Once upon a time in Germany almost 90 years ago there lived a complex human being, a Protestant pastor named Martin Niemoller holding strongly antisemitic beliefs as well various social positions currently labelled as “right wing.” Drawn to the Nazi party’s claim to want to re-Christianize Germany and generally improve the morals of the German people, when that party was up for election in 1933 he enthusiastically voted for them and their leader. It didn’t take long for the pastor to become disillusioned when the party rapidly began involving itself in church policy by supporting a renegade ultra-conservative branch seeking to cleanse “Jewish elements” from Christianity by portraying Jesus as an Aryan, discarding most of the Old Testament and busily trying to rewrite parts of the New Testament as well.

Niemoller began leading those opposed to the party’s attempts to control the inner workings of the churches. In 1934 he discovered that his phone was being tapped. Soon he was a highly active leader in the Protestant church’s active opposition to the regime that he had helped vote into existence. As a consequence, in 1937 he was arrested and locked up in Sachsenhausen (a concentration camp on Berlin’s outskirts). He was there until 1941, at which time he was moved to Dachau, where he remained until 1945, when the Allies liberated all concentration and extermination camps.

In 1946 he began touring what was then only West Germany, talking fervently to fellow citizens about his own failures to speak up during Hitler’s reign, and what he regarded as a massive failure on most people’s parts, repeatedly using such phrases as “we did not speak out,” or “we preferred to keep silent.” He suggested that all Germans needed to accept responsibility for what had eventually occurred. (Amazingly, eventually, Germany did. Our country — from whom the Nazis got their ideas of concentration camps after learning how we “handled” the “problem” of so many native people living in “our uninhabited discovery” — has taken much longer to publicly and after that actively admit culpability and offer minimal reparation regarding the evils of reservations, enslavement, Japanese internment camps, etc.)

At some point or other a quote ascribed to him began to appear in Germany and then around the world — the words of which many readers may recognize:

“First they came for the Communists and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.”

Since then, many people all over the globe have used the basic insight and implied sentiment of that quote to make similar points in regard to various vital dilemmas.

On a visit to Berlin in the early nineties to meet an extraordinary member of what had been the German resistance — with the hope of writing a play about her — I visited Sachsenhausen. On the wall of what had been his cell we saw inscribed Niemoller’s famous words.

No doubt every one of us could write our own, most-apt-for-us version of them.

May we get all together as we are already beginning to: those who voted “left,” those who voted “right;” those on the left tired of what Rebecca Solnit has called the ‘perpetual puritanical unwelcoming committee’” of many progressives (i.e. “if you don’t think exactly as we do you’re not ‘one of us’”), and dismayed by the current limpness of most (though not all by a long shot!) Democratic liberals and moderates; those in the Republican middle and right who didn’t vote for the current regime; those who did vote for it and are beginning to realize that it doesn’t give a damn about them or much else but rather that, as someone said recently, the current resident of the White House appears now not just trying to get instant revenge against his myriad designated “enemies” but at the entire American people.

Perhaps we can join forces by agreeing where we can — to protect things we all care deeply about, working together with confidence and vigor (in Anand Giridharadas’ words) as two very well-known American women did in public last fall: two people on polar sides of the “political fence” but not the moral and decent one.

If not, it may not be long before there is no one left to speak out.

When a complex system

is far from equilibrium,

small islands of coherence

in a sea of chaos

have the capacity

to shift the entire system

to a higher order.

— Ilya Prigogine

(Nobel-winning chemist)

Surely the most effective of such “small islands of coherence” will consist of folks who care similarly, rather than those who all voted similarly or think/feel identically. I can’t recall who it was who once wrote: “A country divided itself cannot long endure?” We’ve been a long time divided.

First they came for trans people, but I’m not trans so I didn’t speak out…

Then they came for the farmers and the migrants (many of them also mutually dependent on one another) but I’m neither one of those, so I didn’t speak out…

Then they came for the Muslims but I’m not Muslim so I didn’t speak out…

Then they came for the veterans but I’m not a vet so…

Then they came after Medicare and Medicaid but I don’t need those…

Then they came for federal workers of all kinds and all descriptions but that’s not me…

Then they came for those who live on Social Security but I don’t, so…

Then they came for the schools, but…

Then, with their tariffs, they came for those barely living from paycheck to paycheck but I’m not living from paycheck to paycheck…

Then they came for information about our private lives, our personal correspondences and details…

Then, with the tariffs, they came for small businesses ….

Then, then, then…

Marianne Lust

Lincoln