Fascism, the American Left and the coming Amstapo

Authoritarian and totalitarian governments have always relied on ordinary people finking out their neighbors. And today's Democrat politicians are no different: L.A. Mayor Wants 'Snitches' to Rat Out Their Neighbors... All for a 'Reward'

Los Angeles Mayor  Eric Garcetti, Democrat

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) is encouraging residents in his city to tattletale on their neighbors who defy his stay-at-home order. Specifically, he's targeting businesses that continue to remain open despite not being considered "essential" (at least by government standards).

“If any non-essential businesses continue to operate in violation of the stay at home order, we’re going to act to enforce the safer at home order and ensure their compliance,” Garcetti said. “You know the old expression about snitches. Well, in this case, snitches get rewards.”

Does Mayor Garcetti know that Hitler's Germany, Lenin's and Stalin's Soviet Union, and the dozens of lesser dictators of the 20th century also rewarded people who ratted on their friends, relatives, acquaintance, and neighbors? Of course he does. Garcetti, et. al. just think there is nothing wrong with it. They want power and control at all costs and neighbor-finking is just one tool in the toolbox. And they will pay you for it.

For the Left, no matter the name of their party, it should never be asked, "Do their ends justify their means?" For in their minds, the end always justify any means. There is no line that must never be crossed to achieve their purposes. There are only lines that should not be crossed yet.

So how did the "inform on your neighbor" program work in Hitler's Germany? It turned the country into a people afraid of one another - even of their own family members - all day, every day. In Nazi Germany, the Gestapo (short for (Geheime Staatspolizei-Secret State Police),

... encouraged German citizens to report anything they thought was “suspicious”. Though denunciations by the general public may have been “sincere” in the early days of the regime, by the later years, the denunciation/informer process was becoming widely abused, and even the Gestapo understood this.

It was not uncommon for squabbling neighbors to settle grudges or simple disputes by reporting one another to their local Gestapo office. Common accusations included overhearing defeatist talk, listening to foreign radio broadcasts(BBC), or even overhearing criticism of the Führer or the Nazi party. In one instance in Essen, a woman accused her elderly disabled neighbor of listening to the BBC in the evening, claiming she heard this when putting her ear up to the common wall. The man was brought in for questioning, and denied the allegations, claiming he and the neighbor had a troubled past. He then hanged himself in his cell the next day. Couples involved in marital disputes also realized that they could use the denunciation process to their own advantage, and these comprised a significant percentage of reports. One woman in Mannheim accused her spouse of making derogatory remarks about Hitler, but an investigation revealed she was involved in an affair with a soldier and wanted her husband “out of the way”. In one particularly disturbing incident, an idealistic grandmother, overhearing her beloved grandson make disparaging remarks about the Führer, and having no idea how severe the penalty was for such a crime, allegedly denounced him to the Gestapo in the hope this would dissuade him from making further such remarks.

Regardless of the motivations of the denouncers, what the process did do, was essentially turn Nazi Germany into a self-policing state. It’s estimated that some 40% of all denunciations were based on the settling of some personal grudge or score... . It got so bad that a Reich Ministry of Justice internal memo dated from August 1943 declared that “The denouncer is the biggest scoundrel in the country”.

So Garcetti is implementing not merely a dictatorship-style government, he is also implementing means by which jilted ex-girlfriends will be paid for lying to police about a former boyfriend, or a man with a longstanding dispute with a next-door neighbor can get even by turning the neighbor into a prosecuted enemy of the people.

To paraphrase Tome Wolfe, fascism is always being planned by the Republicans, but is always implemented by the Democrats.

Welcome to the age of the Amerikanische Staatspolizei, let's just call it the Amstapo for short.