Visiting Nuremberg on my trip through Germany, I was invited to walk the site of the Nazi Party rallies – learning about the size, madness and logic behind an area featuring several huge buildings either unfinished or now crumbling , a parade street and the Zeppelin field for deployment of hundred-thousand of people to listen and worship the “Führer”.
Listening to our guide, I once again realised how mass events can be tools of dictators and fascist leaders to melt the individual into a mass, triggering unison reactions whilst the individual stops thinking.
It reminded me the spectacle of the Chinese Communist Party in Peking we just witnessed, celebrating 100 years of Communist dictatorship in a mass spectacle, carefully choreographed. Add the parades in North Korea or Russia, but I guess one cannot forget the trial runs of Donald Trump and his events in this regard: people forged into a mass forgetting reason, proper thinking, and they act as one body in the direction those in charge wanted them to go.
Nuremberg has once again reminded me of the perverted ways of designing a world according to a leader or party’s vision; it has reminded me again how important it is to resist even traces of phasing and manipulating and equalizing the thought mechanisms of the majority.
In this context I think about Hong Kong and Crimea, but I also reflect on Hungary and Poland; it comes to mind also the greatest nation on earth, as the citizen of the USA call themselves. The Republican Party in the USA shows how fast a usual democracy supporting party can drift into almost fascistic and manipulative shallow waters, following one dominant person while punishing anybody daring to disagree.
As supporters of democracy, we have to be on guard and as human rights activists we have to resist attempts to curtail or diminish human rights and human freedom. Democracy and freedom are no fast selling item, but values to be fought for every day. And they are values we should be grateful for every day.
Filed under: Politics and Society, Reflection, Society and living environment, 3.Reich, china, democracy, Donald Trump, freedom, human rights, Nazi, Nazi Party Rallies Site, North Korea, Nuremberg, Russia
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