A Question About Resistance versus Denial: Trump and Hitler
“… I have never been w the Not-My-President and Never Say He’s President folks. Oh, yes he is and that’s the issue: every form of denial is what would place us here four or more years hence. The denial is a largely useless, feel-good, if not a solipsistic meme and pledge and act….”
Jonathan Wolfman, comment at:
“Adolf Hitler’s rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party then known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – DAP (German Workers’ Party). The name was changed in 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party). It was anti-Marxist and opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles, advocating extreme nationalism and Pan-Germanism as well as virulent anti-Semitism. Hitler’s “rise” can be considered to have ended in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. The Enabling Act—when used ruthlessly and with authority—virtually assured that Hitler could thereafter constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without legal objection.
The 1932 German presidential elections were held on 13 March (first round) and 10 April (second round run-off).
They were the second and final direct elections to the office of President of the Reich (Reichspräsident), Germany’s head of state under the Weimar Republic. The incumbent President, Paul von Hindenburg, first elected in 1925, was re-elected to a second seven-year term of office. His major opponent in the election was Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP).
Under the Weimar system, the presidency was a powerful office. Hindenburg, who deeply distrusted and personally detested Hitler, had been motivated to run for a second term primarily by a desire to stop Hitler from winning the presidency.
Nevertheless, following his re-election, Hindenburg failed to prevent the NSDAP from assuming power. Two successive federal elections left the NSDAP as the largest party in the Reichstag and anti-Weimar parties in control of a majority of its seats. Under this political climate, Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.”
—–Wikipedia
Hitler came to power in Germany legally and without objection.
If Trump, the bigoted racist megalomaniac, is the black man’s American President, Hitler, the anti-Semitic murderer, was the Jewish man’s German Chancellor.
So, here’s the question:
Were the Jewish citizens of Germany in the 30s and 40s, who were astute and attentive enough to envision what lay ahead as the result of Hitler gaining control of the German government, engaged in resistance re increasingly anti-Semitic policies and laws, or were they simply in denial re the fact that a dangerous anti-Semitic mad man had come to power in their country?
09/08/2019 @ 12:05 pm
Numbers of large city-Jews were astute enough and had the means to leave and did.
However, most, particularly in the urban centers where news traveled, wanted to leave and could not for lack of money and overseas sponsors, and bc of exclusionary restrictions and traditions in England and the U.S.
Those Jews who did not either have the means or sponsors to leave who were gassed, shot, burned, buried in mass graves, lived in shtetls, (the Yiddish/German term for) small, segregated-for- many-hundreds- of-years, largely countryside villages and towns where outside outside mass communication access was virtually non-existent.
The analogy is ludicrous, Ron, and smacks of blaming the victim. I doubt you would have led yourself to this absurd comparison were I not a Jew…and I do not think you are being anti-Semitic here, but your focus is flawed.
09/08/2019 @ 12:23 pm
Was leaving a form of resistance, or was it a form of denial?
And of the Jews who were astute enough to see what was coming, but lacked the means to leave, what say you of them?
Further, what say you of the Jews who were astute enough to see what lay ahead, had the means to leave, but instead chose to stay and stand their ground?
Would you characterize them as being in denial or do you accept that standing one’s ground is resistance of the highest order, however futile and hopeless it might appear to be?
09/08/2019 @ 12:37 pm
Ron, the number who chose to “stand ground” were nil. They had no means to stand ground, had few weapons and more apt, had no clue that the final solution would be what it was.
Neither did the S.S. until the Wansee Conference in January, 1942.
I’m done. Eagles are on.
09/08/2019 @ 1:21 pm
“I doubt you would have led yourself to this absurd comparison were I not a Jew…”
Stuff and nonsense…
You couldn’t be more wrong if you had simply accused me of anti-Semetism.
My comparison is spot on and crystal clear. It is you focus that is flawed in that you have failed, or refused, to answer the question(s).
And, that blaming the victim smoke screen and red herring you’re coughing up here will not cut it with me…
How is suggesting that Jews resisting Hitler and his Nazi regime ” is blaming the victim”?
You have a problem with the legitimacy, rectitude, and veracity of the comparison without understanding where or what the comparison is…
Again you haven’t answered my question:
Was leaving the country resistance or denial?
Is choosing to stand one’s ground under the most difficult, dire, and dangerous of circumstances, resistance or denial?
Is fighting oppressive bigotry by any means necessary or available resistance or denial?
There were Africans captured, bound and chained on slave ships who, rather than remain alive for the benefit of their captors chose to throw themselves overboard, thus “denying” the slave trader his profit and “denying” the slave owner the benefit of slave labor…
You clearly are not referring to that form “denial”…Which, by the way, is the ultimate form of resistence…
Your comment is an insult to the millions who sacrificed their lives in the course of resisting oppression. That includes the millions of Jews and non-Jews who died in gas chambers and on the streets of Germany and elsewhere in Europe….
No sir, I will not permit you to sully the intent of this post by accepting your patently false accusation that I am “blaming the victim” here…
Please, stop trying to demean, insult, and condescend to me with such supercillious folderol…
09/08/2019 @ 1:35 pm
I will not argue Jewish Holocaust History and facts with you…
I will, however, argue the difference and distinction between resistance and denial…
You made an assertion re “denial” , but you haven’t made a case for your assertion…
In the face of what I have presented here, I doubt that you can…
I’ve been a Redskins fan since my years at Howard…
I would like to see the Redskins win the game today.
However, it would be a form of denial if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that the Eagles are the better team…
09/09/2019 @ 8:59 am
The situations aren’t really analogous. There are a whole lot of reasons. I’ll start with the fact that the duality of resistance/denial doesn’t work in this instance. The duality really is departure/denial. Resistance wasn’t generally feasible. There are a whole lot of reasons for this.
>German identity was ethnic/tribal, not ideological. A legal structure has everything to do with American identity and nothing to do with German identity, particularly then. A Bill of Rights ethos is a huge part of American identity but has nothing to do with German identity. Equality is, whether respected in practice or not, an American value. The Nazis, on the other hand, were all about emphasizing German tribal identity with the whole Master Race thing.
>Germans were way more accepting of government authority than Americans have ever been.
:>Germany was ethnically mostly monolithic aside from Jews. The US is not racially monolithic and isn’t remotely ethnically monolithic. Ethnic Germans/Jews were a duality though Jews had been blurring that line as they became more integrated. There was some intermarriage but the Nazis treated Jewish ancestry like the old Southerners treated Black ancestry in that any was viewed as a problem. The term mulatto in the old Southern context was analogous to halbjude (half Jew) in Nazi Germany. Blacks in the US can have ethnic allies. Jews in Germany couldn’t because there weren’t any feasible ones.
>Germany was not a gun culture in the way that the United States is. We have a history of armed civilians fighting on the frontier. Germans didn’t think in those terms.
>Jewish survival strategy had been honed through centuries of European persecution, and that strategy involved not making waves. Taking to the streets in protest would firstly not have occurred to them – though Jews in the US held enormous anti-Nazi protests – and would have backfired because it would have highlighted the ethnic German/Jewish duality and would have offended Germans’ traditional respect for authority.
>The Nazis rose to power during the Depression. Germans were ripe for being presented with a scapegoat. This was doubly true because, in the aftermath of WWI, Britain and France presented Germany with the bill for the war, plus they humiliated the Germans in the way the surrender was handled. Germans had more reason to be angry at outsiders than Americans have. Jews were certainly aware of this – actually, German Jews would have been angry about the same things, but in this case the government was blaming Jews for these things.
>German media were state controlled. American media are not. Germany had no First Amendment. Even German entertainment was state controlled, with the government producing and distributing anti-Semitic movies.
>The Nazis intimidated German dissenters. Political opponents often disappeared in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Even Germans who supported the Jews had to risk their lives to do so. Germans had no de facto protection from their own government. I talked about the lack of a First Amendment. That also included no right to assembly. Really, if the Nazis were after you, no rights or protections at all.
That’s the answer about resistance. Now I’ll get to denial. As things got worse, many Jews and many Germans thought there would be a point at which the German people would say Enough. This part is analogous to the United States in that we keep expecting the Republicans to say Enough,
The plan was not initially mass murder. Jews in Germany – and Germans – didn’t think that that was the eventual aim because at the time it wasn’t. If anything, it was eventual expulsion. Jews were certainly being persecuted and certainly being murdered, but we were not being exterminated. What changed that was the conquest of Poland. The German Jewish population was substantial but nothing like the Polish Jewish population, which was the largest in Europe. Germany found themselves ruling a Jewish population running into the millions and didn’t know what to do with us. (This population encompassed family of mine, though the last of my family to get out of Poland arrived in the US in August of 1939, a month before Poland was invaded.) The Wannsee Conference happened in early 1942 and it is there, in secret, that the Nazis settled on the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, which involved building death camps and attempting to kill all of us – all in secret, with no public acknowledgement.. Resistance at this point would have been impossible inside of Germany and did happen in some instances in Poland.
Is this helping?
09/09/2019 @ 10:40 am
“Is this helping?”
As additional context re Jewish Holocaust History, yes…
As an answer or response to the question, no…
If Trump, the bigoted racist megalomaniac, is the black man’s American President, Hitler, the anti-Semitic murderer, was the Jewish man’s German Chancellor.
So, here’s the question:
Were the Jewish citizens of Germany in the 30s and 40s, who were astute and attentive enough to envision what lay ahead as the result of Hitler gaining control of the German government, engaged in resistance re increasingly anti-Semitic policies and laws, or were they simply in denial re the fact that a dangerous anti-Semitic mad man had come to power in their country?
JW’s comment
“… I have never been w the Not-My-President and Never Say He’s President folks. Oh, yes he is and that’s the issue: every form of denial is what would place us here four or more years hence. The denial is a largely useless, feel-good, if not a solipsistic meme and pledge and act….”
This post is a direct response, reaction, and refutation of his assertion.
——–
Trump came to power legally.
His argument or case is since Trump came to power legally, he should be acknowledged as President accordingly, even by those to and for whom Trump and his administration pose a clear and present danger…
My counter to that is:
Hitler came to power in Germany legally….
If Trump, the bigoted racist megalomaniac, is the black man’s American President, Hitler, the anti-Semitic murderer, was the Jewish man’s German Chancellor.
Neither of you have adequately responded to my question within the context of my argument…
That is a rather common practice/tactic ie, if you don’t like the question, claim the question is inappropriate or invalid, change the focus or the subject, pose an entirely different question which is more to your liking and subtly substitute your reaction or response to the new question for a response to the original query…
Neat rhetorical trick you often get away with as a nonresponsive response…
09/09/2019 @ 12:04 pm
I’m fine with the question but it doesn’t fit. The choice wasn’t resistance or denial. The choice was departure or denial, within Germany.
Trump has not to my knowledge expressed any interest in exterminating the Black population, taking away your vote, moving your population, truncating your citizenship per se. He’s a bigot. His White House will not support civil rights. However, there is no Trumpian Mein Kampf, no expressed plan to disenfranchise Blacks. We have a lot of resistance options available. We can vote this guy and his confederates out of office. We can speak and write in public and in all sorts of mainstream media. Trump does not have dictatorial power. He cannot restrict our speech. He belongs to a political party whose cooperation he needs and, whether or not his constituency has limits, his colleagues have some. They do not like to look blatantly bigoted because the ethos here still nominally favors equality. Germany’s did not. His control of the military would not extend to extreme racism because, unlike in Germany, too much of the military is minority.
I am not saying this to minimize Trump’s threat. However, when we talk about resistance, the Jewish situation in Nazi Germany and the Black situation in current America are radically different. Blacks in America have a lot of allies including in the press, in public, in Congress, and in the courts. In Germany, expressing support for Jews could literally get you killed by the government though in some cases they’d just see to it that you were unemployable. The US has disturbing trends but is not currently totalitarian. We will know in a little over a year the extent to which we’ve stopped these trends cold.
09/09/2019 @ 12:25 pm
**ahem** Sounds pretty damn analogous to me. People of color, as a percentage, were as persecuted in German as any other minority. Hitler’s treatment of them is almost identical to Trump’s “intentions” (as based upon his treatment of immigrants who are almost exclusively people of color).
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blacks-during-the-holocaust-era
09/09/2019 @ 5:28 pm
Thanks Amy…
Blacks in WW II Europe is a hugely untold and unreported story….
09/09/2019 @ 4:22 pm
Kosh, you are making my case.
Many Jews would rather have left their country and their homes than acknowledge Hitler as their Chancellor…
In my view, their.
emigration or “exodus” was a form of resistance.
Just as many medeival nursery rhymes, or jumping ship during the middle passage were aexamples of the myriad forms of resistance…
Unlike contemporary Americans, German Jews did not have the constitutional tools or legal recourse or political traditions and resources to resist in Hitler’s Germany.
They had precious few options to express dissatisfaction and distrust so many simply left their country as an expression of resistance to the tyranny of the Nazi regime…(See the ‘White Rose Society”)
I have stated that refusal to acknowledge Trump is resistance. JW insists that refusal to accept Trump is denial…
My assertion re drawing the parallels is made in an effort to show JW that his statement is an inappropriate and unbecoming manifestation of arrogance.
His supercillious, passive-aggressive, attempt to insult, demean, and discredit is palpable and unwarranted…
Of course, what we do here is, at the very least,in the spirit of resistance. if not resistance in fact.
To insist that we call it denial is abject capitulation….
Trump has declared open season on anyone who isn’t a white, straight, Christian, male.
Saying that I, or anyone who Trump is attempting to target, marginalize, scapegoat, and, yes, even murder, should accept or acknowledge him, is like saying that the pre-war Jews of Germany should have acknowledged and accepted Hitler.
Many, if not most, didn’t which is why those who could left home…
Should we “wait until all the facts/evidence comes in…”?
This post takes JW’s assertion to its logical extreme conclusion, it is ‘reductio ad absurdum’.
Pre war Jews didn’t accept or acknowledge Hitler any more than contemporary blacks should accept or acknowledge Trump…
To argue otherwise is to be complicit in the dangerous political fuckery that is being played out before our very eyes…
09/09/2019 @ 10:57 pm
Are you confusing me with Jon? Make your case about him to him and about me to me. I have not stated that we should refer to Trump as the President.
As an aside, I assumed you were talking about treatment of Blacks by Trump, not by Hitler. The two are radically different.
I really, really resent being put in a position where I have any reason to defend Trump. The man is an abomination. He’s an abomination as a public official, he’s an abomination as an American, and he’s an abomination as a human being. However, bigotry is a very far cry from advocating extermination. So far, he hasn’t advocated treating American citizens as badly as Franklin Roosevelt treated ethnic Japanese American citizens or as badly as Russian Czars treated Jews. He hasn’t advocated apartheid. The only group that can really claim blatant targeting are trans citizens, and even there he hasn’t suggested relocation, segregation, or any kind of prosecution.
My ethnic group has lost lives because of that bastard, as presumably has yours because of his defense of police abuses, but I’m not about to advocate going from zero to Hitler in ten seconds. We didn’t refer to George Wallace or Lester Maddox as Hitler.
There are a whole lot of stages in between. Trump isn’t quite Hitler – except perhaps for his contempt for democratic process – and, more importantly, the US isn’t Nazi Germany.
09/10/2019 @ 4:31 am
“We didn’t refer to George Wallace or Lester Maddox as Hitler.”
Neither got far enough to compare…Neither became president.
I didn’t say that Trump is Hitler. I said that both Trump and Hitler came to power legally.
The focus of my assertion is not Trump/Hitler it is Contemporary American Blacks and Pre-WWII German Jews….
If you juxtapose JW’s comment:
“… I have never been w the Not-My-President and Never Say He’s President folks. Oh, yes he is and that’s the issue: every form of denial is what would place us here four or more years hence. The denial is a largely useless, feel-good, if not a solipsistic meme and pledge and act….”
And mine:
“If Trump, the bigoted racist megalomaniac, is the black man’s American President, Hitler, the anti-Semitic murderer, was the Jewish man’s German Chancellor.”
You should see what and where the contrast is…
Drawing the Trump/Hitler parallels is pushing JW’s assertion to its logical extreme, which results in an absurdity or reduces his assertion to an absurd conclusion…
You make my case in that you outline the nature and underpinnings of resistance which can be manifested in many forms and iterations within the context of American political traditions and Constitutional protections none of which were extant, available, or accessible to the Jews of pre-WWII Germany…
Americans resist oppressive government actions or behaviors and do so by any means necessary, accessible, and available which includes rufusal to accept or acknowledge oppressive and repressive government entities and officials…
That includes disassociating Trump and the office he holds…
My argument is that doing so is resistance JW’s argument is that doing so is nothing more than “feel good” denial…
He’s wrong, PERIOD!!!
AND
Your comment helps make the case that he’s wrong….
Finally, suggesting that my argument smacks of “blaming the victim” and/or the juxtaposition made here was done only because he is Jewish is supercillious, passive-aggressive, social media, claptrap..
Nothing could be further from the truth on either count…
The arrogance, condescension, and insult are palpably demeaning and as such are out of line and out of order…
09/10/2019 @ 7:44 am
I’ll give you an answer you may not expect. If Jon were in Germany in the thirties, he would not have said that Hitler wasn’t his Chancellor. He would have said that the problem is that Hitler is Germany’s Chancellor and that his efforts should be devoted to overturning that reality, which is what he’s saying about Trump. We know that Trump doesn’t represent any of us per se but he was elected President. Our system and our citizens put him there. His occupying that office is a fact, as Hitler’s occupying his office was a fact. He is the President, now what do we do?
As to blaming the victim, that comes from your dichotomy of resistance and denial. Most of Germany’s Jews didn’t fall into either category. It was obvious that things were getting worse for Jews as all sorts of laws were enacted preventing Jews from doing all sorts of things, so denial after a certain point wasn’t realistic. To imply that Jews who didn’t resist in an environment where resistance was not logistically feasible – where it would have inevitably led to imprisonment and probably death, the same being true of non-Jewish German allies – were in denial by default certainly smacks of blaming the victim. The implication is “we resisted, you didn’t.” In America, we have the luxury of resisting, and sometimes the difference between having that luxury and not having it aren’t sufficiently appreciated.
09/10/2019 @ 8:09 am
The resistance v denial dichotomy is drawn out of Jon’s comment…
My comment in response to his “your word disassociation isn’t resistance, it’s feel good denial”…
Which , I believe to be an arrogant, condescending, insult…And just plain wrong….
“The implication is “we resisted, you didn’t.” “…
Not my implication but an erroneous inference drawn by Jon and now you…
“His occupying that office is a fact, as Hitler’s occupying his office was a fact. He is the President, now what do we do?”
Inasmuch as Trump has targeted everyone who isn’t white, straight, Christian and male, we resist…
Disassociating words is an element of that resistance….
10/07/2019 @ 4:15 am
Wow, for once I actually agree with you.
10/07/2019 @ 4:21 am
There is historical proof that Hitler’s contacts in the Middle East through the Nazi quest for archaeological significance were advised by the Muslim Brotherhood that the persecution of Jews was a great idea.
10/07/2019 @ 9:22 am
I wasn’t aware the Muslim Brotherhood existed at that time. If you’re claiming that there is historical evidence that there were prominent Muslims in the Middle East who thought that persecution of Jews was a great idea, that’s absolutely true, starting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Mufti was a big fan of Hitler primarily for that reason.
BindleSnitch - NY Times engages in "useless, feel-good, if not a solipsistic meme"
10/08/2019 @ 9:47 am
[…] A Question About Resistance versus Denial: Trump and Hitler […]
06/14/2020 @ 12:43 am
Two things: #1 I’m not, and never will be, a Washington Racial Slurs fan. I know the history of that particular word so I only use it to either refer to myself or to quote others. #2 A majority of Native Americans within the confines of the United States say “Not my President” and we’ve been saying that since the US was founded. Why? In the first instance, we weren’t citizens of the US without giving up our Tribal Citizenship until 1925 and by birth until about 1940. In the second instance, it’s 2020 and our ballots if we vote on the reservations don’t have the office of President on them to start with. Those of us who vote off the reservations typically leave that particular office blank or write “none of the above”. So, no matter who is President… he’s not OUR President factually. We have nothing to do with him being there and bear no responsibility for the stupid he (or she) engages in because we have no “say” in the election of President.