As the Senate vote on a Jan. 6 commission draws ever closer – with most Republicans behaving like see-no-evil monkeys, helping to seed the soil for a neo-fascist harvest – I listened with fresh ears to the climactic testimony delivered by Burt Lancaster in the film Judgement at Nuremberg.
Lancaster played Ernst Janning, a German jurist on trial for abetting Nazi crimes against humanity, a man of prominence and intellectual power who knew better but surrendered to the fever. He sat mute during the long proceedings, until finally he could remain silent no longer:
“In order to understand (what happened), one must understand the period in which it happened. There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes. But it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear – fear of today, fear of tomorrow…fear of our neighbors…and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift your heads. Be proud to be German. There are devils among us- Communists, liberals, Jews, Gypsies. Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.’
“It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies, and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we ‘loved our country.’ What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through…The country is in danger!
“And history tells how well we succeeded, Your Honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams…And then, one day, we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger…(It) swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life…
“It is not easy to tell the truth. But if there is to be any salvation for (us), we who know our guilt must admit it, whatever the pain and humiliation.”
And then he delivered the verdict on himself:
“Ernst Janning – worse than any of them because he knew what they were and he went along with them. Ernst Janning. Who made his life excrement. Because he walked with them.”
A violent rabble stormed the U.S Capitol, seeking to overthrow a free and fair democratic election, but, even now, Senate Republicans still refuse to probe it or, in some cases, even acknowledge it. Like Ernst Janning, they prefer to walk with blinders. The clock is ticking on whether they are better than excrement.