“The Reichstag fire wasn’t set by a Nazi agent. It was set by a committed antifascist, a Dutch council communist (think like, a communist who doesn’t like the USSR and believes in the working class ruling itself through democratic bodies instead of top-down hierarchies). His name was Marinus van der Lubbe. He grew up poor and rough, and he once threw a cop through a window, and he’s been done dirtier by history than just about anyone I can think of.
Marinus set fire to the Reichstag because he was tired of the Left not doing anything about the Nazis who’d just seized power, and because he hoped his arson would spark a workers’ rebellion against fascism. Instead, it was the pretext the fascists used to seize even more power. Strategically, the fire didn’t work out. Morally? I simply can’t be mad. His actions could have sparked a rebellion. They didn’t. If they had, it coulda saved the whole world an awful lot of trouble. (You can hear me discuss his story in part one and part two of my podcast.)
No one seriously believes that without Marinus’s fire, the Nazis wouldn’t have done, you know, the whole Nazi thing. No part of me believes that Marinus significantly changed the course of history. Under some pretext or another, or without one at all, the fascists would have taken power. Blaming all their evil deeds on a working class antifascist Dutch kid is one of the most lasting lies of the era. Why do we even entertain the thought?
Why are we priming our movement to fall for the same thing again, 92 years later?”
#Reichstag #history
https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/without-the-awful-roar-of-its-many
