Liberals, Horror

So the other day I was researching some statements made by high-ranking Nazis before World War II. (Why? Long story. I am using the quotes in a play, believe it or not.)

Anyway, a couple of such remarks I ran across were particularly intriguing. In one, for instance, a statement from a speech made in the early '30s, a Party spokesman triumphantly noted that a certain other party had recently been forced out of politics entirely. National Socialism had, he noted, swept the scum's "black, red, and gold banners" out of the nation.

Who was this? Who was it that the Nazis hated so much? Whose banners were black, red and gold? Not the people you might think. He didn't mean Communists, he didn't mean some rival fascism…he didn't even mean Zionists or politically active Jews.

He meant liberals.

The Nazi's reference was to something known as the "Iron Front." Despite the rather ominous name, the Front was a union of center and mildly left of center organizations more or less allied with the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Some, like the SDP, were mild socialists. Others were surprisingly conservative. All, however, valued civil liberties, the democratic process, and (for lack of a better term) basic decency in politics. Their common flag was a Red, Gold, and Black tricolor—the traditional colors of German liberalism—and their common image was three arrows or spears in a row, one arrow in opposition to each threat to German democracy: the Nazis, the Communists, and the Traditional Right.

And the Front was the group the Nazis detested. Its leaders were arrested and sent to concentration camps even before the Communists. Even before the Jews.

And it makes sense. The Front, not the Communists, not the Stalinists, was the true antithesis of the Nazis. The Stalinists they might hate, the Communists they might try to destroy, but ultimately Radical Right and Revolutionary Left understood the other. Each admired the other. Each regarded the other as a fertile recruiting ground. (As one Nazi famously said, a good Communist could always become a good Nazi. But a Liberal? A Socialist? A Democrat? Never. That was impossible.)

And I think the Front is important to us. Not just because of its role in history, but because of what it tells us about how fanatics regard reasonable men and women. For them, compromise, negotiation, moderation, the golden mean…these things are not just distasteful. They are the Wholly Other. As terrifying as the Kraken. As alien as life from Mars.

And it explains too, I think, why the Right hates us so thoroughly today, here in America. Why it is that the Tea Party insists President Obama is a Moslem and traitor, in spite of every evidence to the contrary. Why it is that the GOP proclaims us Leninists in spite of all we do or say. Why certain churches announce that we are in league with Satan.

You see, we are terrifying to them. We are terrifying beyond measure. We are terrifying because we attempt to be otherwise. Because we attempt not to frighten.

For them, for whom only the bully and the thug are comprehendible, we are thus inexplicable, and therefore horrible.