Deconstructing Hate

Editor’s Note: I don’t want this to be a “react to the news” forum, and it’s not today. But at certain times, events draw attention to trends that are much bigger than a single news story for which a deeper, more comprehensive deconstruction seems appropriate.

Target has found itself aptly named after receiving criticism physical threats in the wake of revelations that they have been selling products to adults who can voluntarily buy them for their children if they see fit. In response to being publicly derided and, again, threatened with physical violence against their employees, Target has made the choice to yield to the pressure.

To deconstruct just their response, I’ll simply remind you that retail outlets exist to sell things in exchange for more money than it cost to produce and market them so they and their collective owners wind up with more money. Making money is The Main Thing for retailers. Offering merchandise to a specialized niche of people, while significant to the effort to normalize their mere existence, is not The Main Thing but rather a means in service to an end (The Main Thing). In short: Target’s aim is making money, not making the world a better place. I don’t care about Target. The Main Thing fluctuates with the prices and the whims of the market.

We’re the market. I’m concerned with our whims. That’s right. I’m deconstructing the whims.

So, let’s have a history lesson. I know a lot of history-buff dads out there love studying World War II. The personalities, the scale of the conflict, the stakes, the technology, the drama . . . it’s all so compelling and massive. Axis and Allies, it’s such great fun.

Speaking of allies, I know a lot of allies to the LGBTQAI+ cause and community tend to point out the similarities between the oppression they face and the oppression brought upon minorities in the years leading up to and through the Holocaust.

It’s crazy, but World War II buffs and Pride-Flag-waving friends do have one really important thing in common: they both recognize fascists as the bad guys in their respective stories. And not just bad guys . . . they are the very worst bad guys in the history of the world. But for some reason the voices of these two often very vocal groups never seem to harmonize.

I think I know why that is. A lot of people study the battles of World War II, and a lot of people study the ideology of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. But not a lot of people seem very interested in studying one of the shortest-lived governments in modern history: the Weimar Republic of Germany, the multi-party democracy that existed in the short and not-too-peaceful interim between the World Wars. Failing to understand this relatively boring period in Germany’s political and cultural history prevents us from understanding a lot about ourselves.

World War I was fought from 1914 to 1919, but the toll it took on all the nations involved (and their people) reached all the way to the dawn of its sequel. And while all the nations involved suffered the fallout, the Treaty of Versailles specifically required Germany to accept the financial responsibility for the war.

Deconstructed point #1: Germany was required to pay reparations to the WWI allies, and they couldn’t afford it

So, everyone in the world was kinda struggling financially, but Germany was really struggling. If you think inflation is bad now (and it certainly has been), at the beginning of WWI, one British pound was equivalent to 20 German marks. By the end of the war, the exchange rate was 1 pound to 250 marks. And it got so much worse. No, I don’t think you understand how bad it got financially in Germany.

As Germany kept printing more marks to try to keep up with inflation, they unwittingly worsened inflation (especially since they had to pay their reparations in gold marks, which retained their value). By 1923, a loaf of bread cost 200 Billion marks. The exchange rate to U.S. currency was $1 = 1 trillion marks. The economy was falling at ludicrous speed.

Deconstructed point #2: Financial panic doesn’t begin to describe the conditions in early 1920s Germany

Germany’s political structure during this time was an attempt at democracy that came to be known as the Weimar Republic. Without getting too deep in the weeds about it, I’ll just say that it’s Exhibit A in the case against having more than two dominant political parties. Now, the premise was actually pretty good. Leaving the previous Kaiser-ruled monarchy behind, Germany adopted a system of proportional representation, where political parties (and they were legion) received governmental seats according to the number of votes they got in the election.

In short, it wasn’t winner-take-all, it was winner-take-most. This resulted in all the different parties having some say in government, but no one party having control of anything. This is a really good system for avoiding wild, rapid swings in governmental control (you know, the way a change in the ruling party in U.S. politics can result in seismic changes in legislation, taxation, the economy, and foreign policy).

The problem for Germany, though, was that they emerged from WWI in dire straits. They needed things to change fast; they needed to be nimble. Instead, they were like a contestant in a three-legged 47-legged race.

Deconstructed point #3: Germany’s democracy was designed to move slowly and moderately

Editor’s Note: I told you this was boring.

The new German democratic plan did allow a couple of exceptions to their burgeoning democratic principles:

1. They grandfathered in a lot of civil and military leaders from the old regime. This was supposed to allow for a sense of stability. (Spoiler alert: it did not work.)

2. They included a clause in their constitution stipulating that in times of emergency (which remained undefined) the chancellor could assume unrivaled authority to help ensure executive decisiveness (Spoiler alert: dear God).

Deconstructed point #4: The need for stability is very important to people

Now, this leads us to one of the most overlooked yet most important points in the leadup to WWII: the era known as The Golden Years of the Weimar Republic (1924-1929). Germany was so far behind in its reparation payments to the Allies that it was beginning to get ugly with France. After years of unsuccessful pleas for leniency, Germany worked out a deal for a loan financed mostly by the U.S. . . . this is important (notice the final Golden Year in the parentheses above).

This led to extreme (but not quite fast enough) improvement economically for Germany. The ranks of unemployed Germans dropped from 2 million in 1924 to 1.3 million by 1928. Hyperinflation had gotten under control, and it looked like increased peace and prosperity were on the horizon.

Then the U.S. stock market crashed. You knew this, of course, but we tend to miss how crucial this was for the well-being of Europe in the years that followed. In economic crisis, America called in its loan to Germany, sending their economy into the same kind of panic that struck the U.S. and the rest of the world. But they were already hurting, and the Great Depression hit Germany especially hard.

Deconstructed point #5: Unregulated corporate financial irresponsibility sent Germany back into an economic tailspin

Now, we move on to the key figure of WWII . . . Adolf Hitler. The Nazi party was lethally racist before he showed up, but they were disorganized and therefore relatively powerless. Hitler’s oratory skills and obsession with power structures made him an obvious fit to lead the party, though even his own party recognized he wanted too much power (he refused to be a part of leadership unless they gave him total control). They eventually buckled to his obsession and gave him the authority he craved.

One of the acts of terrorism waged by the Nazis leading up to the Holocaust was public book burning, but they weren’t just any books. The books chosen for conflagration were seized from The Institute of Sexology, an academic foundation researching and advocating for the rights of gay and trans people. This happened 90 years ago this month, and I seem to recall people on both sides of the political aisle in this country looking unfavorably on that event . . . but things change?

Among the books that were burned was Almansor, by the German poet Heinrich Heine, in which he wrote, “Where they burn books, in the end they will burn humans, too.”

Hitler focused on what he considered to be the key threats to German prosperity: Jews, LGBTQIA+ people, the disabled, the Roma and Sinti communities. (Real quick: scroll back up through the main points of Germany’s post-WWI struggles and see if you can find any of those threats playing any role whatsoever in Germany’s troubles? No? Crazy, right?)

But Hitler’s ability to unify the collective ire of more and more German people brought something they had all been lacking in the land of a thousand political parties and worthless cash: the promise of unity, uniformity, and stability and a return from national disgrace (that had absolutely nothing to do with any of the people he targeted).

Deconstructed point #6: a feeling of unity around a common enemy feels very stabilizing when times are rough

You know what happened next. You know where this led. You know where what we’re going through right now in this country leads. You know the ire directed at minorities right now has absolutely ZERO to do with the economic and social uncertainty shared by so many. You know our worries have nothing to do with people who are different from us and everything to do with those who are more powerful than we are.

The things that make us different are not threats. The threats we face now are the threats they faced then: hate, war, unbridled corporate greed. The things that would have saved Germany and he world from war are the same things that can save us: grace, compassion, love, communication, and understanding. I’ll leave you (and Target) with this: