Never Again
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
When I was a kid, my parents read aloud a whole lot of books. And, especially when Dad picked them out, they tended to be centered on WWII stories and history. Some of the books were historical fiction: from The Silver Sword and The Devil’s Arithmetic to Piet Prins’ Scout and Shadow series. Others, such as Surviving Hitler and The Hiding Place told true stories of people who lived through the war.
Every branch on my family tree can be traced back to the Netherlands. And so when we read tales of Dutch partisans and resistance fighters, of those who aided refugees, our Dutch heritage was a point of pride. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that there were also vast numbers of Dutch Nazi collaborators, and that the number of Dutch who joined the Waffen-SS was more than double the number of Dutch armed resistance fighters.
It’s hard to grasp the idea that the people of an invaded country could be so willing to aid and fight for the country which invaded them. But the Waffen-SS had volunteers from a wide range of different European countries. It wasn’t only German citizens who were willing to overlook, embrace, or downplay Nazi ideology–those outside Germany were not immune from the shiny allure of Nazi propaganda, and economic woes or political concerns about Bolshevism provided additional excuses and reasons for them to join.
In my childhood, it was easy to view the Nazis as monsters. But in adulthood, it is even more terrifying to realize that those monsters were people–that they were human beings who laughed and loved, who had hobbies and histories, who had families and loved ones and churches and friends–and yet they still did those monstrous things.
2025 isn’t over yet, but it feels like it has lasted for years already. In many ways, it feels like we are living in some fictional dystopian storyline, where each day brings news more bizarre and exhausting than the last.
Just days ago in Chicago, an entire apartment complex was raided by American federal agents. With helicopters hovering in the night sky above, peoples’ doors were kicked in by armed men and entire families were then dragged out. Young children, some in various stages of undress, were separated from their parents, restrained with zip-ties, and made to stand outside in the cold for hours. Some people were hauled away in rental trucks.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
-4th Amendment
But these detentions, often made with no respect for people’s rights, have been happening for months now. People taken off the streets, presumed guilty, stripped of due process. “Alligator Alcatraz”, with its horrifying and inhumane conditions, has a huge number of detainees who are now missing from the records systems and whose current location is now unknown.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
-14th Amendment, Section 1
For months, our diplomatic relationships with countries we have long considered to be our allies has been strained without cause. From threatening Canada and Greenland with a hostile takeover to increasing trade barriers via tariff to yelling at Zelenskyy in the White House, we have slighted our allies and embarrassed ourselves on an international stage.
Political opponents have been fired or prosecuted–or even fired for not finding the dirt necessarily to prosecute other political opponents. The closing speech of a memorial service was punctuated with disturbing proclamations of hatred toward political rivals.
Free speech is at risk on many fronts. The government is now actively opposing and seeking to cancel late-night TV hosts who are overly critical of the government. College students who utilized their right to protest have faced jail time and deportation. Flag burning, despite being constitutionally protected, has been announced to be illegal. Meanwhile, AI data collection and profiling by the government is reaching new depths of invasiveness and concerning overreach.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
-1st Amendment
Secretary Hegseth is openly promoting the teachings of Doug Wilson, who doesn’t think that slavery is a big deal, thinks that the death penalty is a valid punishment for homosexuality, and who thinks that women shouldn’t have an independent vote.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
-19th Amendment
American history is being carefully edited and curated to minimize depictions of slavery, to remove stories of contributions of women and people of color, to erase “DEI” contributions.
There are highly credible allegations that influential people in our government, including Trump, are on the Epstein list–and yet Mike Johnson, a man who calls himself a Christian and took his own daughter to a purity ball, appears to be actively trying to prevent the release of these files.
Our own military is being weaponized against American cities and citizens, despite court orders and the protests of State and City governments. And at this same time, we’ve renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War–an announcement coupled with the statement that “We’re going to go on offence, not just on defence. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
Where does this end?
Comparing movements or people or ideas to Hitler and Nazism is far from a new phenomenon. At this point, it’s something of a meme, and has its own fallacy–Reductio ad Hitlerum–associated with it. As Godwin’s Law states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Even in casual spoken vernacular, “Nazi” has become something of a suffix for things not remotely related to the Nazi ideology, from Grammar-Nazi to Stitch-Nazi to (in some circles) Femi-Nazi.
Like the boy who cried “wolf,” these too-frequently used comparisons have dulled the impact of such accusations. Comparing an ideology to Nazism, regardless of the accuracy of the comparison, now feels almost trite and tired–an overused and clichéd shock-value comparison which no longer actually has any real shock or value.
But if we are going to say, “never again,” if we are to learn from history, if we are to avoid a repetition of the past, then we must be able to recognize and call out the warning signs early on, before we are at a point of no return. We can’t simply wait until we have 1945-style hindsight to sound the alarm.
But we also cannot assume that the next evil fascist dictator will arrive in Look Who’s Back fashion, or that they will show up decked in swastikas, bearing a distinctive mustache, and calling for a fourth Reich. Nor is it logical to think that they will have an identical ideology to Hitler’s own, or even admire Hitler–times have changed, trends have shifted, and issues have evolved.
Beyond that, there is the fact that nailing down the exact beliefs of Nazis or defining exactly what constitutes Fascism often results in disputed and often nebulous explanations of what it is that made up their actual ideology. Rather than this being a failure of historical scholars, it seems that this was rather a feature of the original ideology to begin with:
“Nazi ideology was almost totally a product of mass culture and political semi-illiteracy which proliferated since the late nineteenth century; it did not represent the epitome of contemporary knowledge and cognition, but unsophisticated sloganeering which drew on the ‘scrapheap of ideas current in this period’ (J. Fest). What made Nazi ideology compelling was not its penetrating intellectualism or the cohesion of its system of ideas. Rather it was the gripping effectiveness with which popularised snippets of ideas and dogmas of salvation of a certain kind were combined with a political-emotional attachment. What was decisive was not whether these ideas were suited to transmit insights or even comprehensive utopias based on rational argument, but could be used for the deliberate simplification of political world-views and for the creation of a political myth for the masses.”
-Martin Broszat, in Hitler and the collapse of Weimar Germany
The overuse of a word is far being an internet-era issue: back in 1944, George Orwell complained that “as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”
But this overuse did not, of course, negate the impact of Nazism or the fascist regime in Germany. Nor does it excuse the silence of those who failed to speak up when hatred infested their lives.
Thankfully, we are not yet at the levels of atrocities that were committed during WWII and the holocaust. But when we note the echoes in history, the hauntingly familiar repeating strains of all-too similar concepts and tactics and actions and rhetoric, we must not ignore them.
To be clear, I don’t think this means every person who allows or supports harmful ideologies has whole-heartedly embraced that ideology themselves. I myself once held beliefs and ideas that I now view as terrible and awful and dangerous and hateful. At the time, I genuinely didn’t realize the implications or ramifications of what I believed. Removing myself from the echo chambers I was in, learning more facts, and slowly becoming aware of perspectives outside of my own lived experience has been the antidote to the propaganda I once embraced.
I live in a red state. I grew up in Conservative circles. I was homeschooled. So many of the people I have been surrounded by my entire life are human beings who laugh and love, who have hobbies and histories, who have families and loved ones and churches and friends. And so many of them have or are embracing ideas and movements that I view as terrible and awful and dangerous. And I have to believe that at least some of them are truly ignorant of the implications of their worldview and of their political choices.
At the same time, though, I have a hard time grasping how it is that these politicians and ideas have gained so much ground amongst the “Moral Majority” I grew up hearing about. I don’t know how the same people who condemned Clinton’s infidelity from the rooftops came to view Trump’s predatory behavior as being a non-issue. I don’t know how people who grew up in normal homes, where women could vote and have jobs and go to college, who viewed my upbringing as extreme and bizarre, can hear the things that Hegseth and Doug Wilson are saying and not be alarmed.
I don’t know what the solution is. As a child, the idea of standing up and opposing a Hitler-like figure seemed straightforward and obvious. But today, as our country repeats the narrative and choices of 1930’s Germany, I don’t know exactly what to do.
I know that we must support free speech. We must stand up for those who are different from us and support their rights, rather than letting them be dehumanized. We must demand that due process is followed. That the Constitution is followed. And when people’s rights are ignored, when their humanity is disregarded, we must be able to call that out as an egregious harm.
Will that be enough? Are we past the point of no return, or are the last few years nothing more than a moment of terminal lucidity fueled by perceived persecution, rants about Hannibal Lector, and beef tallow?
I don’t know.
I think that history will look back at this time in America as the time that we decided whether we wanted to be fascist, or not. And right now, it looks like the “or not” crowd is too busy renaming congressional bills to actually make a substantive resistance. And as we bystanders desperately hope that the other party will do something, we serve as perfect representatives of the bystander effect.
But perhaps if enough of us choose not, and we actually speak up, and change minds, and act in the way that we think the partisans should have, then this great American experiment will continue for another generation. And Trump, and hatred, and political persecution will not result in a dystopian nightmare that is remembered the same way that Hitler’s regime is. That the political purges happening do not culminate in a repeated Night of the Long Knives, that Charlie Kirk does not become the modern Horst Wessel, that ICE members are prevented from becoming the modern iteration of the brownshirts, that our American Republic does not go the way of the Weimar Republic.
But I think for that to happen, we can’t stay silent.
And when they come for others–though I am not other–we must not go quietly into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Well said, Hannah.