Hitler And Trump, Different But Chillingly Alike
It is overly simplistic and in the end, flawed to compare Adolf Hitler and trump because the factors that gave rise to Hitler were unique to the time and many layered, just as are the reasons that millions of Americans have supported the modern-day autocrat that is trump.
But while the specifics vary, the tone is frighteningly similar, and all Americans should be wary and closely watch as the House committee exposes the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection for having been led and created by none other than trump.
E.J. Dionne, a columnist with the Washington Post, wrote “Constitutional democracies are rarely destroyed by a single blow. Their citizens often sleepwalk into catastrophe, discovering too late that a degree of timely vigilance could have preserved their system of self-rule. The nation must be clear on this: Failing to achieve accountability for the Jan. 6 insurrection, in the courts and at the ballot boxes, will amount to issuing a license for the enemies of democracy to do this all over again.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the renegade Republican who may have sacrificed her political life declared from her post on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
Purges, political violence, propaganda were earmarks of both the Nazi reign of terror and to a lesser degree, to the trump years. Both despots surrounded themselves with the worst kind of sycophants and enablers.
Hitler, Goebbels et all were masterful in co-opting the media and creating their own media and their own big lies. The same effort is being martialed by trump and his forces to discredit the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol by trump followers. The day after the first day of explosive hearings on the attacks, as part of an orchestrated attempt to discredit and minimize the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump’s public relations firm, Fox “News,” prominently ran stories on “What to know about the rare diagnosis Justin Bieber just revealed” and “Proposed $1B patriotic park will feature 1,776-foot tall flagpole.” Not a mention of the hearing.
Hitler denied that he was a murderer because he truly believed that he was rescuing the reich from the Jews and communists who were destroying the motherland and the rest of the world. Trump will deny that he lied about his role in the attack because he truly “believed” that the election was stolen.
A pivotal moment in Hitler’s rise to power was the arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, Feb. 27, 1933, four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Without proof, Hitler attributed the fire to Communist agitators and used the incident as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government. As a result, Hitler induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany and gave the Nazis a legal basis for the persecution and oppression of any opponents, who were be framed as traitors to the republic. The decree also removed basic personal freedoms, such as the freedom of speech, the right to own property, and the right to trial before imprisonment.
In a speech about the enabling act, Hitler told members of the Reichstag on March 23, 1933, “The Government of the National Revolution basically regards it as its duty, in accordance with the spirit of the Volk’s vote of confidence, to prevent the elements which consciously and intentionally negate the life of the nation from exercising influence on its formation. The theoretical concept of equality before the law shall not be used, under the guise of equality, to tolerate those who despise the laws as a matter of principle or, moreover, to surrender the freedom of the nation to them on the basis of democratic doctrines. The Government will, however, grant equality before the law to all those who, in forming the front of our Volk against this danger, support national interests and do not deny the Government their assistance.”
“Simultaneously with this political purification of our public life, the Reich Government intends to undertake a thorough moral purging of the German Volkskörper. The entire system of education, the theater, the cinema, literature, the press, and radio-they all will be used as a means to this end and valued accordingly. They must all work to preserve the eternal values residing in the essential character of our Volk. Art will always remain the expression and mirror of the yearning and the reality of an era. The cosmopolitan contemplative attitude is rapidly disappearing. Heroism is arising passionately as the future shaper and leader of political destinies.”
In Jan. 30, 1937, Hitler had completed his efforts at gaining total control as the fuehrer and told the Reichstag:
“Surely nobody will doubt the fact that during the last four years a revolution of the most momentous character has passed like a storm over Germany. Who could compare this new Germany with that which existed on the 30th of January four years ago, when I took my oath of loyalty before the venerable President of the Reich?”
“And I can prophesy here that, just as the knowledge that the earth moves around the sun led to a revolutionary alternation in the general world-picture, so the blood-and-race doctrine of the National Socialist Movement will bring about a revolutionary change in our knowledge and therewith a radical reconstruction of the picture which human history gives us of the past and will also change the course of that history in the future.”
“And this will not lead to an estrangement between the nations; but, on the contrary, it will bring about for the first time a real understanding of one another. At the same time, however, it will prevent the Jewish people from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations.”
Sounds eerily trumpian.
Similar to the Reichstag fire, trump has tried to use bogus incidents of political violence to justify his actions in office and to garner further support from his right wing base.
Since the nationwide protests following George Floyd’s murder in summer 2020, misinformation designed to rouse trump’s racist base against the Black Lives Matter movement, has been manufactured and spread online, ranging from misleading claims about the movement’s founder to false assertions about the group’s politics. The lies about the extent of damage from civil unrest was used by trump as further rationale to crack down on left wing protests and to beef up the power of the government, his government. Trump’s strategy was furthered by the unfounded claims that antifa members had instigated unrest at the behest of left wing progressives. He also tried to tried to blame Democratic, counter demonstrators for violence at the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug, 11–12, 2017. Far-right groups participated, including self-identified members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Klansmen. In the aftermath of the violent demonstration, Trump slammed the media, defended his comments about violence in Charlottesville and repeated his suggestion that “fine people” were among those at the rally, while he repeatedly mentioned the size of the crowd that had gathered to hear him speak.
Trump also has claimed the assault on the Capitol was a hoax perpetrated and instigated by Democrats and the left wing. This is what trump’s signal mouthpiece had to say.
“What did happen, exactly, on Jan. 6? What’s the truth of that day?” Fox news commentator Tucker Carlson told millions of viewers before the hearings had begun. “Well, that’s still unknown. From the extensive video we have of Jan. 6, it’s clear that some in the crowd, more than a few, were encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol. To commit felonies.”
The Capitol assault has similar markings to the infamous Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass, a Nazi pogrom on Nov. 9–10, 1938, that resulted in the burning of synagogues and arrest of Jews. The violence was orchestrated by the Nazis in revenge after Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris, shot and killed German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Through his speeches, Hitler instigated his followers to seek retribution by wreaking havoc and death on the Jewish community. The German authorities looked on without intervening.
Trump’s Kristallnacht was the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Trump had rallied his followers and urged them to attack the Capitol to force members of Congress to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election and to return the presidency to trump. It was an attempted coup, nothing less and the incident came perilously close to trump declaring martial law and a suspension of legal rights.
Kristallnacht was a great moment of pride for the German people who sought revenge on those who would destroy the nation. The Jan. 6, 2021, assault “was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country,” Trump posted on his would-be Twitter clone, with the oxymoronic name of “Truth Social. “
In the same way that trump did not win the 2016 popular vote, many Germans did not support Hitler and the Nazis at the start of the 1930s. In the 1932 presidential election, Hitler received only 30.1 percent of the national vote. In the subsequent run-off election, he received only 36.8 percent of the vote. It wasn’t until President Hindenburg appointed him as chancellor in 1933 that Hitler began consolidating power.
Hitler was a powerful and charismatic orator who said he would provide jobs and fire up a dismal economy while he offered the German people a return to their pre-World War I glory. He was a strong leader who cast a spell on millions of Germans who wanted desperately to believe him and who fell in step with his exhortations that the real enemy was the Jews because they fomented and sold out Germany in World War I and were planning to rule the world.
Enter trump, a powerful and charismatic, former reality TV star who has the ability to rouse crowds to his call, whether it was to “lock up” adversaries or to rough up dissenters and the “fake news” media. Trump promised a return to a time when white Christian Americans ruled, a time before the Democrats began to dismantle the white Christian culture by promoting the nation’s history of racism, undermining traditional sexual values and backing LGBTQ rights and of following the so-called “Great Replacement” plan to flood the nation with immigrants and remove the political power from the Christian right.
In desperation, today’s followers would support trump even if it meant dismantling the democratic process. They have been entranced in much the same way that Hitler drew the German people to believe his lies. Hitler destroyed Germany. Trump would similarly sacrifice the U.S. as a way to seize power. Hitler said he was the savior for his beloved Germany. Trump, and only trump, could repair his beloved country and return it to its former greatness or so he said.
Pearl Harbor could never happen, but it did; Sept. 11 could never happen, but it did; a president planning and fueling a violent insurrection couldn’t happen, but it did. What will happen next is up to the American people, whether they will turn over and supplicate to a false savior or totally and completely reject him and others like him.