History reveals how Authoritarianism usually develops and what one can do if facing it?

[MaxPC]

When my people were brought into Germany along with the (retreating) N@zi army, they were largely given automatic German citizenship, being represented as "pure blooded Aryans". Each person was questioned and given physical examinations, and those who passed were sent to some area where a "New Pure German Nation" was being constructed. Families were split up. If someone was sickly or physically weak, they were sent elsewhere. If they appeared to be of "mixed race" they were sent elsewhere. Himml3r was very enthusiastic about "rescuing" these "true Germans", being very impressed by the fact that there had been almost no intermarriage with any outsiders during the more than 100 years they had lived in the Russian Empire and then the USSR, as foreigners. The fact is that we are actually NOT German at all, or only with some intermarriage in the previous time in German-speaking Prussia. I wonder how long this "favored status" would have lasted, had Germany won the war. We can all be critical of the reactions of my people to this sudden welcome and acclaim, after a generation of persecution by the Bolsheviks and Soviets.

However, the questions to ask ourselves are
Would we be taken in by such unexpected treatment?
What if we find ourselves somehow favorites of an authoritative and repressive regime?

Precisely. These are salient questions for daily discipleship, especially in the context of Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 10:16.

[Szdfan]

Another example - Germany's center-left party, the SPD is both socialist and anti-Communist, especially when they were one of the major parties in West Germany during the Cold War. The SPD, a major anti-fascist player in Germany during the 1920s and 30s dropped it's commitment to Marxism in 1959 and continues as a major center-left party in Germany.

Somewhat related and something I did not learn/was not taught in my years of education but had to stumble upon on my own, was the fractured nature of the communist/socialist 'world congress' prior to the Bolsheviks gaining power in 1917... I did not realize until fairly recently that the small band of thugs that were the Bolsheviks actually faced a lot of resistance within their supposed happy brotherhood of the world's 'workers'... That many, if not a majority of the European socialist congress/coalition wanted to use popular voting/representative/parliamentary/rule of law means to govern and to right the injustices that serfdom/monarchy etc had brought upon the people. And many of them were killed or had to flee when the small-by-comparison Bolshevik authoritarian thugs among them, ditched established conventions, moral laws against corruption/stealing/violence and even previously agreed upon party processes / due process in order to get quick-acting/impatient Power...
As in the case of Lenin (and probably most of the other authoritarians like him), what he did later to the Russian country as a whole, he had already done earlier on a smaller scale to his fellow socialists and/or opposition to the czarist system.

Yes, the Socialist/Communist world was a lot more fractured than is often portrayed.

Josh gave the GDR as a negative example of what happens when the Communists win. However, arguably the Communists did not win in East Germany. Rather, socialism was imposed on them by the occupying Soviet Union just as it was imposed throughout much of Eastern Europe. At the end of WWII, the Western Allies permitted the Soviet Union to occupy Eastern Europe because they believed that the USSR should have a zone of influence and it would have been a disaster to evict the Soviets after beating back Hitler.

In the case of the GDR, the Soviet Union forced socialism onto its zone of occupation. In 1946, the USSR forced the merger between the Social Democrat (SPD) and the Communist (KPD) parties to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which became the founding and ruling party of East Germany after 1949.

In hindsight, it was fairly obvious that the USSR was going to impose its political and economic system on the countries under it's influence, so I do find Churchill's warning about the "iron curtain" to be kind of naive or hypocritical. At the same time, I'm not sure what else the Allies could have done regarding Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, short of starting WWIII.

These kinds of realities and complexities that Jazzman describes get swept away in this overly broad exestential binary framing of "right" vs "left." Franco was bad, but he wasn't Hitler. Walther Ulbricht or Leonid Brezhnev were bad, but they weren't Stalin. East Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1980s were bad, but they weren't the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Both anti-fascism and anti-communism run the political and ideological gammut. Implying that everyone who opposes fascism and thinks Franco was a thug is somehow akin to Trotsky is ridiculous nonsense.

[barnhart]

However, the questions to ask ourselves are
Would we be taken in by such unexpected treatment?
What if we find ourselves somehow favorites of an authoritative and repressive regime?

This is a salient question for the American church. What theological resources will we reach for, are there portions of the church that have experience in this type of situation?

[Neto]

However, the questions to ask ourselves are
Would we be taken in by such unexpected treatment?
What if we find ourselves somehow favorites of an authoritative and repressive regime?

This is a salient question for the American church. What theological resources will we reach for, are there portions of the church that have experience in this type of situation?

The Dutch Mennonites (specifically those who left Holland and ended up in what was then called "South Russia", "New Russia", and in other contexts, "The Ukraine" - literally "The Border Country") experience the soul searching that accompanies any honest person looking back on a history like ours. During the years there in Czarist Russia prior to 1860, there was complicity in the poor treatment of the serfs. Later, the poor treatment of poor Ukrainians, and also the poor treatment of our own landless class. In short, the "class struggle" - poor treatment of the poor by the wealthy. It is a shame that stays with us, in our self concept/image. (As far as I have been able to ascertain, my own family was predominantly in the poorer class, many in the landless class. One step-great grandfather is a very likely exception, because he & my great grandmother returned to the Russian Empire for a visit, or perhaps with a consideration of moving back there, in 1901 - 10 years after immigrating to the States, and settling in Nebraska. One of my other great grandfathers did make a trip to the States prior to moving his family here, but that was as a part of a "research team" sent to look over the land here before the mass exit from Russia. But I still feel a share of the load of collective guilt for what was done there.)

I could probably flood this forum with documents pertaining to the moral errors of my people, especially during WWII. No, none of my direct ancestors were there at that time, or participated in any of that, but I do have this consciousness that "these were my people". I know that at least some people here think that is ridiculous, that we living "Russian Mennonites" feel guilt that is not ours to bear. But I am willing to expose these sins of my people, if it will be heard, and considered, so that none here go down the same path. And no, it was not all bad that flowed out of my people, even during that same era. The atrocities are remembered by history, and the good largely forgotten. But I believe that the burden of collective guilt needs to be openly acknowledged, hopefully to effect some change in the inner being of those who hear of it. Enough of this melodrama.

[barnhart]

I could probably flood this forum with documents pertaining to the moral errors of my people, especially during WWII. No, none of my direct ancestors were there at that time, or participated in any of that, but I do have this consciousness that "these were my people". I know that at least some people here think that is ridiculous, that we living "Russian Mennonites" feel guilt that is not ours to bear. But I am willing to expose these sins of my people, if it will be heard, and considered, so that none here go down the same path. And no, it was not all bad that flowed out of my people, even during that same era. The atrocities are remembered by history, and the good largely forgotten. But I believe that the burden of collective guilt needs to be openly acknowledged, hopefully to effect some change in the inner being of those who hear of it.

I agree this is the way forward. Although I don't physically descend from this people group, I do consider them part of my spiritual ancestors so I think of them as "my people" in some sense. They certainly have a lot to offer from direct experience. If I fail to learn from them, I could easily make some of the same mistakes they fell into.

[Bootstrap]

However, the questions to ask ourselves are
Would we be taken in by such unexpected treatment?
What if we find ourselves somehow favorites of an authoritative and repressive regime?

This is a salient question for the American church. What theological resources will we reach for, are there portions of the church that have experience in this type of situation?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains a great resource here. Corrie Ten Boom. André Trocmé. Karl Barth's "My Life". Martin Niemöller.

Martin Niemöller initially supported the Nazis. He was caught up in German nationalism, and fervently anti-Communist. The Nazis didn't exactly broadcast everything they wanted to do, there was ambiguity, if you really didn't want to take their rhetoric about Jews and Communists seriously, that was possible. Niemöller believed the Nazis would focus on addressing Germany's economic and political problems.

I think that's the background for Niemöller's famous poem. When they come for "them", they may well come for you later. Authoritarianism is dangerous for all of us. Whether it comes from the left or the right or from some other direction.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

[Bootstrap]

Under the Soviets, the main things I have read by Christians are by Solzhenitzen: "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago."

[Bootstrap]

These kinds of realities and complexities that Jazzman describes get swept away in this overly broad existential binary framing of "right" vs "left." Franco was bad, but he wasn't Hitler. Walther Ulbricht or Leonid Brezhnev were bad, but they weren't Stalin. East Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1980s were bad, but they weren't the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Both anti-fascism and anti-communism run the political and ideological gamut. Implying that everyone who opposes fascism and thinks Franco was a thug is somehow akin to Trotsky is ridiculous nonsense.

And very lefty governments like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, and Iceland are not even remotely authoritarian.

Fascist authoritarianism: bad
Nationalist authoritarianism: bad
Communist authoritarianism: bad

What do all three have in common?

[ken_sylvania]

These kinds of realities and complexities that Jazzman describes get swept away in this overly broad existential binary framing of "right" vs "left." Franco was bad, but he wasn't Hitler. Walther Ulbricht or Leonid Brezhnev were bad, but they weren't Stalin. East Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1980s were bad, but they weren't the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Both anti-fascism and anti-communism run the political and ideological gamut. Implying that everyone who opposes fascism and thinks Franco was a thug is somehow akin to Trotsky is ridiculous nonsense.

And very lefty governments like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, and Iceland are not even remotely authoritarian.

Fascist authoritarianism: bad
Nationalist authoritarianism: bad
Communist authoritarianism: bad

What do all three have in common?

They oppose and exalt themselves against God?

[Bootstrap]

Fascist authoritarianism: bad
Nationalist authoritarianism: bad
Communist authoritarianism: bad

What do all three have in common?

They oppose and exalt themselves against God?

Beyond what all other governments do? If so, how would you distinguish them in the "oppose and exalt" category?