A Direct Current Through the Body Politic

Gleichschaltung was the Nazi word for strategically establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society – the press, clubs, schools. In simple terms, Gleichschaltung was the “Nazification of state and society.” It was a coordinated campaign that pushed the whole society into line with Nazi ideology and policy. Everything became political – sports, the arts, libraries, entertainment, family. There was no ideology-free zone. Even during a religious event, perhaps something like this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., politics would be front and center.

The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. With regard to embracing sacrifice, in the U.S. today that might look like encouraging farmers, who have borne the brunt of President Trump’s trade war with China, to believe that his trade war will entail only short term sacrifice, with big benefits for farms and the Homeland in the long term.

Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained almost complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, magazines, books, public ceremonies, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. Today in the U.S. if one wanted to achieve something similar, strategies could include demonizing and repressing the free press, and calling for the elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which includes National Public Radio and PBS), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. But that could never happen here, right?

In their mission to create Gleichschaltung, the Nazi Party co-opted or destroyed any organization or club – from sports clubs to community choirs to agricultural associations - that might have influence. If such a strategy was enlisted in the U.S., for example, one might replace the heads of the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency with people hostile to the missions of their own departments. Or the president could insert himself into the National Football League by repeatedly tweeting threats such as, “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!"

On a local level, mayors and town council members did the bidding of the Nazi Party, with the threat of reprisals from Nazi stormtroopers if they did not oust Jews and opponents of the Nazis from jobs in public institutions. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung. In an example from our own time, someone like former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch would most certainly have been pushed out.

People who read my column sometimes email me to ask, in essence, “what should be done then?” One of my answers is to pay attention to the warnings of history. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder puts it much more eloquently in his book “On Tyranny.” He writes, “European democracies collapsed into right-wing authoritarianism and fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s...The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands...We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex...Americans today are not wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism...Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

*RGJ posted this opinion column on Feb. 6, 2020 but then deleted it soon afterward due to complaints. Fortunately, they put it back up on Feb. 11. The incident reminds me of something London-based author Umair Haque recently wrote. He asks, "What happens to a society that can’t say the unspeakable? The answer is both simple and obvious: the unspeakable does...A set of words that Americans can’t say, because America’s thinking class, leaders, politicians, and so forth, won’t, can’t say them, to begin with. You know the words. The words are ones like “fascism” and “authoritarianism” and “theocracy” and “concentration camps” and “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.”..There are four key political effects of failing to speak the unspeakable. Opposition becomes appeasement. The opposition fractures, because it’s not unified in fighting a thing that doesn’t exist. And because those terrible things have never happened, nobody can be held accountable for them at all. Finally, reality stops mattering in any way whatsoever, because what you see before your eyes doesn’t really exist. What happens culturally when a people won’t speak the unspeakable? The result is the development of one of the most crucial institutions of any social collapse: a silent majority. A silent majority is called that because it’s made of people who should, and mostly do, know better. But they lack the courage, wisdom, insight, and defiance to speak. They are cowed and intimidated. They are fearful and anxious...As a silent majority refuses to speak, as it holds its tongue, so norms begin to disintegrate, from democratic ones of peace, tolerance, equality, and fairness, into fascist-authoritarian ones of violence, intimidation, bullying, ethnic hierarchies, and purification. What was once severely abnormal and unacceptable becomes a grim everyday reality...Remember what we are really fighting for — and always have been. Freedom, truth, democracy, justice, equality. Progress and civilization. Decency and humanity. Then we are capable of unifying around those things..."