“Sometimes people say, you know, you’re 78, all that stuff, and you’ve been doing this for a long time — But should I be quitting now? When you look out and you talk to these beautiful, beautiful young people who want to move this country forward in such a decent, humane way, it really does inspire me. And to the degree that I have gotten those folks involved in the political process, yeah, I am very proud of that. I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything in my life more important than that.”
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I am not fantasizing about executing SocDems, but believe that these fancy pants libs are counting on any serious class-conscious revolution simmering down so that they don't have to watch their more lumpen cohorts execute communists/anarchists. Though it has come down to that before.
Perhaps I shouldn't have used the term "Strasserist" specifically for Bernie himself, but the same can't be said of the movement as a whole. Some of these SocDems, of which Strasserism was a flavor, do straddle the line between bowdlerizing the history of liberal democracy during crisis & exculpating their own complicity/complacency in imperialism & tailism.
This was in late March 1933 right before a large World Jewish Conference rally was scheduled to be held in NYC to protest the Reich. Jewish SocDems and conservatives in Germany were both anti-Zionist & largely pro-capitalist
“Each of the four Jewish organizations immediately set about fulfilling its obligation as best it could. Brodnitz, Naumann, and Stahl beseeched their friends and associates to flood U.S. and British government offices and Jewish organizations with every form of denial and disclaimer. Doctors, lawyers, professors, bankers, prominent journalists and their newspapers, professional and civic organizations of every category-they all tried by cable, phone, and letter to convince Jewish organizations to call off the Madison Square Garden rally.23
"SHOCKED AT GROSS MISINTERPRETATION OF RECENT GERMAN EVENTS STOP SAVE FOR FEW MOLESTATIONS BY INDIVIDUAL TOUGHS NO HARM DONE TO JEWS STOP LATTER CONTINUE UNDISTURBED IN BUSINESS AND OFFICE STOP NO LEADING JEWISH PAPERS SUPPRESSED STOP GERMANY HAS POSITION WELL IN HAND STOP STRICT DISCIPLINE IS MAINTAINED SIGNED AMERIKA INSTlTUT BERLIN."24”
Self-hatred is fine and all, but without a clear analysis of class/identifying forces of reaction, it's just naive self-important masochism. Fascism really is an outgrowth of these less principled minimum programme movements in liberal democracies