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

[RZehr]

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

What do all three have in common?

That they’re all bad?

[ken_sylvania]

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?

I wasn't saying that necessarily. I was just mentioning the common denominator as I see it.

Are these three options worse than all other governments?

[Szdfan]

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?

Yeah...is anyone going to argue that our government and economic system doesn't also exalt themselves over God? "God Bless America" seems like an exaltation to me.

[Szdfan]

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.

The question of what it means to be the church under an authoritarian regime is an important and salient one. The Protestant churches in East Germany are a good example and how they attempted to remain faithful while also dealing with the political realities they were in and the compromises they faced.

[barnhart]

..."God Bless America" seems like an exaltation to me.

I have similar discomforts. I have considered buying a "God bless America!" bumper sticker and cutting it to reorder the words to say "America, bless God!"

[Jazman]

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?

A number of things... some mentioned / alluded to in what I quoted in the starting post.
But some in my own words.

• Uncomplicated mythologies/simple binaries are exalted: Complex Truths/Reality diminished or warped (the leader directs his followers from the real cause of their woes and points towards a scapegoat or other shiny object?

• Emotional/arbitrary/dear leader's Whim Rule replaces rule of law, established processes, patient/studied due process, etc

• Related: one party rule, small elite makes all decisions, little to no voting, no choices offered to majority of populace.

• Nostalgia-ism...or utopianism... "take us back or forward to the glory days by any means!" (Interesting side note. Our small group has been doing a video course by Curtis Chang, one time podcast partner with David French... and the subject is Anxiety and in the last bit we watched he talks about how focusing too much on the past or the future "hijacks" us/our present with anxiety. That hits me personally but it also hit me with "bingo!" on a broader level: this is what drives so much of the anxiety and fear in politics/culture too! And every authoritarian really gorges on/exploits the anxiety of those two focuses; in fact they spend a lot of "marketing/propaganda time focusing on those 2 things in order to keep their followers in a constant pliable state of anxiety and then say "I can fix this for you or if I had been in charge none of this/that would have happened!" Who's been saying that again recently? hmmm)

• An anthropology /system of hierarchy that says, "we are not all created equal: Some are supposed to be on top and Those people are supposed to be under us -or- I'm entitled to more rights; you are not -or- I'm/we're the 'elect' and you are not. God is an arbitrary monster, so I can be one too...or there is no God so I can be an arbitrary monster..

• No room for questions, self-examination, dissent and definitely No Apologies! or asking forgiveness, ever.

Just a few off the cuff.

[Josh]

Spot on. Interesting how today’s political kibitzers have forgotten about Trotsky.

And Hitler.

When I was in high school, the dual dangers of fascism and Communism were a major part of our history classes. And there was an emphasis on how similar they were, despite waving different ideological flags. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism, no matter what they say in the speeches. Because an authoritarian's speeches are about gaining power and glory, the words themselves are not to be trusted. The same power they use to protect "us" from "them" ultimately becomes the power they use to keep "us" under their control.

Animal Farm was spot on here.

I don’t think anybody’s forgotten about Hitler.

[Josh]

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?

NZ was utterly authoritarian during the COVID fiasco. I consider banning church meetings for a year to be “authoritarian”.

[Szdfan]

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?

NZ was utterly authoritarian during the COVID fiasco. I consider banning church meetings for a year to be “authoritarian”.

Are these restrictions still in place or were they temporary?

[Neto]

Case Study - N@zi Authoritarianism as encountered by the Russian Mennonites - "Eugenics and Euthanasia: Russian Mennonites in the Third Reich", by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

(Due to the length of this article, I will put his text notes in a separate post. I apologize for the inconvenience. One other other could be copied into a document, so that you can flip back & forth, if desired.)

Eugenics and Euthanasia: Russian Mennonites in the Third Reich
Mennonite Genealogy & History (FB Group)
Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
10-08-2023

Eugenics and Euthanasia: Russian Mennonites in the Third Reich
Little surprises me when I write about our people caught “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” A 1944 letter I found recently from Mennonite Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh, however, offers a new and disturbing snapshot of this leader and the Russian Mennonite community under the umbrella of the Third Reich (below; note 1).
It is not too much to say that this larger-than-life leader stands at the centre of almost every significant Russian Mennonite story between 1915 and 1945, including community decisions during the revolution, the formation of MCC, the emigration of 20,000 Russländer, the miracle release of thousands gathered at the gates of Moscow, 1929-30, the creation of the Paraguayan Fernheim Colony, famine relief in the 1930s, the Canadian debates about identity and worldview in Der Bote and the Rundschau, and almost everything that happened with Mennonites in Ukraine from 1941 to 1945. His importance for the Mennonite story cannot be understated. Even for this FB group, his post-war publication with complete, exhaustive lists with every Mennonite family that immigrated to Russia from 1789 until the mid-1800s is the backbone for each and any of our genealogies (note 2).
The letter has to do with active euthanasia.
N@zi Germany developed a policy of eugenics which sought to eliminate those Germans whom they considered to be “unworthy of life” and to be a genetic and financial “burden” on German race, society, and state. It started with forced sterilization in 1933 and by 1939 to specially designated pediatric clinics for children with disabilities, where these children were murdered by medical staff. Soon this program widened to include those up to 17 years of age (note 3).
During the war in the German-occupied East, persons with certain genetic disabilities were typically killed in mass shootings or in gas vans. In Molotschna ("Halbstadt"), Dr. Ivan (Johann) Klassen played a role in the elimination of some 200 handicapped adults and children (including the “deaf and dumb”; pic) in two larger care homes in Ohrloff and Tiege in November 1941. He was required by the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) to examine and identify “for a planned resettlement” those he deemed to be “unfit for work.” About a month later the SD shot about 100 of these patients (note 4).
Anecdotally, Abram J. Thiessen witnessed German soldiers in his village of Gnadenheim “get upset at a young mentally handicapped man who created a little bit of commotion around a campfire when he was hit with an ember. The soldiers took him away and shot him” (note 5).
Young German Red Cross nurses and midwives flowed into the occupied territories as “missionary-style relief workers [and] … ‘Germanizers’”; Molotschna received eighty-four (note 6). Racial hygiene was a top priority, which included the sterilization of those determined to have heritable diseases, including those with congenital feeble-mindedness (most common), schizophrenia, manic-depression, madness, epilepsy, Huntington’s disease, heritable blindness or deafness, serious physical deformities or alcoholism. Social services for Volksdeutsche supported the broader ideological objectives of racial hygiene and the genetic improvement of the Volk. Individuals with some of these conditions are noted, e.g., in the 1942 village reports (Commando Dr. Stumpp) for easy identification and remedial action (note 7; see pic).
Whereas Mennonites had been committed to the highest standards of care and teaching to the deaf for decades, for example, in N@zi Germany those born deaf were categorized as “defective” and “biologically inferior” human material and typically sterilized. Schools for the Deaf were considered a product of Christian sentimentality in which “the greater the degree of idiocy, feeblemindedness, blindness, deafness or other physical handicap was, the greater the public expenditure for these biologically inferior people” (note 8). The policy’s singular goal was “to give back and maintain the health, resilience, and performance capacity of the German Volk”—and “no clear and rationally thinking fellow German national has ever doubted the legitimacy of racial legislation,” according to a rationale published for the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) in Ukraine (note 9).
Mennonite young adults who were being prepared to teach in ethnic German schools were not trained to teach religion—once the hallmark of the Mennonite curriculum—but were now trained in the pseudo-sciences of “race anthropology” (Rassenkunde) and N@zi hereditary studies (Vererbungslehre) to support the "biological fitness of the people" (note 10).
When German armies evacuated ethnic Germans from the Black Sea region to Warthegau, crippled and mentally weak or ill persons were taken away to the provincial (Gau) sanitorium “Tiegenhof bei Gnesen” (see pic); the sanitorium was well-known for euthanizing their patients (note 11). My Aunt (by marriage) Adina Neufeld Bräul worried that her mother could be “eliminated” if hospitalized because of her epilepsy. Albert Dahl of Marienthal remembered that some of their Mennonites simply “disappeared” upon arrival in Warthegau, i.e., the handicapped and mentally weak (note 12). This was consistent with the Racial Policy of the Reich, which assumed that the “rise and fall of a people’s culture depends above all on the maintenance, care, and purity of its valuable racial inheritance” (note 13).
At least one Chortitza District Mennonite family resettled in Upper Silesia with two mentally handicapped children was a victim of N@zi racial health policy. “They took the children from them and the parents were told later that the children had died” (note 14).
And to my surprise and shock, even Benjamin Unruh—the advocate and liaison for Russian Mennonites to the N@zi regime—came to terms with the policy. In a July 1944 letter to regime leaders, including the Mennonite friendly SS-Obersturmführer Dr. Wolfrum, Unruh wrote:
“That there are cases where genetic (erbbiologische=hereditary-biological) concerns present themselves, justifying / requiring (rechtfertigen erheischen) a special treatment (Sonderbehandlung) is viewed by many resettlers as justified. However, they have repeatedly asked the undersigned [=Unruh] to request that these cases also be treated and regulated as painlessly as possible, which I will do in a special submission to the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationality, the Reichsführer-SS [Himmler], via the head of the Ethnic German Liaison Office .” (Note 15)
None of the above is new--except for this letter. It is important because it is from Unruh who had stature in all Mennonite circles and a network of influence in N@zi Germany. It is important as well for his additional comment, namely, that “many of our resettlers” also see it as justified. If the resettlers really did “understand” and accept this as somehow tragically necessary, it was because the propaganda had worked.
I am not willing to grant Unruh the same grace; rather it is the capstone of stunning failure in leadership. Unruh was never an “anti-Nazi” theologian or church leader. He said that his method in contrast to some others has always been to trust in God, trust Christ, but also to work with influential authorities earnestly and without fear, and to trust them too (note 16). This is connected with his concern to hold strictly to the "separation of church and state" (note 17) which the N@zi state desired as well. Unruh had options. He was a highly educated faith leader—not repressed—who for years discussed and debated the priorities of N@zi Germany with Mennonites in North and South America. He observed and supported those developments at each successive stage, especially the underlying assumptions of race and its implications for Mennonite inclusion. Unruh’s small note on the exclusion of the weak, accepting N@zi Germany’s euthanizing policy even as it impacts the Mennonite people he loves, was the inevitable conclusion of his flawed method, dislodging him fully from the tradition.