"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
Attributed to American author Sinclair Lewis
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| Town hall security grabs man who sprayed unknown liquid on U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar |
When President Trump was asked by an ABC reporter if he had seen video of the attack on Representative Omar, Trump answered:
No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.One of the indicia of fascism is a casual -- even favorable -- attitude toward violence directed at the political opponents of the leader. Sometimes it comes from agents of the government. Sometimes it comes from supporters of the leader. Either way, the violence is pardoned, condoned, or laughed off as well-justified. It is a message to Americans: Opponents risk injury or death. Comply. Obey.
Change often sneaks up a little at a time. A populist leader ignores constitutional guardrails, sidelines the legislature, ignores court orders, initiates wars, creates a private army to intimidate citizens, extorts businesses, demands a compliant media, targets and stigmatizes minorities within the country, and demonstrates that dissenters and political opponents are subject to summary violence. I am talking, of course, about Nazi Germany.
Jack Mullen reflects on the events of 90 years ago in Germany. Jack and I thinned and picked pears in local orchards in our youth. He studied history at the University of Oregon. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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| Jack Mullen with wife Jennifer Angelo |
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
Germany 90 years ago.
The Nazi Party snookered Germany in 1932.
The Weimar Republic was deeply fragmented in 1932. No party held a majority. Political parties were in disarray. The Nazi Party, running on a platform that promised economic recovery, jobs, national revival, rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, and virulent nationalism and antisemitism, won a plurality of votes in the July 1932 election and remained the largest party after losing seats in November.
Titans of German industry and leading conservatives convinced the aging president, Paul von Hindenburg, that if he appointed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as chancellor, they could restrain him. Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933.
Did ordinary Germans understand what the 1932 elections had unleashed? The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, gave Hitler’s cabinet the power to pass laws without the Reichstag, effectively dismantling constitutional democracy. President von Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934. Hitler then merged the offices of president and chancellor and declared himself Führer.
Under Hitler, Germany reduced unemployment, largely through rearmament, public works, and the exclusion of Jews and others from economic life. At the same time, Germany cast off the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. By 1936, the regime had a story to tell the world — and a powerful propaganda machine to tell it. Many abroad, and many Germans, accepted that narrative.
In 1936, Germany hosted the Winter Olympics in February and the Berlin Summer Olympics in August, using both events as global propaganda showcases. Unemployed workers found jobs in expanding steel and armaments factories.
At the same time, many middle-class Germans saw violent, strong-armed actions by the SA, SS, and secret police but did not view them as signs of the totalitarian system tightening around them.
Any lingering illusions should have shattered in November 1938 during Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass — when Nazi paramilitary forces, aided by civilians, attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany and Austria while authorities largely stood aside.
In 1938, Hitler expanded Germany’s territory: Austria was annexed in March, and the Sudetenland was absorbed in October after the Munich Agreement. These moves fulfilled his promises to revise Germany’s borders and restore great-power status.
Less than a year later, in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began.
There are lessons to be drawn for America from Germany in the 1930s, including the danger of executive overreach, the use of security forces for political purposes, territorial ambition, and a compliant legislature and judiciary. While many Germans were slow to recognize their country’s slide into dictatorship, recovery is possible if we remember:
--- Free and fair elections matter.
--- A constitution is only as strong as the citizens who defend it.
--- This is a pivotal moment in history as we try to uphold the principles set forth 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence and preserved in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
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Yes to all of this post’s points. I don’t expect an economic recovery though. The world recognizes Trump being erratic, capricious, and untrustworthy and will marginalize the US to the extent it can, as evidenced by the India/Europe trade agreements being made. I would guess Trump helped make that happen with his tariff crazy policies.
ReplyDeleteThis is Dave not anonymous
Granted, Trump is the Second Coming of Hitler. He's taken a few odd turns nonetheless while emulating his infamous forebear, after both men achieved office by way of voter plurality.
ReplyDeleteImagine had the Reichstag not burned but continued to function, instead of Hitler forcibly combining legislative and executive authority. Hitler inexplicably permits free elections and while still in power sends a motley pack of civilians to negate his election defeat instead of his feared Gestapo with guns. The ill-conceived coup attempt dissipates after a few hours, and Hitler duly relinquishes power for a few years, spending most of his time losing in court, before somehow persuading German voters to return him to power.
Of course the stage is now set for the systematic slaughter of millions in unwanted ethnicities amid a raging world war. IF the midterms go better than currently expected, that is....
Trump sent a motley pack of civilians to negatge his election loss. He left the White House not out of patriotic duty but because he lacks a supportive VP and a personally loyal military, that was on guard against Trump. It dissipated because he lacked loyal co-conspirators.
ReplyDeleteAnother significant difference between now and the 1930s in Germany: that was the Great Depression; no such thing is happening now.
ReplyDeleteTrump might actually be the new Mussolini.
Trump has Jewish grandchildren. Trump supports the Jewish state. Trump is targeting illegal aliens, not a particular ethnic group.
Calling Trump the new Hitler has much more of an emotional punch, but that punch is due to the Holocaust. Surfing on that memory when it doesn’t apply dishonors that memory.
He isn't targeting Jews, so Jews are probably OK. But he says that people from Somalia are garbage, that Muslims are dangerous as an entire class of people, and that Black people -- especially Black women -- are "low IQ." This is not exactly the same as saying that Jews stabbed Germany in the back and that Jewish financiers are eating up and destroying the hard work of honest Arian Germans, but it seems pretty similar to me. I have attempted to protect this blog from loose smears. I chased off a commenter who kept calling Black women low IQ, echoing Trump. I will attempt to do the same thing if commenters start making allusion to clever, crafty, disloyal, treacherous financier elites -- antisemitic dog whistles to my ear. So, my own sense is that Trump isn't different from Hitler. He just found a different ethnic group to stigmatize and condemn as dangerous. Trump's casual way of attacking Rep. Omar for getting a stange liquid squirted at her instead of condemning her attacker seems to me a powerful signal about what behavior is permitted and encouraged. In 1930s Germany Hitler made it OK to rough up and kill Jews. In 2026 Trump is making it OK for his supporters to rough up and threaten a Muslim.
DeleteThose are good points, Peter. But they are points about Trump‘s rhetoric. When it comes to actual government action, the only targets have been illegal aliens.
DeleteYou are correct that motivating thugs may be an intentional and hoped for effect of the rhetoric. But it’s hard to say one way or the other given the way Trump runs his mouth improvisationally in the moment. I tend to think that a lot of it is a stream of his narcissistic consciousness.
I still maintain that Mussolini is a much more apt comparison to Trump than Hitler. But that more accurate comparison doesn’t have enough rhetorical punch to satisfy the political needs of Trump‘s opponents.
Nobody said Trump's rise to power exactly duplicates Hitler's, but the parallels are an alarming wake-up call to anyone with any sense.
ReplyDeleteTrump is a much closer parallel to Mussolini than to Hitler. Why reach past the closer parallel, if not to surf on the horrors that Hitler unleashed with the Holocaust?
DeleteThat seems like choosing rhetorical punch over accurate analysis to me.
Accurate analysis would recognize that Trump's masked, well-armed paramilitary goon squads are behaving like Hitler's Gestapo, but MAGA cluelessly claims the people they execute were asking for it. That's like blaming rape victims for being too provocative.
DeleteExcept they are not targeting an ethnic or religious group. They are targeting illegal aliens.
DeleteAnd legal aliens, and dark-skinned people, and Democrats...
DeleteNot as official government policy. Official policy is just illegal aliens. That’s a huge difference with respect to the Nazis.
DeleteThe accounting fails to mention perhaps the most compelling reason for Hitler's rise, which was the very real threat of the Communists, who had in recent memory overthrown the Czar of Russia. Marx had expected Germany to be the first to adopt his principles. Extreme Communist leftists were real killers, conducting numerous assassinations. Hitler fought fire with fire, and killed back. Almost no matter what, middle and upper classes of Germans were deathly afraid of Communism and, in turn, the collapse of a world order that many felt needed to be saved. There was no confidence that anyone could stop the Communists except Hitler.
ReplyDeleteHitler’s “annoyance” was not limited to Jews. He went after gypsies who illegally crossed German borders. The homosexuals who found the Berlin of the 1920’s a safe haven were persecuted unmercifully.
ReplyDelete.....primarily by the out homosexual Ernst Rohm, tolerated by Hitler until Rohm's brownshirts became inconvenient, for reasons other than the gays among them?
DeleteHitler targeting Gypsies and homosexuals was an example of his dictatorial powers to bring harm to his vision of a sustainable Third Reich.
ReplyDeleteSome may quibble over this excellent post’s comparison between what Hitler did with his republic and Trump is doing with ours, but Trump's lawlessness and disregard for the Constitution are well-documented facts. Regardless of who he’s targeting for demonization and mistreatment, they are human beings and deserve to be treated humanely. I wish those who support what his army of masked thugs are doing – breaking into peoples’ homes and cars without judicial warrants, arresting, detaining and deporting them without due process, even executing people with impunity – could experience it themselves and then tell us it isn’t cruel and unusual.
ReplyDelete“Some” are making important points about how to understand what’s going on. Low resolution logic and emotional reactions cannot possibly lead to competent and effective politics, much less policy..
DeleteSome may “quibble” about conflating Trump and Adolf Hitler? Like Dubya before Trump? Or ICE/Border Patrol and the Gestapo? The suggestion is overheated and irresponsible, as are “executing” and “impunity”.
DeleteA federal judge has called out ICE for violating 96 court orders in January alone, but "some" don't seem to think the administration's contempt for the rule of law is any big deal. Point of information: Previous presidents deported plenty of illegal aliens without all the brutal theatrics, but MAGA wallows in it so their Fuhrer gives it to them.
Delete