Apropos of nothing, I thought I’d just share this piece from Vox about the NY Times and Hitler:
On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses.
Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler’s early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: “He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness.”
But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler’s vicious anti-Semitism as the core of Hitler’s appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):
He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the “Hakenkreuzler.” So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night.
But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.
A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”
Now, Brown’s sources in all likelihood did tell him that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was for show. That was a popular opinion during Nazism’s early days. But that speaks to how unprepared polite German society was for a movement as sincerely, radically violent as Hitler’s to take power.
Yeah. Certainly feels familiar. Particularly when you read things like this from King of the Village Jonathan Allen about the next Trump administration:
[L]awmakers from the capable and normie-filled Dakotas delegation, which includes two former governors, will wield influence on issues ranging from agriculture and energy to banking and national security. Oh, and Burgum’s almost certain successor, Representative Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), will arrive in Bismarck to lead his state at the end of this year with deeper connections in the nation’s capital than any modern North Dakota governor.
Just to the west, Wyoming’s senior senator, John Barrasso, is in line to be the second-ranking Senate Republican. Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who as head of the Senate GOP campaign arm this year has largely preempted contentious primaries, could become one of the most influential lawmakers in Washington. That’s thanks to his relationships with Trump and Thune — and the wings of the party each represents — as well as his perch on the tax-writing Finance Committee.
Trump has nudged Daines to consider challenging Thune for leader. However, I’m told by multiple Republicans that the Montanan has already pledged to support his neighbor in South Dakota — and that Daines under a Leader Thune will have a carved-out leadership role harnessing the former Proctor & Gamble executive’s business chops as well as his political savvy and Trump friendship. “There’s going to be a leadership spot for Steve when it’s all said and done,” Senator Mike Rounds, South Dakota’s junior senator and Thune’s leading ally, told me.
Taken together, it’s an imposing array of force from such a sparsely populated corner of the country. Until Montana’s growth recently netted them a second seat, all four states were represented by an at-large House member.
More remarkable is how many of the leading Republicans from the region emerged in the pre-Trump era and, while submitting to varying levels of accommodation, have avoided the bomb-throwing style so many in their party have adopted to keep with current fashions. (The MAGA-obsessed Noem is the notable exception.) “We’re normal,” said Rounds, adding: “It’s not a hard hard-right. We’re Ronald Reagan Republicans.”
Indeed, you could drop most of them in the GOP of 1984 or 2004 and they’d fit right in.“We all kind of sound alike,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told me, and he wasn’t just referring to their straight-out-of-Fargo accents. “It’s tonal and if you watch Fox News, it doesn’t sound like us.”
What Johnson and so many of the other traditional Republicans from the region are wondering though, is how long can it last. “Are we just lagging behind the populist change or are we going to continue to be different?” he asked. “That to me is the central question. And I don’t really know the answer.”
What I’m more immediately interested in if Republicans do take over Washington next year is whether the “Prairie Pragmatists,” as Johnson calls them, will shape or simply be shaped by the Trump restoration. Perhaps it’s not an either-or distinction. Maybe the more likely outcome is the same Trumpian chaos and bombast while the mild-mannered Scandinavians step cautiously and do what they do best: present as wholly guileless, doncha know, while they hustle furiously.
The Village says it’s going to be fine. Don’t you worry. Real Americans in the Dakotas have a whole boatload of Great Whitebread Hopes ready to save us from Trump and the MAGA hordes. Relax. Just let it happen.
*BTW: Barasso and Daines are hardcore MAGA freaks.