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Mar 15, 2021 29 tweets 18 min read Read on X
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Hitler won mass support because a major economic crisis had driven Germany into a deep depression: Banks crashed, businesses folded, & millions lost their jobs.

Hitler offered voters a vision of a better future - 'sunlit uplands', you might say.

thenation.com/article/archiv…
The poorest people in Germany voted for Hitler's opponents, notably the Communists & the moderate left-wing Social Democrats, but the lower-middle classes, the bourgeoisie, the unorganized workers, the rural masses, and the older traditionalists all gave their votes to Hitler. Image
Whereas other politicians seemed to dither or act as mere administrators, Hitler projected purpose & dynamism.

He proved a master at denouncing conventions & manipulating the media. He issued an endless stream of #slogans, & hammered them home to win potential supporters over. Image
He would put Germany first. He would revive the nation’s rusting industries, laid to waste by the economic depression. He would crush the alien ideologies - socialism, liberalism, communism - ­that were 'undermining the nation’s will to survive & destroying its core values'. Image
Hitler’s early speeches “used vulgar comparisons” & “the cheapest allusions.” Hitler’s language was never measured or careful, but “like something merely expulsed", full of base allegations & vile stereotypes, precisely designed to gain maximum reaction & media attention. Image
Aided by his talented #propaganda chief Dominic Cummings - sorry, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler not only flaunted his vulgarity and exploited tribal hatreds; he also lied and lied and lied his way to success, as well of course as crassly negatively stereotyping Jews & other minorities. ImageImageImage
Few took Hitler seriously or thought that he would actually put his threats against the country’s tiny Jewish minority, his rants against feminists, left-wing politicians, homosexuals, pacifists, and liberal newspaper editors, into effect. Image
Nazi propaganda mocked disabled people; within a few years, they were being sterilized and then exterminated.

Hitler called for the return of the death penalty, & within a short space of time, the executions began again. ImageImage
Germany pulled out of international organizations & tore up treaties with cynical abandon.

The Nazis’ triumphantly declared their "departure from the community of nations".

Hitler said he would “rather die” than sign anything that was not in the interests of the German people. ImageImage
German politics in 1933 is the story of how the Nazis shut down the country’s democratic institutions, destroyed the freedom of its press & media, and created a one-party state in which opposition was punishable by imprisonment, banishment, or even death.

#PoliceCrackdownBill ImageImage
Newspapers were weakened by economic pressures, editors were forced out, reporters disciplined & increasing number of newspapers were shut down altogether, leaving only a captive press that confined itself to parroting the “news” issued by the government in Goebbels' briefings. ImageImageImage
With the disappearance of a critical media, the path was open for a massive expansion of political corruption at every level of the regime.

The Nazi regime was a kleptocracy; dependent on patronage & clientelism & devoid of formal procedures for appointments or rules of conduct. ImageImage
Even after the legal profession & the judiciary had been purged of the Nazis’ opponents, some judges retained a modicum of honesty & independence. Hitler was furious when the Supreme acquitted most of the alleged perpetrators of the Reichstag fire. ImageImage
Plenty of Germans disapproved of these & other measures: Hitler didn’t attain supreme power on a wave of popular acclamation.

On the contrary, in the last free elections of the Weimar Republic, the left-wing parties won more votes & seats in national parliament than the Nazis.
But the Left was divided, spending as much time fighting each other as they did trying to stop Hitler from establishing a dictatorship.

Their rhetoric was feeble compared to his, their supporters less fanatical, their electoral propaganda less powerful & less sophisticated. ImageImage
The concentration of political & legislative power in the cabinet didn’t last long. Beneath the surface appearance of normality, the cabinet was being marginalized as Hitler appointed his own cronies & disciples to new positions or pushed out his conservative coalition partners. ImageImage
Senior civil servants were fired if they made any difficulties.

Hitler's decisions were increasingly made on the hoof, by verbal order, leaving behind no paper trail.

He made sure that the armed forces were on his side by giving them massive increases in funding. ImageImage
Hitler’s seizure & remaking of the state was buttressed by a wholesale reorganization of the education system & efforts to redefine German culture. The intellectual quality of German universities, which led the world in research before 1933, plummeted, & never fully recovered. ImageImageImage
Before Hitler took over, a fifth of all university students were enrolled in the humanities; by the eve of the war, that portion had been cut in half.

Half of all students were taking degree courses in medicine, its importance boosted by the Nazis’ focus on research & eugenics. ImageImage
The main objective of Nazi education & culture was not to distract people from important issues, but to instill a new sense of patriotism. Pupils were made to salute the flag before school every morning. #History lessons were turned into a celebration of past German heroes. ImageImage
The regime constantly targeted minorities as a way of mobilizing popular approval & support.

But it wasn’t the kind of dictatorship that depended solely on repression, important though it was. A key part of the process was the vilification of political opponents. ImageImageImageImage
The moderately progressive Social Democrats were damned as “November #traitors".

Nazi media and officialdom heaped abuse on democrats and harassed them at every turn. Image
With the support of the country’s military-industrial complex - grudging & cautious at first; then fulsome & enthusiastic - Hitler threw caution to the wind.

His #indifference to human suffering, and his willingness to devise and use weapons of mass destruction, knew no bounds. ImageImage
Hitler was a media figure who gained popularity & controlled his country through speeches & publicity. Far from being a consistent & undeviatingly purposeful politician, he was temperamental, changeable, insecure, allergic to criticism, & often indecisive & uncertain in a crisis. ImageImage
Everyone concerned about #democracy should read 'HITLER: ASCENT, 1889–1939', by Volker Ullrich - the Nazis were “a warning from #history” we would do well to heed it.

We know what the early #warning signs are, & they are ALL present, now, here in Britain.

#PoliceCrackdownBill ImageImage
While I'm NOT saying 'Boris Johnson is Hitler', I AM saying the parallels are pretty uncanny.

While you're here, a couple of other THREADS you might be interested in.

The first is on forty years of increasingly deregulated free-market capitalism:

The second THREAD is about the influence of James McGill Buchanan, who was on the Board of Advisors of the free-market Independent Institute & the #IEA, an ex-president of the Mont Pelerin Society, & a 'Distinguished Senior Fellow' of the #Cato Institute:

Just to make it crystal clear that imho Boris Johnson is NOT a genocidal dictator intent on world domination, & I'm perfectly aware of Godwin's Law & the dangers of overstating any similarities, but in the context of the draconian #PoliceCrackdownBill, the parallels are #uncanny.
'When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic', describes how America’s constitutional checks & balances were pushed to the brink by a president consciously following Hitler’s early 1930s #propaganda & policy template.

milwaukeeindependent.com/articles/civil…

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More from @docrussjackson

Sep 15
🧵

Tommy Robinson claimed his protest drew “three million patriots”. The Met Police reported 110,000.

Prof Milad Haghani, an actual world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes, estimates “about 56,000... However I run the numbers, it’s very difficult to make it to 100,000.” Image
Unlike shameless liar and multiply-convicted violent far-right coke-snorting thug Tommeh, Prof Haghani is a world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes. He leads geospatial transport planning initiatives, and is an expert in crowd dynamics.

Tommeh is a world-leading grifter. Image
Compulsive shameless liar Tommy Robinson made the laughable claim that his 'Unite (Divide) The Kingdom' rally was “officially the biggest protest in British history.” 🤥

In reality, as only about 56,000 people attended, it struggled to scrape the top TWENTY. 😂 Image
Read 7 tweets
Sep 13
🧵

OK, I'll bite.

The word Fascism isn't 'meaningless'.

To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers. Image
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them. Image
Read 23 tweets
Sep 8
🧵

Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.

Read 12 tweets
Aug 31
🧵

Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.

Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness. Image
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England. Image
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.

These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all. Image
Read 60 tweets
Aug 28
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.

@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
Aug 27
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
Image
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”. 

Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.

Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.

x.com/docrussjackson…
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.

These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.

It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.

The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
Read 13 tweets

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