Gracias, amigo!
It's a voice of alert!!!
Azril

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On Wed, Dec 2, 2020, 03:17 Luis Alberto Padilla Menendez <
luisalberto.luispa@...> wrote:

> 1918 Germany Has a Warning for America
>
> Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign recalls one of the most
> disastrous political lies of the 20th century.
> [image: Jochen Bittner]
>
> By Jochen Bittner
>
> Contributing Opinion Writer
>
>    - Nov. 30, 2020 The New York Times
>
> Credit...Getty Images
>
> HAMBURG, Germany — It may well be that Germans have a special inclination
> to panic at specters from the past, and I admit that this alarmism annoys
> me at times. Yet watching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since
> Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful
> episodes from Germany’s history.
>
> One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful
> conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that they had
> lost. Their denial gave birth to arguably the most potent and disastrous
> political lie of the 20th century — the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back
> myth
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/opinion/trump-biden-conspiracy-theory.html>
> .
>
> Its core claim was that Imperial Germany never lost World War I. Defeat,
> its proponents said, was declared but not warranted. It was a conspiracy, a
> con, a capitulation — a grave betrayal that forever stained the nation.
> That the claim was palpably false didn’t matter. Among a sizable number of
> Germans, it stirred resentment, humiliation and anger. And the one figure
> who knew best how to exploit their frustration was Adolf Hitler.
>
> Don’t get me wrong: This is not about comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, which
> would be absurd. But the Dolchstosslegende provides a warning. It’s
> tempting to dismiss Mr. Trump’s irrational claim that the election was
> “rigged” as a laughable last convulsion of his reign or a cynical bid to
> heighten the market value for the TV personality he might once again intend
> to become, especially as he appears to be giving up on his effort to
> overturn the election result.
>
>
> But that would be a grave error. Instead, the campaign should be seen as
> what it is: an attempt to elevate “They stole it” to the level of legend,
> perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale
> America has never seen.
>
> In 1918, Germany was staring at defeat. The entry of the United States
> into the war the year before, and a sequence of successful counterattacks
> by British and French forces, left German forces demoralized. Navy sailors
> went on strike. They had no appetite to be butchered in the hopeless yet
> supposedly holy mission of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the loyal aristocrats who
> made up the Supreme Army Command.
>
> A starving population joined the strikes and demands for a republic grew.
> On Nov. 9, 1918, Wilhelm abdicated, and two days later the army leaders
> signed the armistice. It was too much to bear for many: Military officers,
> monarchists and right-wingers spread the myth that if it had not been for
> political sabotage by Social Democrats and Jews back home, the army would
> never have had to give in.
>
> The deceit found willing supporters. “Im Felde unbesiegt” — “undefeated on
> the battlefield” — was the slogan with which returning soldiers were
> greeted. Newspapers and postcards depicted German soldiers being stabbed
> in the back
> <https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/weimarer-republik/innenpolitik/dolchstosslegende.html> by
> either evil figures carrying the red flag of socialism or grossly
> caricatured Jews
> <https://www.dw.com/de/juden-im-ersten-weltkrieg/a-17808361>.
>
> *By the time of the Treaty of Versailles the following year, the myth was
> already well established.* The harsh conditions imposed by the Allies,
> including painful reparation payments, burnished the sense of betrayal. It
> was especially incomprehensible that Germany, in just a couple of years,
> had gone from one of the world’s most respected nations to its biggest
> loser.
> Editors’ Picks
> Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/travel/ghosts-of-segregation.html?action=click&algo=als_engaged1_desk_filter&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=460452370&impression_id=8e95b7e0-3440-11eb-8184-b75938e67f1e&index=0&pgtype=Article&region=ccolumn&req_id=805854166&surface=home-featured&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article&region=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
> That Mysterious Monolith in the Utah Desert? It’s Gone, Officials Say
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/monolith-utah-disappeared.html?action=click&algo=als_engaged1_desk_filter&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=98259303&impression_id=8e95b7e1-3440-11eb-8184-b75938e67f1e&index=1&pgtype=Article&region=ccolumn&req_id=805854166&surface=home-featured&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article&region=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
> The College Athletes Who Are Allowed to Make Big Bucks: Cheerleaders
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/sports/the-college-athletes-who-are-allowed-to-make-big-bucks-cheerleaders.html?action=click&algo=als_engaged1_desk_filter&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=353642943&impression_id=8e95b7e2-3440-11eb-8184-b75938e67f1e&index=2&pgtype=Article&region=ccolumn&req_id=805854166&surface=home-featured&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article&region=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
>
> The startling aspect about the Dolchstosslegende is this: It did not grow
> weaker after 1918 but stronger. In the face of humiliation and unable or
> unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous
> self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness
> could never be lost. And those without a sense of national duty and
> righteousness — the left and even the elected government of the new
> republic — could never be legitimate custodians of the country.
>
> In this way, the myth was not just the sharp wedge that drove the Weimar
> Republic apart. It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and
> instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s
> success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had
> put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride —
> above democracy.
>
> The Germans were so worn down by the lost war, unemployment and
> international humiliation that they fell prey to the promises of a “Führer”
> who cracked down hard on anyone perceived as “traitors,” leftists and Jews
> above all. The stab-in-the-back myth was central to it all. When Hitler
> became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer
> Beobachter wrote that “irrepressible pride goes through the millions” who
> fought so long to “undo the shame of 9 November 1918.”
>
> Germany’s first democracy fell. Without a basic consensus built on a
> shared reality, society split into groups of ardent, uncompromising
> partisans. And in an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, the notion that
> dissenters were threats to the nation steadily took hold.
>
> Alarmingly, that seems to be exactly what is happening in the United
> States today. According to the Pew Research Center, 89 percent
> <https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-is-exceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/> of
> Trump supporters believe that a Joe Biden presidency would do “lasting harm
> to the U.S.,” while 90 percent of Biden supporters think the reverse. And
> while the question of which news media to trust has long split America, now
> even the largely unmoderated Twitter is regarded as partisan. Since the
> election, millions of Trump supporters have installed the alternative
> social media app Parler
> <https://thehill.com/policy/technology/525795-parlers-post-election-popularity-sparks-misinformation-concerns>.
> Filter bubbles are turning into filter networks.
>
> In such a landscape of social fragmentation, Mr. Trump’s baseless
> accusations about electoral fraud could do serious harm. A staggering 88
> percent of Trump voters
> <https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/11/19/trump-voters-biden-poll> believe
> that the election result is illegitimate, according to a YouGov poll. A
> myth of betrayal and injustice is well underway.
>
> It took another war and decades of reappraisal for the Dolchstosslegende
> to be exposed as a disastrous, fatal fallacy. If it has any worth today, it
> is in the lessons it can teach other nations. First among them: Beware
> the beginnings.
>
> Jochen Bittner (@JochenBittner <https://twitter.com/jochenbittner?lang=en>)
> is a co-head of the debate section for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a
> contributing opinion writer.
>
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