Thread by @atatimelikethis

I feel like history needs to be applied to the comparisons between UK/USA 2020 and Germany 1930s.

The analogy has some legitimacy. The process and likely outcome need some work.

And we have some things to learn from people with more experience - Germans

Thread ⏬

The Jews were never a threat to the Nazis.

They were disliked, even hated by many bigots who found them objectionable, disloyal, money-grabbing. Not German enough

Nazis built on that to encourage hate

In Trump's America and the UK the direct analogues are Immigrants & Muslims

Hitler's screaming Brownshirts were PR.
Tiny in number

Hitler was supported by "normal" middle class people worried about societal change and economy

They were told by a captive press that Jews were the cause of decline.

A complete lie, believed.
And a direct analogy for us.

Hitler feared a counter-insurgent reaction from the opposition. They argued his 'solutions' vociferously would ruin the country.

The opposition was diverse and broad, in ethnicity and politics.
He narrowed that to "Socialists."
Fox News - "Anti-Fascists"
UK - "Remainers"

Hitler attempted to cover lies by suppressing any alternative media.

But to start with he didn't control all the media. So the parts he couldn't influence he accused of lying. He said a metropolitan elite ran it.

They were treasonous liars, undermining the Mother Land

Hitler encouraged attacks on the State. Its institutions, its buildings, its procedures. He needed chaos to write law to "restore" order.

His habit was to accuse others of the crimes he was committing himself. Over and again, his best speeches accused others of his actions.

Hitler was never troubled by contradictions. His positions varied, but he never accounted for the change.
Others lied. Never him. Even when the record showed it.

His speeches included lies, but they were more commonly incoherent rants that said not much except landing hate.

And of course, Hitler, having burned the House Of Government, was then elected and given power by the people wishing him to solve the crisis and chaos he had created while blaming others.

That and millions of unemployed who, off the back of a "foreign" made crisis, had lost hope

What we had in the UK and US was a profoundly frustrated middle class who had watched themselves get poorer following the 2008 banking crisis.

In his blogs, Cummings celebrates his genius in turning this reaction against one establishment into one against the EU.

I don't think Trump or Johnson are Nazis.

If Trump had read Goebbels, he'd be unable to resist boasting that he was doing it better.

I do think both lies with such ease that they have created a house of cards around them they cannot escape.

And that is the danger.

Fascism is not formally defined as an ideology, since it has no real goals.

It's a political reaction and has two criteria.

1. A wish to use the politics of hate to gain political control.

2. A choice when lies are exhausted not to step back, but forward.

We are at number 2.

Once credibility of a liar is at zero, when arguments have become empty rhetoric, and people start to laugh at instead of listening to you...there are only two options.

[1. You stand down.]
2. You are voted out
3. You become authoritarian to ensure you cannot be voted out.

I excluded 1 - build a platform in this way you don't choose that option.

2. With any luck Trump will now be a victim of this.

3. In the UK, the direction of travel should make anyone worry. Particularly the libertarian right.

Johnson is building the deep state they hate.

It may be some of them have started to wake up to this⏬ or that's just more personal PR from a different contender.

Either way, if you think my interpretation is alarmist of exaggerating, let's count the examples. See if you can find something that isn't public record?

1. A manifesto promising to reduce the authority of courts
2. Removing PM and cabinet from legal review
3. And avoiding House of Lords
4 Three bills (covid19, internal markets and covert human intelligence) granting powers more dictatorial than the Nazi enabling act.

5. History of staging parliamentary coups
6. Refusal to account for massive Government spend and contracting
7. A friendship with the truth that resembles the average post-divorce relationship
8. A lack of accountability for mistakes, a refusal to admit errors - both can reoccur

9. Arrogant dismissal of economics, models or any financial assessment of the country.
10. Favouring party constituencies with cash rewards and lockdown outputs
11 Avoiding media scrutiny, interviews and refusing to answer questions.
12 Proxy ownership of 75% of the press.

13. Unelected, unaccountable, empowered advisors making all sorts of questionable investments in old friends.

14. Returning powers from Europe, but not as they were to Parliament or regions, but to the Government. Without scrutiny.

15. Legislating to break international law

16. Legislating to break domestic law (human intel).

17. Legislating to put the power over life and death into the hands of the Home Secretary, unchallengeable by the Courts (human intel).

18. Self-serving falsification and deletion of medical data in the middle of a pandemic.

I'll stop there; I'm sure that I've forgotten as many as the ones I included. But the list is already as terrifying as it is unprecedented.

Unlike Trump, the election for this regime is not soon. But their House of Cards is larger so they will inevitably face THE CHOICE.

Is it controversial to assert evidence shows the lies are becoming worse, as are the decisions, they are further building the cards?

And doing so on top of an almost unbelievable list of Democratic assaults.

So if they make the wrong choice what should we be looking for?

Dictatorship isn't the first step, it's the last. More mundane things happen first. Such as:

✅ removal of oversight (in progress)
✅ placing executive above the law (pretty much done)
✅ accusing opposition of lack of support (every week)
⚠ Manipulating the voting system

You know about Trump's attacks on Vote by Mail. His equivalent of loading the dice?

We have our own. Voter ID.
In an almost exact copy of Trump we are misrepresenting voter fraud (of which there is none⏬) to create law to favour story voters.

electoral-reform.org.uk/campaigns/upgr…

Democracy rarely falls over night, it is attacked over time to favour an incumbent autocracy - Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, Hungary, Poland, India, Egypt, Brazil, USA, China, Malaysia.

All have rolled back democratic accountability, or if they never had it, become more autocratic

We would be naive to think it cannot happen to us.

In five years, we've undermined the political process more than we have in 500 years.

All of us just resist this assault...if we are democrats.

I promised to talk about lessons from Germany.

There are very few people alive in Germany or the UK who took part in WW2, yet our attitudes are poles apart.

Germans without anyone being accountable for the crimes, remember them, apologise for them, take responsibility for them.

Learn and teach.

We in our arrogance celebrate the actions of others as if they were our own, this even infects language around football (2ww 1 wc). The learnings seem not to be about the futility of war or the damage, but it's celebration.

However there is an even better comparison.

Empire.

The crimes of the British Empire are large, the total dead at our hands, most certainly larger than the Nazis, especially accounting for all the opium addiction we profited from, and the effects of India partition, a disaster of our making.

So are we as reflective as Germany?

You already have the answer to this rhetorical question.

Responsible democracy is humbled by the past and learns from it.

Populism brushes over the past and resists accurate retelling.

And there's one more example.

How does Germany deal with it's statues from the past?

I can assure you they do not celebrate philanthropists who happen also to be Nazis.

They have a practice of removing these, and a standard way to review and if necessary remove any statue for which new information had been involved.

Compare that to our denial of slave owners.

UK did once tell itself it was the Cradle of Democracy and a force for good in the world.

I don't know if that was actually ever true.

But I do know that I'd like us to occupy that sort of role.

Starting out as an international law breaker will not get us there quickly.