Hartmann: Fascism is repeating

He commends those of us who can see the obvious and are fighting like hell to resist it. Yet he warns the rest who refuse to see it for whatever reason. Wake up, history is repeating. And if we don't fight it now it will be too late later.

"Mayer’s German professor friend pointed out the terrible challenge faced then by average Germans, and today by many Americans as authoritarians have taken over the Republican Party and are now openly trying to overturn our form of government. [...] This was the great problem that Mayer’s Germans and so many in their day faced.  They couldn’t see the full arc of fascism’s evil history because it had not yet happened and was merely in process. Just like many Americans today who refuse to keep up with the news, to acknowledge the fascist parallels to the Trump movement within the GOP, to involve themselves with politics."

"Mayer’s German friends — and a few old Germans I got to know when I lived in Germany in the 1980s — didn’t have the benefit of history to see how a democracy could be turned to fascism by the will of a small group of people willing to bend or break the rules and employ threats of violence. We, however, do have that ability — that gift of history — and I commend your bravery for joining the very real and often very difficult work to retain freedom in our democratic republic. The neofascists who have seized hold of the GOP will never give up: neither can we."