I am extremely anxious, but I have hope and I keep remembering we have been here before. We’ve had Eugene Talmadge here in Georgia. He was a fascist and racist. We had Father Coughlin. We had Gerald L.K. Smith. We had Charles Lindbergh. We had Joseph McCarthy. We’ve had . . . Our generation, going back to Kennedy, has not had this form of existential crisis that we have endured these past few years and face right now. Yes, the path has led to this. We look to McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, and others for the foundations, but this year, as we did in 2020, face an existential moment where we, as individuals and a collective, must answer this question, “What future do we want for our nation? A future that includes everyone, or a future that rules with an iron, fascist fist?”

I have said it countless times over the last few years that we’re seeing fascism and that this election is really about what we want for our country and the future of this nation for our children. Over the years, I have heard countless individuals say, “If I was alive in Nazi Germany or Europe during World War II I would have resisted. I would have fought.” Well, history tells us that these narratives of resistance were not as wide-spread as we’d like to believe and that most people fell in line. They “obeyed” in advance, when the Nazis telegraphed their plans, to protect themselves. Timothy Snyder’s first lesson on how fascism arises in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, is that individuals must not obey in advance. He writes, “Most of the power authoritarianism is freely given. In Times like these, individuals thing ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

We’ve seen this before, in countless moments! We saw it in Nazi Germany when individuals fell in line. Some fell in line because the Nazis promised economic stability and a path out of the depression. Wealthy individuals and politicians fell in line because they saw the threats that the Nazis posed to their wealth and power if the Nazis got into office. Or, they thought they could control Hitler and the Nazis if they ever ascended to power. We see how that worked out for everyone! Timothy Ryback details how Hitler and the Nazis achieved this, specifically looking at the summer of 1932 to Hitler’s placement as the German Chancellor in January 1933, which solidified Nazi rule in his book Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.

The Nazis sought to do everything, “legally,” through the “legal” apparatus in Germany, and they did that. Hitler said as much, and they achieved power through legal means. Yet, when they got into power, they destroyed individuals’ rights, suppressed the press, imprisoned political enemies or those they viewed as enemies, and committed mass genocide. As well, we need to recall this did not occur overnight. The Nazis came to power in 1933. The Nuremberg Laws were 1935. The annexation of Austria was 1938. The invasion of Poland was 1939. The Wannsee Conference where the Nazis solidified the Final Solution was 1942. The path was long, and the Nazis telegraphed everything.

Even as they telegraphed everything, individuals fell in line. I keep thinking about Magda Szabó’s Katalin Street here. The novel, which takes place between 1932 and 1969 in Hungary, contains a section in 1944 when the Nazis invaded Hungary and deported and murdered over 400,000 Jews. In the novel, the Held family is Jewish. Henriette Held’s parents get deported to Auschwitz, and a neighbor, the Major, works to protect Henriette. However, one night, a Nazi solider catches her and shoots her in the garden behind her house. Mr. Ekeles, another neighbor, doesn’t choose to help and protect Henriette. He believes in the laws and feels it his responsibility to obey them, even though they go against his “Christian” faith and he rejects “the beliefs and attitides of the fascists.” He chooses, though, not to act, and when Henriette gets murdered, he cannot forgive himself because it was too late to do anything because she was already dead.

In a week when we have former Chief of Staff John Kelly and countless other individuals who served with Donald Trump telling us he is fascist, I keep thinking about Nazi Germany. I’ve done deep dives over the past few years into Nazi Germany, trying to understand how individuals could succumb to such evil, how they could become participants in such evil, how they could see separate their conscience from their actions. Lillian Smith talks about this in relation to the Jim Crow South and the ways that individuals created logic-tight compartments that separated their consciences from their actions, allowing them to enact violence against African Americans and others.

People may say, “I never would have joined the Nazis and participated in genocide.” Yet, we see the same individuals believing the rhetoric that individuals who disagree with them are “vermin” and that there are “enemies within” that need to be eradicated and eliminated. They believe that undocumented immigrants should be vilified and deported, even though doing so would harm the economy. The Brookings Institute points out, discussing construction workers, “Occupations common among unauthorized workers, such as construction laborers and cooks, are essential to keep businesses operating. Deporting workers in these jobs affects U.S.-born workers too. For example, when construction companies have a sudden reduction in available laborers, they must reduce the number of construction site managers they hire. Similarly, local restaurants need cooks to stay open and hire for other positions like waiters, which are more likely to be filled by U.S.-born workers.”

I don’t not know how to break through the noise. I do not know how to educate and elucidate the danger we are facing in a way that differs from the warnings of countless others. I only know that I am not just anxious about this election. I am anxious about where we are at this moment. I am anxious because Hitler and the Nazis never, ever, got a majority of the vote. I am anxious because I do not, truly, view Trump as anything more than a narcissist who just seeks power and will do anything he can to achieve it and lean on anyone he can to support him in his quest. The people he leans on, though, are the ones that scare me. Their policies are harmful. Their policies are dangerous. Their policies will lead, and have lead already, to death.

I don’t know how to break through the noise. I do not know how to educate and elucidate the danger we are facing in a way that differs from the warnings of countless others. I only know that I am anxious and afraid for our future, the future of my kids, the future of any grandkids I may have, the future of my friends, the future of my students, the future of individuals I don’t know. As I get older, my thoughts have shifted from thinking about my own security. I am concerned about those around me, no matter what political or ideological leanings they may have. I am concerned about their rights being taken away. I am concerned about the fact that my daughter and wife are targeted with policies and rhetoric. I am concerned about the fact that friends of mine and students are attacked with policies and rhetoric. I hear the fear in their voices when they talk to me. I know they’re afraid. I know they’re anxious.

I don’t not know how to break through the noise. I just know that I have to try, on some level, to break through, to be the Cassandra or John warning of the dangers that lie ahead. I feel like I have been doing that over the past few years, in my own way, but I also feel it has been fruitless. I pray that is not the case. I pray that I have pierced holes in the veil, shining light into the darkness. That is my hope. That is what keeps me going, even amidst all of this. I just know, that for me, I refuse to obey in advance.