this is Richard Wolff from democracy at
work responding to another ask Prof wolf
question from our patreon community and
this question comes from Mary it's part
historical and its part very urgent
political right now here's the
historical part to begin with she asks
was Hitler ever elected democratically
the basic answer is no he was not let me
be very brief and summarize that history
under the law of Germany at the time
when there was a impasse in the
government the president of the country
could invite a politician to try to form
a government to see if that politician
could could do that and could get enough
support to run the government
in 1932 uh politics had split right down
the middle in for in Germany half the
country voted either socialist or
communist in election after election in
1932 and the other half voted partly for
the Nazi party but partly for a whole
bunch of other smaller nationalist
parties
it was therefore an interesting and
dubious political decision by the then
president of Germany Hindenburg to offer
Hitler the opportunity to form an
election Hitler was not elected to be
the chancellor or leader of Germany he
was invited by the president he took
leadership on the 30th of January 1933.
a very few weeks later basically about
five weeks on the 5th of March was the
one and the only election Hitler ever
allowed
and in the five weeks from taking power
to running that election
he mobilized his own political followers
gave them legal rights as cops as Army
officials and he terrorized other people
he arrested huge numbers of politicians
he deported some some were killed many
were injured they were accosted in their
homes their stores were smashed it was a
completely different situation so by the
time
the 5th of March came about and there
was an election yes Hitler's party got
the majority of the votes in terms of
more than everybody else did not get a
majority of the votes if everybody was
counted but it was the largest single it
got 280 votes roughly the Socialists and
Communists together got about 205 or 10
votes not that far away and the rest
were much smaller
there's no question that Germany had not
made a decision as a mass Society to
support Hitler and he never allowed
another election he outlawed the
Communist Party he effectively drove the
Socialist Party out of existence those
were his two major competitors so no he
got rid of democracy he went through the
motion once by terrorizing everybody
so then we let to the next question you
asked what happens if you have a
democracy but yet they come up with
horrible outcomes the way you might
imagine the Hitler's story did well in a
way the Hitler story gives you the
answer
democracy is no guarantee of anything
democracy means we all have an equal
chance an equal influence if we are
affected by a decision we have the legal
right democratically to participate
equally with everybody else in society
who our leaders are going to be and in
supporting or rejecting what they
propose to do
okay by that standard
democracy can go any which away
in order to have it come out the way
most people who are Democrats with a
small D want you have to create an
appropriate context
Hitler's contact context was to
terrorize everybody who wasn't a Nazi
and that made them hesitate to go to the
polls they were supervised they were not
told that their vote would be known not
secret and all the rest of it you do
that you get the outcome that that kind
of intimidation intends to get so if you
really want democracy you have to make a
context and here's some examples the
ballot has to be secret so you can't be
punished for how you vote because no one
in the end really knows we do that in
this country as a matter of course but
here are other things you really have to
give people time and support to learn
what the issues are to understand them
to learn and understand what the
different political options are that the
different parties support you can't
allow for example parties that have a
lot of money to overwhelm you with
information whereas parties who don't
have a lot of money can't get the first
base then you've destroyed the Democracy
that's what we've done in this country
we buy media time we buy television time
if we have the money the rich therefore
are in a position to support their
chosen representatives and the rest of
us watch to call this democracy pollutes
the very meaning so yeah you can have
bad outcomes but there are things you
can do to minimize them and two of the
most important are to allow people the
time to provide the support to give them
a paycheck if they do it to learn and
become informed then they'll make the
decisions that serve their interests and
will not allow anyone to terrorize or
manipulate them either by military force
or police or Media or any of the ways
that you undermine democracy as we're
seeing in our world also clearly the
mere presence or absence of an election
tells you nothing that's in the
headlines every day you just have to pay
attention and you'll see it
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