Part Honest Fear, Part snark, Part Just Funny

I have never seen Downfall, but I have from time to time posted pieces of Hitler's rant with satirical subtitles. EB Misfit posted another one of these this week; I left a comment saying I found these very funny, and she recommended I watch the clip with its original subtitles. It was actually more difficult to find than I expected; there are apparently well over a hundred of the spoofs. However, her point is well-taken; the original is not funny. It is terrifying. This man came to control over Germany under conditions that are eerily similar to what we have now: economic disaster, a non-functional political system, paranoia, searches for scapegoats, and a deep fear of the "other".

Could it happen here? I don't know. I'm not enough of a student of history, nor of political science, to hazard a guess. But it is clear that a very large portion of people in this country have utterly forgotten (or more likely, never learned) what fascism is. Forgetting history is the first step toward repeating it. Firedoglake has been running a three-part series on the patterns of nations' slides into fascism, how to resist those patterns and avoid the traps that lead to that state. It's a fair amount of reading, but highly recommended. I learned a lot from these, some of what I learned has been hopeful, some... not so much.

Part I: Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
Part II: The Last Turnoff.
Part III: Resistance for the Long Haul.

As Stewart remarked a while ago, what has this country come to that people could be accusing a gay Jew (Barney Frank) and an African-European halfbreed (Obama) of supporting fascism?

I will also point out that with darker hair and the proper moustache, I think Glenn Beck could pull off a powerfully accurate Hitler.

So with those thoughts, I offer a little comic relief... this is the best (funniest) version I've seen so far: Hitler finds out his subtitles are wrong.

In case you think I take this whole thing too seriously...

see more Political Pictures

...and you may (or may not) recall that I started off the year begging that we quit calling each other fascists, and doing my darndest to show how silly it was to trivialize the concept.

Just saying.