A friend turned me onto this prescient article from the August, 1941 edition of Harper's Magazine: "Who Goes Nazi?" by Dorothy Thompson. Some people just seem to have a crystal ball and can see what's coming more clearly than the rest of us — Dorothy Thompson obviously had that gift.
Two things of interest about Thompson.
- In 1934, she was the first journalist to be expelled from Germany by Hitler, making her somewhat of a celeb and cause célèbre in her time.
- She was married to Sinclair Lewis who, in 1935, published the novel It Can't Happen Here, which laid out a terrifying, plausible path for America to be taken over by a domestic fascist movement. We're not the only ones to live in uncertain times.
In this essay, Thompson lays out the types of men who "go Nazi" — men who may or may not be true believers but join up anyway, out of expedience or ambition or fear.
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one's acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.
This was written 83 years ago but it's amazing how much she could be talking about today's Republican party: you've got the Trump type, the JD Vance type, the Lindsay Graham type, the Stephen Miller type, the Steve Bannon type. They're all here.
I'll give you just one example. You can read the rest on your own. The man she calls Mr. D is clearly a Trump type:
D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.
Certain aspects of the essay are obviously dated but it really brings home the question we're likely to be asking ourselves in less than a year: as we slide into autocracy, who of our friends, our family, our co-workers, our neighbors will join the fascists… and who will refuse?
This handy-dandy guide might just give you some guidance before it happens.
Previously:
• Elon Musk has turned Twitter into X: the Internet's Nazi bar
