- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
A WSJ investigation tracked the U.S. citizens caught in the crosshairs of an aggressive government campaign to detain and demonize dissenters
This post uses a gift link with a view count limit. If it runs out, there is a second one and somewhat unreliable archived copy which has the text but not the visuals.
Many Americans can use their library card to generate additional gift links
Martin Niemoller, famously a prominent Lutheran pastor, was actually not a Catholic priest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niemöller
I agree with your sentiment, but his piece is timeless and too important to history to misrepresent.
EDIT: it’s also my understanding (not a historian though) that communists were the first targets. Political opponents when the nazis first achieved power because they were not strong. The moved on to ideological targets after they had established power.
Your wikipedia link shows this priest excited for Hitler’s rise, even voting for Hitler in 1933, after the burning of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft Instititute for Sexual Science.
While this poem is a useful tool, we cannot accept it being used by even the author to obscure the deaths of those he agreed with the Nazis about.
The Nazis had a slow simmer of hate for both Communists and the LGBTQ+ community. Each received state sanctioned violence at the hands of Nazis simultaneously, both being labelled as “un-German”
If you’ll pardon the inflammatory language, I’m going to continue communicating the same thought. That priest was a product of his time and place, and fully teaching his poem demands passing on critique of that basis.
Wholly agree with you here in the goal, sentiment, and calling out he’s a product of his time. Once again, here’s a conservative that only cared about something once it affected him. At least he left his words to the ages in hopes others would learn from them instead.