Is This Our Reichstag Fire Moment?

Reichstag Fire

So, is the Charlie Kirk assassination our Reichstag Fire moment?

For starters, we should really consider what the Reichstag fire moment meant.  

Hitler was named chancellor on January 30, 1933.  (Point of contrast: Donald Trump was sworn in as president on January 20, 2025.  So the two men's tenure is comparable).

Hitler promptly called for elections on March 5, which is doable in a parliamentary system.

In early February, Goering took over the Prussian police, deputized his Brown Shirts, and authorized them to shoot real or imagined Communists on sight.  (Street battles and intimidations between Communist and Nazi paramilitaries were common at the time).

On February 27, the Reichstag burned down in a fire apparently set by a Communist fanatic acting alone.  Nazis promptly blamed all Communists for the fire, declared it the opening salvo of a civil war, and denounced Communists in the most inflammatory of terms.  On February 28, President Hindenburg issued a decree suspending civil liberties and states' rights -- particularly state control of the police.  Goering promptly began mass arrests of Communists in Prussia.  Within two weeks, the Nazis had taken over all state police and made mass arrests of Communist and Social Democratic leaders, shut down their newspapers, and the like.

The elections took place on March 5.  Nazis won 44% of the vote, and rightwing parties won a  majority.  

The next day Nazis seized control of all state governments.  Opposition politicians fled for their lives.  The prisons were so overwhelmed by the number of political prisoners that the Nazis began a makeshift prison in an abandoned munitions factory, named for the nearby medieval town of Dachau.  Dachau opened on March 22, 1933. Widespread reports of torture and murder circulated by early April.

On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag met, under the intimidating presence of the Brown Shirts, and voted itself out of existence.  By July, all parties but the Nazis had been banned.

So what has happened with us?  It is really too early to say.  So far we have seen:

Right wingers have been declaring a civil war and using the most demonizing and inflammatory terms to condemn anyone who might be broadly defined as "left," blaming them for Charlie Kirk's murder.

The digital mob is on the loose, harassing and threatening, demanding the firing of anyone they deem disrespectful of Charlie Kirk.  An unknown number of people have lost their jobs.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr as threatened the licenses of ABC unless they fired Jimmy Kimmel, a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

Donald Trump is ranting like a complete dictator.  Administration member JD Vance, Steve Miller, and Pam Bondi are little better.  All are threatening RICO actions against who-knows-who.  Trump is designating Antifa a terrorist organization.

At the same time, Trump has beaten a tactical retreat from his plans to send the National Guard to Chicago.  Most of us are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So what should be expect?  I am expecting Team Trump to start doing what I feared, and what -- so far as we know -- it has not done yet, such as using the IRS to shut down organizations that oppose it, or sending FBI informants to infiltrate opposing organizations to disrupt them.  And now there are threat of RICO investigations against a very vaguely defined leftwing terror network and its funders.

I believe that many right-wingers really do believe their wilder conspiratorial ideas about organizations on the left -- that all the 2020 riots, and probably the January 6 riot, were organized and directed by Antifa.  That every organization that has ever received a donation from George Soros' Open Society Foundation is controlled by Soros.  That virtually all leftwing activists and protesters are paid and controlled by Soros.  And so forth.  

Certainly a RICO investigation will not turn up any such conspiracy.  But so what?

I do not know much of anything about RICO, other than that it allows any organization that commits two or more listed crimes to be declared a criminal enterprise, subject to extensive criminal and civil penalties.  The crimes include numerous types of fraud.  I imagine if you comb through any organization's books closely enough you can find at least two questionable transactions.  And that just might be enough to declare it a criminal enterprise and shut it down.

Scary stuff!