What Happens When Politicians Promote Violence?
We will discuss this question knowing how the violent fascist leaders during World War II caused so much suffering and death and try to apply these lessons to our current day.
We will draw from our videos/blogs on what it was like to live as a Christian Under Mussolini’s Italy, and under the brutal Nazi regime in Germany.
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/mussolinis-fascist-regime-and-the-catholic-church/
YouTube: https://youtu.be/LvNynEdZFuM
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/christians-under-hitlers-german-nazi-regime/
YouTube: https://youtu.be/QP9UR8fqfvs
The Fascist movements in Italy and Germany came to power with assistance by large gangs of fascist thugs who bullied, beat up, and sometimes murdered their opponents. These fascist thugs were drawn from the millions of veterans of the bloody fighting in the tranches of World War I. After assuming dictatorial powers Mussolini promised the Pope that he would reign in his thugs, but this was a promise he never fully kept, in part because these fascist gangs were hard to control, in part because he wanted to remind the Pope who was really in charge, who alone could rein in the gangs.
LESSON: THE CHURCH SHOULD BE WARY OF A LEADER WHO DOES NOT SUPPORT THE RULE OF LAW
Mussolini grabbed power and stayed in power with his disorganized rabbles of tens of thousands of armed fascist street gangs. Hundreds were killed in the street battles between his Fascist thugs and the Communists, and his thugs also killed many Catholic priests in their rioting. Mussolini bullied his way into Parliament, forming a majority with the conservatives against a loose coalition of the socialist, communist, and Catholic parties.
Mussolini had his thugs march on Rome and planned armed insurrections across the country, but King Emmanuel, the constitutional monarch, balked and refused to approve plans to put down the Fascist thugs by military force.
Mussolini surprised everyone, especially the Pope, when he publicly proclaimed that his Fascist Party was the party of traditional Catholic morality, that under fascism he would make the Catholic Church great again. The Pope sold out the Catholic Party and embraced the new friend of the church who had so much blood on his hands already. Why not back the likely winner in this political struggle?
Why did the Pope betray the Catholic Popular Party to swing his support to Mussolini? Like all popes of his era, Pope Pius XI distrusted democracy, equating it with socialism, atheism, and communism. Conservative Catholics remembered how the democratic French Revolutionaries targeted clergy long ago.
Trump proclaimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would still love him. A famous Fifth Avenue moment actually happened in Mussolini’s Italy. Mussolini faced the first serious challenge to his rule soon after he was chosen to be Prime Minister of Italy. A very brave socialist delegate named Giacomo Matteotti strode to the podium on the third day of Parliament while being threatened by the Fascist thugs also elected to Parliament. There he bravely announced that the recent election, marred by violence, should be annulled.
Mussolini was furious. He turned to Cesare Rossi, his press secretary and head of a secret squad of thugs, and muttered, “That man shouldn’t be allowed to remain in circulation.”
There was no direct order, but we know how mafia gangs work, the boss complains, and everyone knows what to do. The next day three thugs, one with brass knuckles, abducted Matteotti in broad daylight in downtown Rome, drove with the horn constantly blaring, drowning out the screams of Matteotti while they brutally beat him to death. After his wife calls the police, they find the corpse in a shallow grave.
Italy was not yet a totalitarian police state. Many witnesses stepped forward to tell their story of this brazen murder. Everyone knew the trail led directly to Mussolini. Conservative newspapers turned against him, demanding justice. Many tore up their Fascist party cards. Fascists were afraid to march in public. Mussolini hesitated.
Not Pope Pius XI. The Pope did not hesitate, he went all in defending Mussolini. He directed the Vatican newspaper to write an editorial urging all good Catholics to obey civil authorities, refuse to cooperate with Socialists, and abstain from violent protest or any sort of protest. Mussolini was praised for all he had done for the Church, implying that he did not have anything to do with this murder. Mussolini was so grateful he enrolled his children in religious lessons, they would soon celebrate their confirmation and first communion.
Seven months after the murder of Matteotti, Mussolini spoke to Parliament. “I declare here, in front of the Assembly and all the Italian people, that I alone assume full political, moral, and historical responsibility for everything that has happened.”
“We are all with you,” shouted the Fascist deputies.
“If Fascism has been a criminal organization, I am the head of this criminal association!”
“We are all with you!” The applause kept building.
Mussolini shouted, “You believed Fascism was finished, but you will see, Italy wants peace, want tranquility, wants calm. We will give Italy her tranquility, this calm through love if possible, and with force, if necessary.”
Were these seen at the time as the rants of a good Catholic? Now that Mussolini knew he could get away with murder, he would turn Italy into a dictatorship subject only to a compliant king. Fascist thugs threw the opposition leaders in jail and closed down their newspapers. New laws were passed banning opposition parties, only fascists unions were allowed, strikes were banned. Mayors would be appointed by the central government, the press was censored, and capital punishment was reinstated. For good measure, he tricked his wife into being baptized to please the Pope.
This was written/updated soon after the first round of the January 6th House Committee hearings investigating the Capitol Riots. We learned that Trump himself specifically sent his informal Proud Boy insurrectionist militia to march on the Capitol, knowing they were armed, some with lethal weapons, to interrupt the electoral account, attempting a coup that would keep Trump in office. This was written when it was becoming increasingly obvious Trump would be indicted for insurrection, treason and many other crimes.
Why were Mussolini and Hitler successful, while Trump was unsuccessful in their armed coups? One key difference is Mussolini and Hitler had millions of soldiers with bloody World War I battle experience. Although many of the coup leaders storming the Capitol did have military experience, we just do not have as many young men today who have been hardened by years of brutal warfare.
You can compare the big lie of Trump that the election was rigged to the lie that Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Pn7wYntimjo
LESSON: HITLER’S FIFTH AVENUE SHOOTINGS WERE FAR MORE SINISTER
Like Trump, Mussolini may have thought that he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue, and he did get away with the brutal murder of a political opponent on the streets of Rome in broad daylight.
Hitler was bolder, he knew that he could shoot hundreds of people of Fifth Avenue, and nobody would dare offer up a peep of protest. Hitler showed his boldness and savage butchery in the Night of the Long Knives
What led up to the Night of the Long Knives? Papen and Hindenburg became concerned at the brutality and overreach of the Nazi government, and the army command was concerned by Hitler’s huge SA brownshirt gangs that were causing terror in the streets of Germany. With Hindenburg’s encouragement, Papen delivered a speech that called for the restoration of some freedoms and advocated the end of SA terror in the streets.
Hitler was furious. The publication of the Marburg address was suppressed. Papen then met with Hitler and threatened to resign unless the publication ban was lifted, threatening action by Hindenburg. Papen was the Pence of the Third Reich. Hitler outwitted Papen, telling him that the ban on publication would be lifted at once and the SA brownshirts would be suppressed, if Papen would not resign and they would meet with Hindenburg.
Two weeks later Hitler kept his promise. Now that Hitler was in power the troublesome the thuggish SA brownshirt mobs needed to be reined in, the ambitious head of the SA, the homosexual Ernst Rohm was a loose cannon and a threat to his power. During the Night of the Long Knives Hitler directed the SS troops to purge the SA leadership. In addition to Rohm, between a hundred and a thousand of Hitler’s enemies died during the purge, including several Nazis whose politics were suspect, several Catholic politicians, and some of Papen’s associates.
The brutality of the Nazi regime was again celebrated on Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, where the SS storm-troopers smashed the windows of Jewish stores, homes, hospitals, and synagogues, they were burned, looted, and demolished by sledgehammers. Prayer books, Torah scrolls, artworks, and philosophy texts were burned. Many ordinary Germans gleefully joined in the mob violence. Many Jews were murdered, and many more committed suicide. Some Jews were able to emigrate, most lost all their possessions, over 20,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps.
But Trump did not actually kill people like Hitler did, you say. But his administration was cruel to minorities and brown immigrants, his officials purposely tore immigrant babies from their mother’s arms without even bothering to take down names so the children could later be returned to them after they were deported. We still have hundreds of immigrant children torn from their mother’s arms where we cannot find the mother or the parents.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/
Such cruelty can easily turn to violence, there were tens of thousands of lynchings of blacks, and race riots against blacks, in the Jim Crow segregation years in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where blacks were denied access to justice and police protection, and indeed, often the police participated in the lynchings, and if the blacks called the police, often the victims were arrested.
FASCIST GASLIGHTING: TURNING TRUTH INTO LIES, TURNING LIES INTO TRUTH
During his Presidency, Trump uttered more than 30,000 lies, presided over 300,000 Covid-19 deaths, many of these deaths could have been avoided had he simply worn a mask, and had encouraged this followers to wear masks. But no, macho man did not want to be seen wearing a stupid mask.
Trump’s lies about how the pandemic would soon be over and how it was not that serious increased the death toll tremendously.
The Nazis were the inventors of the Big Lie, the lie so big nobody should be fooled that it is true, but if you constantly hear the Big Lie over and over and over again many people will be fooled into believing. Like the Big Lie that Trump actually won the 2020 election, that there was massive fraud, though there absolutely no evidence, that an election where Trump did not win was obviously corrupt. How about that extortion call to the leader of Ukraine? The call that was perfect, it was a perfect call. Always lie the big lie with a straight face, a straight gas-lighting face.
The lies of Hitler were spread with his screed, Mein Kampf, which spread many big lies, like the lie that the Jew is a parasite, that the Jew is a sponger, taking advantage of everyone, that the Jews are not really religious, that the Jewish religion is all about money grubbing, that the Jews seek to ruin girls and women, that the Jews are responsible for all the misfortunes that have befallen the German nation. And Hitler repeated over and over the old lie that the politicians stabbed the German nation in the back, snatching away victory in the First World War. The Jews were even blamed for the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, where Nazi goons destroyed so many Jewish synagogues, homes, and businesses.
Hitler’s many lies against Christians included: they did not support the Fatherland, they were not sufficiently patriotic, their priests and monks were guilty of sexual abuse and embezzlement. As soon as the ink of the Reich Concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed the Nazis accused the Catholics of trumped-up violations of the treaty.
You cannot claim that these sorts of lies do not happen in America, we have already seen multiple attacks on Jewish synagogues, and I have Catholic friends who actually believe that Democrats in Congress and Hollywood elites have a secret child abuse ring where they abuse and murder children!
How bizarre is that!
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FROM OUR ORIGINAL BLOG
We decided to record a series of YouTube videos on WWII Lessons on the various subtopics of this original blog.
In this blog I also said:
Always remember how Trump equates the second amendment gun rights with Christian values. Remember how Trump encourages the domestic terrorist Q-Anon and Boogaloo right wingnuts, and never discourages them from bullying bystanders with their AK-47’s. Remember how Trump tweeted, Liberate Michigan! Liberate Minnesota! Liberate Virginia! Will Trump tweet and encourage and egg on his second amendment right-wingnut vigilantes in the week of the election?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/17/coronavirus-trump-demands-states-liberate-amid-protests.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/
NOTE: See the blogs for the larger source videos referenced on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for the footnotes.
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