> .................................................I also know that I will
not be like
> those Weimar Jews - watching what the Nazis telling they would do, then
> seizing power, and then starting doing it - while hoping (some of them
> at least) that this would go away, that they Germans are such a
> civilized nation, and all that Nazi stuff is hot air. I will not wait
> hoping the US paper goods - the Constitution, the legal system, the
> freedom of speech - to protect me. I will buy a one way ticket BEFORE
> the AA (Ashcroft Abteilung) starts rounding up people like me here.
>
> Anyone who believes that fascism cannot happen here is fooling himself
> (or herself). It can happen anywhere, especially here - see for example
> Richard Rubenstein, _The cunning of history: the holocaust and the
> American future_. The argument there is that every nation has a
> potential of becoming fascist, all it takes is the government willing to
> go that road and a small band of zealots willing to follow.
-----------------------------
But shouldn't we at least wait to first see if a fascist movement actually
emerges? The Weimer Jews and others weren't faced by a "small band of
zealots" when they engaged in wishful thinking; the Nazis had already become
a mass party.
And even at that, I'm not sure that's entirely being fair to the German victims; becoming an unemployed exile in a foreign culture, uprooting yourself and family, is something all of us would keep putting off and weighing against the odds of the unimaginable actually happening. Like timing the market, people like to believe they can identify and wait until the very last minute, and I don't think the lessons of history will make much difference -- even to people who understand fascism can happen here and have already begun prematurely preparing for it like yourself.
Marv Gandall