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So, You Want to Talk Hitler?
I’ve just watched the movie Bonhoeffer, slated for release this November. Filmed in Ireland and Belgium, it enjoys and features a great pedigree. It was written, produced, and directed by Todd Komarnicki — the screenwriter for Sully and producer on Elf. He was recruited by co-producers Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris, who had been inspired to undertake this project by Eric Metaxas’s book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy. The married couple are also the publishers of the estimable online resources Kairos Journal and BibleMesh.
Viewing the film, I was struck afresh by how lame and asinine the Democrats’ comparisons of Trump to Hitler are. These partisans struggle to identify alarming overlaps with the Führer’s activities, so let me have a go at it — and, I think, with less struggle.
Dems Emulate Hitler More Than Trump
The Democrats are the ones who are: advocating for the snuffing out of “deplorables,” in the womb instead of Auschwitz; empaneling kangaroo courts, hosted by laughably biased prosecutors and judges; and supporting the medical mutilation of children under the guise of “gender-affirming” surgeries, which would have qualified for attention in the Nuremberg medical trials.
They cast religious traditionalists as dangerous “extremists” and demean and persecute those not on board with their unbiblical agendas. They generate, nourish, and even enforce lies advanced by their collusive media — similar to Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda work for the Nazis — and celebrate The Triumph of the Woke through their various electronic and print outlets.
They have co-opted companies for toxic purposes — back then it was bad actor brands such as Bayer, Agfa, and Telefunken, now we have Budweiser, Target, and Disney working to normalize transsexuality, as well as “Zuck Bucks” to “save democracy.
They twist language to addle the populace — “Lebensraum” and “Aryan” in the 1930s, “pro-choice” and “equity” today. And, they excuse the vastly destructive Black Lives Matter rioters as members of an admirable “social justice” movement — similar to the Kristallnacht pogroms where purported grievances excused the violence. Indeed, the lords of the cancel culture — over pronoun “discourtesies” or through wielding the universal slandering solvent of “racist” — should go easy on bringing up the Darth Vader of cultural cancellation, Adolph Hitler. (READ MORE: Democrats Conjure the Resurrection of Hitler (Again))
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough helped set this table by saying, “This is not a reach, I can go back and talk about Nazi Germany, and I do it without any concerns whatsoever. And if people can’t start drawing the parallels, well, you’re just stupid or you have your head in the sand, or you’re one of them.” So perhaps you’ll indulge me some further work along these lines. (RELATED: Fascism Is a Progressive Tendency — Not a Trump One)
I think of the four day Nuremberg rallies, including Albert Speer’s “Cathedral of Light,” which employed a line of 252 anti-aircraft searchlights pointed straight up — a display that tracks with the illumination of the Obama White House with the gay flag colors to celebrate the Supreme Court Obergefell decision in 2015.
During the Nuremberg event, 500 trains brought the politically promising and faithful to the stadium — similar to the CBP One mobile app, which enabled hundreds of thousands of non-vetted Latin Americans to fly directly to U.S. cities and gain entry with “advance travel authorizations.” The planned memorial, sacrificial altar that the Nazis were building on the convention site was being modeled on the ancient sacrificial altar at Pergamum — which brings to mind the sacramental status that the millions of slaughtered unborn children enjoy within the Democrat voting bloc.
The display of the Blutfahne during the rally, a flag bloodied in the 1923 Nazi coup and was meant to stir pride and righteous indignation over the heroism of martyrs, is similar to the Democrats exploitation of the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. As sad as his death was, Sicknick was not, as reported, murdered on January 6 — whether by a heaved fire extinguisher or assault with bear spray. As the coroner later declared, he died of natural causes, an arterial blood clot at the brain stem, causing two strokes.
Never mind that. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that he would lie in honor in the Rotunda. The point being to press the politically-exhilarating martyrdom narrative at the expense of the “deplorable” MAGA movement.
Whoa! I find myself giddy with analogies, and I thank Morning Joe, Kamala, et al. for the invitation to play this game.
Bonhoeffer Fights Hitler
Let’s go back to the film. It follows Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his halcyon days as a child into adulthood and the darkness of the Third Reich, where the Reich Church sought to supplant the German Evangelical Church and extended the Ten Commandments to include precepts on “the purity of blood” and respect for the Führer.
In this context, Bonhoeffer ascends to the pulpit before a congregation that includes visiting hostiles as well as befuddled or craven parishioners. He begins his message by saying, “Woe to you hypocrites, you whitewashed tombs. Outwardly beautiful, inwardly full of dead man’s bones. You serpents, you vipers, how can you escape damnation? These violent words are not my own. They come from the mouth of our Lord.” And he concludes, “The German church must stand on God’s Word alone. Not on man’s word. And, especially, not on a Führer’s word.”
In building to this sermon (and beyond), we find Bonhoeffer in New York City, where he discovers Union Theological Seminary to be spiritually deadening, but worship at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church spiritually invigorating. A black classmate at Union introduces him to the baleful reign of “Jim Crow” laws and the delights of jazz music — to which Dietrich is able to adapt his piano artistry. Freshly fired up, he returns to Germany where lines are being drawn and persecution rising, toward the Jews in particular.
He feigns loyalty to the Nazis, but enlists in the resistance and seeks help in England and America and joins in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He also launders money to bribe safe passage for a truckload of Jews into Switzerland and teaches at a small seminary for “outlaws” — members of the Confessing Church raised to maintain biblical fidelity.
And in this, he collaborates with another famous anti-Hitler pastor, Martin Niemöller. The Nazis finally get their fill of and evidence against Bonhoeffer and they condemn him to death — hanging him two days before the liberation of Europe. And thus, he becomes a martyr we honor today.
There are a multitude of emotionally affecting scenes, viewers can choose their favorites. As for me, I was particularly moved by the communion Bonhoeffer served to his fellow prisoners the night before his death. He included a repentant German guard in the circle — one who offered to help him escape — consonant with Isaiah 1:18: “[T]hough your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
I also loved the scene where he played for German seminarians Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, a song he’d learned in New York, for men who didn’t know Harlem from Hamburg.
Though I find the Democrats’ Hitler gambit disgraceful, I realize that things could go awry in a Trump presidency. So, as hopeful as I am for a great outcome, I’m pleased to fall back on a declaration found on our currency, “In God We Trust.” Whatever comes, God’s still on his throne. And this message comes through loud and clear in Bonhoeffer — only the Lord is worthy of unqualified worship.
Those who have worked assiduously to neutralize Trump, portraying him as a Hitler of sorts, may see themselves as modern Bonhoeffers. But they show themselves to be desperate, delusional, and even dangerous huff-and-puffers, not worth a hearing. Shame on them.
READ MORE:
Fascism Is a Progressive Tendency — Not a Trump One
If Trump Is Such a Nazi, Why Do 80 Percent of Orthodox Jews Support Him?
Whoever Yells ‘Fascist’ First Loses
Democrats Conjure the Resurrection of Hitler (Again)
The post So, You Want to Talk Hitler? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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