Originally published in the Winter/Spring 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 76, printed March 26. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

That’s a very famous quotation, spoken by a prominent clergyman during the rise of fascism in Germany. And it’s good for us to remember it today.

Nazi repression didn’t come all at once. There was a progression. The first target was the communists, because they represented an actual threat to Nazi rule. They were arrested and were the first to be sent to the camps. Then came the more moderate socialists, then the less political trade unionists.

And always there was the demonization of the Jews, building on the widespread antisemitism of the time. But even with the Jewish people there was a progression: demonization in speeches and the fascist press, then exclusion from certain professions, then from certain neighborhoods, then into walled ghettos, and finally the Final Solution.

Today protests are breaking out across the country, which is important. But most are just against the job firings and program cuts. Less is heard about ICE attacks on immigrants, not even when Trump sent hundreds of young people to horrific prisons in El Salvador on the pretext that they might be dangerous gang members. Some were apparently picked up simply because they had tattoos. Where were the mass protests for that?

And trans people, a tiny, tiny section of the population, are right in the middle of the MAGA bullseye. But where is the outrage?

This country is obviously in a real crisis, and the very first thing our side needs is Solidarity. If we only care about what happens to ourselves, we’re all doomed.

Because no matter where we land in the progression, there will always be no one there to help.