#this is not a democracy; this is a dictatorship

[jalbert-james]

the question at this point is no longer “is trump a fascist,” it is “how can we stop trump from becoming fascist.”

if donald trump is allowed to assume dictatorship, destroying democracy, then he is allowed to be a fascist.

if donald trump is allowed to create a new racial purity crusade by deporting and promoting violence against people of color, then he is allowed to be a fascist.

if donald trump is allowed to promote and propel the stage 7 genocide against trans people, then he is allowed to be a fascist.

on november 5th, i seriously questioned whether i could make it through the night, let alone the next four years. and i know that others are in the same boat. when a progressive president takes office, the opposing party mourns gas prices. when an alt-right, illiberal president takes office, the opposing party mourns those that they know won’t make it out alive.

when an alt-right illiberal president assumes office, he is given the power to become fascist.

[microtheory]

This is part one on the philosopher Carl Schmitt and his critique of liberalism. I hope you love the show today.

So we’re three episodes into this new arc of the show and, as you know, we’re talking about the early 20th century here. Once again, it’s important to keep in mind all that’s going on during this time. Political philosophy is going through a serious transition phase because, in many ways, the world is going through a serious transition phase. Revolutions are taking place, world wars are on the horizon, the rise of fascism, authoritarianism. The entire legacy of the Enlightenment is being called into question. And what this means for the world of philosophy is that the thinkers doing their work during this time are very quickly coming face to face with the realization that, in this post-nuclear world, where for the first time the consequences of war could threaten the entire existence of the human race, they are the people that are going to have to figure all this out.

Think of the pressure these thinkers were faced with at the time. To be a thinker born into the early 20th century is to be born into a world where the strength of your ideas is going to be tested in real time while the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Being born into this time period is like the forces of history commandeering you for one of the most stressful jobs in the history of the world. I mean, imagine your first day at a new job, and the orientation is, here's the entire history of Western civilization; and day one at the new job is, “Well, time for you to fix it all. Now, get to work.”

Now, this job would be difficult enough if we were looking back at a history of total chaos in the West. But, keep in mind, the Western world at this time is the self-proclaimed center of political thought, the self-proclaimed most advanced collection of societies that have ever existed in history. So, if this really is such an advanced, developed environment that the rest of the world should draw inspiration from, why do we have such a rich history of things failing miserably? Think of the history this world is emerging out of. The Age of Reason and the political thought of the Enlightenment produced for us what we’ve long considered to be the greatest political strategy in existence, liberal, capitalist democracy. By this time, for over a hundred years liberal, capitalist democracy has been the gold standard in the West when it comes to how we should be structuring our societies.

The problem facing political philosophers at the beginning of the 20th century is this: What exactly is it about our longstanding strategy of liberal, capitalist democracy that seems to invariably lead society into an endgame of dictatorship, bloodshed, and political instability? When John Dewey and Antonio Gramsci show up with their lunchbox on the first day at the new job, this is the first order of business people like them are going to have to deal with. Now, it’s right here that we can understand why the two of them went in the respective directions they did. Because like we talked about, the beginning of the 20th century can be broadly understood in terms of three major branches of political discussion, three primary conversations that are going on. We’ve already talked about two of them. And understanding all three of them is going to be absolutely crucial, because the contents of these conversations is going to go on to dictate the direction of almost all subsequent political philosophy all the way up to the present day.

When a philosopher sets out to contribute something to the political discussion of the 20th century, they’re almost without exception doing so in consideration to one of these three major critiques of the way we’ve done things in the past. Once again, what we’ve done in the past is liberal, capitalist democracy. The three major critiques are going to be John Dewey and his critique of traditional democracy, Antonio Gramsci and his critique of capitalism, and the guy we’re going to be talking about today, the philosopher Carl Schmitt and his critique of liberalism.

But where’s the best place to begin explaining one of the most scathing critiques of liberalism in existence? Maybe the best thing to preface this with, just given the demographics of this show, is that when Carl Schmitt sets out to critique the doctrine of liberalism, he’s not setting out to critique liberalism in the context that some living in the modern United States may think of liberalism -- you know, that it’s one end of a political spectrum, diametrically opposed to conservatism, with these two poles being defined by the current state of the US political landscape -- that’s not the liberalism he’s talking about here. Carl Schmitt, believe it or not, is not setting out in his work to critique some modern political cliché, you know, some pro-choice Greenpeace platinum card member who roller blades to work and thinks healthcare should be a human right. That’s not the liberalism he’s talking about.

So let’s talk about what the word liberalism is actually referring to in the context of this broader philosophical discussion that’s going on. The term liberalism is referring to a political philosophy and method of determining political legitimacy that emerged out of the beginning of the Enlightenment. Modern historians, when looking back at history, often describe liberalism as the dominant political strategy of the Enlightenment era that should be contrasted with the methods of determining political legitimacy before the Enlightenment, which historians sometimes just group all together and refer to as pre-liberal thought. So we have the liberalism of the Enlightenment that is to be contrasted with the pre-liberal thought, which is the way we did things before the Enlightenment.

To put all this is in a very Philosophize This! way -- look, people form into societies. Those societies have problems that need to get solved. The people that make up those societies have to figure out the answer to several basic but very important questions. What kind of society do we want to produce? What sort of values do we want to uphold when engaging in our political process? What makes something a legitimate political problem at all? How do we solve these problems? Specifically, what is having a political disagreement even going to look like in our society? Because that’s a very important distinction that might not immediately seem like something our political process defines the parameters of. But, keep in mind, political disagreements of today look nothing like the political disagreements of a thousand years ago, and this is a big reason why liberalism is often contrasted with pre-liberalism.

Before liberalism burst onto the scene, societies determined levels of political legitimacy with very different methods than we do today. Pre-liberal societies often informed their political process through things like divine revelation, tradition, ritual, pure authoritarianism, theological scholarship; you know, the interpretation of scripture was an important part of the political process. Pre-liberal societies relied on these methods, and these methods reliably produced a certain type of society. People got fed up with this type of society and put their heads together in the Enlightenment to try to come up with some better criteria to try to base our political decisions on. These criteria and the positions they naturally arrive at have come to be known as liberalism.

Now, what this transition looks like, in keeping with the theme of the Enlightenment overall -- political strategy starts to move away from revelation and instead is beginning to rely a lot more on reason. Once again, from pre-liberal to liberal. When making political decisions, there’s a turn away from pre-liberal methods of theological scholarship and a turn towards a new liberal focus on secular scholarship. There’s a turn away from political decisions based on divine intervention towards a new confidence in decisions that are hashed out through rational debate. The pre-liberal standard of there being some single, anointed authoritarian leader that has ultimate say over the political process is quickly being replaced by things like parliamentary politics, separation of powers, democracy, civil and human rights. There’s a new focus on issues regarding equality. Capitalism starts to become the dominant economic approach. Liberal, capitalist democracies as opposed to feudal aristocracies.

Liberalism primarily aims to do away with the authoritarianism and divine revelation of the past and replace it instead with things like limited government, equality, freedom of expression, secular science, and rational debate. Now, somebody born into our modern world that’s largely grounded in liberal principles might be confused as to how anybody in their right mind could ever possibly disagree with this method of doing things politically. This episode is not talking about the merits of liberalism, but Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. You might think, “Look, I know we’ve had our problems in the West over the years, but all this stuff just seems like common sense. I mean, back to the modern United States, liberalism seems to be the foundation of both political parties. How could anybody possibly think that it’s liberalism that’s the problem with liberal, capitalist democracy?”

Carl Schmitt would probably say to this person that the most dangerous political ideology is the ideology that’s currently popular, the kind of ideological assumptions you make about the political process that are so engrained, so steeped in tradition, that you don’t even think twice about them. Because if we should regard the thinking before the Enlightenment as pre-liberal and the thinking during the Enlightenment as liberal, then Carl Schmitt can be regarded as someone trying to bring about a new post-liberal way of thinking politically. Modern anti-liberal is how he’s often described.

So, for the sake of understanding where Carl Schmitt’s coming from, the important thing to keep in mind right here at the beginning is that, when there’s this shift towards liberal principles during the Enlightenment, what comes along with that is a promise from the thinkers of the time that this new strategy is going to bring about a better world for everyone. One of the dominant theories among the thinkers of the Enlightenment was that, if we let these liberal values play out and allow them to reach their natural conclusions, we will be the architects of a brand-new, cosmopolitan, peaceful world, the likes of which we’ve never seen. To understand Carl Schmitt, this is the perspective from which we need to view liberalism.

Liberalism was created as an alternative political philosophy that was supposed to be a solution to many of the political problems of the past. These thinkers are looking back at history, seeing the pattern of dictators, bloodshed, and political instability, and they’re trying to come up with some new way of conducting politics where these things aren’t going to happen anymore. This is actually a really good way to understand it. I mean, you can see why many of the hallmarks of liberalism are what they are, when you think about them in relation to some historical problem they were trying to solve. History of dictatorships and authoritarianism? Let’s introduce separation of powers, checks and balances on the executive branch. History of sprawling empires and rigid national and religious identities? Well, we’re all members of a global economy. Let’s have political and religious identities take a back seat for now and instead unite the world under a flag of mutually beneficial consumerism. History of political and religious wars? Well, let’s not fight on the actual battlefield anymore. Let’s instead hash out our political differences in the battlefield of rational debate, where people can still be at odds with each other, they can still go to war, but this way nobody has to die. This was the hope and ambition of liberalism as a political philosophy. Liberalism was supposed to be an alternative way of doing stuff that solved these problems of the past, but Carl Schmitt is going to say this is nowhere near what actually happened.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of Carl Schmitt. Try to see liberalism through the eyes of a philosopher living in the early 20th century. Similar to the early liberal thinkers, Carl Schmitt is looking back at history, and he too sees the pre-liberal world of dictatorships, bloodshed, and political instability. Oh, but then along comes liberalism to save the day. And then what he sees is really not much changing at all. What he sees is that, throughout the entire tenure of liberalism, things continue to descend into dictatorships, bloodshed, and political instability all the way up to the present day. And he thinks the only reasonable thing to conclude from this state of affairs is that there is a big difference between the hopes and ambitions of liberalism and how things actually play out in the world. Liberalism, to Carl Schmitt, doesn’t produce the world that it claims to produce.

Throughout several years of his career, Carl Schmitt attacked liberalism from so many different angles that there really isn’t a clear starting point here. So I want to just jump right in to some different examples of hallmarks of liberal thinking that Carl Schmitt takes issue with, use that as a skeleton, and then try to flush out the rest of his position from there.

So, just to get us started, one of the biggest delusions of liberal thought in the eyes of Carl Schmitt is the expectation that it is possible for us to produce a society where people can have extreme political differences and, by adhering to the tenants of liberalism, these people can coexist, live peacefully amongst each other, and just agree to disagree if things ever get heated. Put in the words of political philosophy, this is the toleration of difference. We see this kind of thinking in Western, liberal democracies every second of every day. I mean, you’ll often hear people talk about political discussion with the expectation that this sort of thing is possible. You know, we may be totally different people. We may disagree on almost every element of how a society should be structured. But, at the end of the day, we can shake hands, live and let live, and just go on about our lives.

Carl Schmitt would say that this is a liberal fantasy world, that if you pay attention to what’s actually going on in the real world of the political, this is not the way extreme political differences interact with each other in our societies. Liberalism just creates the illusion that they do. To Carl Schmitt, this expectation that we’re going to be able to coexist, tolerant of extreme political differences, comes from the more fundamental liberal belief that there is no political difference so extreme that there can’t be some sort of solution eventually arrived at in an open forum of rational debate, that there is no chasm between worldviews that is so unbridgeable that there can’t be some sort of reasonable compromise that’s arrived at by both parties. This is a hallmark of liberal thought and a cornerstone of the liberal political process.

Now, Carl Schmitt would say, this idea just in theory, no doubt, sounds really great. I mean, who doesn’t want a world where we can always just talk things through politically? Who wouldn’t want a world where we never have to implement political philosophy by force? The problem for Carl Schmitt is that this isn’t how the world works. Liberalism is marketed to people as an alternative, more peaceful way of engaging in the political. But Carl Schmitt believes all that liberalism really does is allow people to avoid engaging in the political.

Rational debate puts on a good show, but it’s mostly political theater. We have long periods of normalcy where a bunch of people get dressed up in suits and go to this building downtown and scream at each other for a few hours about issues that are almost entirely inconsequential. This all provides a nice soap opera for people to watch that’s supposed to be evidence of the liberal political process in action. “Hey! Look at how peaceful we’ve all learned to be. Hurray for liberalism!” is what we’re supposed to say.

But Carl Schmitt would say, look at history. What happens every single time there is a truly serious political issue where the differences between parties are irreconcilable? I mean, what happens when you try to have a rational debate with someone whose whole political belief is that I should be king of the world, and you should all be my slaves? Well, it doesn’t work. There’s no reasoning with that person. You wouldn’t try to solve that difference of opinion with rational debate. No, you’d tell that person to sit down and be quiet, or else they’re going to be thrown in jail.

So it’s at least possible to have a political situation that all the debating in the world isn’t going to solve. Okay. Now, think of all the political differences that can possibly present themselves that are far less of a cartoon. Carl Schmitt would start by saying, look, there are going to be groups that emerge in the political landscape whose entire existence is predicated on the destruction of another group. The reality of the world is that there are political differences that are irreconcilable. And these differences are not all that uncommon.

To Carl Schmitt, this is one of the failures of liberal political philosophy. No matter how good it feels to tell ourselves we’re going to be open to outsiders and just talk things out when we disagree, rational debate cannot solve political problems of this magnitude. No matter how much of a poster child you are for liberalism, faced with political beliefs sufficiently hostile to liberalism, faced with, for example, an authoritarian regime that wants to ascend to power, you are eventually going to have to do one of two things. Choice number one, be willing to accept the destruction of liberalism simply because something else was popular at the time. Or, choice number two, use the power of the state to silence opposition or, in other words, temporarily behave like what we would otherwise call a dictator by using the sovereign authority that, to Schmitt, is intrinsically embedded into the political process.

Choice number two of those two is something that liberals are absolutely terrified of, and for good reason. Remember, they’re looking to societies of the past that are structured around social contract theory. Society is an agreement between the citizenry and the sovereign. The citizen’s job is to serve the sovereign. The sovereign’s job is to ensure the security of the citizen. Sometimes in order to do this effectively, the sovereign needs to wield an authoritarian level of power. To political philosophers in the days of pre-liberalism, having a designated sovereign body, like a king, that has the ability to maintain certain elements of society unencumbered by the political process, was absolutely crucial. During the formation of liberalism, people looked back at our history of doing things this way and realized many of the downfalls of the great societies of the past occurred when in this volatile place of a sovereign body seizing control. Liberal philosophers, understandably, tried to do away with the concept of a sovereign. They saw it as an outdated and dangerous idea.

Carl Schmitt makes the case that this is why, once liberalism comes onto the scene, the thinkers at the time become absolutely obsessed with finding any possible way they can to make it so that we don’t have to have a sovereign anymore. The idea of a dictatorship, which at the time was historically one of the most common structures of a successful society -- dictatorships in this new liberal world become unthinkable. And Carl Schmitt wants to mark another distinction here between liberal theory and the reality of how the world is. The reality of the world is that societies sometimes need the ability to make swift and decisive decisions. And, in the post-Enlightenment world, this reality gets swept under the rug for the sake of pandering to the liberal fear of authoritarianism. He thinks this taboo towards the idea of a dictatorship certainly makes us feel good, but it simultaneously ignores the need for capabilities that healthy societies require.

To Carl Schmitt, this is yet another failure of the liberal political process. Not only does liberalism ignore society’s occasional need for a sovereign but, even if it wanted to get rid of the sovereign altogether, liberalism doesn’t actually remove the sovereign from the political process. Once again, it just creates the illusion that there isn’t a sovereign until we actually need one. Liberalism performs this illusion by engaging in various different types of what Carl Schmitt refers to as “normativism.” To put it bluntly, Carl Schmitt’s saying that liberalism’s terrified of the idea of a sovereign dictator holding power. So, to safeguard against that possibility, they’ve come up with all these different attempts to hold political power to a set of predefined norms and rules. Liberals are obsessed with this process of normativism. This is the rise of constitutional democracies in the West. Constitutions are designed to be safeguards against the swift and decisive action of authoritarianism. Normativism is sold as an incredible feature of liberalism that helps protect the will of the people.

Now, Carl Schmitt uses this term of normativism in a way that’s mostly intended to poke fun at the hopes of liberalism because, like I just alluded to, normativism is an illusion to Carl Schmitt. The hope and ambition of liberalism is that, by coming up with these norms that political leaders have to follow, whenever somebody comes along that starts to look like one of those sovereign dictators we’ve seen throughout history, well, we’ll just pull out the constitution. We’ll wave it in their face. They’ll burst into flames; and we’ll never have to hear from them again. But Carl Schmitt’s going to say this is yet another delusion of liberalism that doesn’t shore up with the reality of the world.

First of all, he would say, it doesn’t matter how long you sit down and talk about what the parameters should be for someone holding a position of power. You are never going to be able to come up with a set of rules that accounts for every contingency, given how many moving parts are involved when making decisions that affect this many people. To Carl Schmitt, trying to normativize these highly volatile moments that leaders are faced with is, at best, drastically oversimplifying how complex the world can be and, at worst, severely weakening your society and its ability to adapt and defend itself in a bad situation.

Here’s the good news though. To Carl Schmitt, this isn’t actually how things ever play out in liberal societies anyway, because even the most liberal society in existence eventually recognizes how necessary temporary extra-constitutional power is, given the right circumstances. Carl Schmitt is saying that even in liberal societies, whenever it really comes down to it and they’re faced with some sort of existential crisis, the constitution goes out the window anyway. Citizens of liberal, constitutional democracies often have this expectation of, “Oh, well, the government can’t just go rogue and do whatever they want. They’re held to the constitution. There are checks and balances. They got to get permission to do something, right?” But what happens every time there’s an emergency and something needs to get done? Oh, well, they just take action.

In other words, to Carl Schmitt, liberalism claims to have gotten rid of the sovereign from the political process. But what happens in these societies whenever something actually has to get done and we need a sovereign? Abracadabra! Poof! The sovereign was there the whole time. Who would have thought? I mean, this is a great magic trick. And to Carl Schmitt, the misdirection of this magic trick was performed by the liberal political process.

This is yet another liberal theory versus reality thing to him. The hope of liberalism was to get rid of the sovereign. The reality of the world is that we have these long periods of normalcy, where the government does almost nothing, punctuated by rare moments of extreme action whenever things actually need to get done. Liberalism hasn’t removed the sovereign from the political process, and the only time pieces of paper like the constitution prevent the sovereign from acting are during periods of normalcy, when the sovereign wouldn’t be exercising authoritarian power anyway. To Carl Schmitt, the biggest difference between our modern societies and the ones that existed in the pre-liberal world is that the pre-liberal societies were just a lot more honest about the authoritarianism that was going on. Nowadays, we got this grand illusion of liberalism that puts a bunch of window dressing on the whole process and pretends the world is something that it’s not. Liberalism is, in many ways, an impossible, utopian fantasy, in the eyes of Carl Schmitt.

Episode #132 - Transcript - Carl Schmitt On Liberalism pt 1 - Philosophize This! - Stephen West

[morgana-ren]

Loving the Tumblr sexyman polls having absurd outcomes. Some of us know the truth.

I am sitting here knowingly in my certainty like 'Oh, of course the filthy masses are entitled to their opinions. Have your futile little democratic process if you will, but alas, you are all wrong.'

[directactionforhope]

Don't let people tell you that voting doesn't matter

My grandparents came to this country from an authoritarian dictatorship that literally threw out all the votes. And literally falsified the election results. A country where literally no one's vote mattered - and that was during the years you could vote. (You know, all the things people say about the US to try to convince you that your vote doesn't matter.)

It was a country that literally assassinated their political opponents. And literally sent people who spoke out against them to prison for years of hard labor. (You know, the things Trump has openly talked about doing in the US dozens of times.)

My great-grandmother and great-grandfather were both arrested for refusing to join the governing party. They were both imprisoned for years. Their daughter, my grandma, had to live in a boarding house.

My grandpa, her future husband, was imprisoned for two years because of his country of origin.

My great-grandmother forced them to let her out of prison after two years, but only by virtue of being extremely lucky, tough as nails, and willing to potentially die in the process. My great-grandfather was imprisoned at a work camp for seven years, until his legs stopped working from digging holes in the ground in subfreezing water, at which point they threw him in the snow outside the front gates. The only reason he survived was because of the kindness of strangers who drove by.

My great-grandparents lived the rest of their time in that country with surveillance equipment in their home. Hidden microphones and tapped phones, and my great-grandfather's deep-seated fear that his wife's unwillingness to stop talking shit about the ruling party would land them back in prison.

They tried to assassinate my grand-grandfather. They shot at him while he was walking home from the neighbors', and barely missed. They successfully assassinated his cousin, and almost assassinated eight or so other members of his family in the attack.

Voting matters. The right to vote matters. Imperfect elections still matter.

Trump wants to take us to a country like the one my grandparents moved here from. Don't fucking let him.

And don't let anyone persuade you that it's worth the risk to not vote or vote third party.

The country my family is from is now a democracy. Let's keep the US as one too, please.

[mysharona1987]

[infiniteglitterfall]

So, let me see if I understand the argument here.

You're saying that because a minority of Zionist Jews managed to get 60,000 Jews out of Germany, and the Nazis wanted Jews out of the country, "Zionists collaborated with Nazis." And therefore, "Zionism" is evil, and Israel is evil.

The United States took in more Jews than that during the 1930s: about 100,000.

Why does this not mean that the United States "collaborated with the Nazis" and is inherently evil?

Why does this not mean that Jews stole Americans' land?

Or Native Americans' land?

Was the moral position actually for everybody to demand that German Jews fight the Nazis alone?

You're genuinely arguing that Jews fleeing a fascist dictatorship, which had stripped them of their rights, livelihoods, and savings, and was going to kill them, were actually running to "go steal other people's land."

And this doesn't sound like a literal far-right Nazi conspiracy theory to you?

It's one thing for a random modern-day Jewish woman to be so clueless that she thinks Jews could have stayed and fought.

Because it's her own ass she's mentally sacrificing there.

The fact that so many non-Jews have seized on the "Haavara argument" as some kind of "Israel is the Nazis" nonsense is so embarrassing for you, I can hardly articulate it.

The Nazis were going to kill all of the Jews. This was already obvious to many Jews, forcing people like Hermann Gohring to publicly deny it as early as 1932.

From 1933-1935 alone, the Nazis stripped German citizenship from all German Jews and made it illegal to hire them for most jobs. They weren't even allowed to do farming. And one of the Nazis' first acts was to create a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses. The Nazis systematically destroyed Jewish economic life in Germany.

The Jewish population in Germany went from 525,000 in 1933 to 215,000 in 1939. And a LOT of those Jews fled to nearby countries where the Nazis would later invade and murder them anyway.

The 304,000 Jews who managed to flee had to hand over most of their money and property to the Nazis in order to leave.

(Which then inspired a lot of countries across the Middle East and North Africa to do the same: legislate their Jews out of existence, encourage widespread antisemitic violence, and require them to hand everything over to the government if they wanted to flee. This went on throughout the 40s and 50s, and really, as long as it took. Today, November 30, is Jewish Refugee Day in honor of that.)

And against this level of societal, legal, and military power, BEFORE any Jews fled, the Jewish population of Germany was about 0.77% of the country.

Less than one percent of the German population.

You're saying that German Jews should have stayed and fought.

But you would not have fought for us.

You're not arguing that anybody else should have fought for us.

All you're really saying is that your level of understanding here is at "Nazi and Zionist both have Z's in them!"

They had to find a country that would take them, which was almost impossible because of both antisemitism and the Great Depression. A lot of the ones who left fled to nearby countries like France and Italy, where they ended up being rounded up and murdered by the Nazis anyway.

There was even a global conference about it in 1938 (the Evian Conference) at which fucking nobody except the Dominican Republic would agree to take in any extra Jews.

The Nazi Party had been absolutely clear about its principles since it was first formed:

In their 25-point party program published in 1920, Nazi Party members publicly declared their intention to segregate Jews from “Aryan” society and to abrogate their political, legal, and civil rights.

In 1933, the Nazis took power in Germany:

Once in power, Hitler moved quickly to end German democracy.

He convinced his cabinet to invoke emergency clauses of the constitution that permitted the suspension of individual freedoms of press, speech, and assembly.

Special security forces — the Gestapo, the Storm Troopers (SA), and the SS — murdered or arrested leaders of opposition political parties (Communists, socialists, and liberals).

The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933 — forced through the Reichstag already purged of many political opponents –gave dictatorial powers to Hitler.

Before the Nazis took power, there had been 525,000 Jews in Germany.

They started fleeing ASAP.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote:

...the entire internal policy of Germany is to be controlled by Nazis who are firm believers in violence against the Jews.

Only yesterday, Paul Josef Goebbels, head of the Nazi party in Berlin announced a bloodless pogrom against the Jews to expel Jews from employment in government office and from the economic life of the country.

This he proposes to accomplish by heavy taxation on Jewish enterprises and by influencing the courts to prosecute the Jews individually and collectively to prevent them from conducting any inner Jewish activities.

...[Goering] made it clear [in 1932] that the Nazis would tolerate no equality rights for the Jews whom he charged with being a "disruptive and poisonous element which has brought harm to the German people."

Although he denied that the Nazis plan to murder the Jews... he emphasized that the Jews would be suffered to remain in the country as aliens only.

The Nazis spent the next six years making life unlivable for Jews.

1933: Jewish immigrants were stripped of their naturalization and/or citizenship. Jews could no longer get jobs in government/public service, journalism, or the radio. Jews were no longer allowed to farm.

1934: Jews were no longer allowed to work in stock exchanges or as stock brokers.

1935: The Nuremberg Laws are passed, completing the plan. All German Jews are stripped of their citizenship. Sex and marriage with Jews is now illegal for all German citizens. The German flag becomes the swastika. Jews are banned from flying it.

By 1938, Hitler was saying these laws had been "too humane."

But even at the time, the Nazi Party had made it clear that this was just the start: that if essentially removing Jews from German society did not magically lead to a healthy, functional, Aryan Germany, they would need to revisit the issue.

The fundamental core tenet of Nazi antisemitism was that Jews needed to be removed from Germany. The idea of a Jew-free state is of course easier said than done....

The Germans also created a problem in that the Reichsfluchtsteuer (Reich Flight Tax) had been transformed under the Nazis into a mechanism to fleece German Jews emigrating of a good deal of their worldly possessions.

While there were quite a few German Jews who left Germany in 1933, these domestic and international factors encouraged some German Jews to hunker down and wait Hitler out.

In other words, Jews were being forced into exile, and Germany would only let them leave if they handed over their money and property on the way out.

If you've ever heard stories of Jewish refugees immigrating with their money sewn into the hems or linings of their coats, or people having their Jewish grandmother's wedding ring because she had hidden it inside her false teeth when she fled, that's why.

This is something that happened over and over and over and over again during and after the Nazis, because the Nazis had worked so hard to spread their influence and propaganda across the world.

Almost every country in the Middle East and North Africa had had a large Jewish population that went back thousands of years.

The departure of Jewish citizens was desired and permitted by the Nazi government – even after the Invasion of Poland – until a decree from Heinrich Himmler forbade Jewish emigration on 23 October 1941.

In 1941, the Nazis put the Final Solution into action.

The Final Solution, killing every Jew on earth, was their attempt to "solve" the "Jewish Problem" facing the world.

The "Jewish Problem" was that Jews existed.

(Or, as people following in their footsteps later would put it:

"Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.… It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.

"...For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events.

"They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realization of their dream.

"With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.

"With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there....

"With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there....

"Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.")

That last quote is Hamas. And yet, the war is a genocide and Israel isn't really trying to take out Hamas and Jews are evil Nazis and Palestine is a concentration camp and Israel is a concentration camp and words are meaningless.

[alwaysbewoke]

[agentfascinateur]

Palestinian educators have previously told Middle East Eye that Israeli authorities were aiming to eliminate its curriculum in favour of the Israeli version, in an attempt to erode Palestinian identity and "distort" history. 

Academic content Israel has sought to censor, they said, includes the logo of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian flag, lessons that discuss the Palestinian struggle against occupation, the right of return and prisoners, settlements, the immigration of settlers to Palestine, military checkpoints, the intifada, displaced villages, and considering Zionism a racist political movement.

[anthropoetics]

so funny when y'all latin americans act like you're any better than us when it comes to presidents

us? a hug

[davidaugust]

“Ukrainians are also fighting for our safety and for everyone’s freedom. By resisting Russian dictatorship, they show that democracy can defend itself. By defending their borders, they are protecting the international order and holding off chaos. By fighting Russia alone, they protect Europe. By showing how hard offensive operations are, Ukrainians make a Chinese war in the Pacific less likely. By fighting a conventional war against a nuclear power, they are making nuclear proliferation and nuclear war less likely.”

Tell Speaker Johnson to support Ukraine now:

+1-202-225-4000

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/10/opinions/sean-penn-barbra-streisand-imgaine-dragons-congress-ukraine-snyder/index.html

[itsallpoliticsstupid]

Isn't that how dictatorships start?

Slightly concerning news from America that the Supreme Court have ruled former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts whilst taken in office, but have no immunity for unofficial acts.

Meaning the federal election interference case against Donald Trump will return to lower court which will then decide on how to apply this ruling.

The moment the judiciary are giving former, or current presidents, absolute immunity from prosecution is the moment the country is slipping dangerously into dictatorship territory. And makes a mockery of the checks and balances within the US.

Maybe @mishacollins was right in his tweet?

[mortaljortlebortles]

I missed this and needed to make sure you didn't!!

Trump is quite possibly suggesting that he will put a stop to democracy!!

Vote Democrat

Or your letting a man have a dictator ship

Even if you disagree with Harris on somethings or whatever

This cannot happen.

If you aren't American don't think this won't affect you

It will

This has the 25 seconds before - a man arguing I was misleading said I needed to show this to.

It doesn't change my mind on the point I have made - though as I have said in a later reblog I have my life and you have yours so maybe you haven't been hurt by Trump and you trust him and so you don't think this has any weight and/ or context beyond just the words or you think the first 25 changes the last 20- I think his presidency informs my listening and I hope that it informs others as well. If you benefited from trump it will influence yours. I wish you could be in my shoes except I really don't want that.

[tomorrowusa]

« All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of an autocratic state. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the army and the police. The army and the police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the twenty-first century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality.

Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy but by sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, a complex of security services— military, paramilitary, police—and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation. The members of these networks are connected not only to one another within a given autocracy but also to networks in other autocratic countries, and sometimes in democracies too. Corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country may arm, equip, and train the police in many others. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms and media networks that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote another’s—as well as themes: the degeneracy of democracy, the stability of autocracy, the evil of America. »

– Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum at Substack quoting from her soon to be released book Autocracy, Inc..

You can read several more paragraphs from Autocracy, Inc. at the Substack link above. Her book will be published on the 23rd; if you're within distance of Washington, DC she will be doing a free book reading and Q&A on Friday July 26th at Politics and Prose. She's a good writer and speaker. I've read two of her previous books and can vouch for their quality.

The war in Ukraine is not some remote conflict that idiots like J.D. Vance or Neville Chamberlain might dismiss out of stupidity. Ukraine is just one arena in a worldwide clash between liberal democracy and kleptocratic tyranny.

[psychiatricmentalhealthfacility]

Search for Psychiatry Psychiatrist Psychiatric Mental Health Facility on the Planet Earth - Time Travel Crime - Violent Crime - Witness Intimidation and Evidence Tampering or Concealment - Non-Voters Labelled as Artificial or Proven Criminals

[pennymations]

I'm breaking out of hiatus to say this: To those who voted for that disgusting prick to become the 47th president, fucking shame on all of you! Congratulations! This country will become a fascist dictatorship in the nearly 250 year history of this nation. Fuck. You. All. I just lost all my rights in real fucking time

[the-irreverend]

Regardless of what happens in the next four years, always remember: