Abe Mazliach

I am passionate about Justice and Freedom for all people.

Right-Wing Embrace Of Conspiracy Is ‘Mass Radicalization,’ Experts Warn

December 15, 202012:17 PM ET

Hannah Allam, KQED

The widespread embrace of conspiracy and disinformation amounts to a “mass radicalization” of Americans, and increases the risk of right-wing violence, veteran security officials and terrorism researchers warn.

At conferences, in op-eds and at agency meetings, domestic terrorism analysts are raising concern about the security implications of millions of conservatives buying into baseless right-wing claims. They say the line between mainstream and fringe is vanishing, with conspiracy-minded Republicans now marching alongside armed extremists at rallies across the country. Disparate factions on the right are coalescing into one side, analysts say, self-proclaimed “real Americans” who are cocooned in their own news outlets, their own social media networks and, ultimately, their own “truth.”

“This tent that used to be sort of ‘far-right extremists’ has gotten a lot broader. To me, a former counterterrorism official, that’s a radicalization process,” said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw terrorism cases and who’s now a law professor at Georgetown University.

McCord was speaking at a recent online conference, Millions of Conversations, an organization aimed at reducing polarization. Along with McCord, several other former officials who served in senior national security roles said the mass embrace of bogus information poses a serious national security concern for the incoming Biden administration.

Weekend protest

They added that there’s no easy foil for a right-wing propaganda effort that amplifies fears and grievances on a nonstop loop. Those beliefs already have inspired political violence at protests over lockdowns and racial injustice. Political conspiracies drew thousands to last weekend’s pro-Trump rally, after which the Proud Boys and other violent extremist groups wreaked havoc in downtown Washington, D.C.

“Breaking through that echo chamber is critical or else we’ll see more violence,” said Elizabeth Neumann, who in April resigned her post leading the Department of Homeland Security office that oversees responses to violent extremism.

While it’s impossible to pin down the scope of such beliefs, analysts say, the numbers are staggering if even a fraction of President Trump’s more than 74 million voters support bogus claims that say, for example, the election was rigged, the coronavirus is a hoax, and liberals are hatching a socialist takeover.

Traffic numbers for right-wing outlets and livestreams suggest the support extends well beyond the margins. Recent polls also signal the spread: One survey found that around 77% of Trump supporters believe that Joe Biden won the election as a result of fraud despite no evidence to support that claim.

At the online conference, participants characterized the shift as a mass radicalization. Neumann said the issue keeps her up at night worrying about where the country is heading. She talked about family members who’ve gone down the right-wing rabbit hole of disinformation. She said conversations with them require patience and negotiation, such as laying out her conditions for coronavirus safety protocols at family gatherings.

Neumann said it’s hard to imagine what it would take to replicate those tough conversations on a national scale, given the power and reach of conservative media.

“I am wrestling with: How do I help people that have, unbeknownst to them, they’ve become radicalized in their thought? They hold views they didn’t hold 10 years ago because all they listen to is that conservative infotainment,” Neumann said. “Unless we help them break the deception, we cannot operate with 30% of the country holding the extreme views that they do.”

Show of force

Jason Dempsey, a military analyst and former Army officer on the panel, said too many people are turning to force as a response to fears over political divisions, whether through the military and law enforcement, or the formation of local armed groups. The election-rigging rhetoric only ups the ante as Democrats are painted no longer just as fellow citizens with different views but as enemies who must be vanquished.

“There are no easy answers, even if they’re carrying guns and wearing body armor,” Dempsey said. “We’ve got to get past that and be wary of the idea of militarism that doesn’t lead to a common conception of service, but leads to the kind of tribalism where we have to protect ourselves and our families by force against those we disagree with.”

On the conference call, the analysts agreed that the leftist fringe also is hardening and promoting its own conspiracies. But they said there’s simply no equivalency with the right in terms of the volume of disinformation and conspiracy, or in its connections to violent acts.

“There is a monetization of outrage on both sides,” Neumann said, “but in particular the conservative infotainment sector makes money off of that outrage.”

On the topic of solutions, the panelists floated ideas about education, media literacy, trusted mediators. But they added there’s little chance of progress until Trump, a superspreader of conspiracies and disinformation, is out of the White House.

“Leadership matters,” said Kori Schake, who was a senior adviser in the State Department, Defense Department and the National Security Council. “It really matters that the president of the United States is an arsonist of radicalization. And it will really help when that is no longer the case.”

Entrenched polarization

The online conference wrapped up the way many such discussions do: without a clear solution, at least in the near-term. The same what-do-we-do conversations are happening in political circles, among researchers and at tech companies.

Nobody expects polarization – or its spinoff, radicalization – to go away when Trump is out of office. It’s now a fixture of the American political landscape, part of an international trend toward right-wing populism, said Arie Kruglanski, a University of Maryland professor who’s written extensively about radicalization. He said the erosion of trust in public institutions leaves ample room for disinformation to take root.

“We don’t trust the government. We don’t trust the Congress. We don’t trust the Supreme Court. We don’t trust now the science. We don’t trust medicine. We don’t trust the media for sure,” Kruglanski said. “So who do we trust? Well, we trust our tribe. We trust conspiracy theories that tell us what we want to hear.”

Kruglanski said revolutions and wars throughout history offer examples of how quickly extremism can go mainstream.

“Every large political movement started at one point as a small fringe minority,” he said. “And when it catches on, it can engulf the whole society. So, you know, the danger is there.”

By Abe Mazliach, ago

Edelweiss Pirates: The Anti-Hitler Youth

by Accidental Talmudist

Barthel Schink was a German teenager who led a resistance movement of Hitler Youth dropouts who fought Nazi tyranny.

Born to a postal worker and a homemaker in Cologne in 1927, Barthel was one of five children. Like millions of other young Germans he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, the only legally permitted youth group in the country (the Boy Scouts were banned in 1935.)  Membership was mandatory for Aryan boys, even if their parents objected. Parents were informed that children who didn’t join would be taken from their homes and placed in orphanages. There was a similar youth organization for girls, but the focus was on turning young boys into eager warriors for their Fuhrer.

By 1940, the paramilitary group had eight million members, all of whom were being brainwashed in weekly meetings and rallies to support Nazi ideology.

The brainwashing did not work on Barthel. He was uncomfortable with the forced conformity and militaristic ideology of the Hitler Youth movement. He started getting together for hikes and bike rides with other disaffected Hitler Youth who, like Barthel, had a moral compass and critical thinking skills.They called themselves the Edelweiss Pirates, named for the Edelweiss badges they wore on their jackets. A sturdy flower that grew in the Alps, the Edelweiss became a symbol of resistance. Something of a street gang, these working-class teenagers had long hair and wore colorful clothing that set them apart from the somber, bland attire of the Hitler Youth. They listened to and sang “unapproved” music by Jewish composers, a crime punishable by arrest. The Pirates appreciated the freedom that came with breaking the Hitler Youth’s restrictive rules, but Barthel wanted to do more than have a good time. He wanted to fight the Nazi regime.

Under Barthel’s leadership, the Pirates started playing “pranks” like pouring sugar water into the gas tanks of Nazi vehicles. They spray-painted walls and buildings in the dead of night with slogans such as “Down with Hitler” and “No More Nazi Brutality.” Their motto was “Eternal War on the Hitler Youth.”

The grass-roots movement spread throughout Germany, with Edelweiss Pirate cells in major cities like Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Leipzig. They were able to identify each other because of the Edelweiss pin and their noncomformist style of dress. The largest group was Barthel’s crew in Cologne. Some of the boys dropped out of school to avoid conscription in the Hitler Youth, and they got jobs in factories or mills.

The Pirates’ anti-Nazi activities escalated from attacking Hitler Youth patrols to stealing from Nazi supply lines, looting Nazi warehouses, and dropping anti-Nazi leaflets in city centers. They committed brazen acts of sabotage such as derailing train cars and disrupting Nazi supply chains. They wanted to join the Allied forces to fight Nazis on the battlefield. When Pirates were captured their heads were shaved to humiliate them, then they were beaten and sent to reform schools, psych wards, or labor camps. Despite the danger, some Edelweiss Pirates groups shielded German deserters and escaped labor camp prisoners.

In July 1944, Barthel and several other Pirates were arrested for planning to blow up a Gestapo headquarters in Cologne. They were imprisoned and tortured for four months. On November 10, 1944, a gallows was set up on a public thoroughfare in Cologne. Barthel Schink and four other teen Edelweiss Pirates, along with seven adult members of the anti-Nazi resistance, were hanged in front of hundreds of Nazis. Barthel was 16 years old.

Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem honored the Edelweiss Pirates as Righteous Among the Nations in 1998, but their story has not been widely known. Female Pirate Gertrud Koch, who survived the war, explained to a reporter, “We were from the working classes. That is the main reason why we have only now been recognized. After the war there were no judges in Germany so the old Nazi judges were used and they upheld the criminalization of what we did and who we were.” Gertrud spent decades urging the German government to recognize the Pirates’ heroism, and finally in 2005 they were “politically rehabilitated.” Their criminal status was invalidated and they were officially honored as resistance fighters and heroes. The street where the public execution took places has been named Schink Strasse and there is a plaque recognizing Berthel and the other martyred Edelweiss Pirates.

By Abe Mazliach, ago

1918 Germany Has a Warning for America

Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign recalls one of the most disastrous political lies of the 20th century.

By Jochen Bittner

HAMBURG, Germany — It may well be that Germans have a special inclination to panic at specters from the past, and I admit that this alarmism annoys me at times. Yet watching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful episodes from Germany’s history.

One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that they had lost. Their denial gave birth to arguably the most potent and disastrous political lie of the 20th century — the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth.

Its core claim was that Imperial Germany never lost World War I. Defeat, its proponents said, was declared but not warranted. It was a conspiracy, a con, a capitulation — a grave betrayal that forever stained the nation. That the claim was palpably false didn’t matter. Among a sizable number of Germans, it stirred resentment, humiliation and anger. And the one figure who knew best how to exploit their frustration was Adolf Hitler.

Don’t get me wrong: This is not about comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, which would be absurd. But the Dolchstosslegende provides a warning. It’s tempting to dismiss Mr. Trump’s irrational claim that the election was “rigged” as a laughable last convulsion of his reign or a cynical bid to heighten the market value for the TV personality he might once again intend to become, especially as he appears to be giving up on his effort to overturn the election result.

But that would be a grave error. Instead, the campaign should be seen as what it is: an attempt to elevate “They stole it” to the level of legend, perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale America has never seen.

In 1918, Germany was staring at defeat. The entry of the United States into the war the year before, and a sequence of successful counterattacks by British and French forces, left German forces demoralized. Navy sailors went on strike. They had no appetite to be butchered in the hopeless yet supposedly holy mission of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the loyal aristocrats who made up the Supreme Army Command.

A starving population joined the strikes and demands for a republic grew. On Nov. 9, 1918, Wilhelm abdicated, and two days later the army leaders signed the armistice. It was too much to bear for many: Military officers, monarchists and right-wingers spread the myth that if it had not been for political sabotage by Social Democrats and Jews back home, the army would never have had to give in.

The deceit found willing supporters. “Im Felde unbesiegt” — “undefeated on the battlefield” — was the slogan with which returning soldiers were greeted. Newspapers and postcards depicted German soldiers being stabbed in the back by either evil figures carrying the red flag of socialism or grossly caricatured Jews.

By the time of the Treaty of Versailles the following year, the myth was already well established. The harsh conditions imposed by the Allies, including painful reparation payments, burnished the sense of betrayal. It was especially incomprehensible that Germany, in just a couple of years, had gone from one of the world’s most respected nations to its biggest loser.

The startling aspect about the Dolchstosslegende is this: It did not grow weaker after 1918 but stronger. In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost. And those without a sense of national duty and righteousness — the left and even the elected government of the new republic — could never be legitimate custodians of the country.

In this way, the myth was not just the sharp wedge that drove the Weimar Republic apart. It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride — above democracy.

The Germans were so worn down by the lost war, unemployment and international humiliation that they fell prey to the promises of a “Führer” who cracked down hard on anyone perceived as “traitors,” leftists and Jews above all. The stab-in-the-back myth was central to it all. When Hitler became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter wrote that “irrepressible pride goes through the millions” who fought so long to “undo the shame of 9 November 1918.”

Germany’s first democracy fell. Without a basic consensus built on a shared reality, society split into groups of ardent, uncompromising partisans. And in an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, the notion that dissenters were threats to the nation steadily took hold.

Alarmingly, that seems to be exactly what is happening in the United States today. According to the Pew Research Center, 89 percent of Trump supporters believe that a Joe Biden presidency would do “lasting harm to the U.S.,” while 90 percent of Biden supporters think the reverse. And while the question of which news media to trust has long split America, now even the largely unmoderated Twitter is regarded as partisan. Since the election, millions of Trump supporters have installed the alternative social media app Parler. Filter bubbles are turning into filter networks.

In such a landscape of social fragmentation, Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations about electoral fraud could do serious harm. A staggering 88 percent of Trump voters believe that the election result is illegitimate, according to a YouGov poll. A myth of betrayal and injustice is well underway.

It took another war and decades of reappraisal for the Dolchstosslegende to be exposed as a disastrous, fatal fallacy. If it has any worth today, it is in the lessons it can teach other nations. First among them: Beware the beginnings.

By Abe Mazliach, ago

President-elect Joe Biden’s Thanksgiving Address, November 25, 2020

Thanksgiving Address as Prepared for Delivery by President-elect Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware

My fellow Americans:

Thanksgiving is a special time in America. A time to reflect on what the year has brought, and to think about what lies ahead.

The first national day of Thanksgiving, authorized by the Continental Congress, took place on December 18th, 1777. It was celebrated by General George Washington and his troops at Gulph Mills on the way to Valley Forge. It took place under harsh conditions and deprivations — lacking food, clothing, shelter. They were preparing to ride out a long hard winter.

Today, you can find a plaque in Gulph Mills marking that moment.

It reads in part — “This Thanksgiving in spite of the suffering-showed the reverence and character that was forging the soul of a nation.”

Forging the soul of a nation.

Faith, courage, sacrifice, service to country, service to each other, and gratitude even in the face of suffering, have long been part of what Thanksgiving means in America.

Looking back over our history you’ll see that it’s been in the most difficult of circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged.

Now, we find ourselves again facing a long, hard winter.
We have fought a nearly year-long battle with a virus in this nation.
It’s brought us pain and loss and frustration, and it has cost so many lives. 260,000 Americans — and counting.
It has divided us. Angered us. And set us against one another.

I know the country has grown weary of the fight.
But we need to remember we’re at a war with a virus — not with each other.

This is the moment where we need to steel our spines, redouble our efforts, and recommit ourselves to the fight.

Let’s remember — we are all in this together.

For so many of us, it’s hard to hear that this fight isn’t over, that we still have months of this battle ahead of us.

And for those who have lost loved ones, I know this time of year is especially difficult. Believe me, I know. I remember that first Thanksgiving.
The empty chair, the silence. It takes your breath away.

It’s hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks. It’s hard to look forward.

And it’s so hard to hope.

I understand.

I will be thinking and praying for each and every one of you at our Thanksgiving table because we’ve been there.

This year, we’re asking Americans to forego many of the traditions that have long made this holiday such a special one.

For our family, we’ve had a 40 plus year tradition of traveling over Thanksgiving, a tradition we’ve kept every year save one — the year after our son Beau died.

But this year, we’ll be staying home.

We have always had big family gatherings at Thanksgiving. Kids, grandkids, aunts, uncles, and more.

For the Bidens, the days around Thanksgiving have always been a time to remember all we had to be grateful for, and a time to welcome the Christmas Season.

But this year, because we care so much for each other, we’re going to be having separate Thanksgivings.

For Jill and I, we’ll be at home in Delaware with our daughter and son-in-law.

So, I know. I know how hard it is to forego family traditions, but it is so very important.

Our country is in the middle of a dramatic spike in cases. We’re now averaging over 160,000 new cases a day. And no one will be surprised if we hit 200,000 cases in a single day.

Many local health systems are at risk of being overwhelmed.

That is the plain and simple truth, and I believe you deserve to always hear the truth from your president.

We have to try to slow the growth of the virus. We owe that to the doctors, the nurses, and the other front-line health care workers who have risked so much and heroically battled this virus for so long.

We owe that to our fellow citizens who will need access to hospital beds and the care to fight this disease.

And we owe it to one another — it’s our patriotic duty as Americans.
That means wearing masks, keeping social distancing, and limiting the size of any groups we’re in.

Until we have a vaccine, these are our most effective tools to combat the virus.

Starting on Day One of my presidency, we will take steps that will change the course of the disease.

More testing will find people with cases and get them away from other people, slowing the number of infections. More protective gear for businesses and schools will do the same — reducing the number of cases. Clear guidance will get more businesses and more schools open.

We all have a role to play in beating this crisis. The federal government has vast powers to combat this virus.

And I commit to you I will use all those powers to lead a national coordinated response.

But the federal government can’t do it alone. Each of us has a responsibility in our own lives to do what we can to slow the virus.

Every decision we make matters. Every decision we make can save a life.

None of these steps we’re asking people to take are political statements.

Every one of them is based in science.

The good news is, that there has been significant, record-breaking progress made recently in developing a vaccine. Several of these vaccines look to be extraordinarily effective.

And it appears that we are on track for the first immunizations to begin by late December or early January.

Then, we will need to put in place a distribution plan to get the entire country immunized as soon as possible, which we will do.

But it’s going to take time.

I’m hoping the news of a vaccine will serve as an incentive to every American to take these simple steps to get control of this virus.

There is real hope, tangible hope. So hang on. Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue. I know we can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war.

You will get your lives back. Life is going to return to normal. That will happen. This will not last forever.

So yes, this has been a hard year, but I still believe we have much to be thankful for. Much to hope for. Much to build upon. Much to dream of.

Here’s the America I see, and I believe it’s the America you see, too:

An America that faces facts. An America that overcomes challenges. An America where we seek justice and equality for all people.

An America that holds fast to the conviction that out of pain comes possibility; out of frustration, progress; out of division, unity.

In our finest hours, that’s who we’ve always been, and it’s who we shall be again, for I believe that this grim season of division and demonization will give way to a year of light and unity.

Why do I think so?
Because America is a nation not of adversaries, but of neighbors.

Not of limitation, but of possibility.
Not of dreams deferred, but of dreams realized.
I’ve said it many times: This is a great country and we are a good people.
This is the United States of America.
And there has never been anything we haven’t been able to do when we’ve done it together.

Think of what we’ve come through: centuries of human enslavement; a cataclysmic Civil War; the exclusion of women from the ballot box; World Wars; Jim Crow; a long twilight struggle against

Soviet tyranny that could have ended not with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but in nuclear Armageddon.

I’m not naïve. I know that history is just that: history.

But to know what’s come before can help arm us against despair.

Knowing the previous generations got through the same universal human challenges that we face: the tension between selfishness and generosity, between fear and hope, between division and unity.

And what was it that brought the reality of America into closer alignment with its promise of equality, justice, and prosperity?

It was love. Plain and simple.
Love of country and love for one another.
We don’t talk much about love in our politics. The public arena is too loud, too angry, too heated.

To love our neighbors as ourselves is a radical act, yet it’s what we’re called to do. And we must try, for only in trying, only in listening, only in seeing ourselves as bound together in what Dr. King called a “mutual garment of destiny” can we rise above our divisions and truly heal.

America has never been perfect. But we’ve always tried to fulfill the aspiration of the Declaration of Independence: that all people are created equal, created in the image of God. And we have always sought “to form that more perfect union.”

What should we give thanks for in this season?

First, let us be thankful for democracy itself. In this election year, we have seen record numbers of Americans exercise their most sacred right — that of the vote — to register their will at the ballot box.

Think about that. In the middle of a pandemic, more people voted this year than have ever voted in the history of America.

Over 150 million people cast a ballot. That is simply extraordinary.

If you want to know what beats deep in the heart of America, it’s this: democracy.

The right to determine our lives, our government, our leaders. The right to be heard.

Our democracy was tested this year. And what we learned is this: The people of this nation are up to the task.

In America, we have full and fair and free elections, and then we honor the results. The people of this nation and the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else.

Through the vote — the noblest instrument of nonviolent protest ever conceived — we are reminded anew that progress is possible.

That “We the People” have the power to change what Jefferson called “the course of human events.”

That with our hearts and hands and voices, today can be better than yesterday, and tomorrow can be better still.

We should be thankful, too, that America is a covenant and an unfolding story.

We have what we need to create prosperity, opportunity and justice: Americans have grit and generosity, a capacity for greatness and reservoirs of goodness.

We have what it takes. Now we must act.

And this is our moment — ours together — to write a newer, bolder, more compassionate chapter in the life of our nation.

The work ahead will not be easy. And it will not be quick. You want solutions, not shouting.
Reason, not hyper-partisanship.
Light, not heat.

You want us to hear one another again, see one another again, respect one another again.

You want us — Democrats and Republicans and Independents — to come together and work together.

And that, my friends, is what I am determined to do. Americans dream big.

And, as hard as it may seem this Thanksgiving, we are going to dream big again.
Our future is bright.
In fact, I have never been more optimistic about the future of America than I am right now.
I believe the 21st Century is going to be an American Century.
We are going to build an economy that leads the world.
We are going to lead the world by the power of our example — not the example of our power.

We are going to lead the world on climate and save the planet.
We are going to find cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

And we are going to finally root out systemic racism in our country.

On this Thanksgiving, and in anticipation of all the Thanksgivings to come, let us dream again. Let us commit ourselves to thinking not only of ourselves but of others.

For if we care for one another — if we open our arms rather than brandish our fists — we can, with God’s help, heal.

And if we do, and I am sure we can, we can proclaim with the Psalmist who wrote: “The Lord is my strength and my shield … and with my song I give thanks to him.”

And I give thanks now: for you and for the trust you have placed in me.
Together, we will lift our voices in the coming months and years, and our song shall be of lives saved,

breaches repaired, and a nation made whole.

From the Biden family to yours, wherever and however you may be celebrating, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

God bless you, and may God protect our troops.
By Abe Mazliach, ago

Thanksgiving 2020, Heather Cox Richardson, November 26, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson, November 26, 2020

This year of hardship and political strife brings us closer to the first national Thanksgiving than any more normal year.

That first Thanksgiving celebration was not in Plymouth, Massachusetts. While the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did indeed share a harvest feast in fall 1621, and while early colonial leaders periodically declared days of thanksgiving when settlers were supposed to give their thanks for continued life and– with luck—prosperity, neither of these gave rise to our national celebration of Thanksgiving.

We celebrate Thanksgiving because of the Civil War.

Southern whites fired on a federal fort, Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor in April 1861 in an attempt to destroy the United States of America and create their own country, based not in the American idea that “all men are created equal,” but rather in the opposite idea: that some men were better than others, and had the right to enslave their neighbors. In the 1850s, convinced that society worked best if a few wealthy men ran it, southern leaders had worked to bend the laws of the United States to their benefit. They used the government to protect slavery at the same time they denied it could do any of the things ordinary Americans wanted it to, like building roads, or funding colleges.

In 1860, northerners elected Abraham Lincoln to the presidency to stop the rich southern slaveholders from taking over the government and using it to cement their own wealth and power. As soon as Lincoln was elected, southern leaders pulled their states out of the Union to set up their own country. For their part, Lincoln and the northerners set out to end the slaveholders’ rebellion and bring the South back into a Union in which the government worked for people at the bottom, not just those at the top.

The early years of the war did not go well for the Union. By the end of 1862, the armies still held, but people on the home front were losing faith. Leaders recognized the need both to acknowledge the suffering and to keep Americans loyal to the cause. In November and December, seventeen state governors declared state thanksgiving holidays.

New York Governor Edwin Morgan’s widely reprinted proclamation about the holiday reflected that the previous year “is numbered among the dark periods of history, and its sorrowful records are graven on many hearthstones.” But this was nonetheless a time for giving thanks, he wrote, because “the precious blood shed in the cause of our country will hallow and strengthen our love and our reverence for it and its institutions…. Our Government and institutions placed in jeopardy have brought us to a more just appreciation of their value.”

The next year Lincoln got ahead of the state proclamations. On July 15, he declared a national day of thanksgiving, and the relief in his proclamation was almost palpable. After two years of disasters, the Union army was finally winning. Bloody, yes; battered, yes; but winning. At Gettysburg in early July, Union troops had sent Confederates reeling back southward. Then, on July 4, Vicksburg had finally fallen to U. S. Grant’s army. The military tide was turning.

President Lincoln set Thursday, August 6, 1863, for the national day of thanksgiving. On that day, ministers across the country listed the signal victories of the U.S. Army and Navy in the past year, and reassured their congregations that it was only a matter of time until the United States government put down the southern rebellion. Their predictions acknowledged the dead and reinforced the idea that their sacrifice had not been in vain, as Lincoln himself did just three months later in the Gettysburg Address.

In October 1863, President Lincoln declared the second national day of thanksgiving. In the past year, he declared, the nation had been blessed.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, he wrote, Americans had maintained their laws and their institutions, and kept foreign countries from meddling with their nation. They had paid for the war as they went, refusing to permit the destruction to cripple the economy. Instead, as they funded the war, they had also advanced farming, industry, mining, and shipping. Immigrants had poured into the country to replace men lost on the battlefield, and the economy was booming. And Lincoln had recently promised that the government would end slavery once and for all. The country, he predicted, “with a large increase of freedom,” would survive, stronger and more prosperous than ever. The President invited Americans “in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands” to observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving.

The following year, Lincoln proclaimed another day of thanksgiving, this time congratulating Americans that God had favored them not only with immigration but also with the emancipation of formerly enslaved people. “Moreover,” Lincoln wrote, “He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.”

Lincoln established our national Thanksgiving to celebrate the survival of our democratic government.

Today, more than 150 years later, President-Elect Joe Biden addressed Americans, noting that we are in our own war, this one against the novel coronavirus, that has already taken the grim toll of at least 260,000 Americans. Like Lincoln before him, he urged us to persevere, promising that vaccines really do appear to be on their way by late December or early January. “There is real hope, tangible hope. So hang on,” he said. “Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue…. [W]e can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. You will get your lives back. Life is going to return to normal. That will happen. This will not last forever.”

“Think of what we’ve come through,” Biden said, “centuries of human enslavement; a cataclysmic Civil War; the exclusion of women from the ballot box; World Wars; Jim Crow; a long twilight struggle against Soviet tyranny that could have ended not with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but in nuclear Armageddon.” “It’s been in the most difficult of circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged,” he said. “Faith, courage, sacrifice, service to country, service to each other, and gratitude even in the face of suffering, have long been part of what Thanksgiving means in America.”

“America has never been perfect,” Biden said. “But we’ve always tried to fulfill the aspiration of the Declaration of Independence: that all people are created equal….”

Biden could stand firmly on the Declaration of Independence because in 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal of slave owners from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that promoted the common good.

By Abe Mazliach, ago

For Holocaust survivors, Trump’s refusal to concede is a bad memory, Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua, November 14, 2020

In the days after the 2020 presidential election, Auschwitz survivor Irene Fogel-Weiss grew increasingly despondent.

“I had worried so much before the election. I was happy to find out that maybe I was wrong and that I had overreacted, but now I can’t help but feel alarmed,” said Fogel-Weiss, a survivor from the Czech town of Botragy, now in Ukraine. “Everyday reminds me and others like me of the history we thought we left behind. It’s not an easy time for survivors or immigrants who get how easily it can happen here.”

She is far from alone. In post-election interviews, numerous Holocaust survivors report feeling both relieved at the results, and nervous about President Donald Trump’s continued unwillingness to concede defeat.

Manfred “Manny” Lindenbaum, 88, is one of them. The past four years had been tough ones for the New Jersey resident.

“I was actually going into a deep depression,” he said. “I was functioning, but I couldn’t sleep at night, my mind was going back and hearing rhetoric that wasn’t much different than what was going on in the beginning of the Nazi era.”

Lindenbaum was five when he was “literally chased out” of his childhood home in Unna, Germany in October, 1938, along with 17,000 German Jews of “Eastern” origin in an event known as PolenAktion. Stripped of their citizenship, his family became homeless and stateless overnight. A year later, when the Nazi invasion was imminent, his parents made the bold decision to put their three children on a train bound for the port town of Gdansk, where the last Kindertransport boat to England was departing. Only Lindenbaum and his brother were allowed to board. His sister, 14 at the time, was deemed too old. He would never see her or his parents again.

“When I see images of refugees at the borders, well, I know what happens to kids when they’re separated from their parents,” said Lindenbaum, who toured shelters in Mexico last year after the Trump administration ousted asylum-seekers as part of its Remain in Mexico policy.

“It was particularly moving and difficult for him given his own border experience,” said Mark Hetfield, president and chief executive officer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) who accompanied him.

HIAS, which had once help Lindenbaum immigrate to the United States, arranged the visit to the border. There, Lindenbaum saw refugees forced to remain in limbo in a no-man’s land similar to the one he experienced in Zbąszyń.

For Lindenbaum, voting for Joe Biden was more than supporting a particular candidate. It was a moral imperative. “It’s beyond comprehension that we did that,” he said, speaking of what he saw at the US-Mexico border. “I still get nightmares.”

On Saturday morning, Nov. 7, with Biden still undeclared, Lindenbaum went on a 10-mile bike ride instead of spinning his wheels indoors, waiting for the votes to be counted.

“By the time I returned, Biden was the declared winner,” he said. “It felt like a giant weight had been lifted off my back.”

He wasn’t the only survivor to finally exhale. a video of Holocaust survivor grandparents tearing up at the news went viral. Survivors in Zoom support groups, who had reported feeling tense and fearful under Trump, and increasingly isolated under the pandemic, expressed relief.

“After months of suffering from insomnia and anxiety, many Holocaust survivors were elated that Trump, whom they associated with Hitler, did not win a second term,” said New York clinical psychologist Dr. Eva Fogelman, an expert on Holocaust PTSD.

In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Cordula Hahn, who had been a hidden child in Holland during World War II, rejoiced at the news, banging a pot, getting showered with glitter outside the Barclay Center with her two daughters and son-in-law, enjoying their first hug since March.

“The outburst of emotions was huge,” she said. “I had a flashback from Liberation Day in May 1945 in the Netherlands, where my parents, older brother and I were in a parade.”

“It felt like the end of the war,” said Natalie Scharf, who felt the stress of the last four years dissipating as she delighted in the news that her adopted city of Philadelphia played such a pivotal role in flipping the country blue. “I felt a real obligation to vote for Biden. I don’t have to imagine how much worse it can get under Trump. I lived through it.”

Born in the Polish town of Jaworzno, Scharf was 15 when the Gestapo raided her home one night, arrested her along with scores of other Jewish teenage girls in her town and loaded them on a train bound for Sudetenland, where she was imprisoned at Gabersdorf women’s forced labor camp, only to emerge as one of the sole survivors of her family.

“When I saw them marching with the torches in Charlottesville, I had terrible heart palpitations,” she said. “They looked just like the Nazis of my childhood, and hearing them scream, ‘Jews will not replace us,’ ‘blood and soil,’ it was exactly as I remembered it. And this president said they were fine people? Good riddance. It feels like liberation. We made it!”

For Aviva Slesin, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and adjunct professor at NYU-Tisch, who was smuggled out of the Jewish ghetto in Siaulia, Lithuania in 1943 when she was nine months old and spent the war in hiding, Biden’s victory took her back to the moment she first laid eyes on her new country.

“I thought of being on that boat as we entered New York harbor. Everyone started to weep. Here we were refugees from Europe, coming to the shore of a place of hope,” she said. “And then I thought, had this man [Trump] been president at the time, he would not have welcomed us. He would not have offered us the hope we needed to create a new life.”

“I was playing in the garden across the street from our house, when suddenly the police began to chase us out because we were Jews. I guess I was a good runner, but behind me was a two-year-old girl who wasn’t,” she said. “I saw this very elegant Nazi pick her up by her legs, throw her against the tree and kill her. I ran home and told my mother. She said, ‘That’s it. It’s time to leave.’”

The family fled at night, crossing the Bug River to the east, staying with an uncle in Bialystok until the Russians packed all the Jews on a train bound further east. She was just 13 years old when she arrived at a gulag, a Soviet work camp. Her younger brother died of disease shortly after arrival. Over the next four years, they moved from Siberia to Kazakhstan, where she spent her days gathering tinder wood and struggling to find food.

“You’re hungry all the time. You’re not clean and the most horrible people are taking care of you,” Ores said. “When I saw how Trump took breastfeeding mothers away from their babies, that children died at the border, I saw Americans behaving like Nazis. Who can put children in cages? I was a pediatrician for 50 years at Columbia University Medical Center. Whoever heard of such a thing happening here?”

When she heard that Joe Biden was the declared president-elect on Saturday morning, Ores called her grandson to come over and help her pop the bubbly. “It felt like Victory Day!” she said.

But her bubble began to burst with news of Trump challenging the election results.

“A predator is most dangerous when wounded,” said Björn Krondorfer, director of the Martin Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University, and one of five German-born Holocaust scholars who co-wrote an Op Ed titled, “It’s Not Too Late for American Democracy-Yet,” that ran in the Forward ahead of the election, warning of the threat of totalitarianism should Trump win a second term. “And that’s the situation we find ourselves in. It is scary (again) to see his political maneuvering to get into a position in which he can call on the Insurrection Act.”

Last week Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the 20th Century,” declared Trump’s tactics of rejecting the election results no joke, writing in The Boston Globe, “a claim that an election was illegitimate is a claim to remaining in power. A coup is under way, and the number of participants is not shrinking but growing.”

And that’s what’s so frightening to the people who lived through the rise of European fascism and the Holocaust.

“More than 70 million Americans voted for Trump,” said Fogel-Weiss. “After four years of challenging the rule of law, peddling lies and propaganda, anti-Semitism, scapegoating immigrants, and denying science -all of it has been such a tremendous blow to democracy — they all follow their leader.”

Fogel-Weiss said she is cautiously optimistic that democracy will prevail if there is a peaceful transition to a new president. Others say they won’t sleep soundly until President-Elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Dr. Fogelman reports similar fears reemerging among survivors in her practice. “They wonder what havoc will Trump wreck before the inauguration and will Biden, with his good negotiating skills, be able to work across the aisle to bring the nation together?”

By Abe Mazliach, ago

Pull investments from companies not committed to environment, pope says.

Pull investments from companies not committed to environment, pope says – VATICAN CITY (Reuters).

Pope Francis urged people to pull investments from companies that are not committed to protecting the environment, adding his voice to calls for the economic model that emerges from the coronavirus pandemic to be a sustainable one.

Francis spoke in a video message for an online event called “Countdown Global Launch, A Call to Action on Climate Change”.

“Science tells us, every day with more precision, that we need to act urgently … if we are to have any hope of avoiding radical and catastrophic climate change,” he said.

The pope listed three action points: better education about the environment, sustainable agriculture and access to clean water, and a transition away from fossil fuels.

“One way to encourage this change is to lead companies towards the urgent need to commit to the integral care of our common home, excluding from investments companies that do not meet (these) parameters … and rewarding those that (do),” he said.

He said the pandemic had made the need to address the climate crisis and related social problems even more pressing.

“The current economic system is unsustainable. We are faced with a moral imperative … to rethink many things,” he said, listing means of production, consumerism, waste, indifference to the poor, and harmful energy sources.

In June, a Vatican document urged Catholics to disinvest from the armaments and fossil fuel industries and to monitor companies in sectors such as mining for possible damage to the environment.

Other speakers and activists at the online event included actress Jane Fonda, Britain’s Prince William, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

By Abe Mazliach, ago

Sir David Attenborough to 60 Minutes on climate change: “A crime has been committed”

For nearly 70 years Sir David Attenborough has been exploring the planet, taking hundreds of millions of television viewers on eye-opening journeys through the natural world. Jungles and island archipelagos, deserts and deep under the sea, no place has been too remote, no animal too elusive, for Sir David and his talented team of filmmakers to document.
Now 94, Attenborough has witnessed the evolution of the natural world more closely than most. Attenborough’s latest project includes a book and film both titled, “A Life on Our Planet.” The documentary premiers on Netflix on October 4.
He calls this latest project his “witness statement,” and on 60 Minutes told correspondent Anderson Cooper “a crime has been committed” against the planet. Attenborough says “our planet is headed for disaster and climate change is the greatest threat facing the plant for thousands of years. There could be whole areas of the earth that people could no longer safely live”. The World Wildlife Fund says 2/3 of the world’s wildlife has disappeared in the last 50 years.
He would tell world leaders that the time has come to put aside national ambitions and look for international ambitions of survival. “We don’t have an alternative but to be optimistic, if you love your children, if you love the rest of humanity”. It’s the young Sir David has hope for. “There is a huge movement around the world of young people who can see what’s happening to the world and demanding that their government take action. That’s the best hope I have. My generation failed”. We allowed it to happen despite being the smartest creatures that ever lived. We need more than just intelligence, we need wisdom. After all, this planet is all we have. There is no where else to go.
“We’re both in broadcasting, if you’re going be telling something as though it’s true, you better be sure it’s true,” Attenborough said to Cooper. “So I didn’t say anything much about the world being in ecological peril until I was absolutely sure that what I was talking about was correct.”
Attenborough no longer minces words nor leaves his viewers wondering where he stands on the issue of climate change. In the new film, he laments Earth’s decline and states emphatically, “Our planet is headed for disaster.” Despite his stark warning about the planet’s peril, Attenborough told Cooper it is not too late to salvage it, if countries work together and societies alter their behavior. The nonagenarian remains hopeful for the future.
By Abe Mazliach, ago

We Need Leaders NOW!

James Baldwin said “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”. The Democratic Party and it’s leadership need to play hard ball for this election. Trump is taking the world stage everyday and continues to say whatever he wants and gets away with it. He bullies everyone around him and he has turned the White House into a house of lies and not the house of the people. We all know Trump only cares about himself and will do anything in his power to win or disrupt this election. Anything!
 
We need leaders who have the courage to confront Trump everyday, calling out his lies and the damage he is doing to the American people and our Democracy. Vice- President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are calling Trump out but we need a chorus of voices to do this. We need leaders who will demand that Republican Senators speak up when Trump breaks the law, becomes unhinged or puts people’s lives in danger. We need leaders who will demand that voter suppression stops.
 
We need leaders NOW to express their anger and outrage loud and clear!
By Abe Mazliach, ago