of Project 2025, for example, is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung: transforming the civil service into a fascist nest.

Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past.  A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933.

1.  Voting matters.  Hitler came to power after an election which enabled his appointment as head of government.  It is much easier for fascists to begin from within than to begin from without.  Hitler’s earlier coup attempt failed.  But once he had legitimate power, inside the system as chancellor (prime minister), he could manipulate it from within.  In the American system, “voting” means not just going to the polls yourself, but making donations, phone-banking, and knocking on doors.  We are still, happily, at the stage when unglamorous actions can make the difference.

2.  Coalitions are necessary.  In 1932, in the crucial German election, the far left and the center left were separated.  The reasons for this were very specific: Stalin ordered the German communists to oppose the German social democrats, thereby helping Hitler to power.  To be sure, the American political spectrum is very different, as are the times.  Yet the general lesson does suggest itself: the left has to hold together with the the center-left, and their energies have to be directed at the goal rather than at each other.

3.  Conservatives should be conservative.  Which way the center-right turns can be decisive.  In Germany in 1932, conservatives enabled the counter-revolution.  They did not see Hitler and his Nazis as something different from themselves.  They imagined, somehow, that Hitler would preserve the system rather revolutionize it.  They were wrong, and some of them paid for the mistake with their lives.  As in American today, the German “old right” was less numerous than the “new right,” the fascists.  But how the traditionalist center-right acts can very well make the difference.

4.  Big business should support democracy.  In the Germany of the 1930s, business leaders were not necessarily enthusiastic about Hitler as a person.  But they associated democracy with labor unions and wanted to break them.  Seeing Hitler as an instrument of their own profit, business leaders enabled the Nazi regime.  This was, in the end, very bad for business.  Although the circumstances today are different, the general lesson is the same: whether they like it or not, business leaders bear responsibility for whether a republic endures or is destroyed.

5.  Citizens should not obey in advance.  Much of fascism is a bluff — look at our loyal cult, listen to our outrageous language, heed our threats of violence, we are inevitable!  Hitler was good at that sort of propaganda.  Yet to gain power he needed luck and the errors of others.  American fascism, likewise, is far from inevitable.  It too is largely bluff, most of it digital.  The internet is much more fascist than real life, which is discouraging.  But we vote in the real world.  The crucial thing is the individual decision to act, along with others, for four months, a little something each day, regardless of the atmospherics and the polls and the media and the moods.

It’s simple: recalling history, we act in the present, for a future that can and will be much better.

[tervencherries]

i’m going to expand on this later but i just want to remind everyone that this election was scarily similar to the german 1932 election (this is the one where hitler won).

we’ve got the unstable economy and high inflation rates, we’ve just gotten out of a war in the last decade which has made foreigners hate us, we have high levels of racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, and xenophobia (all of which are what made this president win!).

remember that it wasn’t immediate with hitler. it took 6 years after the election before Kristallnacht happened. “never again” is right now. it could be anyone, but it’ll likely be jews, black people, and/or gay people.

do what you need to in order to make your local government hear you. coordinate protests with other towns in order to make your state listen. coordinate with other states to force the federal government to see what’s happening.

remember that we don’t have to agree on everything in order to come together. the american people’s safety comes before any ideology.

[whencyclopedia]

Reichstag Fire

The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 was a possible arson attack on the German parliament building. The fire was blamed on a communist anarchist Marinus van der Lubbe (1909-1934), but it may have been the work of the Nazi party's paramilitary group the Sturmabteilung (SA) to discredit the left-wing parties before the forthcoming general election.

The chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) used the fire as an excuse to declare martial law and issue a decree that gave the police new powers of arrest and imposed significant limitations on people's civil liberties. The decree was shortly followed by the Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler to bypass the parliament and so establish the Nazi totalitarian regime.

The Nazi Party in Power

In the election of November 1932, the Nazi party (NSDAP), although performing less well than in the election of the previous July, had still won enough seats to convince President Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) that the best candidate to form a coalition government and be appointed chancellor was Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Nazi leader. Hitler's vice chancellor was the conservative politician of the Catholic Centre Party and former chancellor Franz von Papen (1879-1969). The minister of the interior was the Nazi Wilhelm Frick (1877-1946). The minister without portfolio was the Nazi Hermann Göring (1893-1946). Both Papen and Hindenburg were wary of Hitler but thought they could control him better if he was inside the government rather than outside it.

The consequences of the 1932 election resulted, then, in a great step forward for Hitler's plans for total power, but the Nazi party had not won a majority of seats, and so the political situation remained unstable. Hitler had no intention of sharing power and so was not content with the number of non-Nazi ministers in his government. On 1 February, yet another election was called for March 1933. Göring used the police to round up left-wing activists. The Nazi party's paramilitary wing, the SA, conducted a campaign of intimidation towards rival political parties. Something more was needed, though, to guarantee the Nazis would win a majority in parliament. The Reichstag fire produced the perfect propaganda opportunity.

Adolf Hitler in SA Uniform

Imperial War Museums (CC BY-NC-SA)

Continue reading...

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

"His election opens up possibilities! We'll push him to the left." - Liberals in Germany on militarist Paul von Hindenburg, 1932

(Less than a year later, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as German chancellor.)

You fight fascism by organizing workers and oppressed people to fight back, not by voting for centrist politicians whose only 'strategy' is to constantly move further right and build up the repressive forces of the capitalist state.

No, it's not easy. Yes, it's the only way.

Twentieth Century 101

-redguard

[sunbookie]

“We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water. American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.”

... 

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, collector, archivist, writer, activist, and important figure of the Harlem Renaissance was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 24, 1874. His mother was a black woman originally from St. Croix, Danish Virgin Islands (now the U.S. Virgin Islands), and his father was a Puerto Rican of German ancestry.

Seventeen-year-old Schomburg migrated to New York City in 1891. Very active in the liberation movements of Puerto Rico and Cuba, he founded, in 1892, Las dos Antillas, a cultural and political group that worked for the islands’ independence from Spain. After the collapse of the Cuban revolutionary struggle, and the cession of Puerto Rico to the United States, Schomburg, disillusioned, turned his attention to the history and culture of Africa and what we know today as the African Diaspora.

In 1911, as its Master, he renamed El Sol de Cuba #38, a lodge of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants, as Prince Hall Lodge in honor of the first African American freemason. The same year, he founded, with journalist John Edward Bruce, the Negro Society for Historical Research which gathered African, Caribbean, and African American scholars. In 1922 he was elected president of the American Negro Academy.

Schomburg firmly believed that “The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.” The first part of this process was to reclaim history by evidencing Black people’s contributions to history and culture. Working as a mailroom supervisor at a Brooklyn bank, Schomburg spent his free time and resources, and his retirement after 1930, collecting materials on Africa and its Diaspora. He traveled through the United States, Europe, and Latin America, amassing over 10,000 books, manuscripts, sheet music, photographs, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and artwork.

The second phase of Schomburg’s project was to bring this knowledge to the public. He lent numerous items to schools, libraries, and conferences and organized exhibitions. He wrote articles for a diversity of publications: Marcus Garvey’s Negro World; the NAACP’s The Crisis edited by W. E. B. Du Bois; The Messenger, founded by Socialists A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen; the organ of the National Urban League, Opportunity; and Harlem’s newspaper, The Amsterdam News.

In 1926 the Carnegie Corporation bought Schomburg’s collection for $10,000 (about $125,000 today) on behalf of The New York Public Library. The collection was added to the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints of the Harlem branch on 135th Street.

From 1929 to 1932 Schomburg worked as a curator at Fisk University’s library and was instrumental in expanding its collection from 100 to 4,600 items. Back in New York, he was appointed curator of The New York Public Library’s Harlem Division. He held the position until his death on June 10, 1938 in Brooklyn. He was 64. In his honor, the Division was renamed the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, History and Prints in 1940. Arturo Schomburg’s enduring legacy was further acknowledged when the Collection became the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of The New York Public Library in 1972. With over 11 million items, it is one of the world’s foremost research centers on Africa and the African Diaspora.

Legendary.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A Letter from the Editor in Chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it. As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost.

Personally, I find it hard to understand how Americans who take pride in our system of government support Trump. All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil. How do they not see it? The March 25 edition of the New Yorker magazine offers some insight. It includes a detailed review of a new book about Adolf Hitler, focused on the year 1932. It’s called “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” and is by historian Timothy W. Ryback. It explains how German leaders – including some in the media -- thought they could use Hitler as a means to get power for themselves and were willing to look past his obvious deficiencies to get where they wanted. In tolerating and using Hitler as a means to an end, they helped create the monstrous dictator responsible for millions of deaths.

How are those German leaders different from people in Congress saying the election was stolen or that Jan. 6 was not an insurrection aimed at destroying our government? They know the truth, but they deny it. They see Trump as a means to an end – power for themselves and their “team” – even if it means repeatedly telling lies. Sadly, many believe the lies. They trust people in authority, without questioning the obvious discrepancies or relying on their own eyes. These are the people who take offense to the truths we tell about Trump. No one in our newsroom gets up in the morning wanting to make a segment of readers feel bad. No one seeks to demean anyone. We understand what a privilege it is to be welcomed into the lives of the millions of people who visit our platforms each month for news, sports and entertainment. But our duty is to the truth.

Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable, given how the media landscape has been corrupted by partisans, as it was in 1930s Germany.

[tomorrowusa]

Anybody who claims that both major US political parties are the same is either a mindless airhead or a self-deceived cult member.

Third parties and independents in US presidential elections are a bad idea in "normal" cycles due to the archaic Electoral College. This year is not close to normal.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out, Biden would like to campaign on abortion and the economy. But the existential threat to democracy by Trump and his groveling Republican Party has shifted the emphasis to the basic existence of this country.

Complain all you like about the electoral system in the US but don't ignore it while trying to make progress politically.

It doesn't matter if a majority of Americans don't want Trump to be president if they don't properly use the available electoral tools. Republicans need to be stopped via the system that currently exists. Voting for impotent minor parties will do nothing to keep Trump from returning.

Way bad régimes in other countries have come to power with much less than a majority of popular votes.

In South Africa in 1948, the pro-apartheid National Party won 37.70% of the popular vote as opposed to 48.18% for the more moderate United Party. But because of the existing first past the post parliamentary system then, the National Party in coalition with the even more extreme Afrikaner Party (3.93% of the vote) won a majority of seats in Parliament and were able to institute apartheid which lasted until 1990.

In both elections in Germany in 1932 the Nazis got less than 40% of the popular vote: 37.27% in the July election and just 33.09% in the November election. Despite these unimpressive results they managed to take power because the opposition was divided and failed to stop them. Famously, the Communist Party of Germany (16.9% of the popular vote in November '32) welcomed the Nazis. According to Communist ideology, fascism is supposed to be the final stage of capitalism and the German Communists were licking their chops; long story short – Ernst Thälmann, head of the German Communists, was executed on Heinrich Himmler's orders. Communists are stupid – but that's another story.

Not taking the threat of dictatorship seriously does not have happy endings in history. And it's always easier to prevent dictatorships than it is to remove them. If a candidate tells you he's going to be a dictator, believe him.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Didn’t help much. The son of the former Kaiser, Prince August Wilhelm, took the air on behalf of the German Fascist party, which received a set-back at the polls for the first time.”

- from the Toronto Star. November 8, 1932. Page 19.

[impossiblyatomictiger-blog]

I agree with this post on Reddit: “

For context, my immediate family has a private blog we use for fun updates on our lives. Today’s SC ruling spurred me to action and I posted this- I thought others might find it helpful when talking to religious and/or conservative family members. My family is mostly believing Mormon and Republican/reluctant Trump voters. It gets more Project 2025 specific about halfway through.

I’ve hesitated to write this for a very long time. I didn’t want to inject politics into what is supposed to be fun updates about the family. I didn’t want to offend parents or siblings whom I love and care for deeply but who disagree with my positions or opinions, as is their right.

But I can’t be quiet anymore on this. My conscience won’t let me. When all is said and done, I want to be able to, at the end of my life, say I tried everything that was within my power to prevent the destruction of my country and its people. So here goes.

Please recognize this in the spirit it was written. I’m not trying to offend, hurt, or wound. But I do need to be clear, because the stakes are monumental. If I come across as undiplomatic or histrionic, I apologize for the tone but not the underlying message.

In Germany in the early thirties we had some distant relatives who were upset with the failings of the German government. The economy sucked, inflation was rampant, and armed leftist gangs roamed the streets. They didn’t like what the mustachioed man was saying, they thought he was over the top, but they also thought that he made some sense about the importance of Germany rising again, of being respected on the world stage and stopping the subversives in their own country who were hurting and holding the people back. They and others thought that there would be responsible people like Hindenburg and Von Papen who would rein in the worst of this guy’s tendencies, and direct the energy of him and his supporters to only the good stuff. What do we call these people, reluctant supporters of Adolf Hitler?

We call them Nazis.

We do not remember or care about their reservations. We aren’t interested in their feeble protests that this isn’t what they meant to happen, that the Socialists scared them or Germany was seen as a laughingstock. We don’t care that near the end of the war, as Hitler was throwing fourteen year olds in front of Soviet tank treads, some of them protested. They were Nazis. They were complicit. They voted for a Nazi.

No one outside of Hitler’s inner circle knew what he was going to unleash, at least not fully. The people who voted for him can rightly say they had no idea where this would lead, that they thought the system would stop the excesses of the Nazi movement. They didn’t have the benefit we do of history, to see what Hitler was from the very beginning. No one in their own story thinks they are the bad guy, no one thinks they are doing something evil. But they voted him into the chancellorship and it cost them everything, and plunged Europe into destruction and horror and holocaust, and then consigned half of it to Soviet tyranny.

You know where I am going with this. You might think I am being ridiculous or hysterical. But someone in 1932 screaming that a vote for Hitler was a vote for death camps, the gestapo, mass murder, and destruction on a level never before seen in human history would have been similarly dismissed. Except he wouldn’t have been hysterical or exaggerating. He would be correct in every respect.

I was told as a child decency in public life mattered. We should only elect moral people. Bill Clinton was pilloried and denounced by my friends and family for cheating on his wife and lying about it. He was unworthy of the office of the Presidency. Those same people then excused the behavior of a thrice married adulterer who was caught on tape admitting to and joking about sexual assault. They voted for a man who oppressed the hireling in his wages, paid for abortions and mocked disabled people and women.

If I may be blunt, many people I know surrendered their religious convictions on the altar of political power. The fact he was a Republican mattered more than the fact he was the exact opposite of what their Savior and Redeemer was. Power mattered more than Christianity.

I told friends and family in 2016 that Trump would try to stay in office even if he lost, that he would commit acts of illegality and criminality without regard to ethics, morals or the law. I was told I was being hysterical, that experts around him would prevent it.

Over the next four years that wicked man enriched himself by abusing his office. That wicked man broke the law to punish the nation of Ukraine by withholding congressionally ordered aid from being delivered unless they announced on live TV they were prosecuting Hunter Biden. He even admitted he did exactly that. That wicked man banned religious minorities from entering the country – something that happened to our ancestors. That wicked man separated families at the border and placed children – CHILDREN – in cages, and did so deliberately, admitting it was happening as a way to “discourage” future immigration. Some of those families were broken permanently – the children were never reunited with their parents. That wicked man repeatedly attempted to use deadly force on peaceful protestors. He gave security clearances to his son in law who was ineligible, a son in law who received massive kickbacks from the Saudi government. That wicked man supported the Saudis in a campaign of famine in Yemen that killed millions. This wicked man sicced military police against his own citizens so he could walk across the street and wave the Bible upside down and backwards as a bloody shirt. This wicked man so catastrophically mismanaged a pandemic that over a million Americans died, we stored corpses in freezers and states were left on their own to find ventilators. “Stop the testing” he thundered, and continued to hold rallies that killed his own supporters.

Finally, and unforgivably: This evil man lost a free and fair election, and attempted to remain in office. This wasn’t just hyperbole, he wasn’t just speaking. He was meeting with lunatics and loons in the Oval Office. Orders to declare martial law were drafted.

Do you know why our democracy survived? It wasn’t because Trump didn’t try or suddenly had a change of heart. Three people refused to follow his unlawful orders to seize voting machines, deploy the military to shoot protestors, and overturn the certification in Congress. Three people. One at the Department of Justice who threatened to resign, one in the Defense Department who organized a shadow military government to prevent Trump’s orders from going through, and the Vice President of the United States.

We were three spines away from losing our constitutional system, a system friends and family claim is divinely inspired and worth fighting for.

When those three refused, Trump sicced a mob on the Capitol, where raving bands of terrorists came within feet of a Vice President and Speaker they were trying to kill. The man tried to get his own Vice President killed.

This isn’t hyperbole. We all saw it on live TV. I’m not making this up. These facts were discovered by a bipartisan congressional investigation and by a prosecutor in the DOJ after the fact.

I’m not even touching the classified documents case, the fact that 44 members of his Cabinet have stated he is unfit for future office, “very fine people” in a crowd full of Nazis, or illegal payments to a porn star here.

So what about now? What about this election? We survived one term, we can survive another, right?

In his first term there were people around him who prevented catastrophe. There were “regular” Republicans like Pence, Nikki Haley, and Generals Milley and Kelly who managed to hold off the flying monkeys. Not completely, as I pointed out, but the system held; just barely.

There are no adults in Trump’s campaign. There are no “regular” Republicans anymore, because Trump will not stomach someone telling him “no” this time. He is surrounded by sycophants and true believers, many of them convicted criminals.

Trump is going to implement something called Project 2025. It was dreamed up by think tanks and was endorsed by his campaign and Trump personally. Among other things, it will, on January 20, 2025, involve the mass firings of federal bureaucrats who have ALREADY BEEN IDENTIFIED by the campaign as people that will resist illegal orders. They have ALREADY selected replacements who will rubber stamp whatever Trump says. Independent organizations will lose their independence, including the FTC, FCC, SEC and others. Trump has stated repeatedly he will revoke the licenses for “liberal” outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and others. Under this plan he can do it and the underlings will not resist.

It also involves the FDA immediately banning all forms of birth control. Pregnancy will be carried to term even if the mother dies. It’s already happening in red states like Idaho!

Public expressions of gay or trans behavior will be reclassified as pornographic – and pornography will be outlawed. THIS IS NOT A HYPOTHETICAL DISCUSSION FOR ME. THERE IS A TARGET ON MY BACK.

Detention camps will be set up and mass roundups of anyone suspected of being illegal will occur – without due process. Forgive me, but imagine that [half hispanic relative] is picking up her kids from school and ICE does a raid. She “looks” Hispanic, as do her kids. Into the van she goes, and she is unable to prove her citizenship because THERE IS NO DUE PROCESS.

If liberal states resist, the Insurrection Act will be invoked and the National Guard will be federalized. American soldiers, reporting to Generals handpicked by Trump for loyalty to him, not to the law, will be allowed to roam free in liberal cities, opening fire on “seditious” protesters and replacing local police departments.

I am not making this up. This isn’t some wild-eyed fantasy by a liberal who watches too much CNN. They are saying they will do this out in the open. It’s on Trump’s website, he has talked about it, it’s in the social media posts of his campaign and his staffers, it’s being refined and added on by his think tanks. There are dozens of more points I haven’t even touched about Project 2025.

Who will stop him? The courts? They quite literally this morning said he couldn’t be prosecuted for official acts – one of the official acts cited by the Chief Justice was meeting with the DOJ and ordering them to carry out illegal orders. If Trump says it’s an official act, he can’t be held accountable for it.

Congress? The Senate failed to convict him two weeks after he tried to have them murdered.

The people? He lost the popular vote in 2016 and still won.

Prosecutors? They just got their cases gutted by a 6-3 Supreme Court.

Please, listen to me. I am your son, your brother. I am not a wild eyed loon shouting about fluoride in the water or contrails in the sky. I am telling you plainly (and perhaps rudely) that my existence and the existence of other people you love is at stake here. You have family members who are discussing plans with each other for self defense, for ways to protect themselves from the horror that may descend this winter. You have family members discussing the possibility of fleeing the country.

Do you want your granddaughters, your nieces, to grow up in a world where they cannot divorce abusive husbands (another part of Project 2025 is the elimination of no fault divorce), they cannot use birth control and must carry even non-viable pregnancies to term? Where their role is to serve as breeding stock for the next generation of taxpayers? Do you want a world where your son, your brother, is arrested for flying a pride flag or because he has a boyfriend? (I’m not asking you to approve of my life choices; just asking you to respect my right to make it).

If I may be even more blunt: What the hell has Biden done or Clinton would have done that compares to this? You paid a little more in gas, so the constitution must be terminated? You disagree with some of the protections given to sexual minorities, so they need to be herded into camps? What has Biden done that even compares to what the Trump campaign is promising to do? Are our lives really so bad, are we really so oppressed by Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, that we will vote for literal fascists?

You cannot count on decent people to surround this monster and prevent his excesses. They tried it in Germany, and fifty five million people died. We tried it in 2016, and over a million people died from Covid and we came within moments of losing our democracy.

Please. I’m not asking for you to register as a Democrat and support gay marriage or abortion. But do not vote for this monster. For some people in the family it is not a hypothetical exercise. It’s our lives.”

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

"The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don’t know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some, but some did not."---

"On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century," by Timothy Snyder

[reasonandempathy]

Responding to an idiot

Idiot:

"Mmmmm so Hitler didn't get elected by promoting a form of nationalism that he promised would end in a socialist utopia? Or have I read the propaganda from the 30's wrong?

He got elected via a socialist grift just like every soviet, south American, and east Asian dictator.

His best guess was that the revolutions of the early century failed becuase there was in group conflict, hence the desire to create an ethnostate.

So regardless of whether or not he was a true blooded Marxist, he absolutely did run on a policy of collectivism that he wanted to implement after the war, and was dead before he could attempt to realize the promise.

The point here is to show just how easy it is for evil people to take power by promising socialism, justifying the corruption of any and all checks and balances and personal liberties in an attempt to realize a dream that will never work."

I wanted to take a crack at it, so I did.

Mmmmm so Hitler didn't get elected by promoting a form of nationalism that he promised would end in a socialist utopia? Or have I read the propaganda from the 30's wrong?

You read it wrong. Hitler explicitly broke Nazi ideology away from any sort of "socialist utopia." To quote Hitler in Liberty Magazine on July 9th, 1932:

‘Why’, I asked Hitler, ‘do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party program is the very anthesis of that commonly accredited to Socialism?’

‘Socialism’, he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, ‘is the science of dealing with the common weal [health or well-being]. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

‘Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality and, unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.

Hitler's "socialism" wasn't universal, wasn't communist, wasn't marxist, promotes private property, and is just "dealing with the common health and well-being."

He got elected via a socialist grift just like every soviet, south American, and east Asian dictator.

He expressly got elected on anti-communist and Law & Order propaganda, which got him elected to a relatively minor party. He was invited into the ruling power structure by the right-wing conservative politicians who wanted to co-opt his popularity among disaffected younger people.

His best guess was that the revolutions of the early century failed becuase there was in group conflict, hence the desire to create an ethnostate.

His explicit belief was that the Aryan German Empire would've conquered Europe and ruled it if it weren't for "Bolshevists" (his word for left-wing people and marxists) and Jews, which is related to but not foundational for his desire for an ethnostate. He wanted an ethnostate, believed that they were the natural order of the world, and believed that "Aryans" were naturally the best. In fact, Jews were weird and weak for not having an ethnostate.

So regardless of whether or not he was a true blooded Marxist, he absolutely did run on a policy of collectivism that he wanted to implement after the war, and was dead before he could attempt to realize the promise.

I don't know how to explain that collectivism =/= socialism. Nationalism is collectivism. That didn't make Joseph McCarthya socialist.

The point here is to show just how easy it is for evil people to take power by promising socialism, justifying the corruption of any and all checks and balances and personal liberties in an attempt to realize a dream that will never work.

He very explicitly would run on not being socialist and not wanting socialist policies, as described in his interview in June of 1932.

It's amazing how people find themselves so confidently wrong on literally everything they say.

[mariacallous]

Alice Weidel likes to talk about Germany’s past — but she’s talked less about that of her own family.

As co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Weidel has urged her country to move on from what her party calls a “cult of shame” over its Nazi-era atrocities. Yet, despite her calls for Germany to look forward, her own family’s history has remained in the shadows.

An investigation by Welt am Sonntag, drawing on extensive documents from German and Polish archives, reveals that Weidel’s grandfather Hans Weidel was a prominent Nazi judge, appointed directly by Adolf Hitler, responsible for sentencing opponents of the Third Reich.

While the Weidels’ history is not unique in a country where the Nazi past touches nearly every family, these revelations are relevant given the AfD’s positions on Germany’s efforts to atone for the actions of previous generations.

In 2018, the party’s co-leader Alexander Gauland shocked the country when he minimized the Nazi period as “just bird shit” in a millennium of glorious history. The previous year, Björn Höcke, one of the party’s more extreme figures, described a Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame” and called for a 180-degree reversal to the country’s approach to remembrance.

Despite its overt radicalism and warnings by authorities that it is an extremist organization, the AfD has surged in popularity. In September, it achieved the most significant electoral win for the far right since WWII, capturing its first regional election victory. Now, with Alice Weidel as its top candidate, the AfD is preparing to push its nationalist agenda in the upcoming federal election.

Military judge

It’s not that Weidel is completely opposed to talking about her family history. She has recounted how it was expelled from what used to be Silesia, now Poland — but she’s remained silent on her grandfather’s prominent role in the Nazi regime.

Through a spokesperson, Weidel said she had no knowledge of her grandfather’s Nazi past. “Due to family discord, there was no contact with the grandfather, who died in 1985, nor was he a topic of conversation in the family,” the spokesperson said. 

Weidel was six years old when her grandfather Hans died. Her grandmother, also a member of the Nazi party, passed away two years later.

The elder Weidel was nearly 40 when he became a military judge at the Warsaw commandant’s office in July 1941, joining about 3,000 Wehrmacht judges in enforcing Hitler’s military rule. 

His superiors praised him for “carrying out his work with great interest and understanding,” the documents showed.

Three years into the job, Hans Weidel was appointed Chief Staff Judge. His appointment passed through the Führer’s headquarters, according to an official document from Oct. 12, 1944 that reads: “Der Führer, signed Adolf Hitler.”

Before his steep rise in the Nazi system, Hans Weidel had studied law in Munich and Breslau. He was a member of the Nazi party since 1932, joining before Hitler’s rise to power and serving in the Waffen-SS from 1933 as a legal advisor. “Even before the September 1930 election, I voted National Socialist and actively campaigned in the movement’s election propaganda,” he wrote in a document preserved in German archives.

Hans Weidel would later tell investigators that he had no knowledge of the Nazi’s treatment of Jews. He lived in a small town, he said : “I didn’t hear anything there other than what was in the newspapers or on the radio.” 

“I must stress, however, that I never heard anything about the SS’s crimes,” he added. 

The aftermath

After Germany’s defeat and its division into four occupied zones, the victorious powers set about cleansing the country from the Nazis. Supporters of the dictatorship were not to hold important positions in the new state. To this end, tribunals were set up by the military governments of the allied powers.

In Nov. 1948, a tribunal in Bielefeld, part of the British-occupied zone, opened a case against him for “membership of a criminal organization.” But the case was closed within a month, with prosecutors citing a lack of evidence, the investigation file in the federal archives showed.

That decision, while not an outright acquittal, spared him from being disbarred. He went on to open a law firm in the Western city of Gütersloh, where he became active in an association of displaced persons and sought compensation for his lost property in Upper Silesia.

Two decades later, his Nazi past caught up with him again. In the late 1970s, police in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg reopened investigations into his wartime role. Requests for documents were sent to East Germany, then under communist rule. However, both attempts to prosecute him failed. In the Federal Republic, not a single military judge was brought to justice for imposing arbitrary death sentences.

The revelations are unlikely to damage Alice Weidel’s standing with her base as she prepares to lead her party in the election next year.

However, as the AfD struggles to shake off accusations of Nazi sympathy, how she chooses to confront her grandfather’s prominent role in the regime could influence how voters see the party’s commitment to moving beyond its past.