For the U.S., ‘It’s Just Like 1939.’ Well, No.

 

By Steven Jonas

Last week I published a column on these pages entitled : “In Eastern Europe, ‘It’s Just Like 1939.’ Well, No.” It was the first in a two-part series commenting on a phrase — “It’s Just Like 1939” — being used by a number of commentators and authorities who are dealing with the very real threat to U.S. Constitutional Democracy, and all that that threat entails, at the hands of the Trump/Heritage-Foundation/Project-2025 led Republican Party. The United States, as well as the rest of the world, faces a series of major political-economic-social-environmental calamities that would arise — indeed the Trumpites are already telling us about them — with the Trump re-election.

Politico summarized that set of calamities-to-be-faced-in-the-U.S. in one sentence: “From nationwide abortion bans to classroom culture wars, assaults on climate science and political weaponization of the military, his return to the White House could make Trump 1.0 seem tame.” To say nothing of the destruction of the Federal Civil Service (apparently without the benefit of legislation), the open declaration of dictatorship. Yes, for “only one day,” but might not he on that day decide to “extend” it? Certainly, his principal consiglieri, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, would be in favor of that. And so, the popularization of the term “Just like 1939.”

But when one examines the history of that time, the fascist threat we face from the Trumpites has little to do with what we faced from the forces of reaction active in the United States in 1939. Yes, there were very serious threats to democracy in our nation, and we, like the Europeans faced, the very serious threat of Fascists-in-Government on that continent (which, through the “Axis” was allied with a very militarily-aggressive Japanese fascism). But there weren’t any serious, political-party-based threats of some sort of U.S.-fascism. And so, what were the right-wing threats to U.S. politics and policy that our nation did face at that time?

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Source: OpEdNews.com