Authoritarian echoes of the darkest times
We must mobilize now to keep our democracy
They thought they were were safe. They didn’t see it coming. And when they finally did, they did nothing.
The evolution from democracy to authoritarianism moved gradually. It began with a legitimate transfer of power. It was not a coup.
Trump supporters storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Photo via Wikipedia/Creative Commons)
But over time, the new government undermined all the guardrails of a democracy. The legislature became a meaningless rubber stamp. The courts were politicized. Executive fiats overrode individual rights. The constitution was ignored. Journalists were forced to register and limited in their coverage. “Alternative facts” and propaganda replaced objective journalism. Political opponents were targeted, harassed, or prosecuted. Troops marched in the cities, replacing local police across the country.
They came for the most vulnerable, on the streets and in their homes, and took them away.
My grandparents died in Auschwitz. They were wealthy, non-religious Jews. They thought they were part of the fabric of the community. They thought they were part of the untouchable ruling class. My great-grandfather was president of the Bourse, the Viennese stock exchange. Generations of the family had devoted themselves to the community and country. It didn’t matter.
Some forget Hitler rose to power through a democratic process. He came to power in 1933 as a populist, riding a wave of working-class resentment of the elites and economic uncertainty. Blue-collar workers and their families were angry, and the Führer fanned the flames.
Hitler’s rise in 1933 began with the burning of the Reichstag, the German Parliament, all but dissolving the first safeguard of democracy, the legislature.
Soon thereafter, other safeguards fell. The Enabling Act, offered by an enfeebled Parliament, legally freed Hitler from constitutional limitations. Federal forces, the Gestapo, were sent into the states to solidify control, target political enemies, and round up “undesirables.” The guardrails were disappearing.
Then came November 1938 and Kristallnacht. Hatred boiled over. Seven thousand Jewish businesses and 1,400 synagogues were destroyed. The government, its Gestapo, and “Brownshirts” cheered on the mobs. The warnings could not have been clearer.
Still my grandparents did not understand. They loved their country. It can’t happen here, they thought. Not us. They could have left. They could have joined the resistance. They thought it would pass. They stayed too long.
My grandparents were taken. My parents escaped and were immigrants at Ellis Island. It can’t happen here? Or can it?
Holocaust survivors and their families are rightly reluctant to compare anything to the evil of Hitler and the Nazis, and often recoil when such a comparison is blithely offered by others. But we are at an inflection point.
Federal troops are being sent to US cities and states that do not want them. Congress is a rubber stamp, all but abdicating all checks on the president. Courts, dominated by the president’s appointments, have granted him almost unlimited immunity and unprecedented executive power. The once non-partisan Justice Department is weaponized to prosecute political adversaries such as New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and former FBI director James Comey. Even Trump’s own former national security advisor John Bolton and a US Senator, Adam Schiff, have landed on the prosecution list.
Meanwhile, the president has emboldened the insurrectionists who violently stormed the Capitol in 2021, pardoning them and and heralding them as “patriots.” When violent, antisemitic neo-Nazis and KKK marchers descended on Charlottesville, he said, referring to the “Unite the Right” rally and counter-demonstrators who appeared to oppose them, there were “some very fine people on both sides.” The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and their brown-shirt followers were pardoned and “standing by” with the president’s support. Due process and constitutional rights are all but abandoned as masked ICE agents grab people off the streets and deport vulnerable women and children. Political opponents are indicted, despite scant evidence of wrongdoing.
Hitler came not only for the Jews, but also for the unions and the communists and the Gypsies and the disabled. It happened over time. No one dared speak. Today they come for immigrants, minorities, universities, and political adversaries. We put troops in the streets.
It is not the same. But the difference is only a matter of degrees. What’s next?
Too many fear to speak up again. Too many are intimidated. It will pass? It can’t happen here? It’s not the same. Or is this just the start?
Unlike my grandparents, we must not wait. We need to grow a collective backbone. We desperately need a broad-based, nonpartisan, well organized, well-funded coalition that dares to speak out.
Resistance and leadership won’t come from the Beltway or institutional political leaders. They must come from us. In the neighborhoods and the streets, teachers, students, labor and business leaders, doctors and nurses, editorial boards, community leaders, clergy acting in concert. All the great movements in this nation have come from the streets, not Washington — the civil rights movement, peace movement, Earth Day. So it must again.
Organizing has never been easy. It’s not just a march or a speech or a protest or even a candidacy. It requires rebuilding trust in the neighborhood and particularly with the working class. It takes time and effort. But we must begin. Together, hopefully, we can provide each other with cover and courage. Unlike my grandparents, at least we will not just wait and see.
George Bachrach is a former Massachusetts state senator and co-founder of The Civic Action Project.
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