https://twitter.com/Jason_Dean/status/1754991418576158851
we did it! we stopped hitler by voting!
and then what happened?
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED???
Hindenburg appointed Nazi party leaders to essentially all the levers of power within the Weimar Republic. This is something that gets overlooked in lib history because of great man theory brainworms but Hindenburg basically created a turnkey coup government for the party that, famously, was not led by a person who had already attempted a coup of the Weimar government years before.
This will repeat when Biden loses 2024. And if he somehow wins, this will repeat whenever the Republicans win the presidency again because no liberal will arrest a Republican politician for being fascist no matter how much liberals scream about Republicans being fascist.
Does it really get overlooked in lib history? I learnt about it at school in grade 8 or 9.
I think liberals just conveniently forget what happened because to them, Hitler is better than communists winning.
Not sure where you went to school, but in america, Weimar republic basically didn't exist. I never heard of it until after I was radicalized and no one I know ever was taught about it in k-12.
It's definitely going to vary between people and countries and education systems but in my experience most libs put almost all, if not their entire, focus just on Hitler and they fail to see the other moves that happened when the SPD, Hindenburg and the Nazis formed a coalition government.
There's a few tiers of awareness of the twilight of the Weimar Republic:
• Hitler seized power, he wasn't elected
• Hitler wasn't elected directly but he was appointed by a "democratic" system and then he used that position to seize power
• The Nazi party staged a coup of the Weimar liberal democracy because Nazi leaders installed into positions of power with which to enact this coup
• The social democrats collaborated with the Nazis and other reactionaries while spending their time in power suppressing the KPD and its paramilitary arms while allowing the Nazis to run rampant as they held that the communists were the greatest threat to liberal democracy, not the Nazis, and this motivated them to facilitate the Nazi rise to power in Germany
Basically most libs I have found sit at the first or second tiers. It's exceedingly rare that I've found a person with an average level of education who doesn't have a particular interest or specific education in history reaching the last two tiers of awareness but YMMV and all of that stuff.
In Germany it's mostly a "What went wrong?" and the answer given is too many anti-democratic parties, and this is why our modern electoral system is perfect
Ignoring even the lib example of the Netherlands as counter-arguments of course.
He was reaching across the aisle in a true bipartisan gesture to heal the division in German society.
He did. He was a hardcore right winger and arguably outright a monarchist - though of course he never moved to restore the monarchy.
SPD: This election is a choice between Literal Hitler and Diet Hitler.
Thälmann: I'm... Literally right here.
SPD: We might not like it, but we have to choose between the lesser of two evils.
Thälmann: I'm... still right here. If you need me, you know. Yeah.
SPD: Our hands really are tied here. We know that Diet Hitler is not too fond of us, but he's our only hope to defeat Literal Hitler.
Thälmann: Do you... Do you actually hear me at all? Hello?
SPD: In times like these, it is the citizen's duty to vote to save our democracy.
Thälmann: Do you think there might've been some sort of systemic issue that caused us to get into this situation in the first place?
SPD: Remember to vote Hindenburg, everyone!
It's funny because it can also be a commentary on the US in particular and contemporary western society at large
The KPD under Thälmann's leadership regarded the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as its main adversary and the party adopted the position that the social democrats were "social fascists".
I guess he was right.
One of history's great tragedies is how the German workers' movement was held back by the SPD and ended up too divided to effectively fight the Nazis as a result.
Had the SPD backed the revolution instead of sending in proto-nazi Freikorps we could have had world communism today. Or at least the KPD would not have every reason to hate and distrust them.
Or even if the SPD had just been as cordial with the KPD as they were with the arch-reactionary Hindenburg, things could have looked a lot brighter.
Instead we got fascism, a world war and multiple genocides. Capitalism was saved. Stalin was right about succdems.
Democracy is when you vote to end democracy by empowering literally fucking Hitler
Democrats believe that as long as they proclaim the right opinion, then they are absolved of all evils as a result of their ideology or inaction.
Every day that passes proves Stalin was right about liberals.
Niether of them comment on Thalmann even though he's in the picture
Well obviously there's no way the communists are going to win so you might as well throw your vote away! A vote for Thalmann is a vote for Hitler!
Never you mind that a vote for Hindenburg is also a vote for Hitler.
If you make me choose between Hindenburg and Hitler
Shows image of three choices
https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4624
I don’t understand.
They are promising Soviet food and oil, the effort of uniting all German people into one nation, the end of Versailles, the end of debt, the end of hyper inflation, the protection of invasion from Britain and France, and still remaining independent from the Soviets.
And then 13 million Germans were like “give me that, but with war and death and mass killing please.”
Damn, people really can’t handle the word communism.
Because liberal elections are not actually democratic due to the outsized influence of media and wealth.
Also, a lot of Germans hated Jewish people.
What was Hindenburg's platform? Maybe he was going to be tough on China.
"yeah but those commies are a band of murderous thugs who tried to overthrow the government! Hitler and his national socialists would never... what's that? oh. Okay apparently the Nazis did that too and even more recently but at least they RESPECT GERMANY (and flatter my fragile megaloser ego by saying I'm a supermensch and literally the main character for the entirety of human history)." - average NSDAP voter
Good timeline where the commies overthrew the government
The SPD didn't field a candidate in that election in favor of supporting a 84 year old very right wing candidate who was previously a military dictator during WW1 - openly against the wishes of the party's left wing.
They knew what they were doing, and placed their standing in bourgeois democracy over well... any of their goals.
I’m impressed by how often the libs keep going back to the prime example for why voting for the lesser evil doesn’t work to scold people into voting for the lesser evil.
KPD literally had slogan "Wer Hindenburg wählt, wählt Hitler, wer Hitler wählt, wählt den Krieg." in this election, but Cassandra curse striked again.
"Who votes for Hindenburg, votes for Hitler; who votes for Hitler, votes for war."
We, on the other hand, remain convinced, in the light of the revolutionary experiences of Russia, Hungary and Germany, that the socialist state cannot be embodied in the institutions of the capitalist state. We remain convinced that with respect to these institutions, if not with respect to those of the proletariat, the socialist state must be a fundamentally new creation. The institutions of the capitalist state are organized in such a way as to facilitate free competition: merely to change the personnel in these institutions is hardly going to change the direction of their activity. The socialist state is not yet communism, i.e. the establishment of a practice and an economic way of life that are communal; but it is the transitional state whose mission is to suppress competition via the suppression of private property, classes and national economies. This mission cannot be accomplished by parliamentary democracy. So the formula 'conquest of the state' should be understood in the following sense: replacement of the democratic parliamentary state by a new type of state, one that is generated by the associative experience of the proletarian class.
in 1919
