What Those Who Studied Nazis Can Teach Us About The Strange Reaction To Donald Trump

[kpete]

While it’s important to watch the president-elect closely, we also must be mindful of our own response to him.
12/19/2016 07:13 pm ET

………………..

These reactions to Trump and his supporters have a way of separating ideas that usually move in tandem. Facts and truth are suddenly unrelated. Power no longer implies responsibility. Legitimacy and decency are now somehow passengers on separate ships. In this dynamic, People magazine can champion both the perpetrator and the victim and see no contradiction or betrayal. Lilla can use the victory of a campaign steeped in identity politics to highlight the ineffectiveness of identity politics. And Lerner can argue that a campaign “advanced” by sexism, racism and xenophobia can tell us much about the targets of that bigotry, i.e. that they need to behave differently, but little about the supporters of that campaign.

So, why the rush to defend Trump’s supporters? Why the self-recriminations? Why the willingness to stretch the bounds of legitimacy to accommodate Trump’s antics? Much has been written about Trump’s demagoguery and its similarity to totalitarian leaders of the past, but what about Trump’s opponents? Are many of us borrowing a page from totalitarianism without realizing it? Are we empowering him? Are we coordinating?

The word Gleichschaltung is often translated from the German as “coordination” and refers to the process of ― politically speaking ― getting in line. It often appears in books about the Nazi era. German Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer and German journalist Joachim Fest wrote about the personal cost of coordinating in their respective memoirs. German author Sebastian Haffner and Americans including journalist William Shirer wrote about the propaganda and politics of coordination.

German-born Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, in one of her last interviews, explains it best.

“The problem, the personal problem, was not what our enemies did, but what our friends did. Friends ‘coordinated’ or got in line.” And this coordination was not necessarily due to the “pressure of terror,” said Arendt, who escaped Germany in 1933. Intellectuals were particularly vulnerable to this wave of coordination. “The essence of being an intellectual is that one fabricates ideas about everything,” and many intellectuals of her time were “trapped by their own ideas.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-nazi-propaganda-coordinate_us_58583b6fe4b08debb78a7d5c

[DetlefK]

1. The meaning of "Gleichschaltung" is much more sinister than merely "coordination".

It means giving up your individuality and your independence (or being forced to do so) for the sake of some greater goal.

[FarCenter]

6. from the dictionary

the act, process, or policy of achieving rigid and total coordination and uniformity (as in politics, culture, communication) by forcibly repressing or eliminating independence and freedom of thought, action, or expression : forced reduction to a common level : forced standardization or assimilation

[iluvtennis]

2. No worries with me ever legitimizing Traitor Don and his supporters. I've put all my fight into it.

...and will continue to do so for next 4 years. I've never been accused if leaving soneting on the field

[etherealtruth]

3. "So, why the rush to defend Trumps supporters? "

I have really wondered why there has been such an effort to defend and normalize voters embracing racism, bigotry and hate

[haele]

5. The rush to defend them is from familial pity and a form of guilt.

American society really sucks when it comes to getting past the family/church/community and working for the greater good.
Okay, here's the background -
Part of the problem in American culture that is not so prevalent most other places in the world is that we as a culture embrace a nuclear family vision, where we actively encourage separating our adult children from our family units once they've grown up and stopped "needing our help" in some sort of wolfish Call of the Wild scenario, where they're supposed to strike out and set up their own territory.
We like to pretend we never expect that we will need their help in the future, we just cut the bonds and then everyone is, in effect, on their own. Unfortunately, human beings evolved from communal groups and still instinctively revert to the safety of communal groups - because even though we are an "apex predator" due to our brains, we are still small and puny prey, slower and weaker than other predators, and we need to retain community support and protection, or for the most part, we will die alone, unable to cope with the complexities of both creating a sustainable environment for ourselves and protecting ourselves from predation.

The fear of being alone is still a major driver of all of our actions and interactions.

That being said - we protect and normalize tribal abusers and minor deviants - the bigots, the bullys, and their co-dependents - because 1) these people, no matter how negative, are family members or 2) these people generally have more important relationships with other community members/leaders, and are considered by the group as an integral part in either community support or community protection efforts. They are deplorable, but they are still people we are culturally supposed to respect due to what they do or what they can affect within our community.
So we normalize them. We keep quiet or defend perpetually angry Cousin Jack, his pastor-ridden defensive 2nd. wife and the three kids, two of whom are already showing signs that they are bullies. You see, he's family, he has a decent job, but he needs to be paid more money to cover child support, and his wife is always sick, you see, and the school is not a good school, and, and, and....
Same with the sisters who got their bachelor's and masters degrees before they got married. Same with Mom and Dad, retired, still proud and stuck in a dying town with no kids left living nearby - hell, you live 500 miles away yourself. And all any of them have to occupy their time is TV and Church.

We tell ourselves they aren't "bad people" - even though they use all sorts of slurs when demonizing "those others", and could care less if 40 million useless (in their eyes) citizens just disappeared from this country - or were thrown in jail, or internment camps or just gone. They are just misguided, as they stand quietly by as their neighbors - or children, talk about doing vile things to other neighbors who don't look like them, or worship like them, or "belong".
It doesn't matter that they provided the rope or let the truly evil people use the tree in the corner of their lot to lynch those takers, moochers, and undesirables that "don't belong" in their nice little imaginary world, does it? Because we think we understand why they have a reason to be angry, and we probably didn't try to help them enough, right?
Because we didn't try hard enough to "reach" them - even as we are pushing this idea of rugged individualism and breaking every bond to run wild and free, leaving nothing behind. That criticism is something to be avoided, because criticism only means something is wrong in our society. Just like argument only means violent opposition, rather than proving your point.

You can't write the script for someone else's life or feelings. You can't wish someone to be wiser, or curious, or logical. You can't expect people to be better than they are - you can only hope people to be better than they are.
And you still can love someone, even as you may disapprove of and criticize the way they are facing their fears and growing pains.

If we as a society encourage our population to act like spoiled, prurient 16 year olds - forever young and thoughtlessly self-centered - then we as a society need to take responsibility for that.

I don't defend and normalize voters enabling or embracing racism, bigotry, hate or greed. I may pity them, but I let them know exactly what they've done, and at the very least, ask them how they are going to be able to live with the results of that action. What happens to the other will always happen to them. Their job as part of society, willing or not, is to understand that and act accordingly.

They've got to own it, be responsible for it - just as I own and am responsible for every action I do myself.

Haele

[SamKnause]

4. There is absolutely nothing normal or fair about the 2016 election.

I refuse to pretend there is.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. K&R - there's a lot in this article that can't be fitted into 4 paragraphs.

Highly recommended.