With a looming national election that threatens to be one of the most consequential in U.S. history, your intensely (and intentionally) locally focused hometown paper is pleased to announce its own minor October surprise.
We’re opening the doors to an autumn Election Town Hall with noted travel guru and outspoken world citizen Rick Steves. The subject matter won’t be his usual Euro travel, but Euro history: specifically, fascism.
The evening program, Oct. 17 at the Sehome High School Theater, will center on Steves’ TV special, “Fascism in Europe.” Powered by his own deep immersion into Europe’s many standing reminders of the era, the documentary-style production is an hour-long overview of fascism, from roots to resistance, that launched World War II, spawning the Holocaust and carving an indelible scar on human civilization.
For even casual students of world history, the tale, well-told by Steves at European locations where it played out, is not new. But “casual students” as we’ve long defined them are not Steves’ target audience for this material.
Most Americans today, sadly, don’t really qualify, and those who do increasingly lack personal links to the era.
Steves was inspired to step outside his normal lane, he said, by the stark realization that the last living survivors of fascism’s dark era have nearly all left the stage.
“The people who lived through Europe’s fascist nightmare — the destruction of Europe, the Holocaust, and the ultimate, heroic Allied victory — are like flickering candles keeping the memory of those dark times alive,” Steves wrote of his motivation.
On visits to Normandy and concentration camps in Poland, “it occurred to me that the last of those candles are flickering out,” Steves said. “And for those who respect the value of learning from history, the passing of the last people with a firsthand, living memory of Hitler and the Holocaust puts us at a kind of crossroads. Future generations have a responsibility to keep those lessons alive.”
The show does so concisely and effectively.
An obvious pachyderm in the room
But we’re obviously not bringing Steves to town amid the hubbub of the national election simply for historical enlightenment. The elephant in the room won’t be here, but wears a red hat and baggy blue suit.
Steves has made a career of pushing travel as a key to making global human connections that tend to celebrate, rather than inflame, differences. It’s no accident that he was motivated to produce his fascism overview in 2018, amid the Trump Administration.
In November, Americans face the very real possibility that a demonstrably authoritarian-sympathetic former president could return to power in America. And with him could come a cadre of operatives with stated objectives that may not mirror, but certainly rhyme with, the distinctive characteristics of the iron grip of fascism that laid waste to Europe and killed millions.
Steves pointedly reminds the public that fascist leaders in Germany and Italy came to power through largely democratic means. And that those doors were swung open by disaffection, hate, desperation and a lust for punishment of “others” cast as scapegoats.
We all know where that led.
As historians note, vast differences exist between modern America and post-WWI Europe. And the actors then were better than the actor now. Trump, a bumbling ranter, is no Benito Mussolini on stage, and can only dream of holding a nation spellbound the way Hitler did before 200,000 entranced admirers in the Nazi rallies at Nuremburg in 1934.
But as Steves notes, many of the passions driving divisive, far-right political sympathies in the U.S. today are hauntingly and unmistakenly similar. And history shows, unfortunately, that hate, if not snuffed in infancy, often finds a way.
Modern lessons from the past
Steves’ aim is to “show how, even today, would-be autocrats follow the same playbook in their attempts to derail hapless democracies. His fascism production is “a case study in how fear and angry nationalism can be channeled into evil, and how our freedoms and democracies are not indestructible … in fact, they are fragile.”
The telltale signs of slippage in that dark direction, he notes, are seen around us today: Book burning and attacks on academic freedom. The stifling and demonizing of a free press. Vilification and dehumanization of anyone who might be defined as “other.” Rank nationalism, fueled by longing for a supposedly golden past.
A common theme in authoritarian playbooks: neutralizing the power of an electorate, by whatever means is necessary, bluntly or drip-by-drip.
We’ll explore all those topics in our two-hour program, which will include a showing of the film, a roundtable discussion about lessons of history in context with current national and local politics, and questions from audience members. Tickets, $25 plus a ticket fee and tax, are available here.
The event is the first in what we will endeavor to make a series of CDN Town Halls as we expand our community role to become a facilitator, not just informer. We look forward to seeing you there.
Citizens Agenda: Results are in!
In keeping with that theme, we’re excited to note that this year’s Citizens Agenda process has continued to draw broad community involvement, with a record number of votes on questions readers deemed important for us to ask of candidates for public office. As indicated here last week, the chosen questions are a mix of pressing national and local concerns. See the list of selected questions here.
And don’t forget to follow CDN’s election coverage, free to the public, in our print pages, on our website and social media channels. We are proud to lead the way in news, analysis and opinion about local elections.
Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.
