Nov. 9 and 10 marked the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, literally “Crystal Night” but more commonly referred to in English as the “Night of Broken Glass,” or the November Pogroms inflicted on German Jews in 1938.
Promoted and orchestrated by Germany’s national socialist regime, Kristallnacht resulted in more than 1,000 German synagogues burned, damaged, or destroyed; thousands of Jewish businesses vandalized and looted; and dozens of Jews murdered by their fellow German citizens. The regime instructed police and fire departments not to intervene, except to protect non-Jewish property. Hitler’s regime blamed the Jews for the Kristallnacht destruction and imposed a collective fine of 1 billion Reichsmarks. Insurance payouts owed to Jews were confiscated by the state.
Canada in the 2020s is not Germany in the 1930s. But history reminds us why free societies must guard against political ideologies, parties, and movements that punish dissent, treat citizens unequally, and restrict basic freedoms in the name of a supposedly greater good. If we understand how it happened there, we’re far better placed to prevent it from happening here.
Politicians never violate human rights without a pretext. The pretext for Kristallnacht was the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish teenager. This pretext was readily embraced by Germans who had been subjected to daily radio and newspaper propaganda that blamed Jews for Germany’s problems. When people hear a message hundreds (or thousands) of times, most of them embrace the message as true.
Kristallnacht did not arise in a vacuum. It was the result of hundreds of laws that Germany had passed during the previous five years.
The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service excluded Jews and the “politically unreliable” from the civil service, and from organizations, professions, and other aspects of public life. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws defined Jews not by religious belief but by ancestral lineage, and mandated their immediate and concrete segregation from “Aryans.”
German law restricted the number of Jewish students at universities, as Canada once did as well. German judges could not cite legal commentaries or opinions written by Jewish authors. Jewish officers were expelled from the army. Jewish university students were not allowed to sit for doctoral exams. Laws curtailed “Jewish activity” in the medical and legal professions. Germany’s Law Societies cooperated with the regime in forbidding the admission of Jews to the bar, and later revoking the licenses of all Jewish lawyers. Laws restricted reimbursement of Jewish doctors from public (state) health insurance funds, and prohibited Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients. Laws prohibited Jews from serving as tax consultants, veterinarians, public school teachers, auctioneers, gun merchants, and midwives.
The media, controlled by the government, banned Jews from writing editorials. Jewish actors were forbidden to perform on the stage or screen, and Jews were eventually barred from all cinemas, theatres, sports facilities and health spas. Jews were required to register their domestic and foreign property and assets, a prelude to the gradual expropriation of their material wealth by the state. Jewish-owned businesses were “Aryanized” by firing Jewish workers and managers, and forcing the sale (at prices fixed below market value) to non-Jewish Germans.
Eventually, Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage. By the time Kristallnacht took place, the passports of German Jews were stamped with an identifying letter “J.”
Many people today blame Kristallnacht simply on racism.
However, the truth is broader, deeper, and far more complex.
By the early 1930s, the national socialists were the most popular party in Germany, democratically winning far more seats in Parliament than any other party. Together with the communists, the Nazis received more than 50 percent of the popular vote: the majority of Germans supported the express goal of ending democracy, accountable government, the rule of law, and their individual rights and freedoms. Neither Kristallnacht nor the Final Solution (murdering millions of people) could have happened without Germans having first repudiated their democracy and their own human rights and constitutional freedoms as citizens.
In Canada today, the freedoms of all Canadians are threatened by ideologies and policies that slowly and steadily erode our rights and freedoms as citizens.
Freedom today is threatened by Marxist narratives that divide people into two groups: oppressors and oppressed. The old Marxism says that society is in a perpetual state of war between evil capitalists and good workers, a war that will end when oppressed workers defeat, conquer, and crush the capitalist oppressors. The new Marxism says that society is in a perpetual state of war between oppressors (men, light-skinned people, settlers, heterosexuals) and the oppressed (women, dark-skinned people, aboriginals, and sexual minorities). Outwardly, the old economic Marxism looks different from the new cultural Marxism, but they are substantively the same.
This new cultural Marxism has infiltrated many of Canada’s institutions: the media, government bureaucracies, universities, Law Societies, the police, Crown prosecution services, and the judiciary. Numerous Canadian laws and policies require aboriginal Canadians to be treated differently than Canadians of Asian, European, and African ancestry. Our Criminal Code requires judges to consider race and ancestry when imposing sentence on those convicted of crimes. Social conservatives are prosecuted by human rights commissions (and ordered to pay as much as $750,000) simply for peacefully expressing their opinions against the woke LGBTQ narrative.
Many Canadians cheered when laws in 2021 turned some Canadians into second-class citizens simply for exercising their right to bodily autonomy by refusing to get injected with a new vaccine. Those (like Dr.Frances Widdowson) who speak out against woke ideology are criminally assaulted on campus, and this is knowingly condoned by police. Police fail to enforce the law when crimes are committed by those who have the “right” skin colour, or who advocate for the “right” cause.
Cancel culture remains rampant as ideologues seek to silence opponents rather than debate them. Law Societies police the speech of lawyers, and require lawyers to submit to ideological training as a condition of keeping their licence to practice law and earn a living. Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons impose new, unproven orthodoxies on doctors, and commence disciplinary proceedings against dissenting doctors rather than engaging in scientific debate.
Under Marxist intersectionality theory, truth at universities is no longer discoverable through reason but through “lived experience” that only the “oppressed” have access to, such that whites must always defer to the opinions of non-whites. Some university job postings exclude applicants who are male or white or both. After 33 Canadian churches were burned to the ground, almost all of them due to arson or suspected arson, only nine arrests were made.
Canada in the 2020s is not Germany in the 1930s. Our democratic heritage, culture, and institutions originated long before our country’s founding in 1867, in contrast to Germany’s democracy which was ended after a mere decade. We should be thankful that Canadian liberties rest on the great English bedrock of Magna Carta, parliamentary democracy, and natural rights. This is why cultural Marxism has become a serious threat only in recent decades.
We must wake up now and realize that the steady and relentless assault on Canadian rights and freedoms will not simply wind itself down and go away.
John Carpay, BA, LLB, is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
Read this column in the Epoch Times