Sue Coe, Terrible things are happening outside, 2025. Courtesy, the artist.

“First they came”

I always scoffed at “First They Came,” the often quoted, 1946 poem by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller. There are several versions of it, but the best-known starts “First they came for the communists/And I did not speak out because I was not a communist.” Each of the following three verses names another target — socialists, trade unionists and Jews, until concluding: “Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.”

The poem suggests, wrongly, that “they” – the unmentioned Nazis – targeted everyone, not just communists, socialists, trade unionists and Jews. (Niemöller should have added to the list queers, Roma, Slavs, and the disabled.) In fact, the Nazi regime made great efforts to placate the broad, middle and lower-middle class populace and increase its size. Nazism was aggressively pro-natalist, rewarding families that had many children, so long as they were the right kind. In addition, the secret Lebensborn (“fount of life”) program, established by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, supported unwed, supposedly “Aryan” mothers through their pregnancies and distributed the children to similarly racially elite, SS parents. The goals of these initiatives were eugenicist and militarist: the creation of a racially superior population and enough soldiers to forge and sustain a thousand-year Reich.

The Nazis, in other words, knew very well who they wanted to imprison or kill and who they wanted to protect or nurture, and the idea that they would inevitably “come for” someone not on their targeted list is mistaken. Niemöller’s poem is harmful because it suggests that anyone could be a victim of fascism when in fact only some are; protecting those in danger requires solidarity and entails risk. To the pastor’s credit, he openly opposed Nazification of the Protestant Church and was consequently cast into Sachsenhausen and then Dachau concentration camps. Much later, long after the Nazi defeat, pastor Niemöller was active in the anti-Vietnam War and anti-nuclear movements. His poem is therefore belied by his own life; he understood very well who were and who were not the likely victims of fascism and embraced the role of anti-fascist or “antifa” to use the shorthand beloved of Reichkanzler Trump, Reichsmarschall Hegseth, and Reichsministers Miller, Bondi, Patel, Holman, Noem, and Kennedy.

Carefully selected targets

Until about two weeks ago, the Trump administration carefully followed the script of “First They Came.” One by one, it targeted groups and individuals who might challenge the kleptocratic, neofascist state, confident that it could do so without significant resistance. First it was the special counsels and ombudsmen who policed federal agencies for corruption. Then it was the U.S. Attorneys and prosecutors whose job is to ensure that federal laws are faithfully executed, and violators punished. Following that, was the regulatory state. Even junior employees were fired if they worked for agencies – including EPA, Education, Justice, Treasury, HUD, Interior, and HHS – who might object to privatization, deregulation, and sleaze.

Then came the attacks on individuals and institutions of civil society. University presidents were dressed down by Republicans at congressional show trials. (It didn’t help that these leaders conceded error of which they were innocent.) Around a dozen college and university presidents have resigned in the face of administration, congressional Republican, or state Republican pressure. Other universities were forced to accept limitations on their institutional freedom or make cash payments (aka bribes) to continue to receive federal grants. Columbia coughed up $200 million. Many colleges and universities........

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