Weimar America: The Threat Is on the Left

Max Pechstein Poster for periodical An die Laterne (To the Lamp Post) 1919 – Pechstein, one of the most politically engaged artists of the early postwar period, made this poster to advertise the short-lived journal An die Laterne (To the lamp post), which promoted the incumbent Social Democratic Party. Its image of clenched-fisted, flag-carrying protestors—probably communists—marching past a man hanged from a lamppost was a warning against the mob violence and anarchy that threatened to destabilize the fledgling Weimar Republic.

The same angst and disgruntlement that brought the Nazis to power can be seen in today’s woke leftist youth.

For years now we’ve heard that even moderately conservative Republicans are “far right” and deserving of the “Nazi” label. And Republican presidential candidates routinely are tagged with the “Hitler” label. The only time the label is removed is when the left finds it useful to contrast “good” Republicans with bad. So, for example, the onetime Hitler aspirant George W. Bush became “statesmanlike,” sort of, when it became useful to contrast him with the new boogeyman, Donald Trump.

A more subtle form of this labeling comes in the form of comparing our current situation to that of the Weimar Republic — Germany’s first attempt to create a constitutional democratic republic similar to our own, instituted after World War I in 1919. Despite high hopes, the new republic was troubled throughout its short life, riven by radicalism on both the left and the right, catastrophically failing in the end, and giving way in 1933 to Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship.