Parallels

It’s another new year, and I am compelled once again to zoom out with a wider lens to worry about our place—our moment in time. The questions keep returning unbidden to my tired old brain: How is our moment different from Europe in 1933? 1934? 1935? And even if but an echo, what are we to do about it? Are we helpless bystanders? Merely consumers of the news of the events around us? Must we only wait for the conflagration to reach our shores? Then what?

I apologize for spilling my darkest worries in our little, local paper in the first issue of 2026, but this seems to be a moment.

I have spent much of my adult life trying to understand the intelligent, sophisticated and educated population of Germany, Italy, Hungary and Austria who watched events unfold around them in the prewar period. How did they allow it to happen? How did they stand by as their neighbours were rounded up, herded onto cattle rail cars, never to be seen again? Not once, but many times?

Where was the collective will and collective determination to push these demons away from the levers of power? To diminish their strength and potency? Before they were unstoppable? What did they do? What should they have done? And when? By 1938, it was already way too late.

Through inaction, indifference, were they, in small part, complicit? What were they supposed to do? What are we supposed to do?

Of course, the events leading up to the Second Great War are vastly different from those in North America in 2026. The continent had been roiled by upheaval, revolutions and territorial ambitions for hundreds (thousands) of years. The Great War and the need to punish the vanquished surely set the stage for the next great war. So it’s true that our histories and paths are not analogous.

Except.

By 1935, the forces that would propel Europe into horror were already formed. The centre of politics had evaporated. There was communism or fascism, scarcely anything between. With state-induced famine spreading across Stalin’s Russia, the allure of Marxist ideals was wearing thin. Perhaps these wierdos and thugs running around with the brown shirts and shouting about national pride were onto something?

In Western Europe, the masses were growing increasingly agitated with governments that seemed feckless, dithering and far away from their lives. Many become disengaged from politics, soured on the notion that government could be a positive force in their lives. They wanted things to work. To stop the pointless and ceaseless bickering. They wanted government to make their lives better. To reduce the cost of living— eggs, fuel and housing. To make the trains run on time.

So, as societies have done for thousands of years, they gravitated toward the strong man. The easy solutions. The easy answers. Someone who promised to break the logjam— and maybe a few heads along the way—of a sclerotic government and civil bureaucracy. It mattered little that the blustering, angry leader was a bit of a buffoon. A loudmouth. A cartoon character.

Besides, if this group didn’t improve their lives—if they didn’t fix things—they would elect the alternative next time. Germany was a democracy after all.

Nevermind that the Fascist project needed someone to blame: the Jews, the Roma, the other. Nevermind that a pattern of indecency toward the other was already formed. One by one, individual atrocities against neighbours were absorbed. Each obscenity inoculated against the next. Incrementally, things fell apart. Humanity fell apart.

Bit by bit, the folks of 1930s Germany unleashed a horrifying menace on the continent. By the time it was done six years later, more than 35 million Europeans had died as a result. More than 45,000 Canadian lives were lost.

I understand my job is to spark a conversation with a few hundred (thousand?) folks in Prince Edward County. I know I’ve strayed a distance from my designated path. But I am drawn back by this gnawing ache that I am supposed to do something. To say something. Be something.

When I watch—over and over again—the un-uniformed agent of the government get out of an unmarked pickup truck in Minneapolis and unload his weapons into a frightened 37-year-old mom of three, I think it is the duty of everyone who puts pen to paper to say it is wrong. To say it is a symptom of a more profound crisis. One that risks unravelling badly.

When government mouthpieces stand at microphones to lie about what everyone can see, we have a duty to push back. To resist the lies. To point to the historical parallels as a caution about what can come next. To remind ourselves of what our species is capable of doing to our neighbours when we look the other way.

Every voice, even one as remote and sheltered as mine, must use it to remind folks that this is what authoritarianism looks like. When truth belongs only to the government—when facts are manufactured inside the walls of those who control power—we are already in a desperate way.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca