Neo-Right - Neo-Nazi

 First published in 1942, Franz Neumann’s Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism does more than chronicle the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism to a position of controlling the most industrialized nation in Europe although it certainly does that well. However it also shows the methods Nazis utilized to gain and employ power to achieve an ends that few “normal” Germans had the slightest idea what the motives were behind the rhetoric.

Neumann was living in the United States at the time he was writing the book and coincidentally while Nazis were assuming power. Many of his colleagues from the Frankfurt School had also left Germany in this timeframe. The exodus of scientific scholars from continental Europe wasn't limited to Critical Theorists like Neumann. In fact the people everyone most commonly knew that were leaving Europe were the physicists, the most notable and important was of course Albert Einstein. There were many more which everyone I assume knows about. The one who didn’t leave was the preeminent German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his case is another study entirely which I invite anyone to pursue on their own.

That someone of Einstein’s stature was living in the United States was fortunate for the Allies because a letter from any other scientist to Franklin Roosevelt would have hardly had the same impact as did Einstein’s and altered history so much. I would think that everyone alive today would have knowledge of this and its effect on history however I will provide the introduction for anyone who hasn’t.

Sir: Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations. In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America--that it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future. This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable--though much less certain--that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.

It is clearly evident now that Einstein’s words of warning were understated to say the least and if such a weapon were developed in Nazi Germany the world as we now know it would be a vastly different place.

What I want to do then in the remainder of this essay is compare the Nazi or National Socialist movement in Germany leading to Adolf Hitler and his minions rise to power in the 1930s leading to war, the Holocaust and the eventual devastation of most of Europe and the surprisingly similar movement that is present in the United States today.

I - The Ascent of National Socialism in Germany

It would be correct to say that conditions in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s following World War I were unlike any situation that has ever existed in a country with a history in Western European culture. Germany had produced such luminaries in music, literature, philosophy and science as Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Max Planck Friedrich Schiller, Georg Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Max Weber as well as others and contained world renowned universities, research centers and symphony orchestras in quantities so numerous that it is impossible to list them all. So the question one often hears “how could it happen there” is indeed a mystery. Nevertheless it did.

For anyone having trouble understanding that, perhaps this will help.

How, some might wonder, could Adolf Hitler convince an entire nation to support his destructive ambitions so blindly, with no regard for the most basic morality? The answer is that not all Germans did, as the World War II espionage thriller "Valkyrie" (MGM/United Artists) effectively demonstrates.

The movie itself unfortunately shows little beyond that and I invite anyone to read the many reviews of Valkyrie on the Movie Review Query Engine website. Just remember that it is only a movie. The actual historical events are better described in Operation Valkyrie from a number of sources including Wikipedia.

Two other cinematic treatments of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany are Schindler's List and Primo.

Here is one person’s list of the 10 most evil regimes of the 20^th century. There might be surprises but the fact that the United States isn’t among them shouldn't be.

That notwithstanding, one has to understand that much of European history is a succession of wars. However as is noted in Modern Times: A History of the Western World:

Between 1871 and 1914 Europe experienced the longest period of relative peace since 1789. There were a number of limited wars, but they did not involve the great powers against each other.

On June 28, 1914 this era of relative peace ended with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife; the Archduke was the heir-apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His assassination under conspicuously suspicious circumstances in Sarajevo Serbia let to the outbreak of hostilities in the Great War, now referred to as World War I. It involved the Central Powers, which included Germany, on one side, and Russia, Great Britain, France and eventually the United States on the other.

While it was one of the most destructive wars in human history and can be reviewed as such from many sources, the only condition that is relevant here is what happened when it ended. Of primary concern is the situation Germany found itself in when the war finally concluded in November 1918.

Again I’m not going to dwell on details which one can find in so many places elsewhere but will simply say that the circumstances Germany was in would be considered not good; it was so bad in fact that any comparison to the condition the United States in presently in would be ludicrous except perhaps too fat, ugly and totally uneducated media talk show hosts. There is hardly a need to mention names but this photograph might help identify their fan base and political leanings.

To return to the subject of the emergence of National Socialism in Germany, one could say that by the late 1920s/early1930s the country was an unwilling participant in a world economic depression, now generally known as the Great Depression.

Moreover the German people felt they were treated unfairly by the so-called winning side in the First World War, notably France and the UK. Thus someone promising the population a return to past greatness, helping the average German in “getting their country back” would certainly seem an appealing alternative to the perceived hopelessness of the masses.

I’m going to skip over many subjects here that are integral to the overall narrative by merely mentioning them. Anyone reading this however should be acquainted with subjects like the Treaty of Versailles, the demise of the Weimar Republic, President Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, Paul von Hindenburg, the Beer Hall Putsch, Franz Neumann’s book Behemoth mentioned previously and in particular Chapters 1-7 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by the American journalist and historian William L. Shirer – all of which and even more are required to understand how an obscure Austrian painter and Corporal in the German Army in World War I could become the despotic leader of the most significant industrial and military power in Europe in 1939.

After all is said and done, it is considerably more eventful and complicated than the political intrigue in the United States during the first decade of the 21^st Century. Still though there are so many Americans who simply are totally unfamiliar in this relatively contemporary space in history known as World War II and its antecedents.

For some ideal of the level of stupidity and lack of education found in members of political movements opposing the current U.S. President’s administration, one may find this worth watching: Rise of the New Right. It contains far too many commercials for me to take it very seriously however.

I think the picture I’ve inserted slightly to the right captures it all adequately succinctly however. And these people don’t recognize Charles Darwin. I guess that is also understandable.

II-Similarities between the National Socialist Movement in Germany and the Present Political Climate in the USA

Actually there aren’t very many empirical ones other than the propensity of the masses who are unable to overcome prejudices that are puerile in nature and, as a consequence, look for simple answers to complicated issues. What is going on in the United States now however is primarily explainable by two observable phenomena.

1.  The Influence of Power and Wealth in Promoting Mass Hysteria in an Ignorant Population.

2.  The Influence of Racism in Promoting Mass Hysteria in an Ignorant Population.

If you didn’t understand what I said about National Socialism's rise to power in Germany in the 1930s, then go back to Part I and read it until you do.

Was there anything like the Holocaust perpetrated in the United States? No but there was Slavery and the so-called Indian Wars. Everyone has to generate their own rankings in these matters. These are consequences though and one must remember that here we are only looking for precursors.

I've previously covered the subject matter relative to understanding what is now taking place in the U.S. Here is a list of topics that you may review.

The Already Wealthy

Delusional Beliefs and Political Extremism

Say Americans - Why So Scared?

Living on the Edge of Madness

Health Care, Race and Treachery

The Dream State in American Politics

The Drill Goes On II

I see no need to endlessly repeat what I've already documented so systematically. And if one does read anything I've listed, one thing that should be clear is the current U.S. President came to office facing more problems of a national scope than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. So everything President Obama is still dealing with are problems caused by his predecessor.

And to those who say they want their country back, I have this to say to you. It’s from the final chapter of a book I read in 1964. I’m going to quote from it generously.

We watched incredulously as the casket was carefully lifted out of the plane and taken to the Naval Hospital at Bethesda. Later I went to my home in Georgetown. My weeping daughter Christinia said, “Daddy, what has a happened to our country? If this is the kind of country we have, I don’t want to live here anymore.” The older children were already on their way back from college to Washington.

The Dallas school children who applauded the news were not responsible; they expressed the atmosphere of the city. What was more shocking was that the Reverend William Holmes, who reported these incidents in a sermon on the following Sunday and said that “the spirit of assassination” had pervaded the city, received such threats that he had to take his own children out of school and go into hiding.

The Dallas feeling evidently was that, whether true or false, Holmes’s remarks reflected on their city and were therefore unforgivable. Subsequently a Dallas school teacher who asked in a letter to time how her students could be expected to “grow up to be good citizens when the newspapers, their parents and the leaders of their own city preached dissension” was suspended.

Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Dallas, who administered the presidential oath to Lyndon Johnson on the plane back to Washington, said, “It could have happened anywhere, but Dallas, I’m sorry to say, has been conditioned by many people who have hate in their hearts and who seem to want to destroy.”

Well it isn’t Dallas anymore. The hatred permeates all of the United States. That its propagators are the most ignorant, simple minded and uneducated perhaps says even more than their outpouring of hatred. That many of these people hold political office in the U.S. Government is far beyond anything that one would have found in 1963-1964.

Once again to cite names is hardly necessary but it is still true that so many of them still have hate in their hearts and seem to only want to destroy. The hatred evidentially is passed from generation to generation just as is decency.

To anyone who has read this I hope you learned something about European history. As far as the United States goes, it’s always been this way.