James Kirchik takes a 75-Year-Old Harper’s story, “Who Goes Nazi?” and finds that it often applies word-for-word in the current American context.
Written by Dorothy Thompson, the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, the article presents readers with the aforementioned “macabre parlor game†in which she secretly assesses which guests at a random social function might “go Nazi†given the proper political and social conditions. As Thompson keenly observed from her time in Germany, there was no single demographic “type†of Nazi supporter; workers and businessmen and intellectuals and landed gentry all backed Adolf Hitler’s political movement, just as workers and businessmen and intellectuals and landed gentry opposed it. There were even Jews, Thompson wrote, “who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis.†Nazism, Thompson argues, “appeals to a certain type of mind,†not a rigid composite. As such, her article is a timeless analysis of the authoritarian mentality and makes for disturbingly relevant reading today. …
“Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi,†Dorothy Thompson wrote. “Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them. Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.†… These people are lacking “something in them,†a moral code, and their very large numbers are a troubling indicator of a rot in the American soul.
Read the whole thing.
GoneWithTheWind
The shoe is on the wrong foot. Given the sleaze and corruption that is beiing exposed about the Clintons and many/most Democrats clearly the simile should refer to Clinton. But wait! It gets worse. So much worse. As more and more leaks and discovered emails are released and made available it is clear that Hillary and Bill are so much worse than simply sleazy and corrupt. They are traitors working with and aiding foreign enemies in.their efforts to overthrow our country. Why? For the simplest and most basic reason in human history; for money and power. They did this knowingly and in fact sought out the opportunity to sell us all down the sewer. So in the world of NAZI accusers to omit the Clintons seems to be world class propaganda or ignorance.
margot darby
‘Contrary to popular conception, however, the median household income of a Trump primary voter is a healthy $72,000 a year, well above the $62,000 national average and higher than the median incomes of those who supported both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, 44 percent of Trump voters have college degrees, far more than the 29 percent of the general adult population.’
“Popular conception,” eh? The idea just sprang ex nihilo from the great pullulating herd?
No, it’s a trope you people made up and have been pushing all along, Jamie Kirchick. Acknowledge the source of your own lies, if you please?
Old Salt
What a load of crap. Trump has never been prosecuted or even seriously investigated for a serious crime. He is running against the crime cartel our federal government has become.
Clinton is trying to get herself proclaimed Capo of the world’s biggest criminal enterprise.
Bunny
Oh my gosh.
“what it means to be a Christian in the face of a Republican nominee who so wantonly disregards fundamental biblical teaching”-because Clinton is so in line with them???
“the bloodlessly centrist Clinton”-???
It is to laugh.
ThomasS
NYM – a new low.
JKB
“all backed Adolf Hitler’s political movement,”
Funny historical fact, Nazism was not created by Hitler. Hitler and his fellow sociopaths were late to the Party, so to speak.
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“For more than seventy years the German professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of “liberation” against the capitalistic West. The German “socialists of the chair,†much admired in all foreign countries, were the pacemakers of the two World Wars. At the turn of the century the immense majority of the Germans were already radical supporters of socialism and aggressive nationalism. They were then already firmly committed to the principles of Nazism. What was lacking and was added later was only a new term to signify their doctrine.
“When the Soviet policies of mass extermination of all dissenters and of ruthless violence removed the inhibitions against wholesale murder, which still troubled some of the Germans, nothing could any longer stop the advance of Nazism. The Nazis were quick to adopt the Soviet methods. They imported from Russia: the one-party system and the pre-eminence of this party in political life; the paramount position assigned to the secret police; the concentration camps; the administrative execution or imprisonment of all opponents; the extermination of the families of suspects and of exiles; the methods of propaganda; the organization of affiliated parties abroad and their employment for fighting their domestic governments and espionage and sabotage; the use of the diplomatic and consular service for fomenting revolution; and many other things besides. There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.
“Hitler was not the founder of Nazism; he was its product. He was, like most of his collaborators, a sadistic gangster. He was uneducated and ignorant; he had failed even in the lower grades of high school. He never had any honest job. It is a fable that he had ever been a paperhanger. His military career in the first World War was rather mediocre. The First Class Iron Cross was given to him after the end of the war as a reward for his activities as a political agent. He was a maniac obsessed by megalomania. But learned professors nourished his self-conceit. Werner Sombart, who once had boasted that his life was devoted to the task of fighting for the ideas of Marx, [26] Sombart, whom the American Economic Association had elected to Honorary membership and many non-German universities to honorary degrees, candidly declared that Führertum means a permanent revelation and that the Führer received his orders directly from God, the supreme Führer of the Universe. [27]
“The Nazi plan was more comprehensive and therefore more pernicious than that of the Marxians. It aimed at abolishing laisser-faire (sic) not only in the production of material goods, but no less in the production of men. The Führer was not only the general manager of all industries; he was also the general manager of the breeding-farm intent upon rearing superior men and eliminating inferior stock. A grandiose scheme of eugenics was to be put into effect according to “scientific†principles.”
von Mises, Ludwig (1947). Planned Chaos (LvMI)
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Now which party has the “professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of “liberation” against the capitalistic West”? Which party has found common cause in the tactics of the Communists?
JKB
Quick which party does this remind you of? Which party promotes the abandonment of the law for the “feelings of the people”? Granted, it’s been going on so long many on the other side have started going for touchy feely judges, but who has the longest history?
“Nulla poena sine lege, no punishment unless ordered by a law. It is precisely the inability of the Nazis to understand the importance of this fundamental principle that qualifies them as antidemocratic. In the totalitarian system of Hitler Germany the judge has to come to his decision according to das gesunde Volksempfinden, i.e., in accordance with the sound feelings of the people. As the judge himself has to decide what the sound feelings of the people are, he is sovereign on his bench like the chieftain of a primitive tribe.”
von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy
Milo
I wish I had been privileged to attend Yale, as you and Sheila Jackson Lee. I’m sure it’s wonderful to be among the cultured elites.
Hrefn
That’s your thesis? Trump equals Hitler? Rational thought has deserted this blog.
Very disappointing. And delusional. Hillary and everyone who surrounds her are devoid of integrity. Do you think the Democratic primary was an honest contest? Do you think Hillary as Secretary of State utilized a private email network for any other reason than to circumvent Freedom of Information Act requests and conceal her machinations from the people? To conceal quid pro quo contributions to her slush fund Clinton foundation? Do you think the Haitians are happy the Clintons diverted contributions to their politically connected cronies instead of providing real disaster relief?
Iran getting the bomb OK with you?
And Trump is Hitler. So don’t vote for him. Make sure Crooked Hillary wins. Otherwise you are a Nazi. Got it.
JDZ
She must have transferred from somewhere, but nothing I found on-line explains where she started. I was curious and looked her up. Would you believe that she was in the same residential college I was at the same time? I have no memory of meeting her, seeing her, or knowing of her at all.
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