Reichstag Fire Decree (1933)

I honestly cannot imagine why someone just now is posting an article about how a singular crime is used as a justification for a massive government power grab and an excuse to oppress the ruling party's political opponents, despite negligible evidence of any connection to the crime. [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/jd-vance-char...

the idea of the right to bear arms was to overthrow a dictatorial government if need be, not to milsim in city centers or shoot up schools. The 2nd amendment is not really meaningful in the age of palantir and f35s.

If your “freedom” requires walking around backwards waving a pistol is it really freedom?

Alas, this is the same argument that can be used against the 1st amendment and the political opposition: "Rejoicing in Kirk's death is immoral, therefore the 1st amendment doesn't apply, and let's abusively prosecute anyone we can tie to him in any way".

Not really, the Nazis did manage to push a lot of pro-nazi judges everywhere, who judged that what their friends were doing was legal, but fair judges wouldn't have danced to the same tune.

A Brown shirt killed by a communist/socialist was always illegal, but a communist/socialist killed by a brown shirt was always self defence and always legal.

That's why the rule of law is so important, and that's why it shouldn't have exceptions for anyone, even policemen (arguments could be made for elected people as long as they are elected though).

This is a common thing to hear, but I'm not sure how true it is. It would be nice to hear from a historian, but Hitler and the Nazis did many things that were not legal in the early days. They did dodgy and possibly illegal things to give Hitler German citizenship so that he could run in German elections. He literally employed a private army which was committing violent acts across Germany. Not long after being appointed chancellor he personally ordered murders and assassinations including the night of long knives.

which is also the excuse many nazis used at the nuremberg trials

> (Edit: ChatGPT reminds me that Hitler's post-1933 actions were legal; the earlier (and failed) "Beer Hall Putsch" was illegal.)

Looking back it seems crazy that he only got one year in jail for the failed Putsch.

It means that a number of users hit the "flag" button, but not yet enough to kill the thread.

And what does that mean? Probably that several users considered this off-topic, and (under current circumstances) to be political, and more likely to result in a flamewar than in a useful discussion.