SCRATCHPAD: 2024-07-05 Fr: Tim Snyder's Lessons from 1933 in Germany
A scratchpad…
Neofascism: Tim Snyder has lessons for the present from the Nazi takeover back in 1933:
Tim Snyder: How to Stop Fascism: ‘(1) Voting matters. Hitler came to power after an election which enabled his appointment as head of government. It is much easier for fascists to begin from within than to begin from without…. (2) Coalitions are necessary….. The left has to hold together with the the center-left…. (3) Conservatives enabled…. They did not see Hitler and his Nazis as something different from themselves. They imagined, somehow, that Hitler would preserve the system rather revolutionize it. They were wrong…. (4) Big business should support democracy. In the Germany of the 1930s, business leaders were not necessarily enthusiastic about Hitler as a person. But they associated democracy with labor unions and wanted to break them…. (5) Citizens should not obey in advance. Much of fascism is a bluff…. American fascism… too is largely bluff, most of it digital…. Recalling history, we act in the present, for a future that can and will be much better… <snyder.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-fasci…>