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Journalist David Corn's review of fellow journalist Ari Berman's book on minority rule by a right-winged, anti-democratic cabal, references the threat posed by the likes of a would-be dictator, Donald Trump. Many Americans and citizens of the world would agree with Berman's assessment of our current dilemma in the US. A dilemma for those of us who want to see the US progressing toward a fully democratic society--and not one that capitulates to conservatives and Republican fascists.
As Corn writes, for years, this is the cabal that has been "striving on multiple fronts to weaken democracy by suppressing voter rights and pushing for other measures--such as gerrymandering and placing election boards under partisan control--that undermine majority rule".
I agree. One can chalk up the gutting of Roe vs. Wade, removing hard-fought rights from women and their right to bodily autonomy. There's the banning of books about or written by people of color or LGTBQ+ citizens. There's the effort to dehumanize immigrants. Any idea that the anti-democratic cabal feels that threatens their right to push for "absolute power." There's anti-black rage and the idea of a return to a time when America was "great".
Now, there's once again the violent crackdown on the idea that all human beings have the right to exist, to live, to thrive, and, if denied justice, they have the right to protest. Others, allies, have the right to protest at their side just as the US, the Western world, calls on its allies to pursue terrorism around the world.
Students and faculty at various colleges and universities have what seems a strange idea to the right-winged cabal: They care. They have compassion for the Palestinian people. They understand what happened to Israel on October 7, 2023, but they are witnesses to the horrors of mangled children. Thousands and thousands of mangled children. So many seriously injured and without parents. These students and faculty with heart are witnessing a genocide, and, in agreement with South Africa, they want to Israel to ceasefire. To stop! To put and end to the nightmare the Palestinians are forced to endure. Have endured since the Nakba in 1948.
They care so deeply, these students and faculty and activists, many of whom are Jewish, risk being pulled and dragged about by law enforcement. They risk being teargassed and injured for a lifetime. They risk, of course, expulsion from their campuses. Or the loss of employment. And yet they go on. They go on fighting against fascism.
For what else is in when some of us can see Bull Connors again? When we see law enforcement give the order to fire and four students are killed? When we see the fascists of Italy marching in the streets or the Brown Shirts marching and swinging clubs down on innocent citizens?
Ordinary citizens without compassion is far more frightening than the dictator-in-waiting. Ordinary citizens with a hatred for justice and fairness, with a desire to dismantle democracy, will dote on the would-be dictator. They will see students and faculty in support of Palestine as haters of Jews, antisemitic (as if they cared one bit about the Jewish people). They will see the treatment of Palestinian defenders as treasonous enemies of the State.
How different is what I see, these protesters on the news from Gaza any different from the violence inflicted by the Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany?
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Hitler never won an election, no matter how many rallies he spoke at, or no matter how many meetings he attended with the heads of the German State, or no matter how many Brown Shirts attacked and killed citizens they considered enemies. He insisted on "absolute power".
Timothy Ryback in Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power, writes that "it has been said that the Weimar Republic died twice. It was murdered, and it committed suicide." Ryback wonders if any democracy could have "withstood an assault on its structures and processes by a demagogue as fiercely determined as Hitler".
Hitler told Franz von Papen that he could remain a minister in a Hitler cabinet of the future only if Papen is "willing to support his [Hitler's] policies, which included the weeding out to weed out all Social Democrats, Communists, and Jews from leading positions in the country." Otherwise, no go.
Hitler couldn't see himself, writes Ryback, a defeated politician.
A year after the March election in 1933, the Reichstag, writes Ryback, passed an enabling law, empowering Hitler and his fascist henchmen, allowing Hitler to merge the presidency with the chancellorship. He wanted to be a dictator. He had his enablers. His storm troopers. Some were manipulated into believing in the "them" vs the "us". Hitler believes had to save himself and the National Socialist movement.
The German leadership handed over power to Hitler.
The political leaders arrived at the reception hall, writes Ryback. Hitler raises his hand and repeats after Hindenburg:
"'I swear: I will devote all my strength to the good of the German people, will respect the constitution and laws of the German people, will fulfill responsibly my assigned duties, and will conduct my affairs in a nonpartisan manner that is just for every person.'"
And the genocide follows.
Black Germans killed--thousands
Bisexuals killed--hundreds of thousands
Jehovah Witnesses--1700
Disabled people--250,000-300,000, along with 10,000 children
Polish people--1.8 million
Professional criminals--35,000
Political opponents--tens of thousands
Serbs--310,000
Romanian, Gypsies, women and children--250,000-500,000
Soviet prisoners of war--3.3 million
Jews--2.7 in the killing centers
Jews--2 million in mass shootings
Jews--2 million to 1,000,000 in ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps
Jews--250,000 acts of violence outside of camps and ghettos
(Holocaust Encyclopedia)
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Enablers and the silent, unlike the student and faculty protesters, who are mainly Palestinian but also include Jewish students and faculty, believe in the fear-mongering of the mediocre political leaders. As journalist Juan Gonzales, a former student leader during the 1968 Columbia University protests, points out that the police current crackdown implicates the presidents of these campuses as being tough on the "others". Enablers and the silent appease. This multi-racial protest led by the Palestinian and Muslim and Arab protesters against the genocide in Gaza stand on the side of justice and democracy.
Despite fascist attempts to erase the history of resistance, casting the anti-tyranny and to anti-democratic protesters as antisemitic is madness. But then, what else is fascism, if not a form of madness?
The late Edward Said described the Palestinian people, writes Moustafa Bayoumi, in the Guardian, "as 'the victims of the victims'", showing how Palestinians have become inexorably part of Europe's Jewish history, even if the Palestinian "life, culture, and politics have their own dynamic and ultimately their own authenticity".
Who is funding the Israeli assault on democracy in Palestine? Which of us? Or is it all of us tax-paying citizens, here in the US? The protesters want the US to divest from Israel. Is that too much to ask if we are to see ourselves as a democracy? A true democracy?
"'I do believe that as a Jewish person, I have a particular responsibility to resist the instrumentation of my heritage, and to say that I do not believe that genocide in Gaza or occupation and apartheid in greater Palestine is supportive of my personal safety.'" Ariela Rosenzweig, a student at Brown University.
We are talking here of the "persistent denial of the Palestinian quest for freedom". It's what the students and faculty are talking about. Freedom. How is it possible for US citizens to speak of the freedom of some, the powerful and well-armed and funded by the West--and not the others who have been disabused of their right to a homeland without fear of encroachment. Occupation. Destruction.
One day a Palestinian exist and the next he or she becomes a part of the history that isn't allowed to be taught!
And Trump says the protests around the US are a "'mess'"! What about that 26 billion just recently approved of to fund the killing? What about those 17,000 children killed? And Netanyahu still has his eyes on sending US-fund missiles and drones over the city of Rafah. The Gazans have fled and where these survivors are staving. The city where children, according to James Elder who visited Rafah as a spokesperson for UNICEF, witnessed severely injured children, dying children.
It's a city of graveyards filled with the remains of children. Children! And these children are in these graves thanks to Israel air strikes. Thanks to the US. Thanks to US corporate war profiteers. Thanks to citizens who remain silent.
What can't become history is that US citizens refused to embrace compassion, love. Refused to speak out against an anti-democratic movement to empower only the few. The willing, willing to destroy others, determining who is or isn't worthy of life.
It's fascism that must be destroyed It always was a "bad idea." Worse now, when presidents of US campuses should know better.
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