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Stupid-Reichstag
Once upon a time, in 1933, German Nazis blamed the German Communist Party’s Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifa) group, formed in 1932 in defense against Nazi brownshirts, for a fire that burned down the Reichstag, the German parliament. The Reichstag coalition of Nazis and the German Nationalist People’s Party exploited the fire to accuse their Communist Party rivals of a plot to bring down the government. The baseless accusation led to President Paul von Hindenburg’s approval of the fascists’ “For the Protection of the People and State Act,” allowing them to dissolve political organizations, arrest political opponents without charges and suppress publications. “Even the US independent Fox Movie Tones newsreel reflected the German government version,” according to the United States Holocaust Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopedia. The rest, as they say, is history.
Recently, we had our very own stupid version of the Reichstag fire when a joint session of Congress was attacked by a mob fresh from a so-called “Stop the Steal” rally led by the reluctantly outgoing president Donald Trump in a park called the Ellipse near the White House, as legislators sought to certify the Electoral College vote and begin the peaceful transfer of power to the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on January 6, 2021.
Hours after the riot at the Capitol, Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz read the…