LM#41--Is America 2023 becoming Germany 1923?

Is America in 2023 becoming Germany of 1923? Boy, when you look around as we close this year out, it looks quite creepy and eerie in America in 2023. Let's talk about it on this Liberty Minute.

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Liberty Minute as we close the final chapter here in 2023,. America is looking quite creepy and, I'm sorry to say, eerily similar to Germany of 1923 that we read about often, from students getting harassed for their support of the Jewish nation to a high school mob trying to swarm and harm a teacher. And why? Because the teachers support of the Jewish nation. We have the White House spokesperson for our national government dismissing this type of hatred and has clear racist discrimination towards the Jewish race. That comes from the microphone at the White House. Now, at America's most prestigious universities, we have three university presidents defending to the US Congress their hatred and anti-Semitism. That was seen in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. Same same stuff. So all these events, when we put them together in America, has us on the trajectory that is quite horrific. So what did happen in Germany in the 1920s and 30s? Well, there came about a dramatic rise of a venomous strain of anti-Semitism in Europe and most especially in Germany, and it reached its ugly head in Germany in the 1920s. And it was not squashed by the majority of the German people. They said nothing. They simply look the other way. They couldn't be bothered. And when a majority of any people, no matter if it's Germany in 1923 or America in 2023 or Rwanda or Ukraine, you insert when a majority of any people look away against any discrimination, especially overt racism, and they don't say anything, then you have one of the clearest and darkest chapters of world history play out and the devils are free to create havoc in that world. And that is the heinous attempt to eradicate a complete race of people off the face of the planet. The Jewish people and what we now know as the Holocaust. Pause to think about that. When a majority of any people look away and don't say anything, then you allow one of the darkest chapters of world history to play out and you have one of the most heinous attempts by anybody to eradicate a complete race of people off the face of the planet. To people of goodwill. I appeal to you to think about that question. What does it say to us as human beings that we allow others to say you have a right to eliminate a race of human beings off the face of the planet. You have no right. You have zero right, zero right to do that. No race is above another race. We learned all of this with the elimination of slavery in the 19th century and it took us another hundred years to learn that. And most especially, we learned this from the slaughter of 6 million Jews by a Nazi government that was left unchecked because of the majority of the German people in the 1920s and 30s simply didn't say anything. And now we have history starting to repeat itself, and that is a horrific omen. Now, to help explain how Germany got into this mess and how we can learn from history so we don't go down this horrific path again, let us read from a great book that was just released Germany 1923 by Volker Ulrich. Now, volker is an award-winning historian and this book explores the captivating 12 months of the fall of the Weimar Republic, the first German democracy, and I love panoramic narrative histories and this book provides just that. So you hear from letters in newspaper articles written at the time that provide a real-time assessment of what was happening. And the great Austrian writer, stefan Zewig said of this year 1923, it was a year of lunacy. Now, the year 1923 to Germany brought hyperinflation. It was on the back side of World War I, but it was suffering under extreme reparations from the Treaty of Versailles. But that year brought hyperinflation. There was many riots and a lack of order on the German streets. There were separatist movements that would constantly undermine Germany's regional and national government. And then, in 1923, it ended with one of the most famous of all time failed coups, which was the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, hitler's failed attempt, which landed him in prison, in which he then went on to write that rambling work of his titled Mein Kampf my struggle. Of the reviews about the book comes a great endorsement from another good author we need to cover from this microphone, but we haven't yet Norman Oler, who wrote a fascinating book titled Blitzed Drugs in the Third Reich. Now Oler says of this book Germany 1923, it's an exemplary, sober book about an intoxicating time. Volker Ulrich brings order to the historical chaos of the year. That fascinates as well as frightens, and it is closer to us than we might like it to be. It is formidable, end quote. And that's the reason why I picked up this book, because of Norman's recommendation. This period might be closer to us in America in 2023 is the German people were to themselves in 1923, frighteningly close, as we've discussed the overt racism we are seeing since October 7th in the Hamas attack on Israel. But before we go there, let's go. Let's hear from Volker on the anti-Semitism that was springing up and stirring up in 1923. Going to the book Despite many provocations, the Bavarian regional government was remarkably tolerant of Nazi agitation. End quote fascism, which in Munich goes under the name of the National Socialist Workers Party, is blossoming and growing and flourishing under the protection of its authorities. Criticized the Wauldhum. It's a newspaper. The Bavarian leadership feared losing popular support if it decisively went after Hitler, which was becoming increasingly well regarded in conservative circles. The result was that his supporters could more or less occupy public spaces and Munich whenever they wanted. In active with greater impunity, their activities were more and more directed not just against the political left but against Jews. Jewish people were berated on public streets and also physically attacked, while Jewish business people were threatened. The young SA Brown shirts occasionally visited violence even on Munich's residents who sympathized with the Hitler movement. In 1923, one of them forced a bookstore owner on the Breinerstrasse to remove a book he found objectionable from a shop window. The proprietary the proprietor, sent an outraged letter to Hitler complaining about the quote dictatorship of punks. As a man of venerable Germanic family heritage who had volunteered to fight in the first world war at the age of 42, he claimed the right to inform the party leader. The letter was a statement to Hitler that the behavior of a segment of his young supporters was quote reversing the sympathies felt for you. After one Hitler rally in Zerkoskrona in late April 1923, an older woman who had been taking notes during the party leader's speech was surrounded by several young security guards, taken into a separate room and searched Her companion. A practicing doctor expressed her outraged over the incident and let her address to quote my very honorable Mr Hitler. She wrote quote what we encountered there is naked terror worse than what went on in Eisner's days. If the spirit comes from your spirit, then you are not destined to bring Germany ultimate salvation, but rather a fatal blow. A fatal blow indeed, continuing on amid the general climate of anti-Semitic agitation, of violence, more than a few Munich residents felt called to develop ideas and initiatives of their own to fulfill what they assumed was the furor's will. For example, salesman approached Hitler in 1923 with a suggestion of quote inconspicuously but practically taking action against Jewry by getting the patriotic populace to neither buy from nor sell to Jewish firms it was impossible to distinguish reliably between Jewish and racially German companies the Hitler Amir proposed publishing quote an Aryan address book. Moreover, people in the Bavarian capital capital, regularly informed on their fellow city residents, and an honest person claiming to be quote a true supporter of the nationalist socialist, national socialist demanded that a campaign be launched against a pair of brothers named gold Schmidt and a leather shop owner named Rosen's Vig for agitating against the most unheard of of manner, against Hitler's causes. Because quote because I cannot be sure the message will end up directly in your hands, I'm omitting my name and social station. At the bottom wrote the would be denouncer to Hitler. But you can rest assured that I have provided the above information to the best of my knowledge and with a clear conscience, with the intention of keeping people from undermining your great work for the fatherland, even in the smallest way. And quote so there's just a quick example of what the world was like in Bavaria, in Munich, in Germany, in 1923. How, the agitation from the Nazis and against Jewish people, business owners, frankly, against any of the German people who began to spoke out. And a couple years ago I wanted to share with you a wonderful piece. I forgot about it but it came back across my research as I was writing this, doing the research for this Liberty Minute, and it's by a Jewish person that we all have come to love here in this from this microphone Dennis Prager, who is a very good talk show host, good author. We have to cover more of his books here, most popular for starting Prager University, which gives combats the major media narrative on our whole host of issues. If you don't know Prager University, go to Prager University. It's an online university. It's best known for its five minute videos that cover a whole host of topics and help us to get closer to the truth. So Dennis Prager, back in 2021, wrote a very good piece and I'm going to read a good majority of it because I think it fits perfectly with our theme today of is America 2023 becoming closer to Germany of 1923. This article is titled. Now I Better Understand the Good German Quote. As my listeners and readers can hopefully attest, I've been a lifelong. I've been on a lifelong quest to understand human nature and human behavior, and I'm sad to report that I have learned more in the last few years, particularly in 2020, than any equivalent period of time. Just keep in mind we went through the COVID lockdowns in 2020. He goes on. One of the biggest revelations concerns a question that has always plagued me how does one explain the good German the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime? The same question could be asked about the average Frenchman during the Vichy area, or the average Russian under Lenin or Joseph Stalin or Brezhnev and their successors and the millions of others who did nothing to help their fellow citizens under oppressive dictatorships around the world. These past few years have taught me not to be so quick to judge the quiet German or Russian and all the rest. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews, but the Germans who did nothing not so fast. My thinking has been changed by watching what is happening in America and in Canada and Australia, and everywhere else for that matter. Here's the crucial key point the ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrationally, unconstitutionally and unprecedented police state type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering. The same holds true for the acceptance by most Americans of the rampant censorship on Twitter at the time and all other major social media platforms. Even physicians and other scientists are deprived of the freedom of speech if, for example, they offer scientific support for hydrochloroquine along with zinc to treat COVID-19 in the early stages. Board-certified physician Vladimir Zelenko, who had saved hundreds of COVID-19 patients from suffering and or death, has been banned from Twitter for publicizing his life-saving hydrochloroquine and zinc protocol. Let's stop here real quick for some context. Obviously, elon Musk had not owned Twitter and it had not changed to X yet, but we covered the plague upon our nation from this microphone. We covered a whole host of how bad doctors Fauci and Berks were, how Trump did not push back against the COVID lockdowns, even though he had the power to do so. So we're certainly in line with Dr Err, with Mr Prager's views here. Going back to the article, half of America, the non-left half, is afraid to speak their minds at virtually every university, movie studio and large corporation, afraid at virtually every place of work. Professors who say anything that offends the left fear being ostracized if they have tenure and being fired if they do not. People are socially ostracized, publicly shamed and or fired from differing with Black Lives Matter, blm as the American hating, white hating, a group that has ever existed, and few Americans speak up. And, on the contrary, when the BLM protesters demand their dinners outside of restaurants, raise their fists to show support of the BLM nearly every diner does. Now Some more context here. You can search on YouTube and find any of the BLM writers and protesters confronting diners outside of restaurants and demanding this Germany 1923. Perhaps going back to the article. So then, who are we to condemn? The average German who faces the Gestapo if he didn't salute Hitler? Or the average Russian who faces the NKVD, the secret police and intelligence agency that preceded the KGB, if he did, if he did not demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for Joseph Stalin? Americans face the left's cancel culture, but not the left wing secret police or reeducation camps, at least not yet. I have little doubt that the left would send outspoken conservatives to reeducation camps if they could. I've come to understand the average German living under Nazism and the average Russian living under communism. For another reason the power of the media to brainwash. Amen, and here's where it really gets good, the brainwashing. Going back to the article, as a student of totalitarianism since my graduate studies at the Russian Institute, at Columbia University's School of International Affairs, as it was then known. I've always believed that the only in a dictatorship could a society be brainwashed. I was wrong. I now understand that mass brainwashing can take place in a nominally free society. The incessant left wing drumbeat of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and almost every other major newspaper, plus the Atlantic magazine, the New Yorker, cnn, abc, cbs, nbc, pbs, npr, all of Hollywood, in almost every school, from kindergarten through graduate school, has brainwashed at least half of America. Every bit is effectively, as the German, soviet and Chinese Communist press did and in the later case, still does, that thousands of schools would teach the lie that is the New York Times 1619 project is one of countless examples. Stop here. We talked about the 1619 project. We've even talked about and he doesn't mention it here Howard Zinn's, a People's History of the United States. That's absolute indoctrination and propaganda of the most radical of natures. Howard Zinn just frankly teaches hate and it's the most widely read high school textbook in the country and it has been so since the late 1990s. Going back to the article prior to lockdowns, I flew almost every week of the year, so I was approached by people who recognize me on a regular basis. Increasingly, I noticed that people will look around to see if anyone was within earshot and then tell me in a whisper quote I support Trump or I'm a conservative. The last time people looked around and whispered things to me like that was when I used to visit the Soviet Union. And here was the most telling series of paragraphs. As we end, this article from Dennis Prager titled I now better understand the good German In Quebec this pack. Going back to the article, in Quebec this past weekend, as one can see on a viral video, a family was fined and members arrested because six yes six people gathered to celebrate the new year. A neighbor had snitched on them and the celebrants were duly arrested. The Quebec government lauded the snitches and asked for more public quote collaboration. Snitches are likewise lauded and encouraged in some democratic run states and cities in America Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in March. Snitches get rewards, he was quoted to say, and by left wing governments. In Australia too, plenty of Americans, canadians and Australians are only too happy to snitch on people who refuse to lock down their lives. All this is taking place without concentration camps, without a Gestapo, without a KGB and without Malice reeducation camps. That's why I no longer judge the average German as easily as I used to. Apathy in the face of tyranny Turns out not to be a German or a Russian characteristic. I just never thought it could happen in America. End of the article. And it is happening in America. I thought it was important to share that with you because America 2023 is looking eerily similar to Germany of 1923. Now there was a significant event where Hitler should have been stopped early on and the real, the real truth of what happened should have been displayed for the whole public, and that was with the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Let's go back to the book to read what happened. Going back to Germany 1923, by Volker Ulrich. On February 26, hitler, ludendorff and the other conspirators in the November Putsch were put on trial Because Bavaria didn't recognize the state court for the protection of the Constitution and Leipzig. The case was tried at the Munich Regional Court that ensured that there would be no thorough investigations into the connections between the Pushest and the Triumphant of Carr Lasso and Sezner in the fall of 1923. Quote the defendant sit motionless at small tables, reported journalist Leo Lanai about the proceedings in the former War Academy building in the Bluton Burgastrasse Quote. Behind them are the witness, behind them are the witness benches, seats for the press and a couple of rows of observe observers. We are alone among ourselves. There are no barriers that could give the defendants the feeling of not being heard in full the courts. Brown panelling makes the space feel cozy and warm, or refreshing change from the coldly sober atmosphere of most German courts. A legal proceeding no More like a seminar about high treason. From the very start, hitler acted like the master of ceremonies. In his four hour opening statement for the defense, he took for responsibility for the attempted Putsch Quote. In the final analysis, I alone wanted this matter. At the same time, he rejected the main charge against him, claiming there could be no such thing as high treason against the traders to the country in 1918. The presiding judge, regional court director George Niat, made clear his sympathies for the defendants, allowing Hitler to use the proceedings to go on with tirades and, only rarely speaking, mild words of censure when Hitler heaped too much contempt on the Weimar Republic and its representatives. In this closing argument, hitler theatrically turned to address the five judges directly. Quote you will not be the ones to speak the final judgment. The final judgment will be spoken by that of the goddess of the day of judgment who will one day lift us from your and our graves as history? What a telling statement. That was Going back to the book. The trial was the talk of the town. In Munich, respected citizens followed the proceedings and extensive reports in the Mitchner newest Written newspaper, in which Hitler still attracted the greatest sympathy. At an evening in the literary musical salon of Maximilian and Elsa Burstein on the burnest Rossa in late February 1924. Headwig Priershman witnessed ladies from Munich society, including Elsa Berkman, the wife of publisher Hugo Berkman, displaying quote such an enthusiasm for Hitler and his racism that her heart began to race, only calm down by someone after some soothing words from her host. The verdicts were announced in. On April 1st, loondorf was acquitted, while Hitler and three co-conspirators, weber, krybel and Poehner, were given sentences of no less than five years I'll be it with a possibility of parole after only six months. Five further defendants, including Vrick and Rome, received suspended sentences of a year and three months. The court found that the defendants had been directed quote by a pure sense of listen, patriotism and the most noble selfless will. It then added that doesn't justify their action, but it does provide the key to understanding their deeds. The verdicts were more tantamount to a moral acquittal. Supporters of the Weimar democracy were appalled by the outcome of the trial in Munich. Judicial murder had been committed against the Republic, objected the correspondent for the Weithum, who compare the mild verdicts with a draconian severity meted out to former Saxon State Premier Eric Zegner. Quote we in Germany are now well and truly accustomed to differing standards of legal justice, while not at all blessed by any sort of justice between social classes. Stop here real quick. Do we have different series of, or different standards of legal justice here in the United States? Are the January 6th protesters given different justice than the president of the United States' son? Legitimate question? Go back to the book. Where is the justice in any of this? How can anyone still talk about law and legal judgment? As of yesterday, bavaria stopped being a state ruled by law and order. Meanwhile, the Vosha Jaitun objected quote the trial could have been a cleansing. The nest in the hiding places of subversion could have been uncovered, cleared and smoked out. The dirt and filth should have been swept up and burned in a mighty auto-defa. Instead, with the windows and doors closed, the dust was superficially wiped away, stirring it up without removing it. End quote, and here's our last paragraph. The outcome of the trial reinforced in Hitler his belief that he had been charged with a historic mission. With the friendly support of a Bavarian government, he had been able to perform his fiasco of a coup into a propaganda triumph. He and his fellow inmates spent a few quite comfortable months in Landsberg Prison, where he typed out the most of the manuscript for his screed mine conf. It's the book he wrote. If the law had been upheld and justice served, hitler would have disappeared behind bars for years. It would have been far harder for him to launch a second political career and, as things turned out, he was released from prison on December 20th 1924, immediately starting to rebuild the Nazi party. The biggest lesson he learned from his failed uprising of November 8th and 9th 1923, was that if he wanted to take power, he needed to follow a different path, not that of a push but of ostensible legality, in concert with conservative economic and military administrative elites. So you can see there was never any real leadership in the Weimar Republic in dealing with these radicals of radicals. It never got to the truth of what happened in 1923, and they allowed more devils to come out later years. And then it was like a snowball going downhill, picking up steam. Men like Hitler and his accomplices were evil evil men and to serve our country best and to look at the year we are just concluding, we have to ask legitimate, direct questions of our government because we have got no real truthful answers. One question is was the July January 6th so-called insurrection really conducted by federal agents to entrap Trump supporters? The January 6th Congressional Committee was a complete joke by Nancy Pelosi and Armenians and it mirrored similar Soviet-style committees we used to laugh at in this country in the 1970s and 80s because they were frauds of justice. The January 6th Congressional Committee was a complete fraud of justice. Julie Kelly in her book January 6th how Democrats Use the Capital Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right, makes a very compelling case that has not been refuted. Is this the true account of what happened? Troy Nals has written a similar book making the same case. Is that what really happened? The American people deserve to know the truth on these matters. After all, as we just read about in Germany 1923, we are now watching Ivy League presidents and others who express support for extreme radical views of anti-Semitism. That makes any reasonable, sane person think and ponder this notion. Are we watching play out another rise in America 20,. Are we watching playing out in front of our eyes Another rise in America 2023,? What happened in 1923 in Germany? Another valid question was Democrats in the United States as a party. Did they attempt to entrap January 6th protesters, just like another Munich beer hall push from 1923.? Another valid question is are current presidents absolute, extreme reluctance to enforce any immigration law at our southern border? Is this done purposefully? Is it done purposefully to create chaos, to create crime, to create instability all over the country so they can consolidate power and issue even more extreme executive measures similar to COVID lockdowns that we have already documented from this microphone and we have the science that is absolutely overwhelming that lockdowns did nothing to stop the spread of anything. How we learned anything as a country in the last three years on how the radical Democratic Party now conducts itself? Final point by allowing a Navy and extending student visas to our Ivy League universities from residents purely anti-American, terrorist, supporting and autocratic Middle Eastern regimes, will we have more domestic terrorist attacks in our homeland as a result of this? Does the current president, for not enforcing the laws on the books for immigration, to see bare responsibility for this 8 million undocumented illegal immigrants have come into the country in less than three years. That's an unbelievable, crazy amount of people. Now, let's be clear. Let's be clear so there's no confusion, because people will make these comparisons that are just absolutely ignorant of history. They will say the German political right in the 1920s is the same as the American political right in the 1920s. This president will make a claim about white supremacy. It's here, there and everywhere. There's absolutely no proof of any of that. The German political right in the 1920s is not the same as the American political right than in the 2020s. There's just no evidence. Any close analysis doesn't even justify hearing that, and this president will just claim white supremacy and go back and say it's the same. He'll just make wild scene hour claims. He doesn't know what centuries even in. So it's not even close in the United States. It's just a question of who has been the most radical, the most militant on how they viewed other human beings. Unequivocally, it's been a radical Democrats throughout all of American history, starting with slavery. You want to read which group and party advocated and further supported the real, the first real terrorist group in the United States. That was the Ku Klux Klan, as this president likes to say. That's the facts, jack. The KKK was America's first real terrorist group full stop, and that terrorism continued with Democrats supporting it in the Jim Crow South. It continued on with the Wilson administration, our first real racist president. Continued on with FDR, with Japanese internment. Continues on to our present day with Ivy League presidents that are radical Democrats and are completely racist when they're advocating what they're advocating in front of the US Congress. So what are we called to do in 2024? Well, we have to seek out the truth on these matters and get past popular media narratives and popular slogans and what the mass media continually tells us in their narratives. We have to seek out the good books that get to the heart and the truth of the matter, because Martin Luther King was absolutely right when he said judge a person by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. And in the end, the great men and women in our American past can lead us in this area. Unlike Germany in the 1920s, we in the United States have great people in our past that we can learn from men like Abraham Lincoln, women like Harriet Tubman, who helped lead and freed so many with her work on the Underground Railroad. And then the 20th century men like Martin Luther King, who implored all of us to see each other as made and created in the image of God and to look at character as the number one virtue in judging men and women. So in today's Liberty Minute, as we close this year of 2023, all of these questions we just asked will eventually be answered in time. Let's hope Americans an overwhelming majority, who love the truth, will stand up for the truth against these radical of radicals in the current Democratic Party. And let us pray as we in the United States don't revisit a Germany in the 1930s in our years to come. Let's hope Americans will speak up against anti-Semitism anywhere and everywhere it is voiced and, unlike Germans who didn't speak up in the 1920s, let's pray for real leadership to come to our country, to the White House, to our Congress, so we can move beyond these times of lunacy and restore the American dream for all people of goodwill and end the hate of the Democratic Party, put it on the dustbin of history, especially with its radical members nowadays who have foisted this revolution into our laps in 2023, which, unfortunately, is very similar to Germany in 1923. Let's pray for a good new year in 2024.

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