"We Didn't Know."

My first book, Opa Nobody, is about fascism. Specifically, it was an attempt to get to know a German grandfather who’d died before I was born, my mom’s dad, Heina Buschmann. He was a socialist activist who never joined the Nazi Party.

I didn’t know much about him, growing up, other than moments like him saying to my mom, “My God is in the forest,” and her repeating that to me. I still hear that sentence all the time in my head. His story started coming together in bits and pieces after my mom went to a funeral in Germany and then heard from my hilarious wonderful Uncle Klaus that their grandfather, my great-grandfather Heinrich, had hung a red flag from a mountainside.

That’s my grandparents above, with my grandmother Friedchen’s arm around Heina’s shoulder. They were German hippies; the women wore loose clothes in defiance of tradition, they organized socialist youth conferences, built a youth home. He was an activist his whole life. We call this “the wedding picture” because we don’t have a picture of their wedding, which was just attended by a few witnesses because she’d gotten pregnant and so they had to get married quickly with family disapproval. I love them both, these long-dead people. I love his face.

The one fact about the red flag led to all the research, and in hoping to find stories of Heinrich’s labor organizing (and getting fired a lot) in coal mines, I found out how large and dedicated of a presence my quiet grandfather, his son Heina, really was.

They lived in a socialist universe. There’s a different red flag hanging in my living room for their neighborhood’s Socialist Workers’ Bicycle Club. It says “Solidarity” in the middle and the village chapter of Hüls, their neighborhood. My Aunt Christa gave it to me in 2018 after my Uncle Klaus died; it’s my most treasured possession.

By the time the Nazi era was looming, my grandfather and great-grandfather had joined a small street militia, like countless others, with World War I-era scavenged weapons, clubs, and farm implements. As you know, it did not turn out well.

Fascism is when the rods of business, church, and government are all bound together, making a clear demarcation of what’s inside and outside that approved bubble. What’s outside of that unholy trinity is justified as the enemy, and violence ensues. It must, because what’s outside is always the enemy. That’s not so complicated. Yet here we are: people who get it and people who refuse to get it because they think that Fascism has to have the exact image of soldiers in WWII era uniforms goose-stepping down the street, otherwise it’s not fascism.

There’s a magnetic simplicity to fascism. And of course, this is where we are in the U.S. In a complex world, Trump promises, to so many people, to wipe away all questions. There’s something about fascism that is so easy and slippery precisely because it does not get tangled in time and place and detail, instead abusing all three. The assertion of fascism is that either a fact is approved, or that it did not happen at all.

I couldn’t sleep last night, and instead I was thinking about Trump-supporting people I know and have interacted with recently. In some interactions, I see this odd volleying of facts back and forth with no regard for scale. You hit me with a fact, I’ll hit you with one back. Is Hunter Biden’s laptop really worth destroying what’s left of democracy over? Oh sure, definitely. What matters is that a single fact appears to prove the entire edifice true or not.

But back to my family. The most haunting thing—and the thing that comes up to me in the middle of the night, randomly while driving, over and over—is something my beloved Aunt Inga said to me while I conducted interviews for the book: “We didn’t know” about the Holocaust. EDITED: My mom says she thinks it was compulsory for boys, maybe after 1932, and that the Bund for German Girls was also mandatory. There’s always more info!). That’s where she met my Uncle Günther. They did live in a different world, but I also always wonder how it was possible to not know.

But “we didn’t know” is a kind of wince that I cast forward in time. I am imagining that decades later, when my Trump-supporting neighbors and acquaintances are old—if we make it that far—that they will be saying something similar. And I imagine—again, if any of us making it that far—that they will feel fine about it. There will not be the scenes that I observed at my Aunt Inga and Uncle Günther’s house, of people drinking and weeping and pounding the tables with their fists in agony.

Which raises a really interesting question about knowing. About how a person can be complicit in actively repelling information that doesn’t fit with one’s worldview. One Trump supporting acquaintance says she doesn’t read “legacy media.” That’s confirmation bias, and we all do it to some extent. But Trumpland has made it a point of pride. I’m interested in what it feels like to repel information, and I wonder about the emotions attached to that. I sometimes think it must be wrapped up with feelings about parents, fathers in particular, and wanting love and approval from these older white men who present, as the cost of their love, ideological obedience.

What does it mean to “not know” when you are offered information, but you are complicit in repelling it? What’s the word for that? So much has been written about willful ignorance, or the wishful thinking that pulls people to have a “gut feeling” about something and then turn only to the facts that confirm that gut feeling.

Ethics, spirituality, and religion should all boil down to one thing: whether you allow information into your head and heart, or whether you repel it. We are a creature vastly unlike the other mammals, in that we have equal strengths and toxic weaknesses; we have brains that are powerful enough to either absorb and process information OR to repel information presented by our own eyes. We are maybe the only mammal that can put ourselves into very dangerous waking dreams.

Opa Nobody is half off at UNP right now: Just enter 6SUMM24 in the discount code field of your shopping cart and click “Apply.” Offer expires July 31, 2024 and is good for U.S. and Canadian shipments only.

Speaking of popping those bubbles:

Something that was super-helpful this week is that my friend shared info about a presentation that historian made online about Project 2025. You can watch it here!

One of the great things in this talk is that the organizers stressed NOT to get involved in endless demoralizing exchanges with people deep in Trumpland whose minds cannot be changed and who just want to make you stare at a wall in hopelessness and fretting about how a human ends up like them. (See above).

They also have a ton of information about how to talk to people about Project 2025 and are inviting people to organize chapters of Trouble Nation.

The event was hosted by this organization called Red, Wine, and Blue that’s organizing women to oppose Project 2025. One of their slogans is “Not Political? No Problem. In fact, that’s perfect.” I am actually totally in favor of this; it takes all kinds and this is a strand that is clearly working for people because there were over 30,000 people on the live zoom call. When the wine moms turn anti-fascist, look out! I was really excited to learn about all the work they are doing.

ALSO: as I’d written about previously, I’m teaching with Afghan Female Student Outreach, and they are doing a fundraiser! We need to raise $100,000 by Sept. 24 to get a renewal of a major private grant. Every little bit helps, and I hope you will consider donating even a small amount.

And here are pictures: the evening sky last night. A tiny little paint roller as part of a touch-up kit I used to fix after filling some holes. Carrots I picked two days ago. My dog sitting in a stream near my house. A contraption I built to ward off squirrels because I WANT CROW FRIENDS, DAMMIT, AND I’M GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT IT!

Hugs to you if you want them, and thanks for reading. xoxoxoxox S