Mom is 75 and has been so excited about Occupy Wall Street. And then the GOP let loose with the accusations of anti-semitism. Well that did it. And now, after seeing what the Oakland police did, she’s getting scared. It’s really beginning to feel like 1933 again. Or worse — 1963.
More after the squiggle.
After seeing the coverage of the Oakland Police and their violent attack on peaceful protesters, including Marine Vet Scott Olsen, she called to tell me that “Breaking up public meetings and incitement to violence — classic Nazi party tactics! The right is telling us all that the Occupy Oakland people were the first to turn violent. This is how it starts." Just Saturday she had written:
The classic is the Reichstag fire in 1933. Claiming the Communists had started the fire in the German parliament building, the Nazis - then a minority in the government - forced a "declaration of emergency" and within only six months had used the declaration to wipe out all other political parties, the labor unions and Germany's vigorous free press. The courts were emasculated and so were all the rights of the citizens. Totalitarian control was complete.
It took them ONLY SIX MONTHS!
I said, "Mom, that's good stuff for your blog. Where do you think it's all headed?"
Here's where: Chris Matthews, Nazis, and November 22,1963 I don't want to cut and paste her whole blog, but I can't get her to post here directly because the format is too confusing. So just skip the rest of what I have to say and check it out for yourself. She makes a very compelling case.
She's already written on her blog: It Takes An Old Jew to Recognize Today's Nazis with a list of eight of Joseph Goebels propaganda rules — rules today’s GOP appears to be following.
Eight tactics the Nazis used to get power in 1930s Germany and pointed out how the GOP is using these tactics now: The Big Lie, Intimidation, Incitement to Violence, Disruption of Public Meetings, Scape-goating, Media Control (Think Rupert!), Destroying the Unions, Guilt By Association.
(She tells me that after WWII high school curricula including sections on how to spot propaganda.)
And then she wrote about how today’s GOP is using the Nazi playbook in The GOP Nazi Tool Kit: "If It Walks Like a Goose....". Some have suggested that "Nazi" is too strong and that she should talk about fascism instead. But this is my mother's blog. She 75. She lived through it all and all her family that stayed in Poland died in the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz.
In her latest, she looks at how these Nazi tactics are being used right now:
Racism is alive in America, though no one seemingly dares say so. It's the devil's fiddle the GOP has been playing since Nixon adopted his "Southern Strategy" in 1968. Now the GOP has a whole orchestra playing the hateful tune.
The veneer among the GOP right-wing bigots is as thin as the coat of whitewash Rick Perry's family painted that rock with at their hunting camp. And the GOP is stoking the racism in a clever way. With Herman Caen popping up as a convenient Uncle Tom for cover, the GOP can again use the birth certificate issue safely, as they are now doing, to make Obama "the other".