Christopher R. Browning finished his distinguished 40-year career as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, retiring in 2014. What follows is an excerpt from his essay in the October 25 issue of The New York Review of Books titled The Suffocation of Democracy:
As a historian specializing in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars, I have been repeatedly asked about the degree to which the current situation in the United States resembles the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe. I would note several troubling similarities and one important but equally troubling difference.
In the 1920s, the US pursued isolationism in foreign policy and rejected participation in international organizations like the League of Nations. America First was America alone, except for financial agreements like the Dawes and Young Plans aimed at ensuring that our “free-loading” former allies could pay back their war loans. At the same time, high tariffs crippled international trade, making the repayment of those loans especially difficult. The country witnessed an increase in income disparity and a concentration of wealth at the top, and both Congress and the courts eschewed regulations to protect against the self-inflicted calamities of free enterprise run amok. The government also adopted a highly restrictionist immigration policy aimed at preserving the hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants against an influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. (Various measures barring Asian immigration had already been implemented between 1882 and 1917.) These policies left the country unable to respond constructively to either the Great Depression or the rise of fascism, the growing threat to peace, and the refugee crisis of the 1930s.
Today, President Trump seems intent on withdrawing the US from the entire post–World War II structure of interlocking diplomatic, military, and economic agreements and organizations that have preserved peace, stability, and prosperity since 1945. His preference for bilateral relations, conceived as zero-sum rivalries in which he is the dominant player and “wins,” overlaps with the ideological preference of Steve Bannon and the so-called alt-right for the unfettered self-assertion of autonomous, xenophobic nation-states—in short, the pre-1914 international system. That “international anarchy” produced World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, the fascist dictatorships, World War II, and the Holocaust, precisely the sort of disasters that the post–World War II international system has for seven decades remarkably avoided. [...]
Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump. The combination of Trump’s abasement before Putin in Helsinki, the shameful separation of families at the border in complete disregard of US asylum law (to say nothing of basic humanitarian principles and the GOP’s relentless claim to be the defender of “family values”), and most recently Michael Cohen’s implication of Trump in criminal violations of campaign finance laws has not shaken the fealty of the Republican old guard, so there is little indication that even an explosive and incriminating report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller will rupture the alliance. [...]
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“Don’t run around trying to make friends with someone who is depriving you of your rights. They’re not your friends. No. They’re your enemies. Treat them like that. Fight them and you’ll get your freedom. After you get your freedom your enemy will respect you. I say that with no hate. I don’t have hate in me. I don’t have any hate. I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let anyone who hates me tell me to love him.”
~~Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2007—Blackwater US Uh Oh:
Two days after Blackwater USA employees opened fire and killed as many as 11 Iraqi civilians whose only crime was getting in the "security contractors" way, Blackwater's employee, the State Department said:
It's also important to remember that this convoy was attacked...
There was—the basic fact is that there was an attack on the convoy.
I understand that the convoy was attacked and that there was a response.
And a Blackwater USA spokesman claimed:
Blackwater regrets any loss of life, but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life.
And what reason would the State Department and Blackwater have had to lie? I mean, besides the nearly 200 times Blackwater had fired on Iraqi civilians in the past, or the time a drunk Blackwater employee murdered a bodyguard of the Iraqi Vice President, or the more than $1 billion in contracts Blackwater has received from this administration.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Can't believe we're missing Toiletpaperghazi! Oh, and also the Kavanaugh cloture vote. But here's our 10/5/17 episode. Paula Writer saw it all coming. Her Gop abuse series continues. The Nobels are stuck in the past. And why a bump stock ban just might fly.
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