In September, 1930, Chancellor Brüning was forced to call premature elections. The Nazis moved from the ninth-smallest party to the second largest, winning 18.3% of the vote.
" Two years after Barack Obama's stunning first Presidential victory, the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party was able to reduce his health care initiative to a bare minimum of what has long existed in other countries, and the Republicans re-bounded in the mid-term elections.
In 1932, Chancellor Brüning's austerity pro-gram having brought little economic improvement from the harsh conditions of the Depression, Hitler was able to run for the presidency against the aging Paul von Hindenburg, with the support of Germany's most powerful industrialists.
" Whoever runs in the 2016 American election will, like Obama, take orders from the military/industrial/ financial complex that grew out of the Second World War.
President Hindenburg won the election but Hitler came in second, and as parliament continued to be hamstrung, the German business class urged that he be appointed to head a government "inde-pendent from political parties'. President Hinden-burg finally agreed, hoping to contain the Nazis within a conservative cabinet, and Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
" American fascists do not run for the highest office, however, i n France in 2004, after fifty years of symbolic runs for the presidency, far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen came in second to the conservative Jacques Chirac, booting the socialist that had been tipped to win out of the race. Then in 2012, Le Pen's daughter Marine obtained 23 percent in the presidential poll, sending shock waves through the French political scene, and bringing to power a weak socialist who has turned out to be one of France's worst presidents. And following the Greece's economic debacle, the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party garnered seven percent of the vote, entering the Parliament.
When the fractured German opposition again failed to cobble together a majority against his party, Hitler was able to persuade Hindenburg to dissolve parliament for a second time. Next, he barred its left wing delegates and pushed through the Enabling Act that gave his cabinet legislative powers for four years, transforming his government into a legal dictatorship.
" Wikileaks files from the early 1970s reveal Henry Kissinger saying: "The illegal we do right away. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." The Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision of 2010 allows individual states to find ingenious ways to prevent Democratic victories: eliminating last-minute registration, requiring photo IDs, redrawing voting districts, and even eliminating some, forcing residents to travel elsewhere to vote.
Although more subtle machinations have been going on for decades, American workers still do not quite believe the country's rich are flouting the constitution in order to keep them in their place. In Germany, Hitler benefitted from an exceptionally dire situation, but the foundation for America's takeover was laid out in our founding documents. As I noted in my March 4 blog www.otherjones.com/carry the constitution, in contrast to constitutions inspired by the French revolution that enshrine equality, the American Declaration of Independence promises the "pursuit of happiness'. After a two-hundred year run, this motto has led to a no holds barred pursuit of "stuff', a stunning loss of community, the rape of the planet and growing worldwide resentment.
We'll probably never know the truth about that resentment's first major manifestation on 9/11, however it probably has a Nazi precedent:
After the second dissolution of the Weimar parliament, German elections were scheduled for early March, 1933. On February 27th, the Reich-stag was set on fire, a Dutch communist was found in the building, and the fire was attributed to a communist plot. Hitler's government responded by issuing the Reichstag Fire Decree that suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus.
" Bush would do the same after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. Although the Military Commissions Act fails to specify who designates persons as "enemy combatants', depriving them of habeus corpus, Congress rubber stamped it, and President Obama continues its heinous policies. In creating enemies to disguise our rape of the planet, we have become an under-developed but increasingly organized salami republic that whittles its democracy away slice by slice.
During Hitler's methodical pursuit of abso-lute power, leaders of the German Communist Party and others were arrested, forced to flee, or murdered.
" President Obama uses drones to assassinate suspected enemies, including American citizens abroad. As almost two hundred prisoners in their 11th year of captivity at Guantanamo without charges went on hunger strike, Julian Assange marked a year in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London and Chelsea Manning was convicted of revealing America's war crimes to the world. In an ironic twist, Edward Snowden was granted political asylum in Russia, while computer hackers working to disseminate his leaks have left the United States for safer lives in Germany - a former enemy upon whom the US still spies.
In July, 1934, Hitler used allegations of a Stormtroopers' plot to purge that military organi-zation's leadership and other "enemies' during the "Night of the Long Knives'. When Hindenburg died the following month, the cabinet made Hitler both Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor), violating both the Constitution and the Enabling Act. According to the Constitution. the president of the High Court of Justice should have become acting president until new elections could be held. As for the Enabling Act, it barred Hitler from taking any action that tampered with the presidency. But no one dared object.
In August, almost eighty-five percent of Germans approved the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship, eliminating nearly all institutional restraints on Hitler's power - and the last legal means by which he could be removed. In little more than a decade Germany went from a parliamentary democracy in which citizens were represented by elected representatives, to a dictatorship whose propaganda machine engi-neered the answers to simplistic referenda questions.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
5
3
3
