History teaches us that authoritarians use any excuse to seize power | Judith Levine

Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag blaze to justify snuffing out civil liberties. In the US, the calls for a crackdown have already begun

On the night of 27 February 1933, six days before national elections, the German Reichstag was set on fire. Firefighters and police discovered a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe at the scene, who confessed to being the arsonist. The Nazi Reichstag president, Hermann Goring, soon arrived, followed by the future propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler, who had been dining together.

Two competing, still unresolved, conspiracy theories would circulate about the real culprit: the Nazis, with van der Lubbe as front; or a communist cabal. But the three men had no doubts. Goring pronounced the crime a communist plot. Hitler called it a God-given signal", adding: If this fire, as I believe, is the work of the communists, then we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist."

Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism