During the last six to eight months, I have watched, as many of you have, the various rallies and speeches of the presumptive Republican candidate for president of the United States.
I have watched silently, as many of you may have, while hecklers and protesters were beaten and expelled from these public events.
Recently I became alarmed — perhaps you also? — by the language this candidate uses to describe the national press attending his public news conferences, and his verbal attack on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who is presiding over a case in which this individual is a key defendant.
This candidate seems not to understand that without a free press and a free judiciary our democracy collapses.
Are we becoming — dare I say this? — like Germany in the 1930s? Is history repeating itself?
I recently finished Adam Hochschild’s excellent account, Spain in Our Hearts (reviewed in the Valley News on April 3), of that country’s civil war — and the international silence and indifference that accompanied the rise of fascism.
Today, I believe, Hochschild’s book also serves as a “distant mirror” by which we gain insight and illumination of our own current electoral “civil war.”
One theme of Hochschild’s book is that the civil war in Spain was clearly a practice field and a precursor for the coming world war in Europe. Indeed, its battlefields became a testing ground for Hitler’s (and, to an extent, Mussolini’s) newest tanks, rifles, airplanes, aerial dive-bombing tactics and elite infantry.
Moreover, those who remained silent or stood aside in that war, Hochschild argues, may have inadvertently assisted in the rise of fascism and the coming of World War II in Europe. Silence and avoidance, then as now, had consequences.
There are several examples. Hochschild describes two events that we should bear in mind today.
The first is a rally in Paris in September 1936 at the Velodrome to raise funds for the struggling Revolutionaries fighting the Nationalists (fascists) in Spain. It is important to remember that France, Great Britain and the U.S. sent no military materiel (other than volunteers) to support the fight in Spain against the rising Axis powers. They — we — stood aside.
One speaker in Paris that day was Dolores Ibarruri Gomez (“called La Pasionaria”), who warned her audience that if they ignored the rise of fascism in Spain at that time, they would face it later.
“Beware!” she told them. “Today it is we, but tomorrow your turn will come!”
She was right.
Just six years later, on July 16 and 17, 1942, that same Velodrome where Dolores Ibarruri Gomez sounded her alarm, became one of the four internment camps in Paris. Together, they held 13,152 Jews, including more than 4,000 children, awaiting their eastward journey by rail cattle cars to Auschwitz.
The second event that Hochschild describes occurred in England, where “millions were jobless.” In London, for example, only a few city blocks separated the slums of Chelsea from the nearby mansions of Sloane Square, where “the very rich,” Hochschild writes, “lived a life of great elegance with large houses, staffs of servants and magnificent cars.”
In this stark political and economic atmosphere, considerable numbers of the British upper class, including members of the royal family, either remained silent or openly embraced fascism, and especially Adolf Hitler.
Hochschild writes that “the demagogic” Sir Oswald Mosley was among them.
His profile resonates today. Sir Oswald was born into the British aristocracy, opposed free trade, hated certain minorities, married twice and had several mistresses, was accused of hiding his wealth, and crossed the aisle from Labour to join with Conservative politicians to form the New Party.
Sir Oswald began holding political rallies that soon became popular with large audiences. In reaction to disruptions during these rallies, he also organized “an increasingly aggressive British Union of Fascists, its militants dressed in black tunics, black trousers, and wide black leather belts with brass knuckles.”
Sir Oswald’s BUF followers rather enjoyed the frequent confrontations. “Whenever Mosley was heckled at one of his rallies,” Hochschild continues, “he stopped speaking and searchlights focused on the heckler as jackbooted men beat him and threw him out of the hall.”
If you ever wondered what an elected fascist presence might look like here in the United States in 2016, should this candidate win the coming election, Hochschild offers this account about Sir Oswald Mosley and his supporters:
“With trumpet fanfares and flags showing a bolt of lightning, ranks of Mosley’s followers marched through Jewish neighborhoods of London, shouting insults, giving the Fascist salute, and violently attacking anyone in their way. The group boasted 50,000 members.”
Feel free to substitute “Hispanic,” “Mexican,” “Muslim” or “Immigrant” for the word “Jewish.”
Jack Shepherd is the author of 10 books, a former international journalist, and a semi-retired professor now teaching in Dartmouth College’s MALS program.