'The road down authoritarianism': What Ken Burns' Holocaust documentary can teach Americans in 2022

[Behind the Aegis]

Ken Burns’ new three-part documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” which will air on PBS September 18-20, comes at a time when a variety of political figures — from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described “democratic socialist,” and leftist author Noam Chomsky to arch-conservative Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and former Nancy Reagan speechwriter Mona Charen — are sounding the alarm about the state of U.S. democracy and a far-right authoritarian movement within the Republican Party. Burns’ documentary, directed and produced with Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, focuses on events that occurred during the 1930s and 1940s and is full of old black-and-white footage. But in an interview with Axios’ Mike Allen, Burns warned that his Holocaust documentary has a lesson for Americans in 2022: Democracy should never be taken for granted.

Burns told Allen, “We're not unmindful that, as Mark Twain says: 'History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.’ As the film progressed through the last six or seven years, we began to realize just how terrifyingly rhyming these stories and moments and individuals and actions were with our present moment."

In the early 1930s, near the end of the Weimar Republic, some of Adolf Hitler’s critics in Germany were dismissive of the threat that he posed and failed to realize how bad things could get. And Burns warns that it is a huge mistake to believe that Germans were somehow more predisposed to authoritarianism.

“You just have to understand that the things that became so intolerably out of control with the Nazi regime are not alien to any other culture," Burns told Allen. "The road down authoritarianism doesn't end well for people. We want to remind people of the frailty and the complexity — and, at times, the majesty of the human project, and that it's really important to be self-aware.”

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Too bad they can't air this in October...late October, and air it on all major news stations!

[Deuxcents]

1. I hope they play it n replay it

I haven’t seen it but if it’s a Ken Burns documentary, I’ll put my money on it. Besides, the sooner aired, the early voters can be reached.

[BootinUp]

2. Hopefully it generates some buzz. K&R

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[appalachiablue]

4. Look forward to this, good for Ken Burns. They will rerun it hopefully. K/R

Last edited Mon Aug 1, 2022, 10:29 AM - Edit history (1)

"Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people," Heinrich Heine (1797- 1856). German poet, writer and literary critic born into a Jewish family. Heine's works were burned by the Nazis in 1933.

Among the thousands of books burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine.