1625
(1 vote, average 5.00 out of 5)
Oct 6, 2010
The brilliant production of “Cabaret” now playing at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater shines a light on some striking parallels between the rise of fascism in pre-WWII Germany and our current socio-political climate.
In 1930, Germany was a nation on edge in many ways that feel uncannily familiar. As Germans struggled with an historic economic downturn and a loss of world standing – largely the consequences of military aggression – the nation’s society moved further to the edges.
Dejected Germans sought solace in sex, alcohol and mind-numbing entertainment, as embodied by the denizens of the fictional Kit Kat Club in “Cabaret.” They were close cousins of today’s despondent U.S. population, whose mind-numbing agents include Internet pornography, food, prescription drugs, reality television and religious evangelism.
While many self-anesthetized, other Germans funneled their anger and frustration into the political arena, where Hitler’s nascent Nazi movement offered them the elixir of nationalism. Hitler ingeniously propagandized his countrymen to believe that Aryans were the master race, being held back from their potential glory by intellectuals and outsiders, particularly Jews.
The similarities between the early Nazi movement and today’s Tea Party loyalists are unavoidable. With their extremist rhetoric, insistence on ideological purity, threats of violence and vilification of outsiders, the Tea Party often seems to have borrowed its messaging directly from Hitler’s playbook. The rallying cry of the Tea Party – “take back our country” – is precisely the sort of chant one would have heard at a Nazi gathering.
The Tea Party wants to “take back our country” from many of the same enemies identified by the Nazis: the so-called “intellectual elites,” non-whites (especially the current occupant of the White House and Latin American immigrants), LGBT people and everyone else who rejects their rigid ideology.
One might expect these glaring similarities to set off alarms. Our current electorate, however, has cho
sen to ignore them. Too many Americans today are like Sally Bowles, the character in “Cabaret” who shrugs off the Nazis, saying, “It’s just politics.”
They’d better heed another quote, one from poet George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
