While waiting with a friend on the southbound platform at the crowded junction of Medellin, Colombia’s two Metro elevated train lines in February 2017, a short, bespectacled, wavy-black-haired, thirtyish man approached me and asked, in Spanish, where I was from.
I answered, “Los Estados Unidos.”
He replied, “Gracias para derrotar Alemania en la segunda guerra mundial” and walked away, smirking.
I can say most of what I want to say in Spanish and understand most of what natives say to me. But after Japanese, Spanish is the world’s second fastest spoken language. Sometimes, as on that occasion, I don’t immediately comprehend what Spanish speakers say.
Thus, it took me about five seconds to figure out that the Colombian had said, completely out of context, “Thanks for defeating the Germans in World War II.”
I chuckled. Incongruity amuses me. I told my non-Spanish-speaking-friend what the man had said. My friend also thought it was funny.
Many a truth is said in jest. But some people who aren’t joking still love America for something it did eighty years ago. No thanks to me.
And of course, even given the passage of time, the death of young soldiers is the opposite of funny.
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I haven’t been to Europe in 38 years. For reasons I mentioned a few weeks ago, I prefer to travel in the US and Latin America. I appreciate that Europe has countless elegant, old buildings. Some book I read, perhaps William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire, accurately described Europe as a 500-year art, architecture and historic preservation project. Needs more trees though.
Rick Steves is known for his European guidebooks and hundred-plus episode public TV series portraying Euro destinations. Steves is a cultural archetype: an affluent, androgynous Caucasian from Seattle who spouts progressive platitudes and complains about climate change as he jets around the world and encourages others to do the same.
Home alone tonight, I switched on the TV. PBS showed a new, uncharacteristically dark Rick Steves installment entitled “Fascism in Europe.”
During a pledge break, Steves explained that he produced this episode because, while his travelogues routinely portray Europe as a chill and “progressive” smorgasbord of wine, baguettes and cheese, chill cafes, pubs and plazas, art museums, castles and cathedrals and punctual trains and oompah bands—my summary, not his—between 1930-45 fascism took hold in Italy and Germany and Spain. Steves said he wanted to acknowledge and preserve the memory of that grim period.
As he retraced those years, he solemnly enumerated the strategies and actions of these nations’ oppressive governments. As he did, I couldn’t help but notice that even though the 1930-45 regimes in those three nations killed more people—at least until the Covid lockdown and vaxx effects have fully manifested themselves—American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and European governments applied similar social control tactics during the Covid response.
Per Steves, in both periods, governments began by inciting fear to manipulate their citizens. Just as fascists fanned fears that Soviet Communism would spread to Germany, Italy and Spain, during Coronamania American, European and Oceanian officials incited terror about a virus that they said would ravage their nations. They convinced the populace that governors and the governed had to pull out all stops to crush a microbial invasion.
Both frenzied periods were driven by cults of personality. People believed that visionaries would rescue them. Europe had Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. Coronamania was driven by Fauci, Birx and Collins. The hype surrounding these evil individuals fueled fandom and fanaticism.
Officials from each era relied on a central lie. Italians, German and Spanish fascists convinced many citizens that they were part of a superior race and culture. Covid Era officials sold the lie that a respiratory virus threatened people of all ages but that enlightened people could defeat this scourge by “Following The Science.”
Relatedly, during both periods, officials scapegoated specific groups for ruining life for everyone else. During fascist years, Jews, Slavs, communists and others were blamed for the poverty and malaise that gripped Europe following World War I. During Coronamania, the division was based more on socioeconomic status, political affiliation and Covid-measure compliance than on ethnicity. Laptoppers and vacation homeowners skipped their commutes while vilifying MAGA “superspreaders” who refused to stay home, wear masks and inject mRNA.
European fascists curtailed individual identity and civil liberties. They urged national unity with discipline. Everything was purportedly done on behalf of the collective, embodied by The State. During Coronamania, Western governments promoted, and many people fervently internalized, the same collective, restrictive ethos. Since we were said to be “all in this together,” those who questioned any government-imposed restriction or demand for sacrifice were angrily labeled “reckless” and “selfish.” They were deemed Enemies of the State.
In both eras, officials defied constitutions and democratic principles and invoked Emergency Authority. They peremptorily, opportunistically and dishonestly asserted that they needed to suspend basic rights in order to protect peoples’ security. The masses bought in.
Steves notes that fascism was implemented incrementally. Similarly, the Covid response began with “two weeks to stop the spread.” Following the fascist playbook, when the shots were introduced, 2020-2021 American officials assured the public that these wouldn’t be mandated. These, and other, pledges were soon abandoned and more extreme measures were implemented.
During both the period spanning 1930-45 and 2020-2025, the State relied on media control, propaganda and suppression of dissent. Fascist rallies and radio broadcasts resembled Covid Era government briefings and TV ad blitzes. Fascist censorship, including book-burning, resembled Covid Era-captured news outlets and internet deplatforming and shadow-banning. Those who dared to question the human cost of the lockdowns, school closures, masks and tests were subjected to government-directed “devastating takedowns” in order to quash open discussion of the badly overblown Covid risk and the extreme and foolish government interventions.
Overt coercion occurred in both periods. The Europeans had secret police who raided and abducted civilians. Coronamanic police made examples of the non-compliant by chasing, tackling, handcuffing or fining those who didn’t stay home or mask. Covid shot decliners were fired on a mass scale. Concentration camps were big in fascist Europe. These were proposed in the US during Coronamania, but not built. Instead, viral house-arrest and hotel quarantines were common here and abroad.
Both fascism and the Covid response were economically disastrous. In 1930-45 Europe and during Coronamania, governments spent prodigious sums of borrowed or printed money to implement their strategies and subsidize cronies, saddling the general public with mountains of intergenerationally impoverishing debt. I suspect that, despite a net worth exceeding $20 million, Steves got PPP money when lockdowns disrupted travel and show filming.
