Adolf Hilter (yes, I used his name) should be on people’s minds these days, although not in any kind of lazy, alarmist way. He was, after all, just a man of flesh and blood, albeit one with some evil and lethal obsessions. One of his preoccupations was his distaste for the Austrian monarchy and his desire that the Germanic people in the Austrian-Hungarian empire be united with the German nation and not have to share power with the Slavic people in the East and in the Balkans. When the empire was broken up after World War One, Hitler’s desire to unite the Germans in one nation only increased. Based, as his ideas were, on premises of national and ethnic supremacy, they led inexorably to the worst war mankind has ever seen. It was a war that only ended with the explosion of atomic weapons.
It used to be fresh in everyone’s mind that ideologies based on national or racial superiority were inconsistent with continued life on this planet, and that conviction only increased as atomic weapons grew into thermonuclear weapons attached to rockets. The establishment of the United Nations was the world’s way of acknowledging this and a desperate attempt to prevent the worst from happening.
Of course, something similar had been attempted after the First World War, when the League of Nations was established. The effort was undermined by the United States’ refusal to join, but it was still set up and functional on October 14th, 1933, when Hitler announced that Germany would be withdrawing from both the League and the World Disarmament Conference.
Naturally, the Germans employed some political rhetoric to rationalize their decision, and they made sure to suggest that they’d actually prefer to stay engaged in international organizations, provided that every nation destroyed all their guns and demobilized all their soldiers.
In truth, however, Hitler’s desire to unite Germany and Austria and to bring Germans living in Czechoslovakia and Poland into one nation made it impossible for him to work with the existing international order. If you add his greater goal to destroy Bolshevism, this is even more obvious. Any ideology based on national or racial or ethno-religious superiority is inconsistent with working with other nations as good faith partners. If you marry that ideology to militarism and imperial or territorial ambitions, the existence of international peace-brokering organizations is nothing but a public relations problem.
After the war, Europe internalized these lessons. Now they are beginning to forget them.
As for our country, our president is unabashedly pursuing an ideology based on the national superiority of the United States and the supremacy of ethnically white Christians. He is looking to expel racially inferior people, deny entry to religiously inferior people, and to pursue policies of raw power based on the narrowly defined self-interest of America. Along with this, he intends to spend tens of billions more on weapons.
This is familiar stuff, and it should not shock anyone to see it accompanied by other familiar stuff.
State Department staffers have been instructed to seek cuts in excess of 50 percent in U.S. funding for U.N. programs, signaling an unprecedented retreat by President Donald Trump’s administration from international operations that keep the peace, provide vaccines for children, monitor rogue nuclear weapons programs, and promote peace talks from Syria to Yemen, according to three sources.
The push for such draconian measures comes as the White House is scheduled on Thursday to release its 2018 budget proposal, which is expected to include cuts of up to 37 percent for spending on the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign assistance programs, including the U.N., in next year’s budget. The United States spends about $10 billion a year on the United Nations.
The UN and the State Department operate within norms that diminish the legitimacy of raw nationalism and constrain the raw exercise of power. They are irritants that can be defunded and delegitimized. And if that undermines their humanitarian work, that will only help undermine the case for their continued existence and influence.
The cuts would fall heaviest on U.N. programs, like peacekeeping, UNICEF, and the U.N. Development Programme, that are funded out of the budget of the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. It remains to be seen whether other U.N. agencies popular with Congress, like the World Food Programme and U.N. refugee operations — which are funded out of separate accounts in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the State Department, respectively — will get hit as hard. But one source tracking the budget proposal said the Trump administration is considering cuts of up to 36 percent on humanitarian aid programs.
Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said cuts of this magnitude would create “chaos.”
The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) received $1.5 billion of its $4 billion budget from the United States last year, he said. Cutting the U.S. contribution would “leave a gaping hole that other big donors would struggle to fill.”
“Multiply that across other humanitarian agencies, like the World Food Programme, and you are basically talking about the breakdown of the international humanitarian system as we know it,” he added.
Breaking down the international humanitarian system is an obvious goal for a nationalist movement based on racial or ethno-religious supremacy, especially if that movement does not want to be constrained by international treaties or laws respecting banning torture, indefinite detention and other basic human rights.
This isn’t just some arbitrary debate about the relative funding level of the State Department versus the Pentagon. It’s an ideological marker, showing us what kind of ambitions and goals are coming out of the white supremacist minds of Trump, Miller, and Bannon.
With Europe moving in the same direction of renewed ethno-religious nationalism, this is now a global movement on the upswing, aligned with Russia and looking to undo the European Union and all post-nationalist organizations.
Fighting back means fighting to protect the funding for the State Department and the United Nations.
The logic here is astounding. Let’s rant and rail against immigration, then take steps to ensure that we create millions more refuges.
This will not end well.
But her emails…
Yes the only difference being that 1930s Germany allowed its people to express its “agreement” with the avowed militarist policy of chancellor Adolf, haha. We won’t be given that right under our glorious constitution. But obviously a country bent on wars of aggression needed (and needs!) to exit an institution expressly created to halt such wars…
Of course, crazed UN hatred has been a staple of the crackpot American right since I was a child long ago. This is just the first time that the nation “elected” a crackpot rightist as prez—Der Trumper makes St Reagan look like FDR (in the statesman sense).
This sort of braindead self-defeating nonsense was to be expected from simpleton ignoramus crackpots like Der Trumper, Reichsfuhrer Bannon and the rat-like Miller. The question is whether Trumper’s heroic (ex)generals–Mattis and Kelly, are there more?–will object to this obvious strategic error and resign or will they continue to give aid, comfort and legitimacy to this Hitlerite movement? If the latter, they are revealed as unapologetic rightwing militarists and (yet another) example of our national disgrace. And the idea that they serve to “moderate” the unqualified Trumper and his crackpot Reichsfuhrer is shown to be a wishful pipe dream.
Savage, completely demented cuts to the country’s (very cheap) soft power abilities are so clearly against the nation’s interest that Putin and the Chinese are simply pissing themselves with laughter. Heckuva job, incompetent white proletariat!
Jesus, I forgot (ex?)Lt. Gen’ral McMaster, Trumper’s new NSC head, replacing KGB…er, Gen’ral Flynn!
Massive, unprecedented cutting of diplomatic power and influence, what could be a better recipe for national security?
So, more “moderating” of the crackpots by the noble, realist generals….
Of course if those ex generals don’t work out to Dertrumpsters wishes, they will be fired, er resign. But need to get all the guns in a row first, so make it look good. After awhile this sort of thing gets scary.
Of course if those ex generals don’t work out to Dertrumpsters wishes, they will be fired, er resign. But need to get all the guns in a row first, so make it look good. After awhile this sort of thing gets scary.
Like Resistance
Trump’s controllers’ aims…Bannon, maybe Stone, maybe even Putin…are to effectively destabilize the government and then take total control. That much is now fairly obvious.
The question is…what is going to be done (besides politicians talky-talk-talkings and media drip-drip-drippings) to stop them from doing so?
So far?
All talky-talk and drippity-drip. No doing.
Do the Dems have the courage and imagination to actually try to do something? Something concrete?
Will enough RatPuds sign on to get it done lawfully?
Will the checks and balances that are built into the system survive the Trumpist onslaught long enough to actually work?
If none of these things happen effectively, will the covert military step in?
Or even the regular military?
Stay tuned.
AG
P.S. I do not have much faith in the DemRattian and RatPublican parties doing anything real, Too rich, too soft, too deep in bed with corporate interests that see trump as an ally of sorts.
I hope I’m wrong, because military actions in such cases always lead to even worse things.
But remember:
I don’t care where it comes from.
The truth is the truth, and that’s as true as it gets.
Solid take AG. Don’t want the military involved either, because by the time it gets to that point, too much will have gone sideways already.
Yes, MDL. But…if it plainly going that far sideways and nothing “steps in”…then what?
AG
I dunno. Like I stated above, I don’t see how this ends well. Best case, he has a health “issue” and we get Pence, the white supremacy shit fades into the background and full speed ahead on the rest of the republican platform.
Worst case, someone tries, and fails, to take him out and all hell breaks loose. Either way, we’re fucked.
People in the past could be somewhat forgiven for their lack of science as applied to the relative inferiority / superiority of the various “races” of mankind. It’s easy to leave major factors – such as childhood nutrition, education, and opportunities to express one’s creativity, which profoundly influence the sum of the individual – out of this calculus. (Adding to this I suspect we instinctively view those who don’t speak our native language well – including those who weren’t steeped in it as children – as somehow defective.)
At the very least, those who know what we know today aren’t as easily taken in by the those espousing the tenets of racism. The foundation itself is faulty. Though I suppose one can still crab about differing cultural mores and such.
IMO the main problem is money pooling. Can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a billionaire fucking our shit up. Take that away and everything becomes manageable.
Too bad being hit by a dead cat doesn’t eliminate billionaires.
Those who know what we know about genetics and culture nonetheless are not obligated to respond rationally with respect and compassion. Trolling has become a lifestyle for far too many privileged people these days–just for the lulz.
“Too bad being hit by a dead cat doesn’t eliminate billionaires.” Yeah, LOL.
I must say that, however bad it gets today, it’s nice that things are actually fundamentally different than the bad old days when big brained sorts like Thomas Jefferson could convince themselves re. the OK-ness of black slavery. Science displacing a fairly cruel god-of-the-gaps.
I think the superiority/inferiority thing has always been a sort of white man’s burden, a necessary ego defense mechanism to get zillionaires past the shaving mirror in the morning without slitting their own necks. If you’ve seen the “7-UP” series it’s clear that their spawn are very carefully taught these things from the cradle.
So I guess I wonder how much this is just instinctive reflex on the part of our betters, and how much of it they’re putting on for controlling effect.
Yes, I have seen the 7-UP series, and it shows how naive everyone was about media and privacy in 1963. It is interesting how UK public schools (that is, private schools) seem to take it upon themselves to do that through social organization, the framework of a total environment, and regular hazing. Trump seems to be a UK public school kid in these terms.
Jefferson is a fascinating case of a backwoods kid, son of a surveyor (a prestigious middle-class patronage profession at the time) who learned from dad and laid out lots of prime land when it was being platted.
He was more clear about what the planters were doing with the “rights of Englishmen” and “freedom” and “equality under the law” than most others in his thinking. But he could not see how to undo the institution of slavery in ways that would not upset common whites; so he proposed colonization in Africa.
And he could not walk the walk even at his death. Clearly he was divided between mind and everyday life and died essentially a hypocrite, not being able to free his own slaves as part of his estate.
I sense nothing but bumptious self-confidence in this current bunch of freedom-mongers.
One of these days you’re going to have to write something that doesn’t depress the shit out of me.
It is sufficient that the world’s largest military and keystone in nuclear parity is going down this road. If indeed it is going done the road with its parity partner (and the probably of competition and conflict heighten the more both go down the same road), it is much more dicey.
I argued the first sometime around late December and argued that concentration on “Russia rigged the election” was distracting from this danger. And that it was establishment Democrats’ hamhanded “resistance” that was noramlizing Trump’s presidency.
Welcome aboard.
Who exactly is it that needs to be fighting for Rexxon Tillerson’s State Department and Mz. Nikki Haley’s United Nations? And what actions does “fight” actually mean in the current context?
We passengers in this handbasket seem to not be able to work our will on our democratic system and as a consequence are reading our tour guide by Dante Alighieri. “As one begins to get that sense of sulfurous odors from the Congress, look especially for the signs of greed….”
And keeping that earning a living going is going to become very salient as we go forward with radical austerity and rampant corruption and graft.
It’s all well and good to think what might have been with the application of diplomacy much earlier in this century.
Russia seems to be making a play for Egypt and Libya. China and Saudi Arabia seem to be collaborating on replacing the US Navy in the western Indian Ocean, beginning with an agreement with Maldives for basing. Prior diplomacy might have had better outcomes as the world realized that the US was spending itself out.
Would this count as ‘fighting?’ Could it maximize the number of Reps from blue states such that we had a better chance to take the house? Not an immediate answer, of course, but nothing is.
http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary-2017/how-to-bring-home-democratic-voters/
Some key points:
“with enough financial backing” – who?
“be on the ballot” – either through petition or legislation for a referendum – who sees this through?
So in a lot of states, you have to change the legislature first in order to get the method of voting in order to improve the results in the US House of Representatives.
As part of an overall strategy, do it. But it will not carry the main thrust of the fight. And it depends on someone making the case to the communities that will flip the districts in the next election.
All the making it easier is not helpful if you haven’t won the competition of ideas. Unfortunately, for the past 50 years, “ideas” has been reduced to “brand” and does not allow nuanced consideration but demands cheerleading.
And the person that people are hiring to represent them in legislating matters is significant in that they have to be what they seem — engaging, listening, a person with probity, and who actually puts his district’s interests first. And they must get who they are authentically known to 175,000 people very rapidly and known accurately as the shitstorm begins that signals the opponent sensing his or her chances slipping away. The gift of flying a bit under the radar in heavy red districts only works to build initial strength. After then it’s turning 176,000 people out of 660,000 people or so.
That is one way of fighting.
Another is non-compliance with illegal or ill-considered executive orders.
Another is demonstration how the current Congress is of Washington and not of their districts.
Getting the votes out and getting all of the votes counted matters. Election protection is part of the fight.
And so is elected official accountability and educating the system to expect and honor it as between-election feedback.
There is not one-shot solution.
Call me an idiot, but I can’t accept that ethno-nationalism has a real future in Western Europe, at least as long as the welfare states survive–Netherlands or France could blunder into a brief spell of having a fascist PM or president soon, the way Britain blundered (with more long-term terrible consequences) into Brexit, but no neofascist party is going to take real parliamentary power, unless in Greece (where Euro austerity has broken the social welfare system down).
Fascism has taken real root in Russia and Hungary, and to a lesser extent Poland and Czechia–where the Communist safety net was destroyed in 1989-91. We have to worry about the US, where we haven’t had anything like a proper safety net since the 1970s, and the election we just had seems like a terrifying sign. But I feel sure that France and Germany and Italy and Spain and even UK will remember the 30s and 40s for a long time yet and are going to be OK.
I am not complacent about this.
At all.
A lot hinges on the personality the cult of personality is built around. We have:
Theresa May in the UK (for the moment Nigel Farage is out)
Marine Le Pen in France
Frauke Petry in Germany
Donald Trump in the US
In all these cases, there is as much danger in the surrounding leadership than in the cult personality, which varies across these political figures.
For the moment Spain and Italy have stronger left parties and popular movements. Greece has Golden Dawn waiting in the wings.
To actually remember the 1930s and 1940s, one has to be older than around 78 years or be well-versed in the history passed down through one’s family. The memory that stands out in my mind through my family’s tales and Life’s Picture History of World War II, which my dad bought as soon as it was available, and the TV retrospectives during the 1950s and 1960s is something that fewer people have each year. We are very much at a break point even on the Cold War for the McCarthyist charges of Russian involvement not to have reflexive effect on Trump.
No one knows the consequences of blowing up the European Union. Unless the European Central Bank reverses its policy of austerity, the reaction of people further impoverished will result in the disintegration of the European Union as scapegoat.
If that happens with the background of extreme nationalist and militarist ideologies (not yet there in the mainstream), conflicts reminiscent of most of European history will return.
Realignment with Russia or China or both only will occur if those changes bring the support and infrastructure that once was financed by the US. The formerly unthinkable is now at least thinkable because of US folly under two Presidents, strong Republican Congresses 2003-2007 and 2011-present, and weak Democratic Congresses 2007-2011. Our policies had repercussions in Europe.
what’s happening now, 30’s type European fascism is not it, rather it’s a move to extend the domain of the global oligarchs / weaken the non-oligarchies that also provide some accountability and protection for ppl. oligarchs have free reign over world resources including human resources. it’s not about war in Europe it’s about unfettered access to world resources
Sorry, but your history presentation is quite wrong. Yes, Hitler wanted to unite all Germans, but he also wanted to conquer East Europe, genocide its populations, reduce the remaining population to slaves and re-settle with Germans. And it was the conquest and genocide that broke with the established international order. Had he had a heart attack and died just after Munich, and the peace wing of the Nazi party (they existed) taken over, Hitler would stand close to Atatürk in the history books. Ethnic arguments about borders was and is still strong (outside Africa, but that has its separate reasons). Woodrow Wilson was for example a proponent of ethnic borders in Europe. And that is not strange. Through much of the 19th century the movements for democracy in much of Europe was deeply tied to movements for ethnic nations, for example but not limited to Germany.
This also means that the world sadly didn’t learn a lesson about ethno-nationalism after the war. On the contrary, ethno-nationalism remains a strong argument in favour of independence of new states. Would the independence of for example the parts of Yugoslavia been acknowledged by the rest of the world, if the inhabitants had been seen as Yugoslavians instead of Serbs, Croatians etc?
What was learned was a lesson about the dangers of unemployment and economic crisis and the benefits of economic interconnectedness. The first was forgotten in the 70ies and 80ies, and the latter was hijacked from the 80ies and forward to write neoliberalistic (yes, it’s an actual ideology) tenets into laws untouchable by the common people.
With those lessons forgotten and hijacked we see a rise of fascism (of which ethno-nationalism is necessary component). And fascism worships violence and disparages diplomacy.
So I agree on your conclusion, but disagree on history.
Those who fail to understand the history of Mitteleuropa do not understand much of Hitler. And understanding Mitteleuropa means understanding the Hapsburg Empire, which ended after WWI. For instance, the Anschluss or unification of Germany and Austria in 1937. From the perspective of today, this seems like aggression on the part of Germany. However, the history of the Hapsburg Empire reveals that this “Pan-Germanic state” was a project of many in both countries from 1820s on. And the parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia that Hitler wanted in Pan-Germany were the parts which were previously in Austria-Hungary. This does not excuse Hitler’s aggression or crimes. However, there is a historical view which makes him more fulfilling historical patterns than making them up by himself.
Pan-German and Pan-Italian movements were a big part of the democratic revolutions that erupted in 1848. These simmered as nationalist movements under the surface until Italian unification surfaced and Serbian nationalism kicked off World War I. World War I created vacuums in Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Russia that the 1920s through World War II sorted out. (I am of course ignoring similar revolutionary movements disrupting India, China, and Japan during the same period.)
When the world looked to the post-World War II future, there was a strong movement toward preventing a future world war. Roosevelt thought the United Nations would allow the United States to create a Pax Americana that was stable and moved toward general world peace. That required a restrained military, which was what disappeared when Roosevelt died.
Until the publication of The Theory and Practice of Hell the realities of geneocide were kept hidden by PTSD-affected soldiers and by the US national security state except for the push for sympathy for the establishment of Israel. It was visible but not systematically described as the horror policy it was. And then Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem made the point that it was not German genetics or German culture that allowed the holocaust to happen; it was a people ushered into evil one banal step at a time. And that Hitler was not the sole monster in this process although he dictated the strategy and the pace of events.
What emerged in Kristallnacht was a general Mitteleuropa pogrom. What emerged from the wartime Nazi state was a huge break in the toleration of that history by the outside world. Only re-education (de-Nazification) of Mitteleuropa made Hitler the universally considered monster of history that is perceived today. Unfortunately, that moral judgement on Nazism and Hitler is slowly fading and evil is creeping back in in the banality of daily decisions by people about the reasons for their condition and politicians in memes to motivate support.
This is a very dangerous time in terms of shifting ideas about politics.
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ Ethno-Nationalist Movements Don’t Like Diplomacy
Der SS-Staat came out in 1946 (and it is outstanding in its clear headed analysis of the camps and the state, I read it as a history student). I notice from wikipedia that the english translation The Theory and Practice of Hell was not published until 1950. Quite a gap.
Only exit polls but the fascists did much worse than expected and the greens look to have kicked some ass.
Assuming that holds up in the final results, that’s excellent news.