Resistance is Purile

Editor's Note: This is the second of two parts.

At first glance, everything looks fine. Sixty-five years after the Nazi victory at D-Day brought this North American city into the fold of the Greater German Reich, the security situation is calm. Families stroll the sidewalks. Stores that haven't been boarded up are filled with browsers. Travelers line up to take the express elevator to the top of Manhattan's Adolf Hitler Tower to board express zeppelin service to Germania.

But not everyone is happy. Decades after being conquered by Germany, North American subjects of the Greater Reich are growing restive. "We would greatly appreciate it if you would consider withdrawing," reads the pointed graffiti on the side of a local SS recruiting station.

Why the anger? Six months after a new chancellor came to power amid promises of dramatic change, the Reich remains at war. Between the officially unemployed and the long-term dispossessed, 20 percent of North Americans are out of work. Auschwitz is closing and torture has been banned, but dissidents say Adolf Hitler III's reforms are merely window-dressing.

"He still reserves the right to use 'enhanced interrogation techniques,'" points out Seth, a 26-year-old who says he lives in the 'still cool' section of the Williamsburg gau of Brooklyn. "OK, so maybe he needs them. But the Auschwitz detainees are being transferred to Buchenwald and Dachau. What's with that? And now this 'Soviet surge.' This isn't the change we hoped for."

Seth is the twisted face of the Resistance, an umbrella term for the motley mix of militant factions dedicated to the overthrow of the occupation regime. Some are liberals opposed to human rights abuses. Some are leftists who want economic equality. Others oppose the Reich's wars, which they consider pointless and immoral. All say they're willing to use any means necessary.

Seth is so furious that he has even started a blog, SomewhatAnnoyed.net, where he catalogues a litany of complaints against Nazism.

Whether it's Twittering, posting to Facebook pages or creating an iPhone app like iResist, such radical action against the authorities takes many forms. After her boyfriend was deported to the east, Greta vowed to write a letter to the editor to her local newspaper. "Once you commit yourself to the path of resistance against the fascist oppressor," she said, "you must accept that you will either end up dead or in prison. I'm okay with that." Although she hasn't gotten around to writing the letter yet--"I've been super busy with my book club, not to mention transferring my files from Blogger to Wordpress"--she says nothing can stop her from "ruthlessly smashing the infrastructure of dictatorship."

Bob and Ken blame GAFTA, the Germano-Antipodes Free Trade Agreement, for the loss of their jobs when their employer moved to New Zealand. Bored and broke, they while away their afternoons plotting their revenge over chocolate-flavored caffeinated beverages at chain coffee shops with other disaffected partisans. "The German pigs have to go," says Bob. "We'll get them where it hurts." He is planning to think about organizing a poetry jam.

Terrorist sabotage was on the agenda at a recent meeting of their cell. "We should totally march around holding signs and chanting slogans," Bob suggested. "Maybe it would slow down traffic or something," he said, fantasizing that a busload of deportation victims might then go to their deaths later than scheduled. But getting a protest permit might require filling out a form, countered Ken. "Not to mention a fee," agreed Bob. "Anyway, protesting didn't work in the '60s. Did it?"

Denise, a fierce brunette in her late 30s, represents the ruling elite's worst nightmare. First, she obtained an MBA. Then she got a job on Wall Street. "I'm infiltrating the corporate capitalists' den, learning their methods from the inside," she said. "Once I've spent 30 or 40 years allaying their suspicions by doing everything they want and then some, I'll pose as a harmless retiree. They'll never see it coming!"

At this writing, the Gestapo had inexplicably disbanded the American division of its counterinsurgency operations.