"First they came for the immigrants..."

You've seen the signs everywhere. Here's the twist behind Niemuller's "poem." With bonus thoughts on the "illegal orders" spat.

From San Diego, Miami, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. Images culled from Bluesky.

I know you’ve seen these signs. Maybe you saw one or more at a No Kings protest. Maybe you saw some on social media. The people who hold them vary amazingly. Just in the picture above, you can see an apparently well-off white senior citizen in San Diego (a Navy town); a tattooed brown-skinned young person (not sure where); a glistening, tanned young white woman in Miami.

They all call it a “poem.” They all insist that, yes, they have learned something from history. And they refuse to be complicit.

All this would surely astonish Martin Niemuller, the pastor who uttered the original phrases in his penitence lecture tour of Germany after World War II.

Here’s the twist: Niemuller was a fervent nationalist and antisemite who hated the Weimar regime and voted for the Nazi party. That might not be surprising from a World War I veteran who had been a submarine commander and was awarded the Iron Cross. But once the Nazis started demanding changes in his German Lutheran church, he objected. The Nazis arrested him. He spent eight years in concentration camps, including Dachau.

Dachau turned him into a pacifist and a human rights supporter. Once liberated, Niemuller turned his retrospective guilt and regret into action, lecturing around the country to tell Germans that they had been complicit. He regularly used the “First they came for the …” phrases in his lectures. I am sure he had no idea that condensing his moral transformation into a rhetorical gem would still shake people generations later.

Please pay attention to this fact: He supported the Nazis. Reality changed his views.

As hard as it can be, wherever possible, let’s keep talking to the Republicans and, yes, even the MAGA supporters in our universe. Let me confess, here, that I am lecturing myself. My son has pointed out that I am too politically judgmental. But if we’re going to restore this country to democracy, we’ll need to work with our differently minded neighbors as we knit back up the raveled sleeve¹ of civic life. Put down the phone, and work with your neighbors to pick up trash. Chat about the weather while hanging out at the dog park, even with the MAGA-hatted dude. Wave your flags together at a Fourth of July parade. If a Nazi supporter could realize his wrongs and give us the famous “poem” that still burns in our collective moral imagination, who knows what might change your MAGA neighbor? Let’s just hope they don’t have to go to Alligator Alcatraz first.

It’s illegal to obey illegal orders

Here’s one thing that is affecting at least some Republicans: the uproar over four Democratic lawmakers’ Instagram post reminding the military that they must not follow illegal orders. As you may recall, Trump called for hanging the four as traitors, putting all their lives at risk for “stochastic terrorism,” or statistically probable attacks by some outraged or unhinged person inspired by such comments.

But Trump is losing this moral media skirmish, and Sen. Mark Kelly is winning. Some Republicans are joining with Kelly in calling for hearings on U.S. military bombings of fishing boats (er, “drug smugglers”) in the Caribbean.

This is important, and beyond just the resistance to Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war crimes. We’re seeing cracks in Trump’s support inside his own party, and rumblings in favor of the rule of law. This will make it harder for evil troll and “Homeland Security Advisor” [←sic] Stephen Miller to deploy the military, including the National Guard, in Democratic-leaning cities during the midterms to suppress voting, as some have feared would happen.

We’re not out of the woods. You can easily find many, many sources that will tell you what a terrible situation we’re still in (including the New York Times, below). And the harm that the Trump administration has already done will take many years to repair. But I’m seeing hopeful signs. This is one.

Three things worth your time:

1) Jon Stewart explains how we ended up with Trump on the New Yorker radio hour. I’m not the world’s biggest Jon Stewart fan, so I was startled by his clear, brief, precise, and (in my mind) accurate outline of how half the country voted for a populist charlatan. Take a listen.

2) Are we losing our democracy? New York Times editorial board offers a simple and clear outline of how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook. They write, “We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.” The fact that the conservative New York Times would run this is powerful.

I’m giving you a gift link to this, so that you can explain to other people why you’re so upset about what’s happening.

3) Here are two followups to “Where do you get your news?”, which went out Nov. 20. First, I find pointers to many worthwhile articles on Bluesky, the post-Twitter social network I find most useful. Second, my dear friend Laura Zimmerman sent her suggestions:

You ask for additions, and here are mine: places to find top stories of the kind that make you proud to be human. To get this take, I follow Jessica Craven’s Chop Wood and Carry Water and also Fix the News. They are reliable, trustworthy, essential antidotes to the usual news coverage, and they cover the globe.

Till next time!

1. Bonus points to everyone who recognizes a phrase from Shakespeare!