Calling for the Genocide of Jews

 

I’ve been saying for years that we are sleepwalking into everything about Weimar Germany that ended with the rise of Hitler. The parallels are getting faster and more furious. We are now at the point of public calls for Jewish genocide.

It begins with the rejection of conventional ethics. Weimar Germany, endorsing Nietzsche’s scorn for “slave morality,” was a place where anything goes, or went, at first, and most appealingly to the average German, in sexual affairs. But the wall between right and wrong was broken down, and so one could just as properly, in principle, murder and steal. And the greatest danger was not the couple in the bar, but those with great power—the bureaucracy, the industrialists the government. Once the invisible restraints of morality are gone, they can use their power entirely for their own self-interest.

All that mattered was the triumph of the will.

And we see this again in our day. We rejected conventional morality again in the 1960s, first, and most appealingly, in sexual affairs. “Free love.”

And now morality has broken down in the halls of power. Governments and industrialists are colluding to run their Lolita islands, to silence dissent, to manipulate the news, to throw people in prison for protesting, to apply the law unfairly to help friends and punish enemies, to give and to accept bribes, and so forth. In Weimar Germany, Spartacist were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and even extrajudicially assassinated, while Nazis and stormtroopers committing similar crimes were let off with perhaps a slap on the arm raised in salute. We see the same bias now: BLM or Antifa do what they please, while Proud Boys or the January rioters are thrown in prison on petty grounds.

Those in power again feel free to use that power as they see fit to advance their own interests.

The proliferation of “gay pride” rainbow flags is even eerily similar to the proliferation of swastika flags in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Both represent a political ideology; and the same political ideology, the triumph of the will of the collective, the group, over morality and ontology.

And it inevitably comes to antisemitism. First, because Jews represent symbolically the moral law. They introduced ethical monotheism to the world. Second, because once morality is abolished, Jews provoke the sin of envy. They are too successful, just too good at everything. 

Say Biden is Hindenberg, or perhaps Petain. If he is re-elected, some faceless bureaucrat is likely to emerge below him, someone heretofore utterly unobtrusive and unremarkable, as Hitler originally was, or Stalin, or Putin.

If, on the other hand, Trump is elected, is he, perhaps, a Churchill? He is similarly hated by those in power

Auf Wiedersehen, Mein Herr Trump

 

I was watching videos of Liza Minelli singing the title song from Cabaret; Christopher Isherwood had come up in a work connection. Then it occurred to me to also recap “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

We are, after all, living through a similar time. The analogies with the Weimar Republic are overwhelming.

First a period of libertinage; “there is no right and wrong.” Then some organized group emerging, and asserting power for the sake of power.

My sister observes, “beautiful, if you’re not Jewish.”

The two songs are not just ominous for Jews. Most of the people the Nazis outright murdered were not Jewish; and this does not include the tally from the war, not just of combatants but of civilians. Millions died in places like Leningrad or Silesia of starvation. Millions were seized as slave labour. And, had the Nazis won that war, uncounted millions more would have died. The Germans themselves suffered as much as anyone; those young people we hear singing might all be dead within ten years.

But that’s what makes the songs so powerful: because we know how it all turned out. We know where Elsie and Sally’s attitude to life is going to lead, and we know where the young Nazis’ dream led. True beauty is not pretty or pleasant. It must include the sublime. High art must always have an element of sheer terror.

Compare Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The reference is to the bands the Nazis had playing as they herded people into the gas chambers.

What makes the cherry blossoms so beautiful is knowing that in a week they will all have rotted.

But I digress. The poignancy is especially powerful now because we are now seeing the Nazis rise; in America, a far more consequential nation than Germany in 1933. And not only in America, either.

The parallels are astounding, and everyone is sleepwalking through it all.

No, it is not that Trump is Hitler. He is more Churchillian, conservative, gruff, passionately hated by many for his bombast, with many public vices. Hitler, by contrast, was a radical, an obscure figure, the opposite of a conservative, and had no visible vices. Incorruptible, vegetarian, apparently celibate. He was not hated so much as not taken seriously. Who could be seriously frightened by a little Austrian tramp with a moustache like Charlie Chaplin?

Biden is not Hitler either: he is a Hindenberg, or a Petain, a doddering old figurehead behind whose reassuring familiarity the consequential business of conquering and controlling the government apparatus can be done without interference.

Not, I suspect, by Kamala Harris. She not as Hitler either. She is too corrupt to be dangerous. She is perhaps a Goering or a von Papen, someone prepared to hire out her reputation to Hitler’s cause, for some emolument or chance for graft. Biden can be handled, and she can be bought.

By whom? 

The Hitler will emerge from relative obscurity; he usually does. As Hitler did. Probably someone no one saw coming, some faceless bureaucrat with no particular record like Putin, or some lower-ranking officer like Gaddhafi. Someone obscure enough that no one thought to defend against them. He or she is probably already in position and pulling strings. Someone engineered the nomination for Biden. Something has been going on behind the scenes in the FBI. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Antifa and BLM are, of course, the military wing, the stormtroopers, sowing the discord in the streets. Germans in 1933 figured that the way to stop the chaos was to vote for their political masters. Many Americans in 2020 seem to be making the same calculation, and backing the Democrats to stop the rioting. The instincts of the average man seem always to run to appeasement.

We live in interesting times.