In World War II it took the combined might of the Allied countries to defeat Nazi and Italian fascism in Europe and Japanese imperialism.
The war didn’t begin with the German invasion of Poland in August 1939. It had it’s roots in the 1920s in Germany, devastated after World War I. The economy was a disaster, there were few jobs, inflation was horrible.
The Nazis were a populist movement. Adolf Hitler lost the election for president in 1932, but the Nazi party had gained enough influence for him to be made chancellor. He seized power in January 1933. In March leaders of the German Communist and Social Democratic parties were arrested and taken to the first concentration camp at Dachau. On May 2 unions were taken over. Their leaders went to Dachau. June 30, 1933 was the beginning of the Night of Long Knives, when intellectuals and socialists in the Nazi party were murdered or arrested.
German Christian churches were taken over. Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a few others created the Confessing Church to oppose the nazification of those churches. Bonhoeffer was hung by the Nazis just a few weeks before the liberation of the concentration camp where he was held.
Niemöller didn’t mention gays in his famous poem. There was a thriving gay community in Germany in the 1920s. They went to Dachau and other camps.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Martin Niemöller
The Nazis had sympathizers in the U.S. Fred Koch made part of his fortune building refineries for Hitler and Stalin. U.S. Financial institutions helped build Hitler’s war machine, including one where Prescott Bush was an executive.
What Fred Koch saw in Russia made him anti-communist. He was one of the founders of the far right wing John Birch Society. Others included Harry Lynde Bradley, who left his fortune to the Bradley Foundation.
Anti-communist sentiment in the U.S. after WW II led to one of the major factors in the takeover of the Republican Party.
The Kochs, Bradley brothers, John Olin (Winchester), Adolph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife (Mellon fortune), the Smith Richardson Foundation (Vicks fortune), the DeVoses (Amway) were and their foundations still are major donors to the people who took over the Republican party.
In the 1960s civil rights, desegregation, school integration, the Voting Rights Act of 1965… gave birth to the religious right political movement. By the early 1990s they had taken over the Republican party at precinct and state levels. Some people call it a “cultural war”, I refer to it as the Second Civil War. Read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, all you have to change is “four score and seven” and understand that the battlefield is the entire country.
Nixon was the religious right’s first president. His racist Southern Strategy gave the South to the Republican Party and the party to the religious right and their wealthy backers. In return for $billions in funding, the latter got global warming denial, deregulation and tax cuts.
It’s a populist movement. There were plenty of warnings. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. Political scholars have agreed that the difference between “populism“ and “fascism” is violence. Now we have violence, as in the January 6 insurrection. Most of the mass shootings in recent years have been committed by white nationalist Trump following incels. Timothy McVeigh was long before Trump, but he was a white nationalist incel too.
One of the keys to understanding the movement is authoritarianism. Dr. Robert Altemeyer researched and wrote about it. John Dean, allegedly the master mind behind Nixon’s Watergate cover up, recently published a book on authoritarianism with Altemeyer.
Authoritarian fathers create authoritarian sons. Adolf Hitler’s father beat his sons, the oldest left. Adolf was educated at a Benedictine Monastery. Fred Koch was a very busy man, and his wife an active socialite. He hired a German nanny, who raised his sons. She was a Nazi sympathizer, even went to Germany to celebrate Hitler’s election.
Notes:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-positivity/202009/john-deans-authoritarian-nightmare
Altemeyer developed this quiz. The link to his book doesn’t work, but I’ll include one that does.
Update 09132023
Just a comment on the Freedom Caucus and the Heritage Foundation - google any Republican's name with "religious right", no quotation marks. This article includes mention of the Republican Study Committee.
The Heritage Foundation recently released their Project 2025, their intentions after they put Trump, or any other Republican, in the White House, and win control of congress.
Comments