Politics

特朗普的自愿共犯

Dec 5, 2017 Ian Buruma

纽约—1933年2月20日，一场秘密会议在戈林的柏林庄园内举行。包括古斯塔夫·克虏伯（Gustav Krupp）、弗雷德里希·弗里克（Friedrich Flick）、弗里茨·冯·欧宝（Fritz von Opel）在内的20多位德国顶级产业家听取了希特勒的演讲，他承诺他们的资产可以在他的统治下保全。因此他们同意支持纳粹党两百万帝国马克，这是一笔巨款，几乎足以支付即将到来的竞选经费。

他们中间几乎没有坚定的纳粹。他们是德国绅士俱乐部（Herrenklub）的成员，该俱乐部立场非常保守，但不属于国家社会党（National Socialist）。但在狭隘私利的驱使下，他们成为希特勒的帮凶。

他们也因此成了犯有集体屠杀罪行并最终毁掉他们的祖国的犯罪集团的帮凶。他们的公司本身从奴隶劳工中获得了巨大的收益。托马斯·曼（Thomas Mann）称绅士俱乐部是“痛苦潮流的引领者”。但这并没有妨碍弗里克和其他人在战后短暂地服刑后再次兴旺发达。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 14 Comments on this article

Mirek Fatyga Dec 21, 2017

it is a positive of sorts that this sort of comparison is being made, though, if I recall, Ian Buruma was a relatively early adopter of this line of thinking. The brown wave is washing over the developed world, now chock full of nukes, so one cannot get alarmed enough.

The analogy is probably not quite apt for the US though. Trump himself is a symptom of a broader disease, which is progressing disintegration of the US political system, and a slide towards ungovernability. The Republican party chose to escape its economic and social failures through propaganda of scapegoating which Trump exploited, liberally sprinkled with endemic racism, having its roots in the US history.

The likely future trajectory is not some form of a European fascism, in spite of quite obvious similarities. US lives in the western hemisphere, so the counterintuitive but nonetheless likely scenario is a hard turn to the left. Think, left of Bernie Sanders. Think Occupy Wall Street on steroids, attracting millions. The relentless, steady buildup of debt, private and public, coupled with the concentration of wealth, ties the economy into a knot that can no longer be simply untied through legislative means. Takes too long. You can get to the point when this knot simply has to be cut through some sort of expropriation, and this is where we are heading to, in my personal opinion.

Typically, in the Americas, a hard turn to the left is followed by a military coup. Whether US military has it in them as of today, I have no idea. There sure are a lot of generals in the government, and their experiences with civilians in Congress and in the WH cannot be particularly uplifting. Contempt is likely to be the feeling of the day. Time will tell, but I am betting, in the long run, we are talking Argentina with nukes. May be a little bit more than three diesel submarines, but not much more than the UK either.
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Ronald Abate Dec 21, 2017

Let's see. "Americas financial health will suffer as well, with an estimated $1.214 trillion added...by 2027", i.e., over ten years. But Obama add $10 trillion over ten years, so The Donald is a huge improvement. I'm all in for The Donald.
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Ian Maitland Dec 20, 2017

A few days before the Reichstag gave Hitler dictatorial powers, some Nazi sympathizers among the employees of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie (the national industrial league or Spitzenverband for German industrialists) hoisted a swastika banner above the organization's headquarters. The leadership of the Reichsverband had it removed, whereupon Nazi Storm Troopers forced their way into the building and raised the swastika banner again "in order to teach the Reichsverband respect for the new flag" (Henry Ashby Turner, German Business & the Rise of Hitler, OUP 1985). This is the sort of context that is lacking from Ian Buruma's hit job on business leaders past and present. To talk of "enablers" and "willing accomplices" is a complete travesty. Hitler and his thugs were fully in control of Germany and had no need for enablers.
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gerold firl Dec 20, 2017

Actually the middle earners will be bought-off with minor tax cuts. Republicans are hoping they won't recognize where that pay-off comes from. Middle class paychecks might have an extra twenty bucks, paid for with deficit spending. They're getting a little cash advance from the National Debt, so they won't notice the giant windfall paid to corporations and the wealthy. This fact should be emphasized in the analysis.
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Ian Maitland Dec 14, 2017

Ian Buruma has me scratching my head again. He uses the term Herrenklub to refer to the twenty or more industrialists who (he claims) financially supported the Nazi Party in 1933. But the actual Herrenklub had up to 2,000 members. The name has a fine ring to it, but that is no excuse for taking the lords' name in vain.
The Koch name has a ring to it too, but Buruma is abusing it as well. For the Occupy Movement, the Koch Brothers became the incarnation of capitalist evil. But the Koch Brothers sat on their checkbooks during the 2016 election. Charles Koch likened the choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton to choosing between a heart attack or cancer. Both brothers criticized Trump's travel ban. So the analogy between them and Krupp, Opel and Flick is a non-starter. Can I suggest that Ian hire a fact-checker?
- Walter Gingery Dec 20, 2017
  
  True, the Koch organizations did not contribute to the PRESIDENTIAL campaign, but the did contribute to Congressional candidates - to the tune of $900 billion. That seems significant to me.
  - Ian Maitland Dec 20, 2017
    
    Significant of what? There is no secret that the Kochs are libertarian-oriented Republicans. But the question raised by Buruma is whether they were "Trump's willing accomplices." They were not -- and are not.
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j. von Hettlingen Dec 7, 2017

Ian Buruma says those super-rich donors, who stand by Trump the way industrialists of the German "Herrenklub" stod by Adolf Hitler, believe that their business interests and financial gains would be protected, once their candidate gained power. Current congressional Republicans and German politicians in the 1930s all share the same "narrow self-interest in staying in power and making more money for their backers."
Billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson are obsessed with "low corporate and personal taxes, and their loathing of organized labor and the federal government." But they have also different agenda. For Adelson, it's all about Israel and funding pro-Israel congressional candidates, who look at Israel's national security priorities through the lens of the orthodox Jews and far-right settlers, backing Benjamin Netanyahu's ultra-conservative government.
The Koch Brothers have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into building a network of political groups, think tanks, academic institutions, and grassroots outfits, all with the aim of realising their libertarian, small-government worldview. They have built their own rival party to the GOP itself - the Tea Party - and are happy that Trump had picked super rich people to run the country, who have that free market background that the Koch Brothers appreciate.
In February 1933 Gustav Krupp, Friedrich Flick, and Fritz von Opel agreed to contribute "over two million Reichsmark" to support the Nazi Party - "an enormous sum that was almost enough to pay for the upcoming election campaign." They were extremely conservative, but no Nazis, and they probably "despised the vulgar upstart in his preposterous brown uniforms." But their own businesses "benefited greatly from slave labor," drawing workforces from concentration camps. Their complicity in mass murder and destruction of their country is a shameful chapter of Germany's modern history.
Many leading GOP politicians and even super-rich donors "may have private misgivings about the dangerously erratic narcissist in the White House." But diehard Trump supporters stand by him no matter what. He himself said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose voters. Even if he is no nazi dictator, "some of his closest advisers admire some of the ideas that inspired fascism and Nazism in the past." And he poses an enormous threat to the "democracy he is supposed to protect."
In Nazi Germany Hitler's followers were the same people who watched over its rights earlier on, but sank into a condition of mental stupor and became a flock of sheep. Trump's supporters voted for him because they agree with what he hates and rejects. Others who voted for him in protest against the Democrats, who they felt had failed to deliver. Many of the poor and vulnerable in rural America will be deeply affected by Trump's tax-cuts, from which only one percent of the upper strata of the society will benefit. Besides the jobs that Trump promised to bring back, may never return, without structural reforms of the economy.
The author mentions how "Fordism" helped boost economic growth and promote social stability in the first half of the last century. Like Trump, Henry Ford embraced also the "America First" tenet and "opposed going to war against Hitler." Yet he had "one insight, which Trump’s business-first accomplices would do well to heed." Ford said "workers had to be rich enough to buy a car from his factories. Trump’s tax bill will leave millions of potential consumers far worse off. And that cannot be good for business."
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Bernhard Kopp Dec 5, 2017

The German 'Herrenclub' of the 1930s was not the equivalent of 'US country club republicans', if they still exist, of our times. The industrial elite of 1930s, as the military and state elites, including the old aristocracy, were fundamentally non-democratic and either outright monarchists, or at least sympathetic towards an authoritarian state. I assume that even a Henry Ford was fundamentally loyal towards the 'Spirit of '76' and the US-constitution of 1789-ff.
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Keith Roberts Dec 5, 2017

Capitalism "untethered from all necessary restraints" sounds like Karl Polanyi's concern in his book The Great Transformation," as just reviewed in the NY Rev. of Books.
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