Where Does the Duty to Resist Begin?

Commandant le Baron Phillipe de Vomécourt

Simon Wiesenthal noted something that we to learn immediately. He wrote this in a manuscript entitled Resistance and Human Rights:

“Where does the duty to resist begin? [...] It begins wherever injury to human beings begins through the violation of their rights. If people resist from the very beginning, then they later have no need for a heroic struggle. For those who violate human rights are always a minority and one must show them in good time, before it is too late, the limits of their power.”

This is the absolute truth. Had Germans resisted in the beginning, especially professionals, Hitler would have had a much more difficult time achieving his aims. Today we are seeing some resistance from Americans to at least some of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s illegal, unconstitutional and poisonous actions against Americans and others.

However as much as we protest now we cannot ignore that it was the inaction of far too many people going back a decade that has brought us to now. The chances to stop him before today are far too numerous to list here. They are compendium of “what if” moments that boggle the mind, and they include the actions of American political leaders, the oligarchs of business, especially tech giants, an apathetic and compliant corporate media, the hostile governments of Russia and China, an often divided and ineffective Democratic Party, judges and Supreme Court justices who placed their ideology and personal devotion to Trump before the law and the tens of millions of Trump’s MAGA followers who behaved as members of a religious cult in their undying support for him. It makes me tired to think about it.

Of course there are those supporters and opponents alike who did not take him at his word when he said that he would govern as a dictator, or believe any of his other threats against the laws and institutions of the United States or our closest allies. Despite a full term experiencing his actions, including his prolonged efforts to overthrow of the 2020 election, even before the attack on Congress and the attempted murder of his own Vice President and members of both parties Senators and Representatives on 6 January 2021 and the revelations of his crimes Trump was again elected to office.

The problem is that far too many people did not want to see or hear facts, they refused to believe in the truth because it was too uncomfortable, too dangerous and too difficult. Or they refused because they had accepted the lies as the truth or had become so cynical that they did not vote for his opponent because all politicians are corrupt, thus excusing Trump for real criminal actions.

Timothy Snyder wrote: “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.”

Truthfully, most Americans long renounced the difference between what they wanted to hear and what is actually the case.

Now resistance to Trump is starting to build, but had Trump been defeated at the polls, no resistance who be necessary today. To paraphrase Wiesenthal if we had resisted from the beginning, heroic resistance would not be necessary. As the fall of our institutions and the collapse of the guardrails of our Constitution and democracy, resistance becomes much more difficult. But despite the difficulties we must resist as individuals and band together with others of like mind. We will have to take our cue from resistance movements in the past, if need be from other countries.

Commandant le Baron de Vomécourt, a Frenchman volunteer for service after France fell to the Germans in June 1940. He was not called up into the French Army in 1939 due to his age, but he went to England and volunteered to be part of the Special Operations Executive which ran British support to partisans against the Nazis. Unlike many of his countrymen who did not rally to the resistance until it was clear the Nazis were losing the war, he began early and succeeded remarkably. He said:

“Had all of us in France meekly, lawfully carried out the orders of the German master, no Frenchman could have ever looked another man in the face. Such submission would have saved the lives of many, some very dear to me. But, France would have lost its soul.”

It is clear to me that many Americans, possibly even the majority will meekly comply with the edicts of Trump until it appears that he, Elon and Vance have run their course. We don’t have that luxury if America is not to lose its soul. As an American, I want to be able to look other people in the face rather than hide it in shame.

Until the next time. Be safe, watch your six and find ways to resist. It is not futile.