First, they came for Dawn Johnson… and I did nothing. Will that be you? Dennis Prager did a piece this week which seems applicable to our local situation. So let me thank him for his article it is titled “Now I Better Understand the ‘Good German’.
It is a publication of his syndicated column. At the risk of not doing the piece justice many of its key points are included here.
In his article Prager asks the question: How does one explain the “good German”? This is the term describing the average, presumably decent German in WWII. They did nothing to hurt Jews. But they also did nothing to help them. Their inaction did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime?
He goes on to observe one can ask the same question of many others. There was the average Frenchman during the Vichy era. The same can be asked of the average Russian under Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and their successors. Throughout history there have been millions of others who did nothing to help their fellow citizens under oppressive dictatorships.
What has changed Prager’s thinking? He has been watching what is happening in America, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. It is happening in the Lakes Region today. Prager is correct when he notes:
“The ease with which so many Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been sobering.”
Accepting censorship
The same holds true for the acceptance by most Americans. Why are we accepting rampant censorship on Twitter and all other major social media platforms? Think about the physicians and other scientists are deprived of freedom of speech.
Many have offered scientific support for hydroxychloroquine plus zinc to treat early stage virus. There was Board-certified physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko. He has saved hundreds of COVID-19 patients from suffering and/or death. Twitter did ban him for publicizing his lifesaving hydroxychloroquine and zinc protocol.
Half of America, the non-left is afraid to speak their minds. This is true at virtually every university, movie studio and large corporation. It is true in virtually every place of work. Professors who say anything offending the left, true or not know they face trouble. They fear ostracism if they have tenure and firing if they do not.
People are socially ostracized, publicly shamed and fired for differing with Black Lives Matter. BLM is as America-hating and white-hating a group as has ever existed. Yet few Americans speak up. The opposite is true. When BLM protestors demand diners outside of restaurants raise their fists they do. They show their support of BLM, nearly everyone does. Do you live your values and principles?
Americans, people of the Lakes Region, face the left’s cancel culture. We are not yet facing Leftist secret police or reeducation camps. There seems little doubt the left would send conservatives to reeducation camps if they could. First they came for Dawn Johnson… and I did nothing.
Brainwashing
Prager says he has come to better understand the average German living under Nazism. They aren’t so different from the average Russian living under communism. This is true for another reason: the power of the media to brainwash. It is not only in a dictatorship that brainwashing a society is possible. Mass brainwashing can take place in a nominally free society. Wake up America…
There is an incessant leftist drumbeat. It is coming from The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and almost every other major newspaper. It comes from magazines; The Atlantic, The New Yorker, etc. It comes from TV and Radio: CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR. All of Hollywood contributes. Almost every school from kindergarten through graduate school, is brainwashing. It is time to choose a side in this war on freedom.
American media has been effective at generating propaganda. They are every bit as good at it as the German, Soviet and Chinese communist press. Thousands of schools will teach the lie that is the New York Times’ “1619 Project.” It is but one of countless examples. What are your kids’ schools teaching them?
There’s a viral video from Quebec this past weekend of a family fined and members arrested. Their offense? Six — people gathered to celebrate the new year. A neighbor snitched on them. The celebrants were duly arrested. The government there is lauding the snitches and asking for more “collaboration.”
Bringing it home
It is not that different in parts of America today. Snitches are lauded and encouraged in some Democrat-run states and cities. There’s Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti from March: “Snitches get rewards” … remember those stories? And by Leftist governments in Australia… Plenty of Americans, Canadians and Australians who are snitches. They are only too happy to snitch on people who refuse to lock down their lives…
This is taking place without concentration camps. We do not have a Gestapo, without a KGB and without Maoist reeducation camps. Doesn’t this make judging the average German way more difficult? Apathy in the face of tyranny is not a local German, Russian or Chinese characteristic. It is happening right here. Laconia, Belknap County, New Hampshire and America. Remember, first they came for Dawn Johnson… and I did nothing.? What are we going to do about that?