Opinion: Reflections From Berlin

The last few days I have been in Berlin, Germany for business. Unlike other business trips, since I had never been to Berlin and I had three hours of downtime, I scheduled a guided tour of the city. The guide was a young Israeli who had emigrated to Germany seven years earlier. He was an English teacher in Israel.

As you can imagine, the discussion about Berlin’s history, especially in the context of Israel’s war against Hamas and Russia’s war in Ukraine was both fascinating and troubling. But what was most troubling was remembering that Germany had been a democracy before World War II, and that Berlin in the 1920s was an exciting and tolerant city. But in the 1930s, legislative changes slowly chipped away at democratic institutions. And when the parliament, state legislative bodies, and city councils were thwarted by citizens, those same bodies gave more power to the executive to enact laws unilaterally. As laws were enacted that limited the rights of individuals, so-called leaders identified the Jewish people, immigrants, and others such as gays and lesbians and the disabled as enemies of the State. The rest, as they say, is history and millions were slaughtered.

After the tour, I found myself reflecting on what is today happening in the United States.

Currently, there are 14 states in the U.S. that have banned abortion at every stage of a woman’s pregnancy. Voters in seven states—California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont—have supported ballot measures to legalize abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision allowing women to control their pregnancy decisions and limiting state interference.

In 2024, the issue of a woman’s right to choose will be on the ballot in Florida, Maryland, and (likely) Arizona. The Arizona State Supreme Court determined that an 1864 law—before Arizona was a state—could be enforced. That law bans abortion in every stage of pregnancy. On a related topic, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that life begins at conception deciding the embryos used in IVF treatment are considered children.  The decision brought IVF procedures to a standstill and even though the Alabama legislature enacted a law to modify the Court’s ruling, it did not overturn it.

At least 22 states in the U.S. have approved bans on gender-affirming care. These bans impact children and remove parents from making decisions with, and for, their children. There were over 500 anti-gay/lesbian/trans bills introduced in state legislatures. To date, 70 bills have been enacted into law that target drag performances, discriminate against gay, lesbian, and transgender persons, and censor school curricula with gay and lesbian content. These efforts are not slowing and will continue throughout the 2024 state legislative sessions. These attempts to limit individual freedoms for adults, and for children and their parents, are not random. They are—as they were in Berlin, systematic—and are today funded by the Republican party and/or their supporters.

Nationally, the Republican Party candidate for president is on trial for fraudulent business practices to protect his 2016 campaign, and other trials are pending for election interference, mishandling classified documents, and attempting to thwart the counting of Electoral College votes by inciting a riot on January 6, 2021. That candidate, former President Trump, has been found guilty of defrauding the State of New York and defaming an individual he was found to have raped. While these matters are on appeal, former President Trump could owe damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars. While campaigning, the Republican nominee for president continues to identify people as enemies of the state and rails against immigrants, stating that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Having been reminded in Berlin that hateful words and legislative changes that erode democracy and people’s rights eventually can lead to the slaughter of innocents, I do think it is time to stop calling criticism of these laws, hateful words, and policies limiting individual rights “partisan attacks.”

Sometimes things such as hateful words, discriminatory laws, and restrictions on freedoms are simply wrong. Normalizing them, as history instructs, is destructive for democracy and our human and civil rights and identities.