Déjà vu all over again?
By: Sharon R. Kahn, Ph.D, NYCPsych
His administrative staff’s life span is more fleeting than that of the sheep-liver fluke. He is a genial anti-Semite with Jewish confidantes, an habitual liar, obsessed with border security, who orders mass deportations which denies the humanity of the refugees. No, this essay speaks not of Donald Trump but of Otto von Bismarck, the two-decade long chancellor of Germany, whose party forty years after his death placed Adolf Hitler into his former position. Bismarck’s alliances and treaties were the direct cause of World War I. Fifty years after Bismarck’s death, Germany was divided and conquered. It is déjà vu all over again for those of us who remember our modern European history. Bismarck presided over the consolidation of land and power in Germany. He created a land wall between Germany and France through the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. He also made France pay indemnities and tariffs to Germany. Substitute Mexico for France, and Trump aims to do similar; except so far he cannot make Mexico pay for the wall. Yet.
Of course, von Bismarck and Trump are not peas from the same pod. Von Bismarck read and studied the Constitution of the United States of America, and used that as the basis for the constitution of Germany. Von Bismarck offered all German workers retirement pensions and universal health insurance.
Von Bismarck was obsessed with border security. Maintaining Germany as a Protestant land was one of his ruling passions. In his time, Germany shared borders with France, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Russia, and Poland. Throughout his terms, he annexed border territories to use as de-facto walls against foreign influences. This was the onset of the Kulturkampf, where Jesuits were expelled from Germany. Catholics were not Germans.
If annexation was not an option, he authorized the military to patrol the border. Over 700 Jewish refugees left Russia daily attempting to find sanctuary in Germany. Jews were not Germans. Furthermore, in one of the earliest known instances of ethnic cleansing, the military deported Poles and Jews back to Poland at bayonet point, though many not only had lived in Germany for decades, but served in its armed forces. Within a few years, over 30,000 “non-Germans” had been deported and the borders closed.
Ethnic cleansing did not occur all at once, but in a gradual seepage of daily disinformation and religious bigotry. The trickle of disinformation started by implanting the notion that the pope and his bishops dominate Germany’s Catholic population. Thus, the first step is to abolish the Catholic Department of the Prussian Ministry of Culture. Germany was a Protestant nation. Germans did not take their marching orders from the Pope. Catholics were termed “enemies.” Truthfulness was not terribly valued and Bismarck planted fake news stories regularly. And Jesuits were thence expelled from Germany. Once there were few left to protest, he enacted anti-Catholic laws. Finally, he outlawed socialist movements and empowered the police to stop, search, and arrest socialists. Socialists were terrorists. Next expelled were Jews and Poles. Historians regard this now as an early example of systemic ethnic cleansing. The churches did not protest and preached sermons against the Jews and their influence.
Expulsion is itself a euphemistic term for what must have been a forced march, where Poles and Jews were herded like cattle at gunpoint toward the east. The border of Prussia was closed to all migrants of Polish ethnicity. Ethnic cleansing was widely decried and condemned throughout Europe. And amidst a good deal of toothless shouting from other European powers, no further sanctions were placed on Germany.
Like von Bismarck, religion plays a major role in Trump’s own calls for ethnic cleansing. The majority of those impacted by his deportation calls are either Catholic or Muslim immigrants. They too work in sweatshops or agri-business here.
Like von Bismarck, Trump obsesses over border security. Unlike Bismarck, who seized territories, Trump calls for a physical wall as a deterrent to those seeking sanctuary from violence, war, and poverty. Has Trump not heard of airplanes? Has Trump not heard of tunnels? The best border security is that where nations govern by the rule of law, extending equal protection to all citizens. A better Trump doctrine would seek to stabilize strife-riddled countries and craft the millennial version of the Marshall Plan, helping countries long-riddled with ultra-violence transition to peace.