leo.notenboom.org https://leo.notenboom.org/ "Every day is an experiment" Sun, 24 Mar 2024 20:00:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://leo.notenboom.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-hal-eye-32x32.jpg leo.notenboom.org https://leo.notenboom.org/ 32 32 Fascism, the Past, and Our Future https://leo.notenboom.org/fascism-the-past-and-our-future/ https://leo.notenboom.org/fascism-the-past-and-our-future/#comments Sun, 24 Mar 2024 20:00:04 +0000 https://leo.notenboom.org/?p=3917 Is fascism on the rise again? Why?

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Please don’t let history repeat itself.

The Stone Man
“The stone man” (1953), National monument: Prisoner before the firing squad in Camp Amersfoort/The Netherlands. Click for larger image. (Image: leonotenboom.com)

My parents lived in The Netherlands during World War II. The country was occupied by the Germans for several years prior to the war’s end. My parents lived through that occupation, including the famine.

This was not just some “inconvenience”. My father told me stories of diving into ditches to avoid being captured and conscripted by a passing Nazi patrol. He and his brother did get captured once, but in a fit of “either way we’re probably dead” decision making, when they saw an opportunity to run, they did. They got lucky.

During a visit to The Netherlands, I visited Kamp Amersfoort, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamp_Amersfoort, a waypoint for prisoners, many of whom would eventually be transported to concentration and work camps further east. The memorial to those who died was sobering.

Even with these lessons of the past, even with the history we can see and experience ourselves, even with the stories told by the survivors, both living and dead, fascism seems to be on the rise once again.

There’s a very real possibility that we may see more dictators in places we never, ever, would have expected them.

I don’t get it.

White supremacy, genocide, so-called purity, marginalization due to everything from ancestry to skin color to sexual preference, to religion, to race and more — none of these make any sense to me. Their attempted suppression was the foundation for so much evil in the past, how can we possibly be turning in that direction once again?

I just don’t get it.

Of particular concern to me are those who desperately desire to impose their religious beliefs on others by capturing leadership and authoritarian positions in the government. Much like many countries have and enforce state religions, these folks would love nothing more to impose their rules the exact same way here in the U.S..

I just don’t get it.

Particularly since their belief system is supposed to represent a loving and all-embracing deity. It feels like hypocrisy of the highest order.

No system is perfect, but we seem to be headed in a particularly evil, destructive, and disastrous direction.

As someone who’s parents lived through the experience, it boggles my mind that there’s even a remote possibility of it returning.

We certainly don’t seem to learn from history. I truly hope it doesn’t repeat itself.

But sometimes it’s sure looking like it.

These are things I worry about.

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