Trump Tweets About a Domestic Nacht und Nebel Decree

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today President Trump tweeted something against the ANTFA which could be used against any domestic opponents if he tried to implement it. The tweet read:

”Conisteration is being given to declaring ANTIFA, the gutless Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting (only non-fighters) people over the heads with baseball bats, a major Organization of Terror (along with MS-13 & others). Would make it easier for police to do their job!”

Please note, I support the ANTIFA as much as I do White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK. That means I don’t. That being said ANTIFA efforts are always directed at events where the White Supremacy groups are gathered, and usually threading racial or religious, and LGBTQ supporters.

Most of their protests are peaceful, and unlike their opponents on the Right they are not a unified body and have no national organization. The political Right, especially the President tend to lump any opponent as ANTIFA. Likewise, unlike White Supremacist groups, which the FBI have labeled as extremist groups, the ANTIFA, which began as an Anti-Fascist and Anti-Nazi movement in the 1920s and 1930s, has not been labeled as such and despite my best efforts to find recent deaths attributed to them I cannot. On the other hand White Nationalist and Supremacist groups have killed far more Americans than any domestic terror organization. Thousands, dating back from Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement to Charlottesville have been systematical murdered by them.

But seriously, Senator Ted Cruz and GOP Representative Bill Cassidy Of Louisiana introduced legislation to label the ANTIFA as a Domestic Terror Organization. In fact they are nothing of the such, they are a disparate group of individuals with no national or statewide organization, unlike their opponents on the right. To be sure the last sentence of the Cruz-Cassidy legislation mentioned White Supremacist groups, but when the President and high administration officials defend those group daily it is hard to believe that such a law would be uniformly enforced.

I am sorry, unless one is willing to label the violent racist groups of the Right as domestic terror groups, and implement harsh policies against their violence and intimidation then this smacks of a Hitlerian Decree. It is a Reichstag Fire Decree and Night and Fog Decree wrapped into one unwholesome package, with dire impact for any person who writes or protests against the policies and actions of the Trump Administration.

Trump’s tweets and the legislation of Cruz and Cassidy are dangerous. They are going to lead to far worse. Do I think that the Cruz-Cassidy legislation ever being signed, but the President can do a lot with previously issued legislation and executive orders should he make the decision.

In Hitler’s Germany the Reichstag Fire Decree allowed his government under the Weimar Constitution to rule by decree and jail political opponents.   On March 10th 1933 the Malicious Practices Act made even the slightest dissent, including joking about or criticizing members of the Nazi government a crime, punishable by being sent to a Concentration Camp. On July 14th 1933 the Hitler government declared the Nazi Party to be the only legal political party. The previous Conservative and Center parties had either already dissolved themselves while the Communists and Socialists were outlawed. Formation of any new political parties was outlawed.

The Nuremberg Laws Of 1935 stripped the Jews of citizenship rights. The Nacht and Nebel Decree of December 7th 1941 was used as a way to eliminate resistance members and dissenters in occupied countries by either murdering them or shipping them to Concentration Camps.

Heinrich Himmler wrote on that day:

“After lengthy consideration, it is the will of the Führer that the measures taken against those who are guilty of offenses against the Reich or against the occupation forces in occupied areas should be altered. The Führer is of the opinion that in such cases penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation to Germany serves this purpose.”

Less than a week later Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered the German military:

“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal.” 

The President’s continued ill-regard for the Constitution, our laws, our system of government and the long established guardrails to prevent tyranny are increasing. The danger is real.

It is true that this is not Germany of 1933, and that Trump, despite some of his similarities is not Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin, but he is getting more dangerous with every passing day. The frightening thing is that he may find an already existing law or executive order to outlaw any opposition to him, and willing accomplices to enable him to do it.

After the Liberation, a Nacht und Nebel Prisoner’s Uniform 

Historian Timothy Snyder noted:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.” 

That is something we must ask ourselves today.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+