"Instead he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

[kentuck]

"For Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandonded the cloak of legality: he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."
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A quote taken from pp. 217 of a book by Alan Bullock, first published in 1953, "HITLER - A STUDY IN TYRANNY."

I can't help thinking of this subject in this way since watching the censure hearing this morning. I keep telling myself, "it can't be happening".

[Erika]

1. What a fantastic post on W's fascism

"Instead he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal".

[kentuck]

2. That's exactly what the Congress is about to do...

retroactively make his lawbreaking "legal".

[Hidden Stillness]

3. Sometimes, Their "Legalisms" Give You an Angle, Too

An interesting point about this situation, for example, is the way it showed a clue to a solution. Sometimes, the only way to fight things while you are still oppressed and before you can enact a solution, is to turn their own invented tactics against them, if you can. The Hitler/Nazi terror reminded me of two successful (or at least partly) responses to the increasing threat. If you have no power at all, and cannot stop anything for now, then sometimes, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

The first was about the phony legalisms that the Nazis employed for years, preventing Nations from declaring war on them (the intent) as they had not broken international law or violated the soveriegnty of other Nations. This meant that even while they were setting up concentration camps and death camps, they still honored the passports of citizens of neutral countries, so as to not provoke an attack from those countries. This then led to people like Raoul Wallenberg and others printing up and using thousands of fake passports from Sweden, etc., and going down the lines of victims being put on trains to Nazi camps, claiming that this person, or that one that they would just pick out of the crowd, were Swedish (or etc.) citizens, and that the Nazis had no rights over them and they were being taken custody of by the Swedish Embassy, so they could save some number of them; whoever looked like the picture (of someone else entirely) on the passport. The second example of responding to things as they are and using it against them, is when Germany was going to invade Denmark, and gave the advance order that every Jew in the country was supposed to be wearing an armband with a Star of David on it, and their home and business also with a Star of David painted on. They could not refuse to do it, they were under this imminent threat, so what did they do? They went the other way completely: when the German Army invaded Denmark, everywhere they looked, everyone had Stars of David on, all the buildings were painted with it, everything everywhere. They could not hide the Jews, so instead they made everything Jewish--so that the "information" was useless. These were wonderful, very brave--and smart--acts. It shows you that no matter how few rights you have, you can sometimes use their rights against them. Until the Allies attacked, things like this were the only ways people had of fighting them.