Republished with permission from Curt Strickland

Cruelty is a by-product of fascism. Without cruelty, Fascism withers on the vine.

So where does cruelty spring from, where and how is the seed planted?  Or are people born cruel, part of everyone’s DNA?. I believe man is basically good, but when he abdicates  his integrity, and is pummeled with propaganda and violence; he surrenders his humanity, forfeits his capacity for critical thinking, and morphs into a robot unfettered by morals, capable of committing atrocities with an artificial clear conscience. We see this happening in Gaza and the West Bank with its ethnic cleansing; we see it happening in Iran where we bomb schools, 185 children and teachers the latest body count; we saw it in the slaughter of six million Jews, and we saw it in Russia, where Stalin killed millions of his own countrymen.

These atrocities all occurred at the hands of everyday  people: butchers, bakers, cabinet makers, people who had abdicated their moral compass, their integrity, their human compassion, all the while being plummeted with disinformation and propaganda.  We blame the leaders, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin, Trump, but it is the ordinary people who execute the cruelty.  And when the day arrives for accountability, the regular people cry, ‘I was just following orders. You’re after the wrong person. I was just doing my job.’

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” Martin Luther King

And accountability always comes.

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Martin Luther King

On January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials and SS leaders met for the purpose of working out the logistics and strategies for mass deportation and murder. It was called the Wannsee Conference, a coordinated, elaborate stratagem designed for the mass murder of all European Jews.

Not some, all.

The purpose of the meeting was for Nazi officials to tackle the logistical challenges inherent in the transporting of millions of Jews to concentration camps constructed for their execution.  Believing Jews to be animals, scum, less than human, German officials took a scientific, detached  approach in the warehousing and subsequent execution of six million Jews. It was addressed as an engineering problem, using the SS as ground troops. The SS would role into a city and announced that the next day they were executing Jewish families, including women and children. The SS would ask for volunteers to carry out this genocide, women and children included, and shockingly, most towns’ people volunteered to participate.

“I would also like to say that it did not at all occur to me that these orders could be unjust. It is  true that I know that it is also the duty of the police to protect the innocent, but I was then of the conviction that the Jews were not innocent but guilty. I believed the propaganda that all Jew ere criminals and subhumans, and that they were the cause of Germany’s decline after the First World War. The thought that one should disobey or evade the order to participate in the extermination of the Jews did not therefore enter my mind at all.” Kurt Mobius, former Police Battalion HITLER’S WILLING EXECUTIONERS by Daniel Goldhagen

Before Hitler reaped the harvest of antisemitism in Germany, pastors and priests had been plummeting the German people with antisemitic disinformation from their pulpits for over two hundred years, dehumanizing Jews, which in turn allowed Germans to murder Jews with a clear conscience, believing that they were fulfilling God’s plan. Ethnic cleansing wasn’t some DNA trait that dictated the cruelty. No, the cruelty was harvested by disinformation and propaganda. Hitler didn’t create anti-Semitism, he simply exploited the ripe anti-Semitism terrain that had been implanted in the German people for the past two hundred years. Jews were Germany’s scapegoat for everything, including their surrender in World War I.

Ordinary German people who murdered women and children believed they were doing god’s work, their moral compass having been impaired, their empathy, kindness, compassion disabled. They became less than human,  Being infected with propaganda enables one to commit atrocities with a clear conscience. And remember, these were ordinary people who carried out the ethnic cleansing.

This brings to mind Trump, descending his golden stairway in 2015, declaring himself a presidential candidate, and immediately offering up the red meat of Hispanics, who he declared are all rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. Hispanics are Trump’s Jews, his go to scapegoats, a necessary element for  the installation of fascism, and like the German pastors, he is planting the seeds of racism, of hate, daily, 24/7.

And as Trump railed about the Hatians in Springfield, Ohio, declaring they were eating cats and dogs, his minions disseminated his false rhetoric of hate, of violence, appealing to American’s worst instincts. And saturated with propaganda, ICE commenced the abductions, U.S. citizens being dragged out of their cars and homes, children separated from parents, sent to concentration camps where they were housed like they were animals. Some citizens didn’t need the concentration camp housing because they were murdered by ICE.

Tell me this doesn’t remind you of the ICE. Anne Frank wrote on January 13, 1943, about the brutal roundup of people: “Terrible things are happening outside…poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are   torn apart; men, women, and children are being separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”

As we all know, ICE has been kidnapping U.S. citizens. Neighbors are being asked to turn in their neighbors. Tell me that doesn’t remind you of Nazi Germany. Parents are being taken away from their kids during church services. In Chicago, federal agents were dropped down onto roofs by Black Hawk helicopters where terrified naked children are being zip-tied naked at three in the morning and carted off to detention centers. Just imagine the trauma those kids will forever have. Tell me that doesn’t remind you of Nazi Germany.

Tell me that doesn’t remind you of the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in Germany, where Jews were either executed or wisp away to death camps. Remember, Hitler didn’t go after the Jews first; he went after the critics, the press, people who spoke out, gays, the artists, with the disabled were the first to be executed. And today, people are being taken away and placed in camps surrounded by alligators and pythons. Dissent is being criminalized, free speech is under attack. Democracy is hanging on by a thread. This is reminiscent of the 1920’s, when America was ablaze with Xenophobia, embracing Eugenics, labeling certain citizens less, motivated by white supremacy.   

So how’d we get here? The Trump administration had to have had it’s own Wannsee Conference to address the warehousing and the logistics of placing people in concentration camps. First they had to purchase warehouses, not living quarters, but warehouses designed to warehouse goods, not people, and build concentration camps throughout the United States. In order to warehouse arrested Americans at a rate of 3000 a day, a massive infrastructure design was required, to be immediately put into construction. And they purchased warehouses not suited for human lodging. Here’s a list so far:

Large-Scale Facilities (7,500 – 10,000 beds each):

• Social Circle, GA: Warehouse in Newton County.
• Socorro, TX: Located in the El Paso metro area.
• Trenton, PA: Located in central Pennsylvania.
• Regional Processing Centers (1,000 – 1,500 beds each):
• Surprise, AZ: A warehouse facility planned for up to 1,500 beds.
• General Warehouse Conversion: Reports indicate 16 buildings nationwide are targeted for conversion into processing centers, with 9 of 24 planned sites already purchased for over $700 million.
• Existing/Expedited Additions:
• Fort Bliss, TX (Temporary/Tent): A rapid-setup, tent-based facility currently holding over 3,000 people, with expansion capabilities.
• Private Contractor Expansion: CoreCivic expanded contracts to add capacity in Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, and Oklahoma. AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL
• Infrastructure Concerns: Critics argue these warehouses, originally designed for freight and truck traffic, lack the necessary plumbing, electrical, and life-safety infrastructure for humane long-term human occupancy. Bloomberg.com 

But here’s the thing: if they are building these structures, they plan on filling the beds, just as they did with the Prison Industrial Complex, which still rages on. Steven Miller has ordered ICE to arrest 3000 people a day. With that quota, U.S. Citizens are being arrested and warehoused in facilities well below livable standards.  American citizens are  being indiscriminately snatched up, neighborhoods terrorized, people and children walking around in fear. Kids are afraid of going to school, fearing they will be picked up, or their parents taken away.

How is this terror not reminiscent of Nazi Germany?

At some point, the Trump Administration must of had their own Wannsee Conference, where the logistical frame work was designed to house and deport their stated daily quota of three thousand immigrants, even ones born in the USA. And like Hitler, Trump is betting that his propaganda on Hispanics will clear the road for his concentration camps. (And by the way, three people died in the Fort Bliss concentration camp so far.) Reports are sneaking out about the inhumane conditions in these ICE facilities.

After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Jews were pressured with violence and economic sabotage to leave the country. In other words, what today we are calling self-deporting, which  also involves both violence and economic pressure. The Trump administration is careening toward these benchmarks, the building blocks of Fascism.

Key elements of fascism to keep in mind when evaluating the current scene:

• Authoritarianism and Leader Cult: A charismatic dictator commands absolute power, often portrayed as infallible.
• Extreme Nationalism: An intense, often exclusionary focus on national rebirth, frequently based on perceived victimhood or decline.
• Militarism and Violence: Glorification of war, expansionism, and the use of paramilitary forces to terrorize opponents.
• Suppression of Opposition: Elimination of democracy, political pluralism, and labor unions.
• Controlled Media and Propaganda: Manipulation of information to promote the state’s ideology and destroy opposing viewpoints.
• Scapegoating: Identifying a common enemy (minority groups, foreigners, or political opponents) to unify the population.
• Economic Control: While private property remains, the state heavily regulates the economy to serve national goals.
• Gender Roles and Social Control: Strong adherence to traditional, often patriarchal, gender roles and obsession with social order. Keene State College

When the Nazi’s took over in 1933, Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Full throttled eugenics was unleash, the belief in a master race. Destroying Jewish businesses is similar to what has taken place in Palestine where blockades are in full force, denying both food and commerce.

In Minnesota, businesses have been boarded up, workers staying home, restaurants closed. Whole neighborhoods are silent, citizens terrorized.

This is not America.

We are in the throes of Trumpian fascism, and not the early stages. Our civil rights are eroded daily. It is clear they already had their Wannsee Conference with the purchase of facilities and the Infrastructure  construction was proceeding as planned. I don’t think they counted on the opposition being so strong and organized. The protests that are occurring would never have happened in Nazi Germany, although this administration believes peaceful protests are illegal. But we are all inspired by the people of Minnesota who refuse to surrender to America’s SS, ICE.

And then we decided to declare war on Iran. There has been a lot of whitewashing of history with this administration, but I never would of expected that the history of the Vietnam war and the Iraq War had been wiped from our history books. Maybe the wars were declared woke and a delete button was pushed. Remember how Bush sold the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? And it turned out they didn’t. And all those dead and traumatized American soldiers—they didn’t sacrifice themselves for a mission based on a lie.

I find it ironic that we are trying to establish Democracy in these foreign countries at the same time we are dismantling Democracy in our own country.

How’s that regime change in Venezuela working out?

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  Longerich 2010

We are at a crossroads. The forces of cruelty have been unleashed in America, but I am comforted by the resistance, people showing up to resist ICE, the women’s marches, the food banks established, the refusal to stay silent.

God bless America.