By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

“Nothing is more dishonorable for a civilized people than to let itself be ‘governed’ without resistance by an irresponsible clique of rulers devoted to dark instincts.” These words open the first communiqué of the White Rose, a collective of young Germans in Munich, including brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, clandestinely opposing the Nazis.

They issued six pamphlets from 1942-43, exposing the mass extermination of Jews, Roma and others and calling for resistance. They wanted to ensure that, after the war, Germans couldn’t say they didn’t know about Nazi atrocities. They ended their fourth pamphlet with the words, “We will not be silent.”

The Nazi Party was founded in Munich. One hundred years ago this week, on February 27, 1925, Adolf Hitler delivered a speech to 3,000 people in a Munich beer hall. Just out of prison for his role in a failed coup, Hitler was relaunching the party and cementing his role as its unquestioned leader.

Now, 80 years after the end of World War II, President Donald Trump is accused of tearing down the international order that has prevailed since then. This was apparent last week at the Munich Security Conference (MSC), where Vice President JD Vance gave a speech widely viewed as an ominous harangue against the long-standing refusal by European democracies to engage with far-right parties in their respective countries.

“You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail,” lectured Vance, ignoring that his Republican Party is the one known for chanting, “Lock her up!” or “Lock him up!” at so many rallies. Vance then attacked racial and ethnic minorities – not a good look in the city where Hitler got his start:

“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants…all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.”

Earlier, Vance toured Dachau, the earliest concentration camp set up by the Nazis, in 1933, first used to imprison the Nazis’ political opponents, then for Jews and other targeted minorities. He also met with Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD. Once consigned to the fringe, AfD is expected to place second in Germany’s February 23rd elections. In January, Elon Musk, who many describe as Trump’s co-president given the power he wields while gutting the federal workforce, provoked outrage in Germany when he appeared virtually at an AfD rally.

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis explained on the Democracy Now! news hour, “Alternative für Deutschland, the Alternative for Germany…It would be wrong to call it a Nazi party or a neo-Nazi party. It would be right to refer to them as another conservative, racist, xenophobic party which alludes to the dark era of the Nazi period.”

Varoufakis was in Munich for protests against the MSC and NATO. He cofounded MERA25, a political party active across Europe.

Melanie Schweizer, a MERA25 candidate for the German parliament, was also in Munich for the protests.

“The situation in Germany at the moment is really dire. There is a blatant attack on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,” Schweizer said on Democracy Now! “We see a dismantling of the rule of law in Germany, a crisis of democracy. We really very much fear the upcoming elections…that this might be the last election before fascism, because the center parties, especially the Social Democrats, the Green Party, also the Left Party — they have taken over the rhetoric of the far right — not just the rhetoric, but also the policies.”

Schweizer is a human rights attorney who has spoken out in defense of Palestinians, for which she has been targeted by Germany’s rightwing media and dismissed from her government job.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, was supposed to speak last Sunday at the University of Munich, but her talk was cancelled due to its “political orientation.” The student group that invited Albanese called it “yet another case in which an urgently needed academic discourse on the serious situation in Israel/Palestine is being denied in Germany.”

Hans and Sophie Scholl were distributing the White Rose’s sixth leaflet at that same school, the University of Munich, which they attended, when they were caught and arrested on February 18, 1943. Four days later they were tried, convicted, and beheaded, with another White Rose activist. Others were rounded up and executed in the following months. Most of them are buried in Munich’s Perlacher Forest Cemetery. JD Vance would have been better served by a reflective visit there, rather than meeting with the AfD.

As the US drifts closer to authoritarianism, the words of Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose collective remain vital: We will not be silent.