"January 30th 1933 dawned cold and clear in Berlin as Adolph Hitler took his oath of office and promised Germans he would uphold the constitution.

William Lindsey :toad:

@martinvermeer @mloxton Thank you. I must confess that I have never read it — and need to do so. Have read much about it and excerpts from it, but have not read the book itself.

Markus Sugarhill :breadpats:

@wdlindsy published on substack. oh irony...

Scotty Trees

@wdlindsy my God we are about to be so fucked.

William Lindsey :toad:

@kims It's heinous that we have to ask those questions, isn't it? That we have to live in fear that our own neighbors or family members might turn us in? And have to wonder who will shelter us? I go through these questions, too, as an openly gay man who has tried to make his voice heard against political and religious oppression, who knows full well from what was done to the Jewish people in the Nazi period that things can turn on a dime.

William Lindsey :toad:

@theogrin Thank you. Isn't it interesting how attacks on free circulation of books and libraries — and now Internet Archive — are with us all over again as fascism marches everywhere?

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊

@wdlindsy

Interesting, yes. Surprising, no.

I swear, every single godsbedamned politician yelling their lungs out about 'free speech' is working, openly or otherwise, to shut down every library in the world.

Kim Scheinberg

@wdlindsy
I don't keep that list out of fear. I keep it as a means of updating my address book. It has cost me more than a few friends of many years, and brought me closer to those I once thought of as acquaintances

The fear that keeps me awake at night isn't about wondering who will hide me in an attic. It's the worry that my attic is too small for all the people — friends and strangers alike — that I am prepared to hide

With apologies to Spielberg, "We're gonna need a bigger attic..."

Pamela

@wdlindsy I've also noted those hurling the "Woke" label as an insult are really wanting US not to be "aware"! They've co opted our Media into scrubbing clean Trumpie 's 'hate speak' into palatable sound bites his uninformed cultists can blare out without getting the overt retaliation it deserves!!!

Peet Tetteroo

@wdlindsy How many students in the past have paid attention to the 1930 - 1945 period in their schoolbooks .. how many of them are aware of the holocaust, the Nazi culture and the unscrupulous behavior of the Germans during that period .. not interesting for them .. Only 48.6% of USA citizens have a passport to travel internationally

Not many have visited the former concentration camps in Germany Poland etc.. Read project 2025 or a summary of it and you will know..

http://chartsbin.com/view/1147

William Lindsey :toad:

@luv_wins Yes, you're exactly right.

William Lindsey :toad:

@kims I understand. Same for me. It's more a matter of asking, "Which of my neighbors may turn out to be very different from the person I think he/she is, in either a shocking or a consoling sense?" It's a matter of remembering that people can turn out to be not at all who we imagine them to be. I think this has been a central feature of the Trump era for many us, the unmasking of people (as they unmask themselves), and the recognition that many people we thought we knew are now alien to us.

William Lindsey :toad:

@theogrin Surprising, no. Interesting, yes.

William Lindsey :toad:

@scottytrees I fear. And I try to maintain hope.

William Lindsey :toad:

@MSugarhill Perhaps. I'll take the imperfect and ironic in an imperfect and ironic world, as long as the message that needs to be heard is heard.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Pettet50 Thankfully, for those of us who have not troubled to educate ourselves about this critically important period of history, people like Heather Cox Richardson (and numerous others) are doing that in the American context.

micchiato

@wdlindsy

“even in another four years as president, #Trump will not gain the organizational capacity, popular mandate, or institutional consensus to build a dictatorship or prolong his tenure past a second term. What I have seen in Turkey, Poland and Hungary suggests there is a turbulent time between the election of an illiberal leader and the establishment of a dictatorship when resistance will flourish”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/28/a-trump-dictatorship-is-possible-but-not-in-four-years-00137949

@DoomsdaysCW

William Lindsey :toad:

“Regular and repeated obvious lying is part of the process by which fascist politics destroys the information space.”

~ Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (NY: Random House, 2018), p. 57

#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #lies #disinformation
/11

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586030/how-fascism-works-by-jason-stanley/

Markus Sugarhill :breadpats:

@wdlindsy great text!

William Lindsey :toad:

"The kind of government that a Trumpian sort of fascism would bring would not actually address any of the real problems in life. It would only generate the next round
of fake problems the next set of things you should be afraid of and then it will magically declare that those things have been resolved."

~ Timothy Snyder

#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #lies #disinformation
/12

https://snyder.substack.com/p/fascism-on-television

William Lindsey :toad:

"If you asked a hundred or a thousand young men what Trump wants to do that would benefit them, or how the country he wants to create would plausibly be better for them than the one they live in now, I suspect almost none of them would be able to come up with an answer."

~ Paul Waldman

#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #lies #disinformation #gender #men #MaleVoters
/13

https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/trumps-empty-appeal-to-young-men