Conversation

Evangelical conservative antisemitic, Hitler-supporting, Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller didn't write his famous poem "First they came for ..." as a warning to liberals and centrists, but for hard-right conservative Christian Hitler-voting Germans like himself who never believed the poison of Nazism they wished upon others would ever touch him, and it did.

Please understand the poem's breathtaking warning in that context. That warning was meant for the smug supporters of a fascist dictator, the rest of us should already understand we're already in the crosshairs, but their time, too, is coming.

The good Nazi supporting Pastor Niemoller was arrested and imprisoned because he refused to agree with the mandated Nazification of his Lutheran Church, to turn his conservative Protestant church into the Church of the Nazi State. Many others capitulated.