The Poor, The

“First they came for the Communists, and I said nothing, because I was not a Communist.”

So begins a very well-known poem about the gradual creep of fascism in 1920s and ‘30s Germany, derived from the public confession of Lutheran pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, who initially supported the Nazis, but quickly learned to regret having done so. Retellings of this poem often omit the reference to Communists, instead preferring to begin with a reference to “Socialists” or (very odiously, considering the economic pedigree of fascism) replacing it with a reference to “Industrialists.”

Even the most complete and accurate versions of the poem tend not to include the group pastor Niemöller referred to immediately after Communists in his original confession: the disabled and mentally ill, euphemistically called “incurables” by the Nazis. These 275,000-300,000 such individuals were initially used as human guinea pigs under a program retroactively labeled “Aktion T4” to perfect the methods of industrial murder later used to carry out the Final Solution. Administrators of the program argued that this constituted “mercy killing,” and that any person unwilling or unable to satisfy the labor demands of capital or the state was a “useless eater” who didn’t deserve to live.

Sound familiar? It should, since the language isn’t too far removed from the way Republicans in Congress and the Senate have been talking about Medicaid and SNAP enrollees, lately. Meanwhile, worm-brained, trash compactor-voiced, ironically-titled “Health and Human Services” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently called for people with autism to be put on some kind of government registry shortly after insisting “they will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date,” and “many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

Now, where have I heard that before? Hmm…

Oh yeah, HITLER SAID BASICALLY THE SAME THING IN 1939. RFK, JR. (whose grandfather was a Nazi sympathizer, by the way) WAS PARAPHRASING FUCKING HITLER.

The Nazi high command made no bones about the economic reasoning behind their programs of compulsory sterilization and “euthanasia.” They already gave away the game 80 years ago which Republican eugenicists now clumsily attempt to tee up like a pack of bumbling, incontinent golfers. Dachau, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and other concentration camps prominently displayed the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei,” meaning “Work Sets You Free,” as a constant reminder to prisoners within that their only value to the ruling empire was the labor being forced out of them, and the only freedom they’d ever receive from this forced labor would be death.

The current hoisters of this standard seem to be inclined to the ridiculous and diabolical belief that the primary purpose of human life is service to capital, as if capital is some kind of Supreme Deity that existed prior to humanity, requiring constant tribute, and those who hold the most money and property, regardless of how they came to acquire and retain it, are therefore fucking demigods.

They claim that “work requirements” will only apply to “able-bodied” individuals between the ages of 18 and 65, but have they clearly defined what “able-bodied” means, or have they left it totally arbitrary, subject to being changed at a whim and without notice? The Nazis ultimately considered their slaves “able-bodied,” no matter how malnourished or ill they became, until they literally dropped dead from exhaustion, after all.

These “work requirements” also appear to have been designed to make sure that practically anyone who meets them would then be earning just barely too much to qualify for Medicaid or SNAP, even if that income were still well below what’s necessary to afford private health insurance or out-of-pocket medical expenses, not to mention the average grocery bill under President Stinky. Obviously, they’re trying to render these programs functionally inert by making it impossible to qualify for them one way or the other, and also probably plan to cite the public suffering and outrage that would undoubtedly result as an Orwellian rationale for reducing or even abolishing the minimum wage.

Finally, even IF the proposed rules weren’t morally repugnant, and even IF they were part of a genuine, good-faith effort to increase employment levels while making Medicaid and SNAP more efficient, instead of being driven by a sadistic hatred for anyone who isn’t a wealthy Aryan, there remains the fact that they’ve already been tried on the state level, and according to each of those metrics, they were nothing but MASSIVE FAILURES. We already know that in practice, all they do is place additional costs and regulatory burdens on agencies while making the programs they administrate less effective and functional—and that’s without even considering how the larger bill they’ve been crammed into this time, like garbage stuffed into an already overloaded landfill, radically increases the Federal deficit!

As discussed above, deliberately ruining Medicaid and SNAP, and harming their beneficiaries is of course the GOP’s actual goal, here, regardless of whatever bullshit yarns they spin about “reigning in spending” or “making sure these programs better serve the communities they were created to serve.” The problem isn’t with their method rather than their intentions: They are lying about their intentions! Their intentions are “more money for us,” and “fuck you.”

Anyway, just as Republican attendants to Morgoth have their own, modern version of “Arbeit Macht Frei,” the rest of us already have our own, modern version of “First They Came”: the “Leopards Eating Faces Party.” It expresses much the same idea as the poem, by highlighting the irony of craven idiots who support or try to take advantage of fascism, only to find themselves ultimately victimized by it.

Pictured from left to right before the sign at Auschwitz in this cartoon are Donald Trump, drawn with the vacant, bug-eyed stare I’ve taken to giving him as a reference to when Bloom County put his brain into Bill the Cat for the remainder of the strip’s original run; Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, an insufferable dweeb who hasn’t been subjected to nearly enough wedgies, swirlies, and “kick me” signs taped to his back as an adult; and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, victim of the Congressional baseball shooting a little over eight years ago who tragically survived that incident, and who I included here instead of Senate Majority Leader John Thune because Steve seems much more impatient to kill the poor, and besides, who the hell is John Thune, anyway? Does anyone know what he looks like? Are we sure “John Thune” is even a real person?