Laura Ingraham has a new theory. She thinks “the left” is torturing Dear leader with all this nasty “accountability” in order to get his followers so darned mad that they start to riot, giving “us” the excuse to declare martial law and crack down on them.
“Given what we are seeing in the courts, at the DOJ, and even in state AG offices, and given Democrats’ ‘Trump is Hitler’ rhetoric—is it not logical, at least to consider, maybe even to assume, that some on the left are hoping to spark some type of civil unrest here?” Ingraham said.
“Which would be followed, of course, by a mass crackdown on civil liberties, or the declaration of maybe a nationwide emergency?
This isn’t a novel idea, of course. It’s exactly what Trump wanted to do during the George Floyd protests and what they planned to do if their fake elector scheme worked and the supporters of people who actually won the election took to the streets.
Basically, Ingraham is saying, “nice little country you have here, be a shame if anything happened to it.” If people stop demanding accountability for their leader’s multiple crimes, the trashing of the country doesn’t have to happen. Remember that.
Donald Trump told Hugh Hewitt that he would observe the peaceful transfer of power next time. Just as he did before.
“Of course,” Trump responded to Hewitt when asked if he would hand over power peacefully if reelected. “And I did that this time. And I’ll tell you what. The election was rigged, and we have plenty of evidence of it. But I did it anyway.”
Uhm, no he didn’t. Just look at that video above.
I happened upon a piece in Just Security from February 2021 about the fascist parallels with Trump’s coup and the fascist themes in that film they showed at the ellipse to gin up the crowd. It seems newly …. relevant:
Fascist thought
Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s first and most famous book, is entitled “Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna.” In it, he documents what he describes as his gradual realization that behind the various institutions of power were the Jews. His enlightenment supposedly begins with the entertainment industry, where he remarks that “[t]he fact that nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy can be set to the account of a people, constituting hardly one hundredth of all the country’s inhabitants, could simply not be talked away; it was plain truth.” But it was, Hitler writes, when he “recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy” that “the scales fell from [his] eyes.” Hitler describes a growing sense, foundational to the ideology the book delineates, the ideology of Nazism, that Jews were controlling the apparatus of the state, both as important party politicians in the Social Democratic Party, and as operators behind the scenes of the press and other institutions.
In Nazi ideology, Jews are represented by an unholy alliance between Jewish capitalists and Jewish communists. The goal of the Jewish plot is to destroy national states, replacing them by a world government run by Jews. This diabolical Jewish plot involves destroying the character of individual nations, by flooding them with immigrants, and empowering minority populations. Hitler describes the German loss in World War I as part of this plan, a “stab in the back” of the German people by Jewish traitors seeking the ruin of the nation. In Nazi ideology, liberal democracy is represented as a corruption, a mask for this takeover by a global elite. Hitler reveals his true attitude toward liberalism in Mein Kampf, when he writes (in the characteristically sexist terms of Nazi ideology):
Like the woman, whose psychic state is determined less by grounds of abstract reason than by an identifiable emotional longing for a force which will complement her nature, and who, consequently, would rather bow to a strong man than dominate a weakling, likewise the masses love a commander more than a petitioner…
Fascism is a patriarchal cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by a treacherous and power-hungry global elite, who have encouraged minorities to destabilize the social order as part of their plan to dominate the “true nation,” and fold them into a global world government. The fascist leader is the father of his nation, in a very real sense like the father in a traditional patriarchal family. He mobilizes the masses by reminding them of what they supposedly have lost, and who it is that is responsible for that loss – the figures who control democracy itself, the elite; Nazi ideology is a species of fascism in which this global elite are Jews.
The future promised by the fascist leader is one in which there are plentiful blue collar jobs, reflecting the manly ideals of hard work and strength. In Nazi propaganda, many white collar jobs, the domain of Jews – running department stores, banking – were for the idle. And the fascist nation’s heart and soul is the military – as Hitler writes, “[w]hat the German people owes to the army can be briefly summed up in a single word, to wit: everything.” The fascist future is a kind of restoration of a glorious past, but a modern version – replete with awesome technology that glorifies the nation to the world. The German V-2 rocket was a characteristic representation of Nazi might. The fascist future is, in the famous description of Jeffrey Herf, a kind of reactionary modernism.
Fascist propaganda
Fascism uses propaganda as a way of mobilizing a population behind the leader. Fascist propaganda creates an awesome sense of loss, and a desire for revenge against those who are responsible. In the face of the supposed betrayal of the nation during World War I by Jewish “vipers,” Hitler describes the proper response to have been to place the “leaders of the whole movement…behind bars.” Hitler writes, “[a]ll the implements of military power should have been ruthlessly used for the extermination of this pestilence. The parties should have been dissolved, the Reichstag brought to its senses, with bayonets if necessary, but, best of all, dissolved at once.” The goal of fascist propaganda is to mobilize a population to violently overthrew multi-party democracy and replace it with the leader…
II. The Movie Shown at the Ellipse
This history, both European and American, illuminates the dangers we face today, laid bare in the video. In it, Trump is repeatedly represented as the nation’s father figure. It is laced through with images of masculinity, and mournful loss at the hands of traitors, clearly justifying a violent restoration of recent glory.
The video begins with Trump’s eyes in the shadow, and its second frame focuses the audience on the Capitol building – America’s Reichstag, where the decisions being denounced by the rally’s organizers were being made that day. The third frame of the video is the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. This image immediately directs the attention of an audience attuned to an American fascist ideology to the supposedly elite class of Jews who, according to this ideology, control Hollywood. The appearance of the Hollywood sign makes no other sense in the context of a short video about an election. The next two images, of the UN General Assembly and the EU Parliament floor, connect supposed Jewish control of Hollywood to the goal of world government. As we have seen, according to Nazi ideology, Jews seek to use their control of the press and the entertainment industry to destroy individual nations. The beginning of the video focuses our attention on this supposedly “globalist,” but really Jewish, threat.
The next clip lingers on Joe Biden, with a vacant stare in his eyes and the video footage slowed, while Trump’s inauguration speech plays, “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost.” It is clear from the image of Biden that he is not making the decisions. The video shifts to an image of Senator Charles Schumer, reminding the viewer of prominent Jewish leaders of the Democratic party. Schumer is wearing a Kente cloth, an image evocative of Ku Klux Klan ideology — that Jews support Black liberation movements as a way to undermine white rule and destroy the nation. The next frame shows the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, flanked by two Jewish Congressman, Representatives Nadler and Schiff. Pelosi, too, is controlled by Jews.
Who, then, are this “small group in our nation’s capital”? The video suggests it is a group that controls Hollywood and the Democratic Party, and seeks to use Black liberation movements to undermine the nation, and bring about world government. In Nazi ideology, as well as its US counterpart, this group is the Jews. And what are the costs? As the inauguration speech continues, “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of this our country;” gunshots are fired and we are shown images of these citizens betrayed by a duplicitous establishment – mournful pictures of coffins of veterans, homeless encampments, and a series of slides varying between nostalgic images of white American families over dinner with rural destitution – a worn down home flying a large American flag with an old pickup truck in front. At the end of these grim scenes of the results of elite betrayal, Trump declares, “This all ends right here, right now.”
As the music surges, what follows is a series of photos taken during Trump’s first term. This phase of the video begins with images of enormous naval ships on the ocean, and moves to images of Trump striding in front of a military guard at a football game, the iconic sport of American masculinity (hence the very particular danger of the Black quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s challenge to white supremacy). It is followed by rally after rally with adoring masses cheering Trump. The images of women overcome with emotion at the sight of the nation’s father figure, and violent anger at his political enemies, are interspersed with heavy machinery in factories, churning out huge new pick-up trucks, fighter jets streaking across the sky, and Trump striding across the screen framed by the powerful American imagery of the Lincoln Memorial. A Black man and a white man are shown in brotherhood at a Trump rally. Trump is shown observing powerful rockets launch, images evocative, for those schooled in history, of the Nazi’s own obsession with this particular technology.
After these scenes of Trump’s glorious leadership, the restoration of American rocket technology dominance, the mood shifts, as we are shown former Attorney General Bill Barr swearing in at what appears to be a deposition, followed by a smirking Joe Biden. Treachery has entered in, stage left.
What follows is scene after scene of immense loss. Empty streets of great American cities, a forlorn white woman peering out of a window, trapped at home. Scrabble pieces spelling “FEAR” appear and disappear within less than a second, empty chairs at a school, a sign reading “closed.” We see an image of the Supreme Court, followed by what appears to be a Black Lives Matter rally on a street emblazoned with “DEFUND THE POLICE.” Joe Biden appears in a forlorn photo in a gym, speaking to a lone man in a chair – Biden is here a petitioner, not a commander. The video switches back to a representation of glorious Trump years – a rising stock market, more fighter planes, a Black man and a white man with a “Jesus Saves” shirt embracing in brotherhood – a reference to the power of a shared Christian identity to bond Americans across racial lines. It ends with the screen filling with a powerful image of Trump’s face, showing steely resolve.
The message of the video is clear. America’s glory has been betrayed by treachery and division sown by politicians seeking to undermine and destroy the nation. To save the nation, one must restore Trump’s rule.
Each of us can decide what moral responsibility Trump personally has for a video to rouse his supporters at the rally. How much of a role the White House or Trump himself may have played in deciding to show the video and sequencing it immediately after Giuliani’s speech, we don’t know. But it is worth noting that the New York Times recently reported that by early January, “the rally would now effectively become a White House production” and, with his eye ever on media production, Trump micromanaged the details. “The president discussed the speaking lineup, as well as the music to be played, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations. For Mr. Trump, the rally was to be the percussion line in the symphony of subversion he was composing from the Oval Office,” the Times reported.
Worldwide, there have been many fascist movements. Not all fascist movements focus on a global Jewish conspiracy as the enemy, and not all of them were genocidal. Early on, Italian fascism was not anti-Semitic in its core, though it later turned that way. British fascism was not genocidal (though it also was never given the opportunity to be). The most influential fascist movement that takes a shadowy Jewish conspiracy as its central target is German fascism, Nazism. Nazism did not start out in genocide. It began with militias and violent troops disrupting democracy. In its early years in power, in the 1930s, it was socialists and communists who were targeted for the Concentration Camps, torture, and murder. But it must never be forgotten where Nazism culminated.
I know a lot of people want to ignore this stuff and pretend it doesn’t matter because Trump is such a clown. Well, people thought Hitler was a clown too. It turns out that there are a lot of people who are hungry for a fascist clown to lead them.
People love to denigrate Joe Biden as being senile and incoherent. Here’s Joe Rogan doing just that. Only he makes a little mistake:
Yes, it was Donald Trump who said it. And he is is far more incoherent and weird than Biden has ever been. Here’s my favorite:
But really … tell me that this man is all there:
I wish I understood why he is given a pass while Biden is harassed for his rather normal verbal stumbles. Maybe it’s the make-up and hairspray obscuring how old Trump really is.
They seemed otherwise unstoppable. Then common terrestrial bacteria felled the invading Martians in “War of the Worlds.” Put a pin in that. Could it be important?
A week or so ago, this post from Adam Kinzinger popped up and … whut? Whatever prompted that was unclear or I missed it and dismissed it.
I’m genuinely surprised how people close to Trump haven’t talked about the odor.
It’s truly something to behold. Wear a mask if you can
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 16, 2023
#TrumpSmells Becomes Top Trend in U.S. As Claims of Putrid Odor Go Viral
The hashtag #TrumpSmells quickly skyrocketed to the top trending topic in the United States on X after Donald Trump’s team threw a stink over claims that the ex-president and criminal defendant has an “odor” that is “truly something to behold.”
The story on MeidasTouch includes video “testimony” from former The Apprentice staffer Noel Casler about “Diaper Don”:
“The diapers is not a joke,” Casler began.
“He would often soil himself on The Apprentice set. He’s incontinent from all the speed, all the Adderall he does, all the cocaine that he’s done for decades…His [bowels] are uncontrollable.”
Casler claimed that Trump has been wearing diapers since the 1990s and the he had a chance to witness it firsthand in the late 2000s, while working on the set of The Apprentice.
One hellsite user Xitted, “Wonder why Trump hasn’t sued Noel Casler for defamation yet? Prob cause discovery would be wild”
“It’s true. Many people are saying,” quipped another X user.
“No one realised Bannon meant literally,” Xitted one user.
Team Trump is desperately pushing a narrative about @RonDeSantis supposedly being gross when he eats as a distraction from the growing #TrumpSmells scandal as the Orange Emperor is found to be a putrid diaper-soiling scent machine.
So, hold your nose but not your breath at the prospect of something as primitive as smell stopping Trump’s nascent fascist movement. We’ve held out so many hopes for stopping a second Trump presidency. He faces a raft of criminal charges. He could be convicted before 2024 voting starts. He faces 14th Amendment challenges in court. He could be declared disaqualified.
Or.
“One consistent finding is that conservatives show higher disgust sensitivity than liberals,” finds one of many studies. “To a surprising degree, our political beliefs may derive from a specific aspect of our biological makeup: our propensity to feel physical revulsion,” Kathleen McAuliffe recounted inThe Atlantic.
The ultimate irony would be smell being what lodges in the lizard brains of MAGA cult members and finally stops Diaper Don.
More than 15 million people have signed up for health insurance plans offered on the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace, a 33 percent increase compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary data released by the Biden administration on Wednesday.
Federal health officials project that more than 19 million people will enroll in 2024 coverage by the end of the current enrollment period next month. That total would include those who gain coverage through state marketplaces, continuing the record-setting pace.
Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in marketplace enrollment is a testament to the law’s enduring power.
Legislation passed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people buying plans, lowering the costs for many Americans. The Biden administration also lengthened the sign-up period and increased advertising for the program and funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll.
[…]
On Dec. 15 — the deadline to sign up for coverage that begins on Jan. 1 — nearly 750,000 people opted for a marketplace plan on HealthCare.gov. It was the largest single-day total yet.
Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a health economist at Harvard who served in the Biden administration, said that improved outreach helped explain the record sign-ups. “I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said.
With years of increased subsidies, he added, “it might be this is the natural growth rate over a few years in a new policy environment.”
Kody Kinsley, the top health official in North Carolina, said that his state had gotten creative by using its efforts expanding Medicaid to also sign people up for marketplace plans.
“We’ve had a very broad educational and outreach campaign — with civic organizations, churches, navigators — built around expansion to educate folks about eligibility,” he said in a text message.
He added: “As part of that, we support folks to get coverage on the marketplace, if they’re not eligible” for Medicaid.
The open-enrollment period on Healthcare.gov runs through mid-January, ending at 5 a.m. Eastern time on Jan. 17. People who enroll by then will have coverage beginning in February.
Biden administration officials said that they were encouraging enrollees who were already covered through HealthCare.gov to continue shopping for plans, in case a new option turns out to be better and more affordable.
The Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces have become particularly valuable to the people losing Medicaid coverage this year after a federal policy that guaranteed coverage earlier in the pandemic lapsed in April.
The millions of people dropping off Medicaid rolls has contributed to the uptick in marketplace enrollment, Ms. Cox said, and to surges during normally sleepier periods outside open enrollment. (Certain life events, such as the sudden loss of other health coverage, allow some Americans to get new plans outside the open enrollment period.)
According to federal health officials, from March to September enrollment in marketplace plans increased by 1.6 million people, or 1.5 million more than during the same period last year.
This is really fantastic news. If all those monstrous red state governments would agree to accept the money to expand Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, we might actually be getting close to some kind of universal coverage.
Trump will keep saying what he says because other than terrorizing his political enemies and coddling dictators, his only agenda is reversing all progress of the past century, most particularly anything with Obama’s name on it. And it’s going to hurt him. There are just too many people who have benefited from the program. That’s great!
I had been wondering why there was such out-sized coverage of this issue. I realize that many members of the elite media went to Ivy League schools so it’s of personal interest. But now I see that it’s a right wing hissy fit ginned up by their chief propagandist.
Rufo knows exactly what he’s doing. And I have to assume that the mainstream media knows it too. It’s not as if he’s trying to hide it.
Keep your eye on this as we go into the election year. These mini-scandals have a way of affecting close elections depending on the timing. I can’t help but think of the Comey sabotage in 2016. Thee is good evidence that if it had happened a week or so earlier, Clinton would have recovered in the polls. (They bounced up and down a couple of points throughout the fall campaign.) These folks know how to get the media excited and they’ll find a way to dominate unless the public remains vigilant and calls them out.
Semafor reports on a recent meeting by some pretty heavy hitters to strategizde how to stop this sabotage campaign by No Labels:
A coalition of Democratic and Republican anti-Trump groups are organizing an aggressive, multi-front campaign to stop the independent group No Labels from injecting a third major candidate in the upcoming 2024 election.
Their plans, laid out in a private, roughly 80-minute call obtained by Semafor, include legal attacks, opposition research and warnings to potential candidates and donors that involvement with No Labels could make them politically toxic.
No Labels, founded in 2010 by a top Washington political fundraiser, Nancy Jacobson, bills itself as an answer to America’s divisive partisan politics, and has sought to present a poll-tested centrist platform. Democrats believe any such effort is far likelier to pull votes from Biden than from Trump, whose support
The call, organized by the center-left Democratic group Third Way with the help of the progressive Move On, also included representatives of End Citizens United, the Lincoln Project, American Bridge, Public Citizen, and Reproductive Freedom for All. Attendees included prominent anti-Trump Republicans Sarah Longwell and Bill Kristol, former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, and an aide to the Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman, Dmitri Mehlhorn.
“Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone — everyone — should send the message: If you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it,” one speaker said during the call. “If you think you were vetted when you ran for governor, you’re insane. That was nothing. We are going to come at you with every gun we can possibly find. We did not do that with Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, we should have, and we will not make that mistake again.”
The group laid out plans to discourage a set of possible candidates, including: former Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Will Hurd; sitting Republican Governors Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire; former Republican governors Jon Huntsman of Utah and Larry Hogan of Maryland.
They seem to realize that appealing to the No Labels people themselves is probably a fool’s errand. They are focusing on the potential candidates as they should. You’ll notice that the people on that list are all Republicans which in a normal world should help Biden. But the polling shows that it ends up hurting him instead by providing a spot for the swing voters he needs to counteract Trump deluded cult.
They do mention Manchin but one of the people said they’ve heard he’s not going to do it which a spokesman later said wasn’t true. We’d better pray that it is.
No Labels, the organization attempting to assemble a third-party presidential unity ticket, is openly floating the prospect of a “coalition government” forming after the 2024 election if no candidate reaches the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the White House.
Officials with the group are mapping out an unlikely and largely unprecedented scenario where they could be in a position to cut deals on policy, Cabinet posts or even the vice presidency if their still-unformed ticket manages to win electoral votes and blocks a major-party nominee from winning the presidency outright.
“It’s possible that if you got to the Electoral College and no candidate had 270 [electoral votes], that there could be negotiation to create a coalition government where electors get traded between different candidates to get somebody over 270,” Ryan Clancy, the chief strategist for No Labels, told reporters on Wednesday. Clancy added: “There are quite a number of states that have what are called ‘unbound electors,’ which is to say: Those electors are not statutorily required to vote for the candidate that won their state at the Electoral College.”
In 33 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, laws prevent “unbound electors,” statutorily requiring electors to vote for the presidential and vice presidential candidates who won their state’s popular vote.
Former Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, a co-founder of No Labels, expanded on the group’s view of this potentialscenario in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, suggesting the No Labels ticket could “cut a deal” with one of the major parties’ tickets.
“It could be Cabinet posts. It could be a policy concession. That’s the kind of thing it could be,” Davis said, adding the vice presidential position could also be part of the discussions.
Davis said a “deal could clearly be cut” to “swing faithless electors over” to another ticket’s candidates.
“It could be, for example: ‘We’re going to build a border wall [and] not run deficits.’ Any number of things,” Davis said.
In the video conference call with reporters, Clancy said that a coalition government is not “the plan” of No Labels,which is seeking to place a presidential ticket on the ballot in all 50 states.
“One thing I really want to clarify: This is not No Labels’ plan. This is not No Labels’ strategy,” Clancy said, adding he wants to put forth a ticket that can win the Electoral College outright.
Davis also said that the group is looking at another potential, if far-fetched, outcome: A contingent election in which the president is selected by the U.S. House.
My God. Can it be any worse?
And by the way, look at the agenda he mentions. Basically they are planning to blackmail the Democratic party into passing the Romney agenda. Fuck that.
Grrr. Happy Hollandaise, everyone. We have our work cut out for us.
It’s a real contest but if I had to choose Donald Trump’s most fatuous claim it would have to be that until he became president “nobody could say Merry Christmas anymore.” He said it again just the other day and his ecstatic followers practically went into a collective fugue state and began speaking in tongues they were so thrilled. This war on Christmas has been a theme on the right for many, many years but Trump is the first politician to say that he “won” it. It was smart. After all, the war didn’t exist in the first place so every time anyone says “Merry Christmas” he gets the credit. Boom!
I have no doubt that his right wing evangelical fans are thrilled by all this. This is one of Christianity’s most important holidays after all. On the other hand, most of them are also fine with Trump evoking Adolph Hitler’s rhetoric so their alleged reverence for Christmas as a religious holiday may be beside the point.
Hitler wasn’t exactly a follower of Jesus but most of his followers were Christians, motivated to support him out of long-standing antisemitism, hostility to the more liberal social and political changes they blamed on the Weimar Republic , anti-communism, rabid nationalism and loathing for the international community. With the exception of the antisemitism the followers of Trump aren’t much different here in America today. And I think we can safely assume that the only reason they aren’t on board with today’s antisemitism is because they believe Jews must be in Israel for the rapture to be triggered.
They’re happy to join in Trump’s racism and bigotry against his chosen “other” which he recently specifically defined as people from Asia, Africa and South America who are “poisoning the blood” of our country. Trump and his supporters also despise Muslims from anywhere, “radical leftist thugs,” LGBTQ people and the media, all of which the Nazi Party also saw as enemies. Let’s just say the historical Nazis shared a whole lot of the same grievances we see in the MAGA movement today.
Christmas was an issue for Hitler as well but in a different way than Trump. Even though the holiday was always a very popular holiday in Germany, Hitler found it to be an insipid drain on the national will, what with all the “peace on earth” folderol. He didn’t want that and he didn’t want the German people to want that. But he couldn’t just ban it. It would have caused a mass rebellion. So instead, the Nazis set about changing its meaning to “holiday of actual domestic national peace” by which they meant peace after all the enemies had been vanquished.
Hitler ordered that Christmas be altered in other ways as well. The Christmas tree was originally a German tradition but he really didn’t like that star on the top which was just a little bit too reminiscent of the Jewish star of David or the five pointed star of the Soviet Union. So they replaced it with a Germanic “sun wheel” or a Sig rune. This was in keeping with the Nazi plan to move Christmas away from a Christian holiday into a more ancient German pagan celebration of the winter solstice, even calling it by a different name: Rauhnacht, the Rough Night (for some reason.)
They even changed the lyrics to Silent Night to make it a celebration of the Führer. It started off with the usual “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright” but rather than “Round yon Virgin Mother and Child” etc., it took an abrupt turn to, “Only the Chancellor stays on guard, Germany’s future to watch and to ward, guiding our nation aright.” (So much for “sleep in heavenly peace.”) People were also encouraged to sing, “Exalted Night of the Clear Stars” which is all about motherhood, renewal, and holiday fires but no Jesus. He was, after all, a Jew.
Hitler didn’t like Santa either. After all, St. Nicholas was a saint from Turkey (a “sh*thole” country in Donald Trump vernacular) which meant he wasn’t Aryan and that was unacceptable. But the people loved him so the Nazi propagandists cleverly turned it around to say that the beloved mythic figure was actually the pagan god Woton which the Christians had appropriated and now the Germans were taking him back. They called him “Solstice Man” and he wore a slouch hat and a mask.
Over time all these changes became more and more mandatory and any refusal to go along became a political act. “The apparently banal, everyday decision to sing a particular Christmas carol, or bake a holiday cookie, became either an act of political dissent or an expression of support for national socialism,” writes historian Joe Perry. I think we know what happened to dissenters in Hitler’s Germany.
Nazi propagandist Wilhelm Beilstein wrote an article in 1939 explaining the true meaning of Christmas:
“When we celebrate a German Christmas, we include in the circle of the family all those who are of German blood, and who affirm their German ethnicity, all those who came before us and who will come after us, all those whom fate did not allow to live within the borders of our Reich, or who are doing their duty in foreign lands amidst foreign peoples.”
That brings Donald Trump to mind for some reason. Hmmm. I’ll have to think about why that is.
The right has accused the left of waging a war on Christmas for years now, which is really just a joke at this point. Nobody’s trying to prevent anyone from saying Merry Christmas if they want to. “Happy Holidays” is just a way of including people who may not celebrate the Christian holiday. It’s called having manners. But Donald Trump heard about the fake controversy from talk radio and now claims that he fixed the problem that never existed. All of that is silly.
But you can see where the worship of a demagogue can lead a country. People went along with that absurdity because, whether through desire to please or to avoid intimidation, they did whatever Hitler wanted them to do. He persuaded them that maintaining the purity of “German blood” was of paramount importance and everything and everyone had to submit to that priority. With almost half of Republicans telling pollsters that Trump’s rant about immigrants poisoning the blood of America made them more likely to support him, it appears the MAGA movement is headed down that same path.
