I just want to leave a couple excerpts from they thought they were free by Milton Mayer
It’s a short read, and I highly recommend it if you’ve never had the chance to read it.
…”Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”…
…”Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”…
…””But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”…
This is how fascism works. It’s an unrelenting deluge of controversies, changes, and bullshit. This deluge is what empowers the fascist. One step leads to the next, but people say it’s all just talk. The people are kept busy with things meant to look like they’re important, while the real important changes are carried out away from prying eyes. And most importantly, it’s a steady march to hell. No one thinks the dictator is actually going to do those things, until he does one. But then it was only the one thing after all.
If trump says he’s going to invade Mexico, I fully expect him to attempt it. But it’s not going to be on day one. No, it’s going to be after a year or 2 of mass deportations and ICE raids. And most people won’t say a damn thing about those. And then if news keeps saying that we tried deporting and it’s not working, well then we have to invade, I’d bet a decent amount of people will support it, probably a vocal group of Latino republicans who “did it right”.
We’re so very close to a dictatorship, all of the groundwork is already laid out, the plan is out for anyone read. I just hope people will actually resist when the changes start coming.
I just want to leave a couple excerpts from they thought they were free by Milton Mayer
It’s a short read, and I highly recommend it if you’ve never had the chance to read it.
…”Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”…
…”Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”…
…””But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”…
This is how fascism works. It’s an unrelenting deluge of controversies, changes, and bullshit. This deluge is what empowers the fascist. One step leads to the next, but people say it’s all just talk. The people are kept busy with things meant to look like they’re important, while the real important changes are carried out away from prying eyes. And most importantly, it’s a steady march to hell. No one thinks the dictator is actually going to do those things, until he does one. But then it was only the one thing after all.
If trump says he’s going to invade Mexico, I fully expect him to attempt it. But it’s not going to be on day one. No, it’s going to be after a year or 2 of mass deportations and ICE raids. And most people won’t say a damn thing about those. And then if news keeps saying that we tried deporting and it’s not working, well then we have to invade, I’d bet a decent amount of people will support it, probably a vocal group of Latino republicans who “did it right”.
We’re so very close to a dictatorship, all of the groundwork is already laid out, the plan is out for anyone read. I just hope people will actually resist when the changes start coming.