"The Spiral of Silence..break it!"

Have you ever wondered how an entire nation came under the hypnotic control of Hitler and his Third Reich? How they overlooked the soft tyranny as it permeated their everyday lives slowly but unmistakably. How did so many look the other way when Jewish businesses were targeted, bullied, and treated unfairly because it didn't affect them directly?

How did they explain away to their children the strange new doctrines being taught in the classrooms about how evil Jews were, the strange new righteousness attributed to the pursuit of the perfect race, and how anyone with disabilities should be killed? How did they attend church Sunday after Sunday knowing each week the majority stood idly by as their fellow Jewish citizen were being run out of the country, refused service at the stores, snitched on by neighbors, and lied about in the press?

The Germans weren't a country populated by ignoramuses with no moral compass but rather they were exceptionally smart & inherited a great spiritual heritage of great moves of God such as the reformation via Martin Luther. They easily had some of the smartest economists, scientists, and engineers in the world during the rise of Hitler and his ilk. So how could a nation of such intellectuals with a spiritual lineage fall for the propaganda of Hitler & the Nazis? Greater still, how is it that the majority of them stayed silent while people, their own fellow countrymen, were targeted for extinction by the government?

They watched the government apparatus go from gradual aggressive manipulation of people into full-scale war with the most evil intent targeting people to strip them of their status, belittle their contributions to society, isolate them from commerce, crush their dreams, strip them of their freedoms, and cancel them by any means necessary.

Tyranny is an insidious vehicle of evil to control people and it utilizes bullying in every dimension while rewarding those who look the other way and remain silent. Tyranny's surrogates leverage fear to get as many to "go along to get along" until the compliant lose their freedom of expression, of thought, of worship, of everything to tyranny's newly acquired dominion. One great German, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, recognized the tyranny of the Nazis and is accredited with saying...

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless."

The "Spiral of Silence" was a phrase coined by German sociologist and political scientist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. She lived through the rise of the Nazis and would have identified herself as "pro-Hitler." Apparently after the war, and the true toll of the wicked atrocities of Hitler was revealed to the world she couldn't reconcile why so many of her fellow countrymen had suddenly discovered great courage to oppose Hitler after the war but said nothing when they had the chance. After intense reflection, she concluded the dangers of what she called the "spiral of silence."

In Elizabeth's view, the "spiral of silence," referred to "the idea that when people fail to speak, the price of speaking rises. As the price to speak rises, still fewer speak out, which further causes the price to rise, so that fewer people yet will speak out, until a whole culture or nation is silenced."

There can be no doubt tyranny is on the rise in America and the discerning can easily see that America is in grave danger of the incalculable costs of the "spiral of silence." If it could happen to the Germans it could happen to us.

Tyranny's targets may change over time but the results of a nation controlled by tyranny can't be achieved without the majority remaining silent. Let us learn from history, from Bonhoeffer, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, and break the silence before it's too late. By God's strength we the remnant of Christ must stand up, speak up, and break the silence.

"If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all." Isaiah 7:9

"Who rises up for me against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers?"

Psalms 94:16

Source: "Letter to the American Church" by Eric Metaxas