Anti-vaxxers and the GOP Steal a Page from Hitler's Playbook

The most prevalent rhetoric of the Covid anti-vaxxers is that government requirement vaccine mandates are fascist. In fact, allusions to Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust are rampant in their rhetoric. What these protestors don’t understand is that the GOP’s extremists like Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida, as well as the screwball crew at Fox News, are taking a page straight out Hitler’s playbook.

How?

Because the Nazis were anti-vaxxers, too.

Before the Little Corporal became Der Fuhrer, Germany had a long history of compulsory vaccination. In 1847, after a smallpox epidemic killed tens of thousands of Germans in Prussia, the government ordered all newborns and military recruits vaccinated against the scourge as well as other diseases.

The German vaccination programs were quite successful. But in the waning years of the democratic Weimar Republic, an antivaccination movement took root. Called the Lebensreform, or Life Reform Movement, it advocated replacing vaccines with healthier lifestyles such as getting more sun and eating special diets.

The Life Reform Movement was also anti-Semitic. According to its adherents, vaccines were part of a global Jewish conspiracy to harm the German people. This isn’t too far from today’s antivaxxers who claim the Covid vaccines are unsafe (instead, they advocate taking a horse dewormer or drinking bleach) or that the vaccines inject tracking devices into our bodies (while they all carry cell phones by which they actually can be tracked).

Fearing protests, the Weimar government loosened its vaccine policies. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, they did not issue mandates for vaccination and what mandates were still in effect were largely ignored. In fact, like today’s GOP, they went out of their way to appease the Life Reformers. In 1935, Hitler’s Reich interior minister, Wilhelm Frick, said, “the popular character of the health laws, which must appear to be absolutely desirable in the National Socialist state, is better served if unnecessary restlessness is avoided in the implementation of the laws in the population.”

In other words, don’t rock the boat. German vaccination requirements under the Nazis became voluntary.

The Nazis’ nonchalance toward vaccination wasn’t just politically convenient. It had a more sinister side. Hitler and his cronies knew that the Germans they considered less desirable—Jews, gypsies, the mentally and physically handicapped—were also less likely to get vaccinated and, therefore, more likely to die. As the black shadow of Nazism spread across Europe and Russia, the party’s antivaccine policies became an even bigger genocidal weapon.

 According to Hitler’s Table Talk, a compilation of Der Fuhrer’s droning monologues, this was the Nazi leader’s ideas on vaccines and public health in the occupied countries: “Their conditions of life will inevitably improve under our jurisdiction, and we must take all the measures necessary to ensure that the non-German population does not increase at an excessive rate. In these circumstances, it would be sheer folly to place at their disposal a health service such as we know it in Germany; and so—no inoculations and other preventative measures for the Natives! We must even try to stifle any desire for such things by persuading them that vaccination and the like are really most dangerous!” (Emphasis added.)

Is this so different from the sentiments of the far-right extremists of the GOP or the anti-vax “reporting” of Fox News? They know the Covid vaccines aren’t dangerous. Most of them­—hell, probably all of them—are vaccinated. We know the talking head yo-yos at Fox News are vaccinated—it’s a company mandate. They also know Covid is dangerous; at this writing, at least seven anti-vax and anti-mask conservative activists have died from Covid and its complications.

So why all the antivaccination rhetoric?

Could the GOP extremists be taking a page out of the Nazis’ antivaccine playbook? They know Covid deaths are highest among those they don’t consider desirable voters—the poor, people of color, the elderly—people who don’t normally vote Republican. Have the Republicans become so power hungry they are willing to sacrifice their own voters—who are, in fact, dying in droves from Covid—in order to “cleanse” the nation of those they don’t want to cast votes by trying to, in Hitler’s own words, “to stifle any desire for such things by persuading them that vaccination and the like are really most dangerous!”?

Just asking.

Escape from the Graveyard of Empires

Watching the hurried evacuation of American citizens, troops, and Afghani allies from the Kabul airport in August might seem to be an embarrassing defeat for the U.S. and the Biden administration. However, considering that the “former guy” had nearly a year to begin the withdrawal and did little, America’s exit from Afghanistan is nearly as remarkable as WWII’s Miracle at Dunkirk.

It’s all the more remarkable considering the long saga of failed ventures to occupy Afghanistan by some of the most powerful empires in history, from the Persians to the Mongols. After initial successes, these empires ultimately met with failure if not outright defeat. Even Alexander the Great’s unmatched record of conquering countries met its end in this country that is often called The Graveyard of Empires.

What we today call Afghanistan was Alexander the Great’s last stop on his rampage to conquer much of the known world. After defeating the Persians in Afghanistan, Alexander tried to push on to what is now called Pakistan (then the northern portion of India). Alexander left a good portion of his army lying dead in the Kindu Kush mountains. While trying to tame Afghanistan, Alexander began a physical and mental deterioration that led to a rebellion among his forces, forcing him to pull back to Babylon. He died not long after.

Britain's First Retreat

Britain fought two wars in Afghanistan in the 1800s; both failed to gain control over the region. (A Third Anglo-Afghan War was fought in 1919, but most of the fighting took place in neighboring India.) The First Anglo-Afghan War led to one of Britain’s worst military defeats.

Remnants of an Army by Elizabeth Butler shows the only British solider to

survive Britain's 1842 retreat from Kabul.

After occupying Kabul for three years, British forces were forced to evacuate the city in 1842. More than 16,000 troops and camp followers marched out of Kabul and into the Khyber Pass, a mountainous route through the Kindu Kush that links Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like Alexander before them, the British littered the mountain range with the bodies of their people. Out of the 16,000 troops and camp followers, only one British officer made it out the other end of the pass.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 intending to prop up a pro-Russian government in Kabul. The ten-year Soviet-Afghan War was not only unpopular in the USSR (it was referred to as Russia’s Vietnam), it was also extremely costly in both blood and national treasure. When Soviet leadership was taken over by moderates like Mikhail Gorbachev, the decision was made pull their troops out.

The End of the USSR

The Soviet pull-out was not as disorderly as Britain’s 1842 withdrawal. The USSR allowed itself nearly a year to slowly evacuate Afghanistan, beginning the withdrawal in May 1988 and completing it in February 1989. While orderly, it wasn’t without problems. At one point, Soviet troops had to fight their way past a recalcitrant Afghan warlord and his fighters.

While the Soviet withdrawal was ultimately successful, the die was cast for the fate of the USSR. In December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

In nearly each case, the cause of the occupation’s failure lay in the fact that Afghanistan was never really a country to begin with. The region has always been a hodgepodge of tribal factions led by warlords who form and destroy alliances based on who they saw as common enemies. There was no sense of nationality or common interest. Even when the Taliban “ruled” Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, they still had to deal with dozens of individual warlords who refused to bend fully to their reign.

Trump's Failure

Donald Trump signed a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 after months of “negotiation” in which he handed them everything they asked for. There can be no doubt Trump’s military advisors, pointing to the Soviet example, told him the withdrawal would take as long as a year to accomplish properly. While troops began withdrawing in mid-2020, Trump never ordered the evacuation of nonessential personnel like the families of embassy staff, contractors, and Afghani allies, which should have been the first step.

In fact, Trump policies that made it harder to organize the evacuations. For instance, his immigration policies made it nearly impossible to issue Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) to Afghani who worked for the U.S. and NATO during our 20-year war there, leaving a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applications when President Joe Biden took over. In fact, Trump refused to even brief Biden and his transition team on the situation in Afghanistan, leaving the new president in the blind until he took office.

That Trump did little to accomplish the withdrawal from Afghanistan for nearly a year—despite the fact he said he want to be out of the country by May of this year—forced Biden into a quick and hasty withdrawal process. The massive C-17 air transports flying out of Kabul this August did not carry military personnel, they carried those people who should have left Afghanistan last year.

Considering how little had been done by Donald Trump after signing the withdrawal agreement, what we watched happening at the Kabul airport was nothing less than a miracle in military logistics and a sign that for the first time in four years, we have real leadership in the White House.

The American Putsch: The First GOP Coup the Republicans Tried to Whitewash

According to Republicans in Congress, the violent Jan. 6 attack on the national Capitol was little more than a friendly tour of congressional offices by patriotic Americans. On May 12, Rep. Andrew S. Clyde, a Republican from Georgia, downplayed the insurrection as a “normal tourist visit,” despite photographs taken during the attacks showing the retired Navy officer panicking as insurgents tried to bash their way into the House chamber.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson claimed it was a “false narrative” to say, “there were thousands of armed insurrectionists breaching the Capitol.” This despite the fact four people died because of the riot, including a Capitol police officer who was beaten and spayed with dangerous chemicals, and that dozens of Capitol and municipal police officers suffered severe injuries, including losing fingers and, in one case, an eye. Johnson’s remark also ignores the fact the rioters were armed with firearms, stun guns, bear spray, even a gallows with a hangman’s noose as they chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”

Some congressional Republicans are trying to deflect blame for the assault away from Donald Trump, who incited his extremist MAGA supporters to riot with his “big lie” rhetoric that the November 2020 election was stolen from him. To them, the Trump supporters were peacefully protesting while outside agitators from Black Lives Matters or Antifa were the actual attackers. (To set the record straight, the FBI said the rioters were all Trump supporters, some 400 of which are currently facing assorted federal misdemeanor and felony charges.)

Yet other Republicans are saying the country needs to move forward and leave the past behind. These, of course, are the same GOPers who continue to promote Trump’s big lie about the election.

GOP Opposes Investigation

On May 19, all but 35 of House Republicans voted against a bill establishing a bipartisan committee to investigate who was behind the insurrection. The bill passed, but still faces strong Republican opposition.

As unbelievable as this conduct appears to any truly patriotic American, it’s not unexpected. It isn’t the first time Republicans tried to whitewash an attempted coup by their cohorts. They did the same thing 88 years ago in the aftermath of the Republican-backed American Putsch.

Also referred to as the Banker’s Revolt and the Wall Street Plot, the aborted putsch took place shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. The plot involved raising a small army to storm the White House, arrest FDR, and establish a fascist dictatorship. And, despite the GOP's attempt to portray the plot as imaginative thinking, it was in fact a well-organized and well-financed attempt to overthrow the U.S. government that involved top members of the party.

Legendary American Hero

Retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley
revealed a 1933 fascist plot that the GOP
tried to whitewash.

Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler was a legendary American hero. A recipient of two Medal of Honors for combat actions in America's Banana Wars of the early 1900s, he was also lauded for siding with WWI veterans when they were attacked by the Hoover administration during the Great Depression-era Bonus March.

In 1933, Butler was approached by Gerald P. MacGuire, a Wall Street broker, and another man representing wealthy and conservative American bankers and industrialists. The men explained they had been sent to Europe to study fascism and how best to bring it to the United States. Their backers decided a coup was the best idea. They intended to raise an army of disgruntled WWI veterans to attack the White House, dispose FDR, and install a fascist government—and they wanted Butler to lead it.

Butler was no fool. Despite being a legend in the Marine Corps, “Old Gimlet Eye” as he was called was a progressive iconoclast with a reputation for butting heads with the big brass. Butler didn’t dismiss McGuire’s plot, but played along and gathered evidence for the FBI which eventually exposed the conspiracy.

Dismissed by Republicans

Butler’s evidence was immediately dismissed as a hoax by the Republicans and conservative newspapers. Nevertheless, Democrats initiated a congressional investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Hampered by recalcitrant Republicans, the HUAC investigation, at best, was proforma, with only Butler and MacGuire called as witnesses and the involvement of several prominent, politically powerful financiers and businessmen ignored.

Nevertheless, HUAC report concluded, "In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented, and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."

In other words, the planned coup was entirely the work of wealthy Americans with no help from fascist governments in Europe.

No one was ever charged in the coup attempt, largely because FDR suppressed the most damning evidence fearing it would cause a public uprising. The Republicans continued to whitewash the plot, dismissing it as a ruse even to this day. Transcripts of the HUAC testimony was finally made public in 1967. The BBC added more substance to the coup story, reporting in 2017 that one plotter was none other than Wall Street investor Prescott Bush, future U.S. senator, and father and grandfather of two American presidents. Bush was a well-known supporter of Hitler's rise to power and was prosecuted for continuing to do business with the Nazis even after Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941.

Unparalleled Parallels

The parallels between the American Putsch and the Jan. 6 Insurrection are obvious: Trump’s incitement of the riot to overthrow the election of President Joe Biden, and Prescott Bush’s and his cronies’ attempt to incite a rebellion to overthrow the election of FDR. Only the Trump Putsch was put into motion, and it was violent. Unlike the American Putsch, Congress doesn’t need to rely on the testimony of two individuals. There are hundreds of hours of video taken by the news media and security cameras. Dozens of police officers have described the viciousness of the attack. Most important, there is video of Trump and several congressional Republicans inciting the seditionists, and evidence some of those members of Congress may have taken part in its planning. In fact, some of the House Republicans who voted against the House investigation are expected to be called as witnesses. Of course, they want to limit their culpability by downplaying the seriousness and violence of the revolt.

All this raises a question too few are willing ask: Should a political party whose members were involved in two coup attempts to overthrow American democracy be allowed to continue?

 

More reading on the American Putsch:

 Gerald MacGuire and the Plot to Overthrow Franklin Roosevelt

The Wall Street Putsch: Did Fascist Bankers try to Overthrow Franklin Roosevelt?

  

Hong Kong, Voter Suppression, and Republican Hypocrisy

The Republican Party is taking a firm stance against China’s anti-democratic policies designed to thwart free elections and autonomy in Hong Kong. The Beijing government is foisting new election laws on the former British colony intended to end the “one country, two systems” policies that allowed Hong Kong to exist as a democratic enclave in an otherwise totalitarian state.

Last year, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Hong Kong’s pro-democracy, “demonstrations against the repressive grip of the Chinese communist party.” And he hailed the fact that “Hong Kong voters with American flags in hand dealt crushing defeats to Beijing’s preferred puppet candidates in elections last fall.”

McConnell continued his support for Hong Kong democracy this year by criticizing new Chinese laws restricting voters’ rights in the enclave. “The Chinese Communist Party is trying yet again to tighten their grip,” he said. “New laws supposedly related to national security aim to stifle dissent and curtail Hong Kongers’ civil liberties.”

Sen. Ted “Cancun” Cruz, R-Texas, also supported Hong Kong’s civil rights movement, saying last

January, “I’ll continue to support and stand alongside those of you speaking out against tyranny and fighting for freedom.”

China’s authoritarian government and its attempts to destroy democracy in Hong Kong deserve the strongest condemnation. Yet the GOP’s response to the Chinese restrictions would be more admirable if it weren’t so hypocritical.

At the same time McConnell criticized China’s new laws curtailing the civil liberties of Hong Kong’s citizens, the Republican Party was launching a multitude of state-level voter suppression laws to prevent American citizens of color from casting votes in future elections. And, as in Hong Kong, the reason for passing these anti-democracy laws was that the GOP suffered crushing election defeats in November 2020.

In February, the Brenner Center for Justice reported that “33 states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 restrictive bills this year.” In the first two months of 2021, Republican state legislatures introduce four times the number of voter suppression bills than introduce in the whole of 2020. The Center described this anti-democracy legislation as “a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities.”

Salon reported that number to be much higher, claiming the “tidal wave of (Republican) voter suppression” included 253 bills in 43 states.

These bills aim to limit mail-in voting, which became popular in 2020 during the COVID crisis; impose stricter voter ID requirements, which makes voting difficult for the elderly and minority voters who don’t drive; slash voter registration opportunities, also aimed at the elderly and people of color; and enable more aggressive voter roll purges, all aimed at removing people of color from the voting rolls.

Georgia—where a massive voter turnout helped give Joe Biden the presidency and sent two Democrats to the U.S. Senate—is one of the states scrambling to make it harder for its citizens to vote. On March 26, the state's governor, Brian Kemp, signed into law a bill that bans automatic voter registration, limits Sunday early voting days and ballot drop boxes, and restricts absentee voting. It also prohibits volunteers from passing out free food and drinks to people forced to stand in lines for hours because of the state's failure to provide adequate polling places in minority neighborhoods.

Georgia’s Republican legislators introduced the bills in response to Donald Trump’s baseless claim of widespread voter fraud in the state.

The Georgia restrictions are so heinous and so obviously aimed at Black voters they are being compared to the Jim Crow laws which existed in the U.S. from the end of the Civil War until 1968. “We know their targets are Black voters,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter. "These (legislation) notes are dripping in the blood of Jim Crow.”

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that marginalized African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education, or marry outside their race. Violating Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death.

Lest there be any doubt as to the oppressive nature of the Jim Crow laws, they were so admired by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler he used them as a model for the German racial purity laws that restricted the rights of Jews, Blacks, Slavs, and Roma.

The Republican Party did not suffered setbacks in November 2020 because of voter fraud. Repeated investigations by federal and state agencies declared the election one of the cleanest in U.S. history. Fifty lawsuits filed by Trump supporters alleging voting fraud were found without merit by state and federal courts. The Republicans lost because their presidential candidate was widely unpopular because of his hateful rhetoric, unprecedented corruption, and dictatorial ambitions.

Both the Chinese government and the Grand Old Party need to realize governments only suppress the vote because their policies are unpopular. If you want to win over voters and win elections, don’t restrict people’s right to vote, change your policies.