If not now, when?

[redbird]

I got this in email:

if you ever wondered what you have done when Adolf Hitler took power in Germany or Francisco Franco in Spain or Augusto Pinochet in Chile, well now you know. You would do exactly what you are doing now. If that’s going into the streets, then great. If that’s complaining about protestors or whining about liberals or whining about the left, then that’s what you would have done in 1933, 1937, and 1973. Only you can stop Trump. So do it.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/01/keep-protesting

Comments

[liv]

I'm pretty sure that what I would have done in Germany in 1933 is run far away. And I'm working on it, but maybe not as committed as I should be to the escape plan. Well, I think Britain isn't falling apart quite as badly as the US right now, but I would not at all be surprised to find that I have gambled wrongly in thinking I have a couple of years to sort my life out.

[redbird]

There's that, but I'm not at all sure where we could run to, given that four months ago I'd have suggested to my mother that she run back here.

[liv]

I can't believe I'm actually having this conversation, but (with every hope and prayer you won't need it) I think the best option may in fact be Germany. I think they have some kind of immigration fast track, or at least are generally favourably disposed, to Jews with recent German ancestry. I mean, I'm not sure whether your people are in fact German, and if they are it's just about unthinkable to suggest your mother goes back there. But I suppose it depends just how bad the alternatives are. (They don't have the nasty immigration restrictions Canada does, at least. And German society generally doesn't hate you for most of the other reasons that Trumpist society hates you.)

[redbird]

I actually looked up the German citizenship rules a couple of months ago; it turns out I'm not entitled to automatic German citizenship, because that's patrilineal. My father's parents were born in what was then Russia, and is now Ukraine; the family story is that my paternal great-grandfather had spent some time in German rather than be drafted in Russia, hence the German family name, but I doubt that would be useful here even if provable, and I'll take even Trump's U.S. over Putin's Russia. My mother could reclaim German citizenship, having been born there, but I doubt she wants to.

I don't know whether I'd have a fast track, but that might be something to investigate further, some night when I can't sleep, or day when I have no other work that needs doing. (I'm fairly sure neither Andy nor Adrian would, but in this sort of calculus, he's at less risk than Adrian or I, being neither Jewish nor LGBT.)