Just two items of interest before returning to my series, Fascism For Beginners. Tomorrow, Friday January 30 is a national day of protest against Trump’s personal, masked Gestapo (in the U.S. it is referred to as “ICE”). If you live in America and are appalled by what you’re seeing in Minneapolis and elsewhere (and I hope you’re appalled), you have an opportunity to make a strong statement by skipping school, or taking a day off from work, and refusing to buy anything. Money talks, and in America it howls, so this “ICE Out” will send a strong message to both politicians and business leaders. (Not that Republican leaders, most of whom are white supremacist, even care. But every little bit helps.)
Since our crippled federal government can’t seem to refrain from threats of a shutdown, there’s no reason why American taxpayers shouldn’t shut down, and for a worthy cause.
The other news item relates to a subject – music – that this blog wishes it could return to. It is a just-released Bruce Springsteen song denouncing “King Trump” and dealing with the “state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” and inspiring those of us who still believe in justice, democracy, and human decency. Of course, the Trump regime has already ridiculed it, just like it ridicules, dismisses, or lies about everything that doesn’t bow to its warped agenda. Sadly, those Americans who should be hearing this song have their ears clogged with wax and their hearts and brains numbed by vitriolic, fascistic conservative “press.” But, no matter. Again, every little bit helps.
It’s a shame more music artists don’t share Springsteen’s courage and convictions. But the 1960s are far behind us. Perhaps we need a war with a draft to get us off our collective butt? Is it because the white middle class has (at least, until Good and Pretti were killed) thus far been immune (on the surface, at least) from Trump’s assaults? I don’t know. But anyway, thank you, Bruce. You’re still The Boss.
Keep fighting the good fight, people.
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace – John Lennon
(The steady stream of lies from the Trump administration continues, after more ICE terrorism in Minneapolis resulting in yet another murder. It’s quite clear by now that America has descended into fascism. In this four-part series repost, I examine William Shirer’s monumental history of Nazism, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The parallels between Hitler and the National Socialists, and Trump and today’s Republicans, have only sharpened since 2017, when I first wrote this.)
On February 24, 1926, leading NSDAP (aka National Socialist, or Nazi) officials met in the town of Bamberg in southern Germany. Hitler attended. In the crowd sat a skinny young man with blazing eyes and a crippled leg named Joseph Goebbels.
The Bamberg conference would be a defining moment for Goebbels and the Nazis. Until now, the well-educated but impressionable Goebbels had supported a northern German Nazi leader named Gregor Strasser.
Strasser was a typical Nazi: nationalistic, militaristic, and racist. But he was strongly opposed to Hitler’s 25-point Program (see previous post), and he competed with Hitler for party leadership. At the Bamberg assembly, Hitler delivered a withering two-hour speech. Any opposition to his extremist program was quickly smothered.
After Bamberg, Goebbels, like an adoring schoolgirl – and like so many other Germans – began to fall under Hitler’s spell. He would eventually rise to become Nazi Minister of Propaganda, one of Hitler’s most trusted henchmen, and, next to Hitler, the person most responsible for bamboozling an entire country. Strasser would later be executed by Hitler.
Two days after this meeting, just 213 kilometers west of Bamberg, in the beautiful city of Frankfurt, a Jewish girl named Margot Frank was born. Exactly 19 years later she would die of starvation, exposure, and disease, along with her younger sister, Anne, in a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
***
Historians and writers have been scratching their scalps for over 70 years over how a Western democracy, albeit a fragile one, could elect a dictatorship, then permit a bunch of misfits and sadists to start a global conflict, rape their nation, and commit the greatest act of genocide in history. There’s more than one reason, and they’re all very complex. But William Shirer discusses some of them in his book, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH. I lack the space to adequately cover them, but I’ll try to graze the surface:
Margot Frank. Like her sister, Margot kept a daily diary while her family was in hiding. It’s never been found.
Sonderweg: “Sonderweg” is a German word meaning “special path.” It’s a theory that German peoples’ values developed differently from other Western nations due to the nature of their leaders, as well as the writings and teachings of certain German philosophers and thinkers. Before WWII, historians looked at Sonderweg in a positive light. But after the war, they viewed it as having hindered development of liberal democracy, and helping give rise to fascism.
Shirer discusses Sonderweg and proposes that Nazism was a logical evolution of a national character that dates to Martin Luther in the 16th century. Luther is famous for his “Ninety-five Theses,” which broke from Roman Catholic dogma and helped initiate the Protestant Reformation. But Luther also openly hated Jews and advocated violence against them. His anti-Semitic writings, needless to say, were circulated widely in Nazi Germany.
Shirer cites a number of Germans after Luther whose beliefs (Shirer claims) contributed to a rising German nationalism and sense of Aryan superiority. Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Hegel, and composer and writer Richard Wagner are the most well-known. While these cultural giants undoubtedly influenced 20th-century German thought and attitude, Nazi propaganda skillfully selected only those ideas of theirs which helped promote its cause, then twisted them for its own purposes. For example, although Nietzsche is famous for his philosophy of the “Übermensch” (a superior human who creates new values in the absence of God), he also spoke out against anti-Semitism, and he didn’t intend his humanistic philosophies to imply Aryan racial or German national superiority.
But did many Germans in the Depression look beneath the surface of the Nazi propaganda?
The THIRD Reich: Hitler and Goebbels sold many incredible fictions to the country during their moment in history’s spotlight. One of them was that Nazi rule represented a third realm, following the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806) and German Empire (1871-1918), and it would last a thousand years. It lasted less than a baker’s dozen, but enough gullible Germans became convinced that Hitler followed a line of great rulers that began with Prussian King Frederick II (Frederick the Great), and continued with Otto von Bismarck.
Both Frederick and Bismarck have mixed legacies. They made Germany strong, but they did so through relentless militarism and imperialism. Additionally, Frederick marginalized Jews and despised the Poles, referring to them as “vile apes.”
Frederick II (Frederick the Great)
Hitler kept a miniature portrait of Frederick up through his final days cowering in his Berlin bunker.
Treaty of Versailles: Germany and Austria-Hungary were the aggressors in World War I. After it was defeated by the Allies in 1918, Germany was required to accept responsibility for starting the war, disarm its military, relinquish large tracts of territory, and pay reparations (the equivalent of $442 billion U.S. dollars today) under Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles. Many, including some in the Allied sphere, considered the penalties too harsh (although not the French, who suffered most during WWI).
Every political party in the Weimar Republic, from the liberal Social Democrats to the Catholic Centre Party to the conservative German National People’s Party, railed against the treaty, but none more so than conservatives, nationalists, and ex-military leaders. Many of them – especially the far-right National Socialists – found a convenient scapegoat in socialists, communists, and especially Jews, who had been successful as business leaders and were thought to have benefited from a weakened Germany.
Hitler was very skilled at gaining traction for his extremist ideas by appealing to Germans’ patriotism and racial heritage and demonizing “the other.” Hitler knew that once you can convince enough people of a shared enemy, and create an impression that this enemy is sub-human and has devious motives… it’s extremely easy to get people behind you. Hitler’s most fanatical adherents were young people who could be easily indoctrinated (“Hitler Youth”), and the lower educated, who could be easily duped. Although the Nazis took the tactics of demonization to unparalleled lengths, such behavior has been exhibited over and over throughout history by people in power seeking political gain. The strong preying upon the weak. It happens in dictatorships, as well as democratic republics… including the U.S.
But I digress.
Once the Jews, Bolsheviks, and intellectuals could be purged from Germany, Hitler argued, “Der Vaterland” would be purified. It could then unify its many independent provinces, regain its lost territories, and expand on them (providing Germany its “Lebensraum,” or “living space”). Then, once again, it could bask in the greatness for which it was preordained.
As jobs became ever scarce and German exports slowed to a trickle in the first years of the Depression (1929-1933), citizens hungered for quick and easy solutions… even if some of the solutions made them a little queasy, or might be temporarily “uncomfortable.”
Hitler and the National Sadists provided these solutions with gusto.
***
(Thanks for sticking with me in this unsavory topic. In the next installment of my “Fascism for Beginners” series, I’ll discuss how German citizens weren’t the only ones who contributed to the rise of fascism in Germany).
NOTE: this is the first of a four-part series I published in April 2017, not long after Trump was first elected. The insurrectionist is now threatening to use America’s 1807 Insurrection Act to stifle protesters in Minneapolis after the brutal murder of anti-ICE protester Renee Good. I thought now would be a good time to reiterate what can transpire when a nation turns toward fascist leadership. (And happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.)
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which – George Orwell
I’m reading a very good book right now. It’s called THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH by William Shirer. I bought it a few years ago in honor of the 50th anniversary of its publication, but until recently it’s been sleeping on my bookshelf. I’m reading it now because, like many people since the November election, I’m pretty deflated, and I’m thinking this book will be a good antidote. Maybe it will put things into perspective. As low as America is right now, it would have to claw a lot more dirt out of the pit to reach the depths of 1930s-40s Germany.
RISE AND FALL is considered the definitive history of the Nazi Party. It’s a 1,150-page book of small print, so reading it is a long haul. I’m just past the rise and starting on the fall. Churchill has replaced Chamberlain in England. Germany’s vaunted army has finally been repulsed, on the icy Eastern front, by Russia. The U.S. has reluctantly been pulled into the war following the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I’ve never been much of a WWII buff. As far as historical conflicts go, I’ve always preferred the more antiquated and seemingly altruistic slaughter of the American Civil War. My wife loves the Second World War. Any time one of those black-and-white newsreels about WWII is broadcast on television, she grabs the remote. I can’t watch them. Inevitably, there are clips of that shrieking madman with the greasy hair and Charlie Chaplin mustache. I usually leave the room. The sight of him makes my skin crawl.
So until recently, I was probably like most Americans, in that my knowledge of Nazi Germany was limited to a few names, dates… and one monumental atrocity. But Shirer’s book has made it abundantly clear that Nazi philosophies and practices were aided and abetted many years prior to the war and the Holocaust. The war and the Holocaust were just fascism brought to its logical and horrifying conclusion.
Charlie Chaplin spoofing Adolf Hitler in “The Great Dictator” (1940). Hitler was considered a big joke in the beginning. After the clown makeup came off, the world saw something else.
What’s the definition of fascism? The “Merriam-Webster Dictionary” defines it as follows:
A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
That’s a mouthful. But let’s look at the first part: “…exalts nation and often race above the individual.”
The Nazi Party was founded by a man named Anton Drexler and three other far-right Germans in Munich on January 5, 1919. At that time, it was called the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or DAP). By 1921, a onetime vagabond and former Austrian colonel named Adolf Hitler had, through boundless energy, skillful oratory, and not a little fanaticism, wrested control of the party.
Anton Drexler, founder of the Nazi Party
Hitler added the words “National Socialist” to the name, making it NSDAP, or “Nazzy” (Note: the word “Socialist” here was merely used rhetorically and had little to do with the philosophies of various leftist parties in Germany at the time, which Nazism eventually extinguished). Hitler and other party leaders also delivered a 25-point manifesto. Two of the manifesto points were as follows:
Point Number 4: “Only a member of the race can be a (German) citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.”
(This ignorant stipulation mistakenly assumes that precious “German blood” equates with race, when Germanic heritage is actually an ethnicity. And note the casual singling out of one particular group for discrimination: Jews. Evidently there were few Arabs in Germany at the time – at least, any that had social or economic significance).
Point Number 8: “Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.”
(August 2, 1914 is the day Germany mobilized for WWI, which it ultimately lost. The 1918 Treaty of Versailles required the country to make reparations for its aggression, including a substantial loss of territory. This left a lingering bitterness throughout the prideful nation. The date of August 2, 1914 was probably significant to the most nationalistic Germans, but totally arbitrary to most immigrants).
Nation and race. Nationalism and eugenics. Always choice ingredients in a recipe for disaster. Remember, this Nazi “Program” was drawn up in 1921: eighteen years before Germany invaded Poland to start the next world war. Although NSDAP was still only a radical fringe group in Germany, the party principles had already taken root. Hitler and his henchmen would adhere to these two points, and all 23 others – and expand on them – until their empire of sadism finally toppled.
My stomach’s starting to churn, so I’ll break off. But please check back for the second part of my “Fascism for Beginners,” where I’ll be examining how citizens allowed a political party and its leader to turn their country into a pigsty.
(Breaking news: Trump’s ICE just murdered a peaceful protester in Minneapolis. Trump and his yes-men and -women have, of course, worked their usual spins and lies.)
The latest black comedy out of Washington is that the U.S. just bombed Caracas, Venezuela – minus congressional approval – and “kidnapped” Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and plans to now “run” his country (shoeshine boy Marco Rubio currently manning the controls). America’s most powerful insurrectionist and convicted felon, Donald Trump, has threatened he won’t rule out “boots on the ground,” and he’s recklessly brushed aside the possibility of a prolonged military entanglement.
Maduro was vice-president under late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. A socialist, he has been condemned as a corrupt autocrat guilty of crimes against humanity. Therefore, few tears are being shed at his “removal.” But some leaders are so fearful of Trump’s use of punishing tariffs, they are actually applauding one fascist merely knocking off his alter-ego. I call their chickenshit behavior “the Neville Chamberlain Syndrome.”
A few brave souls have condemned Trump’s actions, criticizing them as yet another attempt at regime change by a U.S. Republican president, similar to George W. Bush‘s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. “This is about making Trump’s oil industry and Wall Street friends rich.” True, Chris. But I would add it’s also about an easy way for him to look like a badass and nourish his megalomania.
Trump has, in his typically grandstanding, vague, and simplistic way, also made veiled threats against other countries in the Americas, notably Mexico. On his personal right-wing propaganda mouthpiece, FOX News, Trump claimed Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum is powerless and “frightened” of Mexican drug cartels, and that “something is going to have to be done with Mexico.” Like I said: grandstanding, vague, simplistic, and reckless. Just the catnip that his base loves.
Prior to Maduro’s kidnapping, Trump held a 60 percent disapproval rating. In the U.S., military actions are often used to stoke patriotism (i.e. nationalism) and spike poll numbers.
***
Some of you may be familiar with secular humanist Lawrence W. Britt‘s oft-cited article “Fascism, Anyone?,” published in Free Inquiry magazine in Spring 2003. Britt compared the regimes of seven fascist leaders – Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar (Portugal), Papadopolous (Greece), Suharto (Indonesia) and Pinochet (Chile) – all right-wing conservative, like Trump – and discovered 14 areas of commonality between all seven.
Trump has repeatedly exhibited all 14 fascist characteristics except one: “Supremacy of the Military.” Trump’s ascent to power was partly fueled by his criticism of decades of bloody American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. So this Venezuelan attack is a reversal. But egotistic bullies are egotistic bullies, and Trump is infamous for his disdain for pesky things like truth and morality.
His recent incursion into Venezuela is undoubtedly a next step. He’s conquered America, so why not the world? How about invading that terrible island Greenland? (Not joking, people.) There is absolutely no doubt in this writer’s mind that Trump will continue using America’s military might “whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.” (Britt, Fascism, Anyone?).
(At a later date I hope to discuss how Trump has wholeheartedly embraced the other 13 characteristics of fascist leaders.)
In the title of this essay, I asked a question. Since American citizens have proven woefully inadequate in preventing their country from rollicking down the road of fascism, perhaps we could enlist the assistance of another nation (or nations)? One a bit more enlightened, maybe? Perhaps those of us who still value this dying concept of democracy could arrange a small kidnapping ourselves…except the victim would be our own elected leader!
Just a hypothetical…but s’pose we could hire a country…like, say, Canada…to invite dickhead up north, maybe for a golf extravaganza at a resort near maybe Banff. Isolated near the 13th hole, he would there have only a small posse of security goons, and said goons could easily be smacked over their skulls and rendered unconscious with a few hefty nine irons. Maybe Canada could knock dickhead over his head as well, just to keep his bombastic trap shut while his turbo-charged, gold-plated golf cart is hijacked to the Canuck helicopter awaiting in a grove of evergreens.
Dickhead could then easily be whisked to an existing underground compound high up in the Northwest Territories. (Actually, doesn’t matter where, long as it’s really, really cold.) Since he’s now 80-something years old (why would a loving God allow a virus like this to live so long?), he could remain there until he finally dies of natural causes, hypothermia, or Viagra withdrawal. ‘Course, if our Canadian friends choose to speed up his demise – maybe through a steady diet of Hostess Twinkies while his bullet-proof diaper is chained to a large gold-plated “T” ripped off one of his skyscrapers, and while subjected to endless reruns of Obama inauguration celebrations – that would be fine.
This wouldn’t of course solve the problem of a dumb American electorate permanently incapacitated by decades-worth of fermentation in conservative propaganda media (like FOX News), crappy public education, and American football.
But it would feel so good to finally and irrevocably drag a selfish pig and bombastic bully off the world’s playground.
The good news about climate change is that if it gets us first, Trump won’t have time to build his death camps – Joan Baez, June 2025
Happy 2026, everyone. I hope you had a good holiday season (whether secular or non-secular).
I’ve always loved Christmas. As a child, it was literally a magical time. I still remember the gadget-crammed detective briefcase Santa brought me, sometime around 1965, a toy inspired by the hit TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (or was it Secret Agent Man, aka Danger Man?). And now that I have four grandchildren, I vicariously enjoy their joy. But as with most people plagued with critical thinking skills, the appalling commercialism, materialism, and hypocrisy of Kitschmas have placed me firmly in the Charlie Brown camp. And since I’m non-Christian – that is, one who considers virgin births as fictions, albeit clever and comforting ones – I don’t need Linus to recalibrate my perspective.
Suffice to say that, yesterday, I breathed a big sigh of relief: the gent down the street was finally removing the garish, plastic, inflatable cartoon characters he’d installed on his front lawn (“for my grandkids,” he claimed; I wonder about that, grampa). The polyester Walmart Santa, his reindeer, and giant green Grinch will soon be lining an ocean floor near you.
Anyway…to the subject at hand…although I resurrected longitudes a year ago as a strictly music blog…and I’ve loved sharing and interacting with all of you musically (the TCRAC poll, especially, was loads of fun)…I’m now thinking of occasionally returning to non-musical op-eds.
What happened was this: following the inconceivable 2024 U.S. presidential election that was inconceivably conceived, my wife and I decided to move to Spain to escape what we feel is a diseased country. Without belaboring things, we actually followed through, moving to beautiful Estepona, Malaga on September 3 of last year. Despite some growing pains and residency concerns, we loved it and were fitting in nicely. Spain is a wonderful place with lovely people, not to mention a gun policy that is moral.
However, three months later our daughter became very ill. She has a history of chronic pelvic and gastrointestinal pain, and this latest reoccurence was very bad, actually making us concerned for her mental state. The fact that she has three daughters to raise – ages 8, 6, and 4 – added to the worry. Long story short, we decided to return to America to be closer to her and help out. So we now have a cozy condo in sleepy Goshen, Ohio, rather than a hip, urban apartment on the Mediterranean.
Life is strange. I guess when you’re born on a country’s birthday, the stars preordain that you will live and die there.
So what does all this have to do with longitudes? Well, I told myself that, since I have to return, I have two options: I can either become a bunny rabbit and nibble lettuce while Trump and the Republican Party turn America into an open sewer; or I can take the opposite tack and hurl even more rotten tomatoes than before we left. And although I’m not a lion, I’m not Peter Cottontail, either. Not that it will effect any positive change, but I plan to be politically vocal and active again, maybe more so than before. Including on WordPress. At least, until Trump and his neo-Nazis silence my voice.
(They) keep you doped with religion and sex and TV – John Lennon, “Working Class Hero”
Our return to what Gore Vidal called the “United States of Amnesia” couldn’t have been timed better: it came just as ourfavorite petty tyrant characteristically went on a xenophobic and racist rant against U.S.-based Somalians – many of whom are U.S. citizens, all of whom want to escape to a better life – calling them “garbage” and sending his masked gorillas to nearby Columbus (which has the second largest Somali population in America) to indiscriminately scoop them up. Just the latest, sick fun and games in America’s “New Normal.”
Therefore, don’t be too taken aback if you start seeing my usual misanthropic essays again…at least, as long as my mental health doesn’t become mental unhealth. I am what I am, and I have to speak out. America is now a country where the constitution, the rule of law, due process, and traditional values…like, for example, basic human decency…have been trampled into our chemically toxic soil by fanatical ideologues who’ve somehow managed to hypnotize half of a seriously myopic nation. Sound like 1930s Germany? You bet. And it’s been said many times before: if you’re not part of a solution, you’re part of the problem.
Although back in January 2025 I stated that my topical essays might be making me a bit too cynical, I never want to be one who blithely accepts what, as “Kurtz” in Heart of Darkness recognized, is “the horror.”
So…got a whole bunch of juicy outrages to pontificate on. Racial profiling by masked “Brownshirts.” Book banning zealousness by Moms For (Non-) Liberty. University takeovers. Redistricting by Republicans to tilt elections. Incarcerations of the homeless. Corporate welfare for the wealthiest. Erasing benefits for the poor. Gutting funding for education and the arts. Organized Christian prayer in public schools. Revitalization of the coal industry. Politically motivated renaming of geographic locations. And most shocking of all: the phenomenon of brain-consuming worms.
So here’s to 2026. Let’s hope it’s a more activist year than ever, because we need activists now more than ever. While it’s never been a better time to be a misanthrope, I plan to do my part in fighting the “dope” that keeps us acquiescent. And if y’all hear of any planned conflagrations of books near zip code 45122, please let me know. Maybe we can intercept a few copies of Fahrenheit 451 before they hit the flames.
Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag – Mark Twain, in a letter to William Dean Howells, 1899
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