Najib Anwar
Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and the court system.
—Donald Trump, tweet, February 5
Any history student is aware of the term “Reichstag Fire”, which helped the Nazis to grab power in Germany.
The term is referred to an arson attack on the Reichstag, the German parliament, in Berlin on 27 February, 1933 done by Martinus van der Lubbe, a 24-year-old unemployed Dutch anarchist, under the cover of darkness of the night. He carried with him the matches and firelighters he had bought earlier that morning with the last of his funds. He entered the main chamber and set the drapes on fire. Looking at the orange flames from his balcony, Adolf Hitler told Rudolf Diels, the first chief of the Gestapo: “There will be no more mercy now. Anyone who stands in our way will be butchered. The German people won’t have any understanding for leniency.”
We are using “Reichstag Fire” as a metaphor to describe how the newly elected President of the United States Donald Trump is blaming an amorphous internal enemy, to be coupled with an external enemy and is swiftly moving towards grabbing the state apparatus by criminalising and crushing public dissent.
But can this metaphor be applied in the present situation in the United States? Could a “Reichstag Fire” like happen?
The odds are that it would not. Not likely inspite of the megalomaniacal rhetoric of the new President. Unlike Hitler, Trump holds no ideology, so to say. He has no Weltanschauung, as Hitler had; his highest priority appears to be himself.
The America of 2017 is not the Germany of 1933. The media environment of today is vastly different with 24-hour cable news, the internet, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp etc. It is much more intrusive than in the era of Hitler. The Trump administration would have no chance of getting away with a deliberate terrorist attack as a pretext for a coup d’état and also we should not forget that Trump is dramatically less popular than Hitler was in 1933 and there is significantly more pushback from the population to the things he is trying to do.
But at first the Nazis were underestimated as low-class clowns and thugs until it was too late. Given this fact this “Reichstag Fire” incident is increasingly a dangerous possibility. From the historic Women’s March in Washington to the widespread protest rallies throughout America on Muslim ban, Trump and his cohorts know it too well his loss of the presidential popular vote by about three million nationwide is now growing into widespread public discontent. Not only that, the judiciary is also resisting tooth and nail against the executive order of the President.
They got a “Reichstag Fire” moment as soon as the executive order to ban Muslims from seven countries for 90 days to enter the United States was introduced. The moment to justify these draconian measures and push for even more came from Quebec, Canada. A gunman had attacked a Muslim centre there. Trump’s most trusted network, Fox News who regularly spews fake news came up with another one. Instantly, it reported that the perpetrator is a Moroccan Muslim.
But, as usual, it was a sham news from Fox network. The suspect of the murder was a white national named Alexandre Bissonnette, notoriously known as an Islamophobe. He was not a Muslim, on the contrary, Muslims were his targets. But that did not prevent Fox News from jumping to the conclusion that the act of terror was perpetrated by a Moroccan Muslim and, on the basis of this false news, the White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer instantly jumped up to declare that Trump’s Muslim ban is totally vindicated. What a farce!
But this farce continued. It came from the notorious Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s top chatterbox consigliore. In an interview soon after the Muslim ban, she referred to two Iraqi refugees as “masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre.” There is no such massacre, but she said it with such confidence that the interviewer did not objected. Two Iraqis were arrested having ties to an explosive device used against US troops in Iraq. But no massacre except in the demented mind of Conway.
Trump and his cohorts are desperate to find a Muslim “Reichstag Fire” and they will use any incident to further demonise Islam in the US and push for a Muslim registry or even worse. The illegal and unconstitutional Muslim ban is only the first salvo. Trump has a longer spectrum in mind. Demonisation and official persecution of Muslims, just as Jews were in Nazi Germany, will progress apace until he manufactures his “Reichstag Fire”
