As a German, I say this: Do not repeat Germany's De-Nazification mistakes.
Once the Third Reich fell, magically all the Nazis in Germany disappeared. The big ones were put to trial, but all the little ones disappeared.
The law-bending Nazi-judges of the Third Reich magically stopped being Nazis.
The bootlicking NSDAP-members in every town-hall and administration magically stopped being fans of Hitler.
SS-soldiers magically became good people over night.
Germany as a whole simply decided to forget that the 12 years of Hitler's rule had ever happened.
Germany as a whole simply decided to forget that there were people in their midst who had commited horrible atrocities.
Then came the 1960s. A new generation, with fresh eyes, and they were horrified by how closely post-WWII Germany resembled the Third Reich.
The shameless support for the war in Vietnam and for murderous tyrants like the Shah of Iran.
The same shameless over-the-top propaganda, except this time it was driven by sensationalist media like the "Bild"-newspaper.
The same police-brutality, with some police-officers even being former SS-members.
The same Nazi-judges meting out harsh sentences against left-wing protesters like they did during the Third Reich.
The same societal retreat into conservatism that declared new ideas to be bad.
What followed was a cultural backlash from the left that was especially bad in 1968. A radicalization of the left that even birthed bona-fide domestic left-wing terrorists. The political climate became bad in Germany. Really, really bad. Because the majority of Germans prefered to forget, prefered to pretend that these young people didn't have a point when calling out all these similarities with Nazi-Germany.
The beginning of the end of the crisis came with Chancellor Willy Brandt, a social-democrat, admitting in a landmark-speech that these left-wing protesters had a point. In the following years he step by step defused the situation, by making political reforms that made Germany more liberal, thus showing to the radical left that there is a point in non-violent political activism.
The US must NOT EVER forget what Trump and his supporters have done.
The US must NOT EVER move on.
The US must NOT EVER in any way think that this was normal.
You don't heal a country by forgetting. You heal a country by facing the problem and talking about it every single day.
If you pretend that this crisis, this hatred, ended with Trump leaving office, if you decide to forget, then this hatred will fester and be reborn in a few decades.
Maybe it will return as right-wing violence. Maybe it will return as left-wing violence.
Please mark my words: If US-society decides to forgive and forget, if it decides to move on and to go back to business as usual, if it doesn't deal thoroughly with this hatred, with this divide and its perpetrators, then there will be dark consequences down the road.
https://democraticunderground.com/100214846050
