J
ournalist
Micheal
Herr
once
wrote, “It took the war to teach it,
that you were as responsible for
everything you saw as you were for every-
thing you did.”
This quote first appeared in Herr’s book
“Dispatches” published in 1977, where he
described his experiences in Vietnam as
a correspondent for Esquire Magazine.
I am not writing about the Vietnam war,
not even about a book about the war. I am
writing about this quote and how it came
back to me years later while I was living in
Germany.
I
was born in Chile but spent the
majority of my life living in sev-
eral cities across the United States.
I believe that my yearning to find a place
to call home has propelled me to explore
other parts of the world. I have no con-
nections to Europe, but I spent the last five
years of my life learning French and Ger-
man. So, like many 20-year-olds who are
privileged enough to lack serious adult
responsibilities do, I jumped at the idea of
traveling abroad.
During my third year of my college, on
a half-baked plan, a depleted bank account
and two semesters of German, I found
myself committing to studying abroad for
seven months in Berlin and Munich.
From the beginning of my German
career, I was told by my eclectic professor
that, as a student of the German language,
I was responsible not only for learning all
four cases of the German language, but the
history of Germany as well. This history
would be centered on the rise of fascism in
Europe and, in particular, the role of Nazi
Germany in the 20th century.
As soon as I touched down in Germany,
the war was inescapable. I couldn’t walk
down the street without seeing some
memorial dedicated to the war. Even Frau
Dette, my landlord in Berlin, who lived the
precarities of post-World War II Germany,
carried the war in her soul. But this living
memory of the war, in the people and on
the streets, wasn’t always part of German
culture. It took a generation of Germans,
those whose parents were alive during the
war — demanding to know the truth of
their families and their country — to make
this collective consciousness possible.
Those who fall more towards the left on
the political spectrum argue that, regard-
less of the history classes, it isn’t enough.
They argue that the recent backlash
against refugees in Germany is in part due
to the heritage of the war. As someone who
has always had a certain fascination for
history — in particular family histories — I
wanted to hear the stories that missed my
textbooks. So, I asked.
I first met Noah in a literature seminar
titled “Literature and Exile.” We were
partnered up for a presentation, and I
made sure to introduce myself. After class,
we walked off campus towards a patch of
green to get to know each other. With the
wind blowing through the trees and the
sun shining, no one could have suspected
the heaviness of conversation we had on
that bench.
Noah was born and raised in Germany.
I remember we started talking about his
family and the war and, somehow, over the
course of our conversation the personal
turned political. Given all the tension in
Germany regarding refugees and other
world events, I asked if people had felt they
overcame the war. He looked at me and
without blinking he replied, “A country can
never overcome its history.”
O
f the five classes I took at Lud-
wig Maximilian University of
Munich, only one was about the
Nazi regime and included a day trip to a
concentration camp in the syllabus.
I visited Dachau at the end of June, dur-
ing the height of the coverage of the Mex-
ican-American border crisis. I remember
walking around the eerie grounds, seeing
the dust in the air and listening to the guide
talk about the rise of fascism in Germany.
Despite being so far away from my friends
and family, both physically and culturally,
I couldn’t help but think about the state of
the United States. My mind started to draw
connections between images of children
in cages and the German concentration
camps.
T
his year alone, I have had three
different phone numbers belong-
ing to three different countries.
Sometimes the feeling of disorientation
seems to be the only consistent thing in
my life.
This lack of consistency seems to be
mirrored in the politics of today. I know
that the United States, an America under
President Donald Trump may seem to
many like a joke made in bad taste. But I
don’t think this administration is a mock-
ery of politics. I believe it is the overt and
violent exhaustion of liberal democracy
in crisis. The past three years have been,
for many, an emotionally exhausting
and politically confusing time. Ameri-
cans have been whipped back and forth
between policies that continue to polarize
the political landscape.
While illegal immigration has been a
hot topic for several presidencies, the cur-
rent situation at the Southern border is
attracting more attention than ever. The
images of children in cages, masses of
immigrants lined up behind barbed wire
and the drowned bodies of Óscar Alberto
Martínez and his 23-month-old daughter
Angie Valeria have been circulating since
April of last year. I am now struggling
to grasp the contemporary landscape of
America as it unfolds before my very eyes.
The detention centers are being com-
pared to concentration camps, and these
statements have been met with enormous
backlash from both sides of the political
spectrum. People are afraid that drawing
a connection between detention centers
and concentration camps diminishes the
atrocities that occurred under Nazi Ger-
many. Others argue that the gravity of the
situation at the Southern border demands
an examination of this severity.
In the wake of this debate, I see the aper-
ture for a new discussion regarding democ-
racy and extremism.
Society would like to use a simple check-
list to determine if what is happening
counts as facism. Some political scientists
would likely argue that because Trump is
not actively promoting the dismantling of
the American democracy, his administra-
tion therefore cannot be considered fascist.
But I think that if we hide behind this rigid
definition of fascism, then we will never
confront the brutality of what is happen-
ing.
I think these detention centers, in a very
visceral way, are injecting the framework
of war into daily life. They are promoting
fascist rhetoric by creating hierarchies of
affirmation and conformity. We look at
each other wondering first what it is that
differentiates us, and if we pass this test
then we seek to find what unites us. Deten-
tion centers manifest an “us versus them”
narrative reinforcing our fear of the other.
Those placed inside the detention center
are outside the community and, therefore,
are not afforded the same rights of citizens.
To me, detention centers, like concen-
tration camps before them, become a
void where any type of violation of rights
becomes the rule. Placed outside a larger
community those held in detention centers
are labeled as outsiders, stripped of rights
and vulnerable to all kinds of abuse.
We can get lost in a debate of defini-
tion. However, if we spend all our time and
energy discussing if fascism is back or if we
need a new term, then the atrocities on the
border will continue happening. If people
resign themselves to fear of the other, as
fostered by a fascist-like rhetoric, all acts of
violence and hate will be excused.
What will come, when those children
who spent months in cages grow up and
tell their stories?
We may not be at the border, but we have
all seen the images. We are responsible.
We may not be keeping children in cages,
but we are watching silently. Just like Herr
said, we are responsible for everything we
see just as much as everything we did (or
did not do).
Whether or not there is a consensus
regarding fascism in the United States,
everyone is responsible for what is happen-
ing at the U.S.-Mexico border. This crisis
will become another chapter in an already
complicated history of the United States,
and, like Noah said on that park bench, a
country doesn’t forget its history — history
doesn’t disappear like bodies that drown in
the Rio Grande.
3B
Wednesday, September 18, 2019 // The Statement 3B
ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN KUZEE
Understanding the border crisis: Fascism
in America?
BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, STATEMENT COLUMNIST