famously, or infamously, depending on how you thought about it, opposed German reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall and East Germany's communist government. He had several reasons for it but the awkward fact that East Germany under the communists' and Soviet control had not de-Nazified to the extent West Germany had wasn't one I remember him stating at the time. But, as it turns out, living under a communist police state had the result of preparing many a former communist or subject of communism to become a fascist or neo-Nazi. It happened in East Germany and other satellites of the Stalinst system and in Russia, as well.
And here, it turns out, that our indigenous form of fascism, white supremacy, has pretty much the same consequences, especially in the states where that dominated. Which is an unmentionable problem for those of us who live there and instates somewhat less vulnerable to domination by white supremacists.
Both of my parents and an uncle all volunteered to join the fight against fascism and Nazism, I know in the case of my parent's parents, they had been staunch opponents of fascism in the form of the KKK and racism in general since before either fascism or Nazism had those names. Since the rise of Trump I have had so many occasions to be glad they had all died before the United States fell to Trumpist Republican-fascism and our country heading in the direction the countries they fought against in the 1940s in a dangerously serious way. It would have broken their hearts in ways that made even those they suffered under Nixon and Reagan and Bush I pale by comparison.
When the Free Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was invited to address the European Parliament, as he was about to speak, the German fascist, I would say neo-Nazi member sent there from Saxony, Siegbert Droese, expressed his solidarity with American Republican-fascism by shouting "USA, USA, . . . " in the American-fascist style. The fascist said it was his way of "addressing the elephant in the room" but that elephant (ironic that he unwittingly chose the symbol of the Republican-fascist party, I doubt he realized that) is the Trump regime's attempted Anschluss of Canada which, unlike the Nazi-Austrian one, is rejected by the large majority of Canadians. Prime Minister Carney was in Strasbourg to further the integration of Canada with Europe, in a direct analogue to the, hopefully future, integration of Ukraine with Europe which Trump's patron and likely blackmailer Putin is waging war to prevent.
It is to the eternal shame of Trump, the Republican-fascists in Congress and, most of all on the Supreme Court that a German neo-Nazi is shouting "USA!" in ways the original Nazis would not have been shouting.
It should make every American sick that the name of our country has become a rallying cry of Nazis and fascists, both here and elsewhere. Sitting where I am, it makes me wonder if, as Grass said about unifying Germany, if we have not lost the moral right to be a united country. He also cited the danger of Germany becoming a dangerous giant. You should read the editorial he wrote in 1990 and ask how much of that is relevant to the United States thirty-six years later.
Despite all our protestations, even well-intentioned ones, we Germans would once again be feared. For our neighbors would gaze at us with justifiable mistrust and from ever-increasing distance, which would very quickly give rise to a renewed sense of isolation and with it the dangerous self-pitying mentality that sees itself as ''surrounded by enemies.'' A reunited Germany would be a colossus, bedeviled by complexes and blocking its own path and the path to European unity.
I wonder if A.G. "Putsch" (as I always think of him) Sulzberger would publish such an editorial today. Perhaps one safely foreign of that kind might be safe enough, though he'd never write one that told that kind of truth about the United States. I fucking hate the New York Times and its publishers.
At some date soon, I will go on to write about the word I learned yesterday, "crybully" in regard to the mentality of Trump and his supporters. I'm amazed I hadn't learned it before, it is the perfect word for them as it was for Hitler and the Nazis.
Given the experience of both Canada and Mexico in the past eleven years, can anyone wonder why Canada has turned to Europe and certainly won't ever trust the United States again? A country that has the support of European and other fascists and Nazis, the country that has given in to our indigenous form of it after an all too brief period of seeming to have left that in the past?
My parents generation fought fascism and Nazism just as the generation in the 1860s fought the slave power. Only as soon as the 1870s to have the slave-power dominate the country, largely through the actions of the Supreme Court overturning the civil rights and voting rights legislation and nullifying and lying about the 14th and other amendments to the Constitution. Though the Electoral College imposing the loser of the election in 1870 on the basis of a corrupt deal made with the slave power had a considerable effect on that happening, as well. In the case of the World War Two generation, it took somewhat longer but the exact same history has repeated itself.
Our history is repeating itself in largely the same way under the same forces in our government and we have done nothing to change that. Unless those change, the United States will continue on to a neo-fascist future. I pray Canada and Europe can be the force for equality and democracy that our form of government thwarts over and over again. If that's not the case I pray the United States breaks up and cannot be that kind of fearful colossus, the Putin-Soviet Russian system and all other such large entities. I pray that Germany can avoid a repeat of its history. I'm nervous about that in ways that has gotten me remembering what Günter Grass warned about.
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