America’s Third Reich

The German First, Second, and Third Reich can also be understood as a three phase process that many empires go through, including the USA. The First Reich symbolized a feudal and fragmented political landscape, where diverse kingdoms and principalities coexisted under the umbrella of the Holy Roman Empire. These various kingdoms led the colonization of the Americas, with Christopher Columbus as the most famous figure who undertook this American Holocaust to create Lebensraum for the settlers.

The Second Reich in Germany wasn’t officially created until 1871, but it’s creation was a process that began after the fall of the First Reich in 1806. Though the Second Reich under Bismark only lasted until WWI ended, the Weimar Republic was a continuation of the Second Reich’s “lesser empire” and lasted until it was replaced by the Third Reich in 1933.

For the USA, it’s Second Reich was first founded when the settler colony established a republic in 1776. This achieved independence from the British Empire, which was itself both a part of the Holy Roman Empire and struggling to free itself from its grasp. However, this was hardly the end of its struggle with forces who maintained an allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire.

After all, some of the founders like James Madison wanted the USA to be a bigger and better version of the Holy Roman Empire. It’s just that he saw the republic as a means of doing so. The South shared a great deal with the First Reich and, along with countless capitalist “robber barons” who viewed themselves as ubermensch, these forces of reaction have been at war with the republic ever since.

On the one side are those who want a capitalist republic where “everyone” has a chance to civilize the savage inside them and achieve the middle class American Dream. Who counts as part of this “everyone” has obviously always been a struggle from within America’s Second Reich. There are also those who wish to return to the power of an America under the First Reich, except a “greater empire” this time. This is where the concept of an American Third Reich comes from.

The emergence of a more unified national identity came after the Civil War, when the forces of America’s First Reich were defeated, temporarily. Some refer to this as the “Second Founding,” where the Reconstruction era sought to reconcile the North and South while addressing issues such as citizenship and rights under the mantle of racial equality. Since the initial founding of the republic in 1776 was more of just a republic for rich, white, slave-owning men, the “Second Founding” that began in 1865 was another pivotal date for the American Second Reich.

The forces of reaction who wanted to destroy the republic nearly succeeded again in the wake of the Great Depression in 1929. But their coup attempt against President FDR in 1934 failed and the forces of the American Second Reich grew much more powerful with his New Deal. Similarly, in the aftermath of WWII, the American Second Reich established an “American Century,” helping establish republics around the world and a middle class dream. Ultimately, despite the rhetoric, this foreign policy, like all foreign policy from the USA, amounted to what some refer to as “Endless Holocausts.” Much of the middle class politics used to divide and conquer actually came from the Nazis themselves.

Then came the 1960s, when a final push was made to expand that dream here at home amidst multi-faceted economic, social, and political crisis. Some even wanted to go beyond the framework of the Second Reich and its settler colony. Once the movements for civil rights, Black power, women’s liberation, participatory democracy, etc. were put down, the forces of an American Third Reich began to rise again in what was called the “Reagan Revolution.”

Unlike Germany though, the crisis facing the American Empire wasn’t as severe. But over the course of the next five decades and up to the present, the crisis would worsen greatly. In response to Reagan’s emerging Third Reich politics, the Democratic party abandoned the last of its New Deal past. Instead, they adopted a similar framework, abandoning the working class in favor of a politics centered on that “ideal” settler colonist focused on attaining and retaining middle class life. Of course, this was all happening at the same as the economy continued to lose the manufacturing base that led to a broad middle class during the New Deal in the first place. It was a rainbow-masked survival of the fittest branded with the important goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Just like Germany, this created conditions where the rising forces of an American Third Reich could position themselves to the left and right of the Democratic Party. With the Dems caught in a contradictory politics of “everyone will be middle class” at the same time as fewer were actually achieving anything remotely close to this, American fascists could present themselves as the only force capable of taking decisive and radical action to address the root cause of problems facing the nation. Meanwhile, this made the Dems look increasingly like the status quo and an American Third Reich as rebel forces.

Despite the fact that we’re just repeating the history of Germany’s Weimar Republic, this remains buried. It’s not a conspiracy though, just vulnerable middle class people looking out for themselves in the survival of the fittest. It’s just settler colonists who, not matter what they say, still want to believe in themselves as “civilized” over the “savages.”

Consider who tends to be the people who spread information, whether news, colleges and universities, non-profit organizations, and all the rest. Are they not those among the “ideal.” What about those who have yet to achieve this supposed “ideal,” but still hope to someday, despite the crisis engulfing them? Should we expect them to sacrifice themselves? Let’s consider the history.