it can't happen here

Sorry, heavy topic alert.

I've been thinking about the Holocaust a bit lately because I recently listened to the audio version of Anne Frank's Diary, and also because I recently did some reading about Kristallnacht in memory of its eightieth anniversary.  I used to be confused about how Nazism took hold, how Hitler was able to come into power, and how people could rationalize supporting a government that sent people to concentration camps.  I've thought many times that it couldn't happen here.  While it would be much harder for something like that to happen in the United States with the separated powers we enjoy in this country, in the last few years I've come to the conclusion that it can happen here.  People are people, and they're prone to demonizing others if doing so supports their preconceived worldview.

That Internet conversations and debates frequently devolve into one side comparing the other to Hitler or the Nazis is so well established that it has its own informal law. The real shame of this tendency is that comparing everyone to Hitler and the Nazis makes it so that few really take it seriously when someone actually does things like Hitler would.  If a real Hitler appears, anyone pointing it out would be seen as a crazy person triggering Godwin's Law.

My views on identifying nascent Nazism have changed some over the years.  I used to think of it as a workers movement because this is the vibe that the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will gives, and I in turn thought that was what I needed to be wary of.  However, workers movements elsewhere haven't had that same destructive tinge.  Certainly, some have.  The destructive ones are noteworthy because they're the exceptions, though.  Most have not.  Therefore, it has to be something deeper.

It could be that the key is that Nazism, like Fascism, was Nationalist.  I know that belief is getting airtime nowadays more than in the past.  It could also be that a deeper dig could reveal that this is unfair to some Nationalist movements which are not so destructive, if such movements exist.  I simply don't know at this time.

I'm not calling anyone on the world stage a Hitler today.  Even if I did, who would take it seriously?  These are now the sort of accusations crazy people make, and so they are a red flag to most that the speaker wants to decry everyone who disagrees with his as a Nazi.  I do see tendencies of what I do know about Hitler and Nazism in general in some modern political figures and movements that give me pause, though.  Some of those figures are in other countries and some are in the United States.  Since I'm no true expert, it would be unfair for me to call out someone as a Hitler based on a partial observation.  I have to believe though, that it would also be right for me to be cautious about their statements and actions, and refuse to support or endorse those individuals and movements, wittingly or otherwise.

It is easy to see how an individual with similarities to Hitler could take power, and how horrible things could be justified in the name of whatever that man portrayed as the ideal.  In 1930s Germany the ideal was a form of Eugenics supported by a host of conspiracy theories about Zionists.  I'm certain that a lot of Germans figured the Jews were simply being sent to a camp where they couldn't harm anyone else, and whatever happened to them they had coming.  Modern societies aren't immune to that sort of thinking.  Someone today can mix a weird political philosophy with conspiracy theories about some other group of people and do the same thing.  As long as a vocal minority (or even majority) believes the conspiracy theory, what's to stop them from doing horrible things?  Those people probably won't even ever realize the negative things they enabled.

History can be scary when you stop thinking that it can't happen here.