The atmosphere in this country is beginning to smack of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and Adolf Hitler's accession to power in 1933.
In that era of turmoil, German defeat, crippling inflation and worldwide depression, the struggling German democratic government based in Weimar was faced with repeated challenges from both left and right -- in the end, most strongly from extreme nationalists whose message of blame, scapegoating and hate appealed to lower-middle-class masses who felt threatened by change and by economic loss.In the United States at that time, and even more so through the Franklin D. Roosevelt years of the 1930s, democracy was under attack from the same populist Know-Nothing elements that have arisen in every national economic crisis dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion. Demagogues ranging from Huey Long and Father Coughlin to Fritz Kuhn of the German-American Bund kept the pot of civic discourse boiling with hatred.
Nowadays, just as Nazis and their growing bands of sympathizers could not accept German defeat in World War I and the costs imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, suddenly booming extremist groups do not accept the legitimacy of the 2008 election, President Obama or any policy proposal of the Democrats. In short, having lost in 2008, they trumpet their loyalty to democracy but refuse to let the winners govern. We are witnessing the temper tantrums of ignorant, noisy, easily led children.
Have you had enough of the wildly anti-government "tea party" types and "Christian warrior" militias like the vicious, deluded Hutaree? I have. It's time to call these intolerant, screaming mobs what they are. If they are not fascists, they are fodder for fascists. Spittle, insults and bricks flying, they are out of control -- and getting excessive media attention that attracts even more of the mentally unstable to their ranks.
The stench of fascism is in the air. These people want to destroy the elected American government as the Nazis wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic.
To which I say: Never again.
