"Since Donald Trump's rise to political power in this country, the famous poem cautioning that the horrors of autocracy would extend to the entire nation of Germany, Pastor Martin Niemöller's "First They Came," has gotten quite a bit of mileage in the United States. While meant to be a warning that brutality, cruelty, and lawlessness extended toward some would not end with those first targeted,"
"The first problem with the Niemöller poem is that it only ever works in shaking those who read to the end: You're meant to understand what it all means the very instant you get to "They came for the Communists." But, of course, in the United States they've been coming for the Communists (or whatever got labeled "communist") for many decades."
A long-invoked cautionary example about how targeted repression spreads has been central to debates since Donald Trump's rise. The warning loses force when people only grasp it after their own group is targeted, since labeling and longstanding campaigns have already singled out many groups in America. The warning also wrongly implies long separations between waves of repression, whereas the recent rapid targeting of a comedian, a former FBI director, Haitian refugees, immigrants, alleged domestic terrorists, and public figures shows simultaneous or closely clustered attacks. The quick convergence of targets exposes how repression can be immediate, politically motivated, and broadly applied.
Read at Slate Magazine
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