Germany | Leslye Joy Allen

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

This is not a full book review. I don’t have the strength to do that right now. Yet, when you are a historian there are certain books that stay with you because they are so provocative. One of them is “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” by Christopher R. Browning.

People often forget that the Holocaust in Nazi Germany didn’t just extinguish millions of Jews, but it also exterminated Afro-Germans, Gypsies, LGBTQIA, and people with disabilities. Anything or anyone that was viewed as defective was subject to be put to death. But that’s not exactly what I want to write about here.

The title of this book says it all. This battalion was charged with the duty of marching groups of Jews out to a ditch, having them lay in that ditch; then the battalion would shoot them to death.

The first time they carried out this heinous order, most of the men balked at having to carry out such an awful task. Several men vomited at the sight of the murders; others ran and went AWOL. Yet, most of the men stayed behind and followed their orders.

By the time I got to the end of this book, I was mortified. That same battalion that initially balked at killing Jews that were laid in a ditch now carried out the orders with precision and without blinking. They became professional killers doing a job, not men who once had some empathy, sympathy, and consciences.

We prefer to believe that most people cannot be manipulated and threatened in order to convert them into monsters under the appropriate circumstances. “Ordinary Men“ showed me that it was relatively easy to find and nurture the dark side of human beings.

Those of us who are fighting as hard as we can against the excesses and abuse of Felon 47 need to remember one thing—Felon 47 and the Muskrat are only TWO men. They cannot do what they are doing without willing accomplices.

Stay the course my Fellow Resisters. But watch the people around you and watch your back; and NEVER normalize or explain away bad behavior even when it’s yours.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

In this current political climate in the United States, there is something that every member of the Left/Resistance needs to remember: People that only respect violence and who cheer violence will typically have to be dealt with violently. They don’t respond to reason or kindness or common sense. You will not write them away or blog them away. Calling them names won’t work either.

You’re going to have to accept that they are monsters. You don’t reason with monsters anymore than you reason with poisonous snakes. This is what you need to remember about MAGA supporters and those nuts that stormed the capital on January 6, 2021.

I am not going to teach a full history lesson in this blog. Yet, it would help you to review the French Revolution (1789-1799) where crops failed and the economy tanked while the nobility and the clergy paid almost no taxes as commoners bore the brunt of taxation and starvation while Louis XVI kept spending on himself.

You also would do well to study France’s Maquis (“the underbrush”) which was its underground guerilla movement that fought against the Nazis during World War II. In some instances they were successful; in others they were not. Yet, you better recognize that American insularity and that feeling we tend to embrace that says, “We will be okay as long as we protest and go through the courts,” will not necessarily save us.

In the next four years we may have no other choice but to get our hands dirty. Even worse, our obsession with the internet, and the attention we receive from it, may eventually work against us. Some strategies do not need publicity. We need more face-to-face private conversations whenever possible.

So, here’s a few good articles about the Maquis, including its African and Afro-Muslim participants, and the current research historians are still working on.

Overview of the French Resistance

France to Rename Streets after African WW2 Heroes

In the Footsteps of African Resistance Fighters

Leslye Joy Allen

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