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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/217831/what-to-do-about-trumpWhat to Do About Trump? The Same Thing My Grandfather Did in 1930s Vienna.
Historical analogies are always flawed, but some moral principles shine eternal
By Liel Leibovitz
November 14, 2016 11:47 AM
My grandfather Siegfried was not a sophisticated man. When he bought a caralways the same car, a blue Peugeot 305, replaced every few years with a newer model of the same exact makehe kept the seats covered in plastic to keep them eternally clean. When you asked him for an apple, hed hold the fruit in his hand and rotate it like a tiny globe, peeling it with his pocketknife and making sure to remove only the skin and none of the flesh. When I ran away, as a child of 6 or 7, to explore a park nearby, he dashed out the door, wearing nothing but his underwear, and ran until he found me and hugged me tight. He didnt even hear the passersby who pointed and laughed. Nothing mattered to him but his family.
He died when I was very young, so I know his lifes story only as a broad outline: Educated in a conservatory in Vienna, he was a promising young violinist and composer when he was spooked by the goosesteps of Hitlers goons. He convinced two of his sisters to trade in a continental future for one less tender on the shores of Palestine. Some of his friends, maybe even members of his family, pointed and laughed then, too, telling him he was hysterical, that he was getting it all wrong, that it couldnt possibly be that bad. But grandpa Siegfried wouldnt listen: His simple heart advised him to take the thugs at their word and leave. At least thats how I imagine ithe never spoke of those early days, and his family and friends were all soon seized, deported, and murdered.
Im not sharing this particular story at this particular point in time to make some kind of historical analogy. Those are rarely useful even under the best of circumstances, and to compare Donald Trump to the Fuhrer or his ascent to the rise of the Third Reich is an absurd and reprehensible proposition. But Ive been thinking a lot about my grandfathers story this past week, and in it I find three simple commandments I cant bring myself to dismiss.
The first, and most obvious, is this: Treat every poisoned word as a promise. When a bigoted blusterer tells you he intends to force members of a religious minority to register with the authoritiesmuch like those friends and family of Siegfrieds who stayed behind were forced to do before their horizon grew darkerbelieve him. Dont try to be clever. Dont lean on political intricacies or legislative minutia or historical precedents for comfort. Dont write it off as propaganda, or explain it away as just an empty proclamation meant simply to pave the path to power. Take the haters at their word, and assume the worst is imminent.
Do that, and a second principle follows closely: You should treat people like adults, which means respecting them enough to demand that they understand the consequences of their actions. Explaining away or excusing the actions of others isnt your job. Vienna in the first decades of the 20th century was a city inflamed with a desire to better understand the motives, hidden or otherwise, that move people to action. Freud and Kafka, Elias Canetti and Karl Kraus, Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfelthese were the eminences who crowded the same cafés Siegfried and his musician friends most likely frequented. But while these beautiful minds struggled to understand the world around them, the world around them was consumed by simpler and more vicious appetites. Dont waste any time, then, trying to understand: Then as now, many were amused by the demagogue and moved by his vile vision. Some have perfectly reasonable explanations for their decisions, while others have little to go on but incoherent rage. It doesnt matter. Voters are all adults, and all have made their choices, and it is now you who must brace for impact. Whether you choose to forgive those, friends and strangers alike, who cast their votes so deplorably is a matter of personal choice, and none but the most imperious among us would advocate a categorical rejection of millions based on their electoral actions, no matter how irresponsible and dim. So while you make these personal calculations, remember that what matters now isnt analysis: Its survival.
Which leads me to the third principle, the one hardest to grasp: Refuse to accept whats going on as the new normal. Not now, not ever. In the months and years to come, decisions will be made that may strike you as perfectly sound, appointments announced that are inspired, and policies enacted you may even like. Friends and pundits will reach out to you and, invoking nuance, urge you to admit that theres really nothing to fear, that things are more complex, that nothing is ever black or white. Its a perfectly sound argument, of course, but its also dead wrong: This isnt about policy or appointments or even about outcomes. This isnt a political contestits a moral crisis. When an inexperienced, thin-skinned demagogue rides into office by explaining away immensely complex problems while arguing that our national glory demands we strip millions of their dignity or their rights, our only duty is to resist by whatever means permitted us by law. The demagogue may boost the economy, sign beneficial treaties, and mend our ailing institutions, but his success can never be ours. Our greatness, to use a tired but true phrase, depends on our goodness, and to succeed, we must demand that our commander in chief come as close as is possible to reflecting the light of that goodness. Theres no point indulging in the kind of needlessly complex thinking that so often plagues the intelligent and the well-informed. Theres no room for reading tea leaves, for calculations or projections or clever takes. The only thing that matters now is the simple moral truth: This isnt right. As long as we never forget that, we can never lose: As grandpa Siegfried knew all too well, those who refuse to gradually put up with the darkness are making a very safe bet; if youre wrong, theres no harm, but if youre right, you win more or less everything.
So forgive me if these next four years Im not inclined to be smart. When it comes to the task ahead, Ive no interest in deep dives or shades of grey or mea culpas. Like my grandfather, Im a simple Jew, and like him, I take danger at face value. When the levers of power are seized by the small hands of hateful men, you work hard, you stand with those who are most vulnerable, and you dont give up until its morning again. The rest is commentary.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)It's hard to resist the group think. To go along to get along. To remember way back when, before this or that. But this must be done somehow. To accept that all exists for the benefit of the corporate oligarchy because, so they say, they provide the jobs. To accept cuts to Social Security and Medicare because, so they say, that enables people to be free unto themselves. To accept that a travel ban for Muslim countries is not a religious-based ban.
It is horrifying to think that this is where we are. I have seen how easy it is to get a group of people to go along with just about anything. That's terrifying.
elleng
(130,887 posts)you work hard, you stand with those who are most vulnerable, and you dont give up until its morning again. The rest is commentary.'
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,607 posts)And off to the Greatest Page for this timely, important post.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I am sure some people will find it maybe a bit paranoid or hyperbolic, but it rang true for me. It made me think about the parable of the frog in the pot of boiling water (http://awesci.com/the-old-tale-of-a-boiling-frog/) which I know is not scientifically sound, but it makes the point about the danger of acclimating to slow, but negative changes.
By the time you realize that things have become intolerable, it's really too late to do anything to reverse what is happening. You adjust to each little change thinking "It can't get worse, things have to change soon." Until one day you find that you no longer recognize the world around you anymore and worst of all, it is hostile toward you.
"As grandpa Siegfried knew all too well, those who refuse to gradually put up with the darkness are making a very safe bet; if youre wrong, theres no harm, but if youre right, you win more or less everything."
tblue37
(65,340 posts)Milton Mayer writes about in They Thought They Were Free:
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was expected to participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all ones energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. One had no time to think. There was so much going on."
MORE:
http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I can actually feel it happening.
VOX
(22,976 posts)Going to print this and hang it at my desk, so I can read it EVERY DAY.
malaise
(268,966 posts)Should have 500 recs
Squinch
(50,949 posts)Turn CO Blue
(4,221 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,001 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)But while these beautiful minds struggled to understand the world around them, the world around them was consumed by simpler and more vicious appetites.
I wish we all could move to Scandinavia.
byronius
(7,394 posts)BSdetect
(8,998 posts)"to compare Donald Trump to the Fuhrer or his ascent to the rise of the Third Reich is an absurd and reprehensible proposition"
I'm not seeing that much difference at all.
Hitler never had nukes to use.
And I won't be going to some other land.
Duppers
(28,120 posts)Amaryllis
(9,524 posts)bdamomma
(63,845 posts)this comment I held onto:
Refuse to accept whats going on as the new normal. Not now, not ever.
This is not normal, and never will be. Aren't we are better than this?
dlk
(11,561 posts)These are words we all need to hear.
johnp3907
(3,730 posts)I've read it several times since.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)world wide wally
(21,742 posts)worstexever
(265 posts)colorado_ufo
(5,733 posts)that you have rightfully paid for!
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I'm sure I would have loved your grandfather too.
Favorite line:
Theres no point indulging in the kind of needlessly complex thinking that so often plagues the intelligent and the well-informed.
Let's remember this when we think about the people in Syria now and the refugees.
Akamai
(1,779 posts)They Thought They Were Free, about how Germany was taken over, slowly, slowly,slowly.
A philosophy professor said, "It all happened so slowly, so gradually. Every step justified, every step not overly extreme." He pointed out though, that as the farmer is not aware of the corn slowly growing above his head, so too average German citizens were unable to see the terrible things happening to their country.
Hekate
(90,667 posts)It's imperative for this essay to be seen again, and again, and yet again.
We just returned from Seder with our neighbors...
Bookmarked.
babylonsister
(171,059 posts)Had never seen this before yesterday; thought it good advice and, sadly, timely.
Cha
(297,184 posts)fascistrump asshole.
alanbudda
(23 posts)..."it's a moral crisis"...is a brilliant definition of the 'deplorables'.
kentuck
(111,085 posts)Not now, not ever.
ewagner
(18,964 posts)Trump's and his family's refusal to attend the passover dinner...
Spicer's ignorant white-wash of Hitler..
The signs are there and we would be fools not to heed them.
dalton99a
(81,468 posts)northoftheborder
(7,572 posts)Kentonio
(4,377 posts)blueseas
(11,575 posts)For all Americans - this is not normal.
classykaren
(769 posts)kag
(4,079 posts)"our only duty is to resist by whatever means permitted us by law."
Part of the problem is that, like the Nazis did, the haters and fear-mongers are busy changing the laws. At that point, the only thing limiting our response is our own morality. I take my cue from Henry David Thoreau and Gandhi on this one. Civil disobedience is necessary in the face of a corrupt government.
Kber
(5,043 posts)calimary
(81,222 posts)Not now. Not ever.
Wonderful testament, babylonsister.
3catwoman3
(23,975 posts)"When people show you who they are, believe them."
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Hulk
(6,699 posts)I've watched the first two parts, and the last one is tonight.
I've learned more about my country in those four hours than I could learn in years from books and other sources. I understand NOW how some things never change with the immigrant phobia, the corporate raping of the country and the bankers soaking the last drops of blood from the unfortunate situations of the masses. Racism has ALWAYS been alive and a power to deal with in this country.
I strongly recommend watching this documentary. Without the clear knowledge of the mistakes of history, we are bound to repeat them again; and we are in fact repeating them again.
We are moving forward, but we have a very long way to go; and sometimes we take steps backwards.
oldcynic
(385 posts)oldcynic
(385 posts)whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.