General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Biden should still win but this morning I am weeping for the USA [View all]wnylib
(21,885 posts)mainstream now instead of being fringe. Your reference to Nazis is apt. There are enough parallels in US politics today to how fascism gained power in Europe in the 1930's to be scary as well as sickening. Too many Americans do not see the parallels because they do not know the details of how fascism evolved in Germany in particular, but also in Italy, Spain, Austria.
I made a point of learning how it happened in Europe because I had one set of grandparents who came to America from Germany as young children 45 years before there was such a thing as Nazis. There were older relatives of mine who had kept in touch with their relatives in Germany over the years. I was born a few years after WWII ended. I wanted to know not just what had happened, but how it had happened. In addition, there were children at my grade school who had come with their parents to America from Italy. The parents had lived through Musolini's rule and had aided Americans during the war.
So I paid attention to how, not just what.
Americans dismiss concerns about creeping fascism because they only know the horrible atrocities and say that since we are not doing those things, there are no parallels in the US. But there are. There definitely are.
It's not conspiracy theory or alarmism on my part. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has written about it. Her family escaped fascism in Europe during the war and then communism after it. From her family's personal experience and her professional experience, she knows what she is talking about in her book, :Fascism, a Warning."