TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF THE WEIMAR PERIOD

Glenn Beck warns people that America may be headed into a period resembling that of later-period Weimar Republic and though it's not always clear what he means, he seems to think that this means that Communism may be imminent.

Noam Chomsky also notices a similarity between the present and Weimar but he draws a far different conclusion:

“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”

I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”