Rabbi Joachim Prinz, March on Washington, August 28, 1963, next to Bayard Rustin, Jr. PC-3551. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.
“The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Preface to the First Edition, 1950.
“It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Memphis Tennessee, April 3, 1968
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. published his final book in June 1967, ten months before he was gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Incisive at the time of publication – we were then at the height of the Vietnam War and the beginning of what King called “the white backlash” to the achievements of the civil rights movement –the book’s title framed a question that challenged us when it came out: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
This question plagued us after his assassination, and it has haunted us ever since, especially as the white backlash took on increasingly toxic, ugly and corrosive forms, culminating in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, his achievement of the popular vote in 2024, and the beginning of his second term today.
The voters of the United States gave us a definitive answer to Dr. King’s question at this grave juncture of American history. Our beloved nation is plunging headlong into deeper and deeper chaos, he would say — a hurricane of disinformation and lies, deregulation and dysregulation, corruption and graft, repression and violence. Based on the overwhelming evidence before us – including, for example, the assault on our democratic system on January 6, 2021 and the valorization and promised exoneration of even the most the violent assailants — King would warn us that the coming moral, political and social chaos will be likely be worse and more cruel than the terror and repression of Jim Crow we experienced in Birmingham and Selma; in St. Augustine, Florida, where Ambassador Young was savagely beaten; in Montgomery where Dr. King’s home was bombed and in the white neighborhoods of Chicago where King was attacked by bricks, bottles and rocks; or in Memphis where the sanitation workers were brutally exploited and Dr. King murdered.
This is the harsh, grim and tragic reality in which we live today.
Dr. King used a very specific phrase to describe the chaos to which we are entering as a nation. He called it “a dangerous fascist path.” We have two choices in response. We can contribute to this nascent American fascism — or we can oppose it, and withdraw our cooperation with it.
Among the readers of this blog, few if any will actively support this chaos. But many of us will try our best to ignore it, to mind our own business, keep under the radar, attend to family and friends, and wait, hoping that the storm will pass on its own accord. In the meantime, we understandably want to step aside and get out of the storm’s way, to the extent we can, to protect ourselves, our family and our community. Such an approach, however understandable, fuels this chaos by passively contributing to it.
On August 28, 1963, Rabbi Joachim Prinz stood before the Lincoln Memorial and spoke to tens of thousands of Americans who gathered for March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This is an excerpt of his speech on that day:
“When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence. A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder.
America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent. Not merely black America, but all of America. It must speak up and act, from the President down to the humblest of us, and not for the sake of the Negro, not for the sake of the black community but for the sake of the image, the idea and the aspiration of America itself.”
Juxtaposing hope and despair, we celebrate two federal holidays today: MLK Day, and Inauguration Day. On this august day, Rabbi Prinz’s admonition, like Dr. King’s question, sears, burns, challenges, and demands our attention. We cannot look away. We can run but we cannot hide.
Where do we go from here? How do we face the tragic circumstances unfolding, and spinning out of control, in our beloved country?
Today, the most urgent problem facing all Americans is not Donald Trump or Elon Musk or the policies they seek to implement. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.
On this day, and for the next 1,459 days that follow, we must each choose one path or the other:
The path of silence, or the path of opposition.
The path passive cooperation, or the path of actively withdrawing cooperation.
The path of submission, or the path of dignity.
The path of fear and depression, or the path of self-respect and courage.
The path of violence, or the path of nonviolence.
The path of defending human rights, or the path of violating human rights.
The path of cruelty toward the most vulnerable, those who Dr. King called “the least of these”, or the path of protecting them.
The path of oligarchy or the path of equality.
The path of American fascism, or the path of American democracy.
The path of chaos or the path of community.
America must not become a nation of onlookers, Rabbi Prinz challenged us. America must not remain silent.
We have 1,460 days remaining.
Which path will you take?
We cannot repair America and the world with hate, only with love.
Jonathan D. Greenberg
