Are We the Baddies?

I emigrated to Austria a long time ago. I did a lot of research to try to understand my adopted country.

Austria never faced their Nazi past as the Germans did, even though Hitler was an Austrian! There is still a huge amount of denial about Austrians’ Nazi complicity. I also feel that the Austrian extreme tendency to play down one’s wealth — a tendency that is slowly fading — had at least somewhat to do with the questionable provenance of many people’s wealth.

It is some years ago now that someone researched and cataloged the amount of wealth stolen from the Austrian Jewish population after the Nazi takeover. The wealth stolen was far greater than anyone had imagined. Many here know about top-line examples like The Bristol Hotel, for example, but at the other end of the spectrum people would turn on their neighbors to get that neighbor’s flat (for example). Unsurprisingly, the Austrian government did not want to delve into the report or try to right the wrongs committed, and the report faded to obscurity.

Only about 25% of Austrians were actual Nazis, but enough others went along for various personal, political and professional reasons. As with racism in the US, if you can keep another group (or groups) down, you as a mediocre achiever will do better.

Those statistics are sobering. It really doesn’t take a huge percentage of the country actively being fascists for the country to be fascist. I would argue the US in 2020 is very similar to Germany in the 1930s. Militarized police? Check. Suspension of Habeus Corpus if you are deemed a “terrorist” by some shady government agency? Check. Locking up of “undesirables”? Check. Slave labor? Check. Corrupt politics? Check. A melding of large corporations with government actitivities? Check. Wars of aggression based on lies? Check.

This didn’t start with Trump. Fortunately Trump is too stupid and lazy to be a successful dictator. In my opinion it will only take a couple more “lesser of two evil” presidential cycles before we get someone just as evil as the little corporal with the toothbrush mustache who is not an incompetent moron like Trump. We’ll look back at the orange idiot thinking these were the good ol’ days. A Biden victory will not make things better.