Most days, these days, I wake up, scan the headlines, and wonder: are America’s wise men the reincarnations of the ones who drove the Weimar Republic into collapse, ruin, and implosion? Because they’re making all the same mistakes.

I’ve already covered in detail how American elites have mismanaged their economy so fatally badly, the world hasn’t seen the like since the 1930s. Here, I want to discuss another, eerily similar series of mistakes: not just economic, but political and social.

I was amused, in a kind of tragic way, today, to read a new narrative from the wise men of American collapse. “He’s not a king!” they all cried, in unison. This narrative, which appeared on Twitter, in the New York Times, on CNN, was obviously coordinated. Over some dinner or in some private email group, elites had obviously decided this was a Very Wise Angle of Attack. But is it?

LOL — America’s at exactly zero risk of becoming a monarchy. But it is at very great risk of fascist collapse. Indeed, it’s many steps down that road already. And yet here we are, well into a textbook fascist collapse — and elites have never used “fascism”, “authoritarianism”, “concentration camps”, or “Gestapo” to raise a loud and deafening alarm about what is happening — even while people are snatched away in broad daylight en route to having babies. Instead, American elites flitter and lurch from ineffectual to ineffectual “narrative” —so much so that by now we have laughable, palpably absurd ones, the latest one, about kings. Don’t you think that’s bizarre? Weird? Foolish? I do.

Donald Trump isn’t the only one who has a problem with truth, my friends. American elites, and their refusal to acknowledge history, reveals just the same thing. They think they are above it. But are they?

During the 1930s, as the Weimar Republic collapsed, how did the Nazis rise? To a large degree, because elites had made a fatal choice. “At least they’re not the communists!” thought the wise men of the Weimar Republic. Is this sound familiar yet? It should. Because every day, American elites still demonize socialism (while Europeans live longer, healthier, happier lives) — and flatly absolve themselves that fascism could possibly be rising in America. Oh no. Not in the promised land.

(But why not? America was an apartheid state, if we are honest, until 1971. It has had barely a few decades of what you might call genuine freedom, equality, and diversity — even in the little and stunted way that it does, minorities realizing poorer outcomes in every possible way. Why is it so hard to believe that an apartheid state might soon implode, after a few decades at failed equality, into a fascist one? They are not so different, after all, apartheid and fascist states. But I digress slightly.)

Because the wise men of the Weimar Republic had decided that the communists were an equivalent or even greater threat, they were left to tolerate, normalize, and minimize the harm that the fascists were doing. So there the fascists were, giving insane, vitriolic, poisonous speeches — in which they outlined, precisely, what they were going to do. “The Jews are vermin! We must solve the Jewish Problem!” And yet the leaders of the Weimar Republic laughed gently, and said: “don’t take them literally! They’re good Germans, after all!” Is this sounding familiar yet?

It wasn’t that the Weimar leaders thought the fascists were wonderful and noble men — just that they were the lesser evil. Eventually, inevitably, that made the communists turn on the establishment, making a functioning government impossible, which cemented the Nazi rise to power. Does that sound like it could happen in America, too? Yet just the choice of the lesser evil was more than enough to set the stage for history’s wrecking ball to sweep across the globe.

That choice gave the fascists, who were genuine Nazis by this point, exactly what they needed to seize power: a kind of implicit license from leaders. They could preach whatever hatred and poison they wanted, they could march brownshirts down the streets, they could intimidate and threaten minorities, they could beat people up in broad daylight — but at least they weren’t the communists!! Having received this implicit license, their transgressions multiplied — because they understood, quite correctly, that, being the lesser evil, they could get away with anything.

Soon enough came the history that you know well enough. The Nazis seized power by engineering an illusory catastrophe. They burned down parliament and stormed the government. The wise men of the Weimar Republic quite literally at this point simply handed power over to them — Hitler was appointed protector of a society which couldn’t protect itself from…the Nazis. It was a kind of mafia shakedown all along.

But this formal handover of power was just that: a formality. In truth, power had been taken by the Nazis, every day, for a decade by this point. But that was also because power had been given to them, by the wise men of the Weimar Republic, who never really said things like: “These are very bad and dangerous men! If you follow them, they will lead you into atrocity, disaster, catastrophe, and ruin. Of historic and generational sorts. The kind that is unthinkable.” How could they? They’d already decided the fascists were the lesser evil.

“Fascist” then didn’t mean what it does today — today, all the above is exactly the connotation it carries, isn’t it? And yet, by not calling American fascists “fascists”, the wise men of American collapse are failing to sound precisely the alarm of history, in just that way. Some words matter a very great deal, because they are not words at all — they are sirens, bullets, knives. The connotation is missing, entirely, in formal American discourse today, that “these are very bad men, who will lead you into disaster, atrocity, and ruin” — and in fact, they already are. Isn’t that what kids in camps are? If you don’t think so, my friend, then you are on the wrong side of history.

The leaders of Weimar Republic, failing to sound the alarm, laughed gently, tolerating the Nazis’ worst abuses, perhaps condemning a few here and there — but never really to the degree or with the intensity that was needed, deserved, or justified. Loudly, piercingly, like an air raid siren, like a knife into the hearts of people. The wise men of the Weimar Republic had chosen their lesser evil — but by doing so, they’d licensed the Nazis, and left themselves utterly, absolutely impotent to save their very own nation from ruin.

Now. Doesn’t all that sound eerily like America today? Who’s the real enemy of the American future? Using words like “enemy” is childish, to be sure — but here we are. Is it the socialists — who basically want healthcare for everyone, not to communalize your house and car? Or is it the guys who are snatching people by now in broad daylight? Wait — are those guys fascists, or not? What other kinds of men snatch people in broad daylight, over the color of their skin?

But if the fascists are the real enemy — then why aren’t such acts condemned with the fury and outrage and scorn that they rightly deserve? After all — they’re not. They’re shouted at, a little bit — but as I’ve said, nobody in the American elite is sounding history’s alarm. The wise men of America won’t even call them fascists today — because that word has connotations they cannot bring themselves to use. What connotations? Precisely the ones you and I know. “These are very bad men, who will lead you into atrocity, ruin, and catastrophe” — precisely what the leaders of the Weimar Republic should have said.

In fact, the wise men of American collapse are doing everything they can do not to sound the alarm. Even absurd things like saying “king” — but not “fascist.” But if I say “king”, what comes to mind? Maybe Lear, Hamlet, or George. Yet if I say “fascist”, you immediately understand the path of ruin America is on — demonization, scapegoating, laws, ghettos, camps, cleansing, etcetera. Do you see the difference — and how much it matters? The alarm is only sounded by the right word, my friends. And uttering those words is the primary duty of those who wish to lead nations.

(And yet, because America was an apartheid state for so long, I think, American elites evolved norms of politesse, which fail them now. Even then, slavers and abolitionists would smile friendly smiles at one another, mingling not just at parties — but in Congress. So today, American elites tolerate abuses by their own, to a degree that no other nation really does, normalizing them and licensing them.)

Hence, today, the wise men of America are, just like the wise men of the Weimar Republic before them, more worried about the communists than the fascists. Who, today, are the socialists. Hence, America’s engaged in bizarre, abstruse debates about whether it can afford healthcare — while people are snatched off the streets in broad daylight. Can anything else explain that bizarre, gruesome set of facts?

And so just as in the Weimar Republic, the fascists have received a kind of implicit social license to go on doing their worst. That is why transgressions and injustices and abuses now mount by the day. That is how people end up being snatch in broad daylight — because the fascists know full well they can get away with it. A little more so, every day. They can get away with it. What does that mean? It means that they will never be held accountable — because already, America’s wise men have decided that all this is bad, but perfectly tolerable. But when a nation makes the mistake of choosing a lesser evil which is obviously going to be one of the greatest ones of all, my friends, it does not often recover easily.

So here America is. I didn’t believe in reincarnation until 2018. When the wise men of American collapse, eerily, made precisely and exactly all the very same mistakes as the wise men of the Weimar Republic. And brought, just like them, a once proud and noble nation so low, that the abyss itself looks down in shame.

Umair

August 2018