Where this was said
First They Came: Reading Niemöller and the Firestone Warning
At 15:30 · chapter starts 15:20
The emotional and rhetorical peak of the episode's first half. Bongino reads Niemöller's famous poem — in which the pastor confesses to staying silent as the Nazis targeted communists, socialists, trade unionists, and finally Jews, leaving no one to speak for him when they came — and then challenges listeners to identify what is meaningfully different about the language being used by DSA-aligned politicians today. [1] — Dan Bongino "Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote his famous poem about the Nazi escalation targeting communists, then socialists, then trade unionists, then J…" 15:20 He then pivots to a quote from René Firestone, a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor featured in Steven Spielberg's documentary 'The Last Days,' who describes how each new Nazi law felt like a temporary measure that would soon blow over. [2] — Dan Bongino "Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor René Firestone explained in the documentary 'The Last Days' that each new Nazi restriction seemed like …" 18:30 'It didn't blow over,' Bongino emphasizes. 'It never blew over.' The dual reading is designed to short-circuit the listener's instinct to treat the current political moment as cyclical or self-correcting — the historical evidence, Bongino argues, suggests it is neither.
Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote his famous poem about the Nazi escalation targeting communists, then socialists, then trade unionists, then Jews — and by the time they came for him, no one was left to speak. Bongino reads it in full and asks listeners to explain what's different about the language being used today.
Bongino noted the remarkable historical coincidence that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4th, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor René Firestone explained in the documentary 'The Last Days' that each new Nazi restriction seemed like something that would pass. It never passed. Bongino applies this directly to the current political moment: every small concession to extremism is a ratchet that doesn't reverse.
