The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. It will have to take the field against the vices of hubris, power-worship, envy, and humbug, as the roots of all evil. It must not underestimate the importance of human example (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus); it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives the word emphasis and power.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Macmillan Publishing, p. 381.
In this relative lull before the second Trump Presidency begins, an important movie, Bonhoeffer, has just been released. It is the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leading Lutheran minister in Germany in the 30’s and 40’s who was killed by the Nazis two weeks before the war’s end. He was part of an underground resistance movement from 1935 on, including unsuccessful organized efforts to assassinate Hitler, which is why he was eventually arrested in 1943.
This is a movie that should be seen by as many US Americans as possible. Those who have done so since it was released five days ago have liked it, garnering a 4.5 out of 5 rating by those who saw it according to a Google survey. That is good news.
I’ve known about Bonhoeffer for a long time. When I was in prison for 11 months during the Vietnam War for my draft resistance activism, the most important book which I had inside was his Letters and Papers from Prison. His life example helped a great deal in making my prison time, as difficult as it was on a daily basis, into something of real value, an important learning and deepening experience.
The movie is very sobering. As it portrayed the steadily mounting, brutal realities of Naziism in Germany in the 30’s and 40’s I increasingly found myself thinking that it is hard to see how anything close to what happened there could happen here, now, in the USA. I thought of how, prior to the Nazis winning power electorally in 1933, the political Left in Germany was seriously divided, with the Communists attacking the Socialists, portraying them as more of an enemy than the Nazis, so that when the Nazis won it was much easier for them to proceed with their anti-Semitic, anti-communist and regressive, violent program. There was no unified Left opposition; just the opposite.
That is not our situation right now in the USA. The overall progressive movement was overwhelmingly on board with the organized efforts to defeat Trump and MAGA. We understood that the only way that could happen as far as the Presidency was through the Democrat, Kamala Harris, getting more electoral votes than Trump. In many different ways, primarily on a grassroots level via door knocking and phone calling and postcard sending, we played an important role. That work was unquestionably a major reason why both the Senate and House are closely divided, which will make it hard, even under Republican control, for Trump/MAGA to do all the damage that they would be doing otherwise.
The Green Party and Cornell West, on the other hand, two Presidential candidates who campaigned knowing that their efforts could help to get Trump elected, together received no more than about 0.6% of the Presidential vote.
But as I’ve continued to think about the movie, I’ve come to realize that there is a key lesson that we need to learn from what happened in Germany in the 1930’s. That lesson is the absolute importance of the progressive movement as a whole prioritizing, when Trump takes office, more than any other issue, resistance to mass deportation of overwhelmingly people of color immigrants.
The Bonhoeffer movie shows how the first, major, mass repressive campaign by the Nazis was against Jewish people. One scene portrays Bonhoeffer watching as people wearing “Jewish badges,” the star of David, were forcibly put into trucks going, we now know, to the concentration camps which later became genocidal, murderous death camps for millions of Jews, as well for socialists, trade unionists, gay men, disabled people, Blacks, Poles and others.
What was the biggest issue of the Trump campaign? Immigration. Repeatedly he spoke in racist and violent ways about immigrants, using words like “vermin” and “criminals” to describe these struggling human beings trying to find a better life for themselves and their families. Much of the immigrant surge in recent years is because of the more frequent and destructive droughts, storms and floods happening because of the disruption of the world’s climate due to the continued burning of coal, oil and gas. Emigration is also happening because of the reality of repressive governments south of the border supported by successive US governments for decades on behalf of corporate interests.
If the MAGA’s are able to carry out their outrageous plans at the scale they are clearly hoping to, who will be next? Will the concentration camps set up for immigrants then become filled with others of us who refuse to kiss Trump’s ring?
Are there reasons to think we can mount a successful resistance to this planned mass deportation assault? Yes, there are. The Congressional reality is one of them. The continuing unified strength of the progressive movement is another huge one. The courts are still a place where some victories can be won. One helpful analysis articulating more specifics can be found in this article recently published by long-time revolutionary Carl Davidson.
As Bonhoeffer wrote, “we must not underestimate the importance of human example; it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives the word emphasis and power.” Like Bonhoeffer and so many others down through history, we must continue and step up our game to meet the new reality.