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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Reichstag warning
Good article about Reichstag and its modern parallels.
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/26/reichstag-fire-manipulating-terror-to-end-democracy/
On February 27, 1933 the German Parliament building burned, Adolf Hitler rejoiced, and the Nazi era began. Hitler, who had just been named head of a government that was legally formed after the democratic elections of the previous November, seized the opportunity to change the system. There will be no mercy now, he exulted. Anyone standing in our way will be cut down.
The next day, at Hitlers advice and urging, the German president issued a decree for the protection of the people and the state. It deprived all German citizens of basic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly and made them subject to preventative detention by the police. A week later, the Nazi party, having claimed that the fire was the beginning of a major terror campaign by the Left, won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections. Nazi paramilitaries and the police then began to arrest political enemies and place them in concentration camps. Shortly thereafter, the new parliament passed an enabling act that allowed Hitler to rule by decree.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)Doreen
(11,686 posts)gordianot
(15,242 posts)suffragette
(12,232 posts)Mining fear to implement dictatorship.
Martin Eden
(12,871 posts)When enough people believe that and believe the man who said it, fascism will come to America.