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Then let me turn the question back to you - what historical precedent is there for a major power having a disputed election amidst war and economic inequity, wh

Then let me turn the question back to you - what historical precedent is there for a major power having a disputed election amidst war and economic inequity, where they turned things around and maintained a free and open society? We're asking the same question - what can the US do differently from Germany in the 30s? Edit: or to reframe the question, what could the German public have done differently in the '20 and '30s?

gavanwoolery 9y ago
Good question :) I am not sure if it could have been easily avoided, unless the Nazi party was met with strong resistance from the start. When a party assumes total power, it has inertia that is hard to overturn. A lot of people are using the word authoritarian, but we are still far from a true authoritarian regime (that said, the fact that we are given two dubious candidates every four years makes me wonder how free we really are). I think the counter-counter-question is "will history repeat itself indefinitely?" We still have genocide today (i.e. the Yazidis by ISIL), but the last genocide to occur in a country with remotely Western values was 70 years ago (not that Western values imply moral purity). Like the dropping of the nuclear bomb, the Holocaust was so powerful that most people (even on the extreme right) seem keen not to repeat it.