The Meaning of Hitler

 

Someone on Facebook put up a post with a typical concentration camp scene and the caption "It didn't begin with gas chambers there either."

This isn't helpful.  Why not?

Well, obviously it is true that no dictatorship ever began with gas chambers.  But here is the thing.  The vast majority of dictatorships don't end with gas chambers either.

When people compare Trump to Hitler, the problem is that in our culture Hitler has two meanings.  One is the archetype of how democracies can fail.  The other is as the archetype of all evil.  This runs the risk of conflating these two things, but they are not the same.  Many democracies have failed.  Only one such failure has ended up with gas chambers.  

We desperately need another way to talk about democracy failing, another point of comparison.  Talk Orban, Erdogan, Putin, Hugo Chavez -- anyone but Hitler.  Granted, all these analogies have their own problems.  None of them are as well known as Hitler, for one.  Furthermore, many of Trump's supporters would cheerfully embrace comparisons to Orban, or even Putin.  And Putin comparisons seem more than a little hyperbolic -- not as bad as Hitler comparisons, but no one really expects a rash of Trump's opponents falling out of windows any time soon.  

Let me put it plainly.  I see the risk of the US becoming a "mild," Orban-style dictatorship as quite high, somewhere in the range of 30-70%.  I see the risk of a harsher, Putin style dictatorship as lower, but still real, maybe 5-20%.  And I see the risk of this ending in gas chambers as zero, none, zip, nil, nada.

It also brings to mind Naomi Wolf's End of America, which, among other things, describes what everyday life was like in Nazi Germany for an ordinary, non-political German:

You never knew who it might be when the doorbell rang. [W]e children were not allowed to touch the curtains . . . There was always somebody with a leather trench coat standing there in the hallway. And, especially when there were two or three people at our place, there would be several people standing outside in front of our house.

She also estimates that in Nazi Germany fully 36% of the population was briefly arrested for questioning.  

It seems unlikely that we will have men in trench coats standing in hallways, or 36% of the population arrested for questioning, just as we are far from having Proud Boys harassing and breaking up anti-Trump rallies.  Elon Musk's search engine trawling social media and unleashing the troll army is a different matter.

I also recommend the movie Swing Kids.  Yes, I know, the movie is fiction, but it gives some idea what everyday life looked like to an ordinary, non-political German citizen.  The movie led to a revival in interest in swing in the US because it was, in so many ways, a typical teen angst movie that American teens could relate to -- aside from being set in Nazi Germany!  Swing music was seen as suspect both in the US and Germany, both because of its sensuality and its association with Black culture.  The difference was that in the US, teens who followed swing music came into conflict with their parents.  In Nazi Germany, the consequences were rather more dire.  Hitler Youth beat up swing kids.  (They also beat up Jews, not that most swing kids cared).  The police were known to raid clubs were swing music was suspected, and the bands and dancers learned to change their style very quickly.

Darker things are afoot as well.  The primary character is Peter.  Peter's father was once a college professor who quit to protest the firings of Jewish colleagues.  One night the Gestapo showed up and took him away.  He returned, broken and cringing from torture and died soon after as a result of the abuse.  Peter is understandably intimidated as a result.  Peter's mother is particularly afraid of having her son mixed up with swing kids because of this experience.  Peter steals a radio (ransacked from a Jewish home) and is arrested.  To avoid further trouble with the law, he and his best friend are compelled to join the Hitler Youth and spy on suspected enemies of the regime, including family and friends.  They begin joining ironically, but Peter sees his friend gradually subverted into an actual Nazi.  Peter is eventually arrested when his former friend joins the Hitler Youth in breaking up his swing club and goes away defiant, "I don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!"

Roger Ebert criticized the movie as downplaying the horrors of the Nazis, but I can't say I agree.  Even in Nazi Germany, life goes on.  This is what everyday life looked like for an ordinary German.

Again, I am really not afraid of that.  I don't expect things to get that bad, anymore than they have gotten that bad in Orban's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, or Putin's Russia -- at least until the Ukraine war.

I plan to post soon on what I think we should fear.