Something to read and ponder

[Lydia Leftcoast]

After so many online encounters with rabid right-wingers, I decided to reread William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and even though I'm less than 1/4 of the way through, I highly recommend it as food for thought.

Shirer, who lived in Berlin as a news correspondent during much of the time he describes, shows that after World War I, there were several Leftist groups vying for power, and some of them even succeeded in seizing control of various cities for a time, sort of like Occupy on steroids. Yet it was the Nazis who ended up running the country.

Germany's working class was demoralized by World War I and in dire straits economically, so the leftist parties had a lot of appeal. However, the Allies' harsh terms for an armistice gave rise to the feeling that the Socialists, who ended up in power almost by accident, had "sold out" the country and "stabbed it in the back." (Does anyone remember that phrase from the post-Vietnam era?)

So far, it seems that the Nazis were able to tap into not only ordinary people's desire for a better life but also their disbelief that Germany could have actually lost World War I without being "stabbed in the back" and their latent anti-Semitism. Furthermore, the industrialists and the military tended to back the Nazis, with the wealthy sending them money and the military and police looking the other way when their goon squads busted up opponents.

As the saying goes, "History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes."

I think it's worth thinking about why people vote against their best interests and what those on the Left can do to overcome those tendencies without resorting to counter-productive snark.