Pensacola, Florida News Journal
By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – Thomas Mann, the prominent German writer born in 1875 and who died in 1955, was a staunch opponent of Hitler’s Nazi fascism. He went into exile in the United States, and a quote is attributed to him, reportedly spoken in Los Angeles on October 3, 1940, during a lecture titled War and Democracy: “If fascism ever comes to the United States, it will come in the name of freedom.”
For those who do a little research, fascism is a form of government first adopted by Benito Mussolini and replicated years later by Adolf Hitler. There was also fascism in Franco’s Spain. All of these regimes shared very similar characteristics, although each had distinctive features shaped by its particular country and historical context.
Generally speaking, it is a regressive and totalitarian, one-party regime characterized by the glorification of a supreme leader who embodies the will of the nation and stands above everything else. It portrays the nation as having a destiny to fulfill but, for some reason, as having failed to reach its potential because of the actions of internal enemies. In Nazi Germany, those enemies were the Jews; in Franco’s Spain, the communists.
This far-right ideology was defeated by history, both militarily and culturally. And that is why Thomas Mann’s words resonate so strongly today, especially here where I am, in the United States, where, in the name of freedom and under the slogan “America First,” politics has veered toward a point of no return. Here, immigrants have become the internal enemy, and all the foundations of liberal democracy are being called into question.
A figure like Donald Trump has no precedent in the history of this country, and certainly not because he is a great democratic leader, but quite the opposite.
And, as in every era, there is never a shortage of ignorant people willing to play the role of useful idiots, masking their hypocrisy, malice, and social resentment behind a fascist ideology disguised as a struggle for freedom and against communism.
They are the same people who advocate banning communist ideas from society and even teaching about the atrocities of that radical far-left ideology in the education system.
But I ask myself: Why not also ban fascism and the MAGA movement in the United States?
Read more from the diary of Pedro Pablo Morejon here on Havana Times.
