VE Day, 77 years later

On May 8th, 1945, Europe was liberated from the fascism that threatened not only Europe, but the world. By the end, untold suffering had been inflicted, and the number of the the Nazis victims' was so great that it could only be rounded off to the nearest six million, give or take. Why then, 77 years after VE Day, has fascism stirred back to life, this time in the countries that committed their militaries to defeat it? The easy answer is, people forget. And a lot of people enjoy hatred, especially hatred of difference. The irony of course is that the Nazis packaged and sold that hate as "patriotism" and "morality"—exactly how it's being sold today, right under the noses of people who would bristle at being called stupid, or oblivious. It's almost as though WW2 never happened, and the stories of horror and virtue that came out of it were nothing more than a late-night drunken rant in a bar, the name of which no one can remember. Please, please remember. This is how it occurs: one law change at a time, a scapegoating here or there, a culture war, the demonization of the press, and the recasting of history as "your opinion." You know whose opinion it was everything was going to be fine? Minorities in Germany in the early 1930s. Never forget how wrong they were.