Gary Horton writes of partisan extremism, divisiveness, and violence (Oct. 8) as if those on the far right are the only ones capable of, or responsible for, it. Being on the far left, he cannot see and indict his own, and I won’t hold that against him. But if Horton is into history lessons, then I’ve got a real doozy for him.
While reading the book, “A History of the Jews,” by Paul Johnson, I came upon a couple of pages describing the rise of Nazism in post-World War I Germany as being so similar to events we are experiencing in the United States today that I was as disturbed as I was astonished. Although the Nazis were a strictly right-wing organization, what they were actually doing is remarkably similar to what those on the far left are doing today. Are you shocked? Then you don’t know your history. The Nazis invented “cancel culture,” and boy, were they “woke.”
“Above all, Hitler achieved his greatest success among university students. They were his vanguard … But an important bond between the Nazis and the students was the use of violent demonstration against Jews … It was not that the professors were pro-Nazi … but they were anti-democratic socialists and, above all, they were cowardly in standing up to student acts which they knew to be wrong … As a result, the Nazis effectively controlled the campuses two or three years before they took over the country.”
Sound familiar? Read on.
“The climate of actual violence which nourished Nazism was itself sustained by growing verbal and pictorial violence in the liberal media … The violence of print is often the prelude to the violence of blood. Post-WWI Germany was, by German standards, an ultra-liberal society and one of the effects of its liberalism was to destroy most restraints in the press.” They went from telling you what to think about to telling you how to think.
Speaking of destruction, no group has perfected the art of destruction like the iconoclasts on the left. Given free rein they will leave nothing standing. So, are you willing to see today’s progressive left as fascists, Gary? You don’t have to be on the right to be a fascist, did you know that?
Scoff at the notion if you will, but the ultra-liberals in the U.S. today are behaving in ways not unlike the National Socialists in the Germany of yesterday. So, which are you, Gary, the goose or the gander?
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita
