Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
Yesterday I wrote about Senator Jeff Flake’s speech on the Senate floor in the context of history. I compared it to two other instances where Senators of a party went against the President and leaders of their own party, in both cases signaling a watershed where the the history of those parties and their polices were defeated and the course of the nation changed.
While I posted Senator Flake’s words I did not go into any real analysis of them. Tonight I will take what I think is the most important segment of his speech, that in which he compares the use of President Trump’s use of the term “enemy of the people” to Josef Stalin. Some pundits and the politicians on the political right have decried Senator Flakes words but they all sound like Soviet apparatchiks when they do so. The fact is that like it or not Senator Flake sounded a warning about a clear an present danger.
The use of the term “enemy of the people” was a hallmark of Stalin’s tyranny and unlike Hitler, who primarily reserved it for the Jews; Stalin applied it across the social spectrum to any opponent. Timothy Snyder noted that “In the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, NKVD officers recorded 682,691 executions of supposed enemies of the state, most of them peasants or members of national minorities.”
The problem is that once the leader of any nation applies the term enemy of the people or enemy of the state to any individual or group in society that all bets are off when it comes to any real freedom, even for people who think that they are allies or supporters of such a regime. As Snyder noted about Stalin’s state, “All in all, the purification of the armed forces, state institutions, and the communist party led to about fifty thousand executions.” The fool is the one who thinks his loyalty to the tyrant will keep him alive.
The President’s supporters should always be aware of what has happened to the supporters of regimes that suddenly find themselves to be inconvenient, no longer necessary, or even possibly a danger to the regime… at least according to the dictator, or the wannabe dictator de jour.
The truth is that the President and many members of his administration backed up by their allies at Fox News and other right wing apparatchik sources and supported through the base motives of Republican politicians who value passing a tax cut and appointing right wing judges over truth and the Constitution itself. To do this they use what is for all purposes propaganda to demonize any opponent as an enemy of the people. Hannah Arendt was so spot on when she wrote:
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
Arendt’s words are so true today. The attack on truth, free speech, the freedom of the press, and all that the founders of the United States of America sought to preserve are under attack by a man and party who were elected to their offices in legal elections.
While the President may not be a certified dictator like Stalin, Hitler, or so many others, his words and actions before and after he became President do suggest that he is an authoritarian who neither has an understanding or an appreciation of the the principles of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. As Snyder wrote:
“The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.”
Senator Flake was right. This is a dangerous time and the President whether he fully understands his actions or not is following the path of Stalin and Hitler in terms of how he deals with truth. Sadly, the truth is that Stalin, Hitler, and yes our President value instability and chaos in order to bolster their power by promising stability. Arendt noted:
“The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.”
My dear reader, please ask yourself if the United States is more stable than it was a year ago. Ask yourself if any of this is normal.
Senator Flake, as real and doctrinaire conservative Republican as there ever was, has compared the President of the country and leader of his party to Josef Stalin. As Jesus once said, “Let he who has ears let him hear.”
I’ll write more about this but it will have to wait. Until tomorrow.
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 