English author Michael Rosen’s 2014 poem is pertinent to our times. It is worth quoting:

“Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you were, clear out the venal and the corrupt. remove anything you feel is unlike you… It doesn’t walk in saying, ‘Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.’ ”

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US vice president, JD Vance (he of the “childless cat ladies” fame, a remark that drew an instant rebuke from Jennifer Anniston), delivered a blistering speech at the Munich Security Conference, eviscerating the Europeans for not listening to their voters and for being afraid of them. Munich holds special significance. Adolf Hitler was born and raised in Austria, right across the border from Munich, where he spent ample time as a young man. Vance refused to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Germany but he met with Alice Weidel. Who is Alice Weidel? Weidel is the face of the far-right in Germany. She leads the neo-Nazi party, Alliance for Democracy (AfD).

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In November 2023, with many Nazi motifs, a secret plan was hatched near Berlin not just to deport non-Germans from Germany but also all “unassimilated” German citizens. The........

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