Through the Looking Glass
Dear Friends,
I didn't have time to write you one coherent post, and so I am writing you three posts instead. The First:
They're Arresting Judges; Here's How Hitler Did It
Here's the news of the day, should you be hiding from it: A Milwaukee judge was arrested by the FBI after allegedly helping an undocumented man to avoid arrest.
Kevin Breuninger
People on bsky made posts saying things like:
so I decided to figure out exactly what stage of fascism that is – and I return with more context than I wanted on how to position this in the broader sweep of history. The short version is, this is actually worse than what is recorded in the Holocaust Dictionary.
In their article on the first of the "Letters to All Judges," the US Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the appointment of a "vehement" Nazi as the Reich Minister of Justice in 1942 – quite a ways into the war, in other words. The Minister then sent a series of letters to the judiciary, telling them how to rule, and publicly pressuring them with removal if they refused. However, according to an institution dedicated entirely to the study of this period of history,
...no judge was ever removed from office for the explicit reason of having failed to do so.
In other words, we are now arguably at a state of fascism that does not have precedent in Nazi Germany.
Of course this suggests (but doesn't say) that judges were removed for other reasons, but Kash Patel was quite public about his reasons: You got in our way. The charge is "obstruction." Patel's own post was quickly taken down without explanation, but the Holocaust Dictionary was able to explain that too:
The letters were classified as state secrets because the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or “SD”) of the SS was convinced that the public would protest the intensification of state control over the judicial system. In a report on May 30, 1943, the SD declared, “The people want an independent judge. The administration of justice and the state would lose all legitimacy if the people believed judges had to decide in a particular way.”
Of course, the reason to look into these things is not to despair over them, but to turn around and use them. We want the administration to lose all legitimacy – and this is a way that they themselves admit could make it happen. The message writes itself:
As we go through the looking glass, into both the nightmare and the outright surreality of the present day, I am reminded of White Noise by Don DeLillo, in which a professor of Hitler Studies shares a lecture stage with an aspiring professor of Elvis Studies, and they trade comparisons. I feel like I am these professors now, doing a public presentation on Hitler and Trump, and growing more dismayed by the day over how easy the comparisons are.
On to the Second Post.
I Still Welcome Your Thoughts
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on The Plan rebrand, and I'd love to hear from more of you! The survey link is here. To repeat the premise, for convenience:
I am talking to a production company about professionalizing the newsletter, and they are recommending I rebrand. But how? I have a few ideas, but as the actual readers, I would benefit immeasurably from your thoughts. Please don't hesitate to suggest something entirely different.
The goal is to attempt something spectacularly ambitious, with the largest audience possible. I want catchy (No Kings), over erudite (Sic Semper Tyrannis) – self-explanatory, descriptive, and even imperative, over passive and un-Googlable (like The Plan!). Positive (Strategy for a Better World) over negative (Things Are Bad) or revanchist (The Recovery Process). But above all, I want it to convey a simple message: There are extraordinarily large problems in front of all of us. If you tune in, you will find the strategy, community, and motivation, to solve them.
And the Third –
A Changing of the Guard
The reason this is not another Plan post is that I have now heard a very consistent story from readers: the serialization of something meant to be 300 pages is just confusing. My deep narrative tendencies run towards punchlines, reveals, mounting and resolved tension – but it appears, and I trust you, that this is not a format where that makes sense. So for the unspecified future I am choosing to retire the weekly Plan installments, and replace them with another Contemporary post – which is something I have been feeling pressure from History to do, as well.
If you think this is a terrible loss, then let me know that too! And I do intend to revise and regroup. But for now, as I am pushed to reshape this project in several other ways as well, this will be one of the changes I try out.
And if we make it to Sunday, I'll see you Sunday.
If you liked that ...
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