Bill Mauldin’s Pulitzer Prize winning cartoon from 1958 gives us an idea of what happened in the Soviet Union during the brutal purges of Joseph Stalin. Tyrants ruled throughout history and most were eventually defeated, some peacefully others with a cost of millions of lives.
Tyranny and oppression happens when dissent is quashed and facts are suppressed; it also happens when we forget history. Today, we are seeing truth and empirical evidence replaced with so-called “alternative facts” coming from the Trump administration. They are attacking our science based and fact gathering agencies and delegitimizing our nation’s experts in a frightening manner. They are replacing them with their own unfit and antagonistic hacks. In words from George Orwell’s, 1984:
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.
Is it any wonder we see George Orwell’s “1984” is now, once again, on the New York Times Best Seller list? At the present time, Amazon is sold out of all copies of 1984- not surprising at all.
From Bloomberg: Trump's Systematic Attack on US Institutions :
“I alone can fix it,” Trump said in his ominous speech accepting the Republican nomination for president. He has told us repeatedly that he has no respect or deference for democratic institutions, civil discourse or basic honesty. He has signaled consistently that an attack on democracy is coming.
Well, it’s here.
Previous history shows that tyranny can happen swiftly. During the Nazi years, author William Shirer, who worked for the New York Times in their Berlin bureau, wrote an epic book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that details how the Nazi’s and Hitler came to power. On January 30, 1933 Hitler took office and within a month, the Reichstag was burned, which triggered the chaos. Hitler quickly blamed the Communists and the following day, February 28, 1933, a decree was ordered suspending individual and civil rights. William Shirer states:
“Thus with one stroke Hitler was able not only to legally gag his opponents and arrest them at his will but, by making the trumped-up Communist threat “official,” …”Truckloads of storm troopers roared through the streets all over Germany, breaking into homes, rounding up victims and carting them off to S.A. barracks where they were tortured and beaten. The Communist press and political meetings were suppressed; the Social Democrat newspapers and many liberal journals, were suspended and the meetings of the democratic party either banned or broken up. Only the Nazis and their Nationalistic Allies were permitted to campaign unmolested.”
Another Hitlerian decree came in March 1933: namely, the Enabling Act, which made the Nazis unstoppable and gave them full power without the consent of the Reichstag. Journalists, scientists, university professors and students, trade unionists, the clergy, the courts, were all quieted by the brutal terror from the Nazis. Without these voices in unity and opposition to the Nazis, it was impossible for others to speak against this tyranny.
”Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty”- Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago
Today, we are witnessing many parallels between brutal dictators and the Trump administration. Let’s not forget our history (and, according to Mother Jones, President Trump used to keep a book of Hitler’s speeches near his bedside). .
I’m asking that all of us in our Democratic Party remember this. Stand United. Forget the divides over single-issues and petty differences. We need to stand together with all groups and our media, who are targeted by Trump. Let’s march, fight, and write letters to save science, public education, Planned Parenthood, the immigrants, Muslims, LGTB, women, the disabled and especially fight for our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Sandy Lusk
TNDP, State Executive Committee Woman, District 11
P.S. In 1981, I saw this cartoon on the door of my Russian History Professor’s office at Texas A& M University. Since our November election, I wake up with worry and am reminded of it. I’ve searched for it to no avail and finally sent a message to our Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Mr. Clay Bennet, and he located it promptly for me. I cannot give adequate thanks to him for finding this timeless cartoon.
