Column: Teaching tomorrow's voters critical thinking is what politicians actually fear

To paraphrase George Santayana: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

What this saying omits, however, is that those who have learned from history are also capable of repeating it, provided they prevent others from possessing this knowledge. In fact, one of Adolf Hitler’s keys to creating a fascist government was revealed in his assertion that, “A man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or no eyes.”

Although it is normally not couched in these terms, America was founded on the premise that human nature is inherently inclined towards evil, which facilitated the need for a “check-and-balance” style of government.

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But a major problem occurs when those responsible for maintaining these checks and balances realize it is more politically beneficial to exploit and exacerbate evil than to contain it. As many right-wing pundits and politicians have learned from history, the tools of democracy can be used to destroy democracy.

The frightening truth is all that is required for a fascist takeover in America is the ability to control school boards, city and county councils, state legislatures, and having a few well-placed devotees occupying positions on police forces, the military, and the judiciary.

Fascism thrives not only upon the exacerbation of evil, but on the emotion this evil creates, which dispenses with the need for logic and reason. As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “The driving force of the most important changes in this world had been found less in scientific knowledge animating the masses but rather in a fanaticism dominating them and in a hysteria which drives them forward.”

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This creation of fanaticism and hysteria establishes the milieu essential for one of the most potent tools of fascism — the great lie theory. Again to quote Hitler, “By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell — and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.”

This “great lie” theory gives politicians and pundits the capability to reduce falsehoods to unquestioned and oft-repeated slogans that resonate more forcibly than lengthy intellectual discourse, which, in turn, gives rise to “scapegoating.”

Scapegoating reduces complex problems into simplistic, but unviable, “solutions;” thus, right-wing pundits and politicians never truly have to solve any of the problems they complain about. For example, when the banning of Critical Race Theory and the burning of all “offensive” books, literally or figuratively, fails to transform America into a bastion of harmony and justice, all that is required to divert attention from this failure is to create another scapegoat.

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Since logic, reason, and truth are anathema to fascism, education becomes its natural enemy.

For example, although the “Race” in Critical Race Theory is cited as the grassroots reason for its banning, the money, organizations, and people instigating these bans are really more terrified of the “Critical.”

Critical thinking rejects the obsequious acceptance of assertions made by cultish leaders, and inspires the student, voter, listener, viewer, or reader to question, to analyze, and to research. This is kryptonite to “great lies” and scapegoating.

Although the depth of Hitler’s evil should never be diminished, it is important to remember that he did not come to power in a vacuum; thus, while it is disconcerting to realize that so many people in America are oblivious to the fact that numerous right-wing politicians and pundits are increasingly utilizing Hitler’s tactics as a guidebook, what is even more frightening is how many more seem to be perfectly comfortable with this.

David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional law attorney. He lives in South Bend.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Columnist: Critical thinking is the kryptonite of 'great lies'