Trump is more like Hitler than he was three years ago on the eve of his election.
This is an easy thing for me to measure because I wrote a post on October 19th 2016 in which I compared Trump to the rise of Hitler. Three years later Trump is clearly worse – or better if you are a neo-Nazi.
My comparison from October 2016:
- Like Trump, Hitler:
- played on people’s fears and racism;
- promised to make his country great again;
- had little regard for civil rights;
- presented himself as a strongman;
- was dismissed as a clown who could be controlled.
- Unlike Trump, Hitler:
- had a strong, united party behind him with broad national support;
- faced no strong opposition party;
- had already tried to overthrow the government (in Bavaria in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch);
- had a master of propaganda (Joseph Goebbels).
The first five are still true. In fact, people like me are still calling him a clown and think he can be brought under control, despite the lack of actual progress on that front. Congress is at long last moving towards impeachment, but at present there are enough loyal Republicans in the Senate to keep Trump from being removed from office.
Of the last four, two are clearly no longer true:
- The Republican Party is solidly behind him and is still a strong, national party.
- Fox News and Trump himself are, by any measure, masters of propaganda. Like the Nazis they use repetition, fearmongering, scapegoating and repetition.
A third is not true:
- Had already tried to overthrow the government.
And a fourth is arguably true
- Faced no strong opposition party.
Democrats only control one house of Congress and, until the past few weeks, they let Trump walk all over them. Only with Ukrainegate have they shown any detectable backbone. So he gets a half point.
What else is there?
On the dark side:
- Concentration camps: Trump has opened what most experts agree are concentration camps. In true Hitlerian fashion he has scapegoated and fearmongered about an ethnic other and used that to lock them up in camps. They are not death camps, yet, but neither were Hitler’s concentration camps at first.
- Neo-Nazi adjacent: Trump also had a hard time condemning actual neo-Nazis who marched with torches and chanted stuff like “Jews will not replace us!” He called them “very fine people”!
On the bright side:
- No Reichstag Fire: So far there has been no act of terrorism, false-flag or otherwise, that Trump has used as an excuse to declare a state of emergency to suspend freedom of speech and assembly and throw anyone he wants in jail. So there is that.
- The press so far has stood up to him, the only check of the checks and balances that seems to still be fully functioning.
But far more frightening than Trump are his followers. They have shown themselves to be White nationalist fascists in sheep’s clothing. And they are not going anywhere.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- Ukrainegate
- neo-Nazi
- US White nationalism
- Donald Trump
- Hitler
- “Hitler was democratically elected” – my original Trump/Hitler comparison
- Hitler: War Propaganda
- Reichstag Fire
- concentration camp
- impeachment
- Trump Derangement Syndrome:
546
You’ve got to be kidding, Abagond! Trump may a little crazy, that’s true, but in the main, he is nowhere near Hitler. Not even close! He’s done quite a bit for all American people, not just whites. I know that I shall vote for him in the next election, as will many other Americans.
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Always demonizing Trump. How Rich
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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Hitler was a war hero, Trump a draft dodger. Hitler couldn’t wait to start the next war, Trump, so far, has avoided getting into a new war despite the goading of his advisers and the media.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“He’s done quite a bit for all American people, not just whites”.
Name three things Trump has done for Black people, Pomare.
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@Afrofem
For one thing, unemployment amongst the blacks has drastically decreased under his rule. That’s an accomplishment. But of course, it’s more than just blacks, it’s also whites, Hispanics, Jews, and everyone else in between. All Americans, without respect to who they are, have benefited from this man being in office. He may be unconventional, but that is the point. Trump is not a politician. Rather, he is a guy who left his life of wealth to serve us, the American people. All the others were politicians, but not Trump.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“…unemployment amongst the blacks has drastically decreased…he is a guy who left his life of wealth to serve us….”
Both points are highly debatable…and laughable. Ever heard of the Emoluments Clause?
What are the other two?
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@Afrofem
I will say this again, Trump is no conventional President, and he is not at all a career politician, He is shrewd and cunning, yes, but all in all unconventional. Why not take a break from the media for a bit, eh?
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@ Everett F. Pomare
Sooooo, you have nothing but a claim of lowered employment in the Black community to bolster your pronouncements about Trump’s effectiveness. You couldn’t even come up with two more things Trump has done to benefit the Black community. That is because he has done nothing, Pomare.
The only people Trump cares about are (in order of importance) Trump, other wealthy people and Trump. He has been using the Office of the Presidency to stuff his pockets. So much for Trump being, “…a guy who left his life of wealth to serve us….”.
I would urge you to do a simple search for the words, “Emoluments Clause”, but Trump supporters tend to avoid research——-and critical thinking. Let me know how that works out for you in ten years when Trump and his cabinet level wrecking crew complete their demolition of the federal government.
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@Afrofem:
Didn’t he try to get a couple of rappers out of jail? That’s something, isn’t it? Instead of working two jobs, one has to work 45 or five. I guess that’s an accomplishment.
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@ Herneith
Yeah and when flitting from job to job with no time to cook nutritious meals, exercise and can’t afford the best food (organic this and free-range that), you gain weight and your health suffers.
Then if you find there is more month than money and go to a food bank (pantry) to get a few provisions, some rightwing joker will claim you are fat because you are lazy (conveniently ignoring your “45 or five” jobs. Moreover, the rightwing joker will claim there is no real problem with hunger because low income people are “obese”. In their imagination, low income people are lounging around on broken down sofas all day gorging on ‘tatoe’ chips and swilling koolaid.
Just saw this specious reasoning in the comment section of the San Francisco Chronicle this morning. In an article about suburban hunger:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Hunger-moves-to-the-suburbs-14806445.php
This is hardly the first time or the last time some clueless, insensitive person will deflect about real issues and blame the people most affected. Trump just enables their public behavior and ridiculous commentary.
As to those rappers that Trump grandstanded about a few months back, they may have been campaign contributors. Black people of means often shift their focus from race to class and become just as dismissive of low income and moderate income people as Trump’s $72 Grand a year base.
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@Everyone
Just don’t talk about. Like the venerable actor Morgan Freeman says. Issues don’t exist anymore if you don’t talk or think about it. Such a wise man…
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@ Untoldstory
Serious or sarcasm??
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@Untoldstory
Morgan Freeman actually said in a 2005 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/morgan-freeman-on-black-history-month/
I repeat, Black people of means often shift their focus from race to class and become just as dismissive of low income and moderate income people (of all ethnicities) as Trump’s $72 Grand a year household income base.
Black people like Morgan Freeman lose sight of the struggles of ordinary Black people because their money, connections and fame can insulate them from the very worst abuses of the system. They uphold their class interests first and many of them are Trump supporters. Kanye West is not the outlier he seems to be when viewed through the lens of class.
The flaw in Freeman’s argument is that while Black history is a part of American history, White American institutions (schools) and people tend to treat Black people as if they come from nothing and nowhere. In the White imagination, Black people have no history. That institutional bias leads to pretty ugly outcomes.
Such a false and glaring premise prompted Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) to start the celebration of Negro History Week in 1926. The original week corresponded with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. For all of the people who moan about a February Black History Month (“…they gave us the shortest month of the year” nonsense) and show their own profound ignorance about Black American history——–their ignorance of African history is a given.
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@ Afrofem
Yup. I am not sure where the income cut-off is, but it is well south of Morgan Freeman, Kanye West and Oprah Winfrey. And the Obamas. My guess is it is probably at $200K/year, maybe even $150K. Whatever that point is where Black men are more likely to marry White than Black.
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@ Abagond
$150K, gosh.
It’s sad that some Black men sell out so cheap.
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How do I feel about Trump at this point in his presidency?
Good news: He has kept the US out of more wars.
IMO, as president, Hilary Clinton would have overthrown Bashar al-Assad in Syria and produced another quagmire as in Libya and Iraq. Even under Trump Venezuela had a new leader “declared” from outside the country so Maduro may have been put under even more serious duress under a President RegimeChange Clinton. These wars are for multinational corporations and do not benefit either Americans or the hapless citizens of the targeted countries. It is pure hypocrisy to claim that the wars are for “liberation” from “brutal dictators” when one of the most repressive countries in existence, Saudi Arabia – from which most of the alleged 9/11 hijackers hailed and which allegedly kidnapped a journalist in Turkey this year and dismembered him – has America as a staunch ally in its war against Yemen and was a major Clinton Foundation donor.
Trump exists outside the national security apparatus with its entrenched doctrines and came into the Oval Office promising to keep America out of wars. It’s likely that he has faced a lot of resistance from the establishment within the military, FBI and CIA. The fact that people like Bill Kristol, who were cheer-leading the Bush wars on Fox, are not critical of Trump says a lot to me. Consequently, I’ve had a healthy suspicion of reports emanating from that part of the government which seek to undermine his presidency. However, it seems that he did overstep bounds in his attempt to strong arm Ukraine into opening an investigation into an American. Pity he wasn’t smart enough to set up private servers and communications to conduct such business! /sarc
Bad news: The Economy, perhaps
Admittedly, many of the issues are systemic and not completely Trump’s fault. The ease with which people can get into debt is masking the inadequacy of many incomes. Unemployment numbers can also be deceptive; one can google how it is computed. Furthermore, the banks are being bailed out by the Fed right now every day under our noses with hardly a whisper from the media.
https://fortune.com/2019/09/26/the-feds-repo-market-bailout-is-a-sign-of-deeper-problems-that-are-getting-worse-over-time/
That article was from the end of September and claimed the “liquidity injection” was “temporary”. The bailouts continued in October and are ongoing, as far as I know. So much of the economy is based on perception and “consumer confidence” so we’ll be told everything is fine until one day it suddenly isn’t. I’m pretty sure that’s how it happened in 2008.
Bad News: Fox has gone full propaganda with very little subtlety.
CNN and MSNBC are often biased as well, but that will be reflected more in what they refuse to cover (like Sanders leading in a poll) or the kind of questions they’ll ask in interviews rather than outright misrepresentation of facts. Many presenters on Fox will nonchalantly do the latter.
Bad News: The Republican party will tolerate anything from Trump (except his anti-war instincts).
The Republican party has shifted because the Dems moved towards the position of the former Republican Party. The “establishment” of both parties are largely in agreement on foreign policy (perpetual war) and corporatism. Back in 2016, Americans were fed up with the status quo so both Trump and Sanders became popular anti-establishment figures on the “left” and “right”. Trump was allowed to win his party’s nomination and Sanders was not. The rest is history: Trump is the party now.
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“The ease with which people can get into debt is masking the inadequacy of many incomes.”
A feature, not a bug.
“…the banks are being bailed out by the Fed right now every day under our noses with hardly a whisper from the media.”
Most people have no idea what “quantitative easing” is or who benefits.
Yet, that same media argues vociferously that America can’t afford universal healthcare, student loan debt forgiveness, free tuition for college and trade schools or infrastructure projects (new water systems, new electrical grid, universal broadband, modern bullet trains and new bridges).
Instead, they shriek about our ‘ballooning national debt”, like national economies are the same as household economies. How many households can print their own sovereign currency?
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I made a pretty big typo in my previous post.
I meant to say that Bill Kristol is NOW critical of Trump and accidentally said NOT instead. That changed the meaning a great deal, lol.
@Afrofem
“A feature, not a bug.”
Absolutely.
The economy runs on debt.
I was reading an interesting article last month about how capitalism will end. I didn’t bookmark it but I’ll see if I can track it down again. IIRC it was written in 2014 and made some points that seemed relevant to our time.
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So it turns out that Stephen Miller is the bonafide Hitler in the Trump admin.
(For those who don’t know, his Breitbart emails were leaked)
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Even though we have some evidence of Trump’s racism, I’ve personally not compared him directly to Hitler. I think he’s too self-absorbed to be just like the infamous Austrian. Hitler was an obsessive ideologue who was willing to shed his blood, sweat and tears for his overarching vision. I think Trump is both too lazy, and considers himself too precious to be directly bothered with any of that. Trump, though over 70, is like the personification of social media: he just wants likes from people he likes. (I mean, the guy shut down the government because Ann Coulter bashed him for failing to deliver on his promises.)
However, the composition of his administration is a different matter. He doesn’t have Stephen Miller’s level of commitment to Nazi ideology, but there is a place for Miller in his administration. He claims to be Christian but isn’t committed to the religion or to a theocratic America, but there is a place for Mike Pence in his administration. He doesn’t have a commitment to American military interventionism, but there was a place for a hawk like John Bolton in his administration.
I think it would be fair to hold Trump responsible for the composition of his administration. However, as far as a direct comparison to Hitler is concerned, I see him more as a kind of useful idiot than a grand mastermind. The smarter, more committed, more sinister people around him (remember Bannon) are the ones really driving policy, IMO. The thing is, Trump has the snake-oil salesman’s charisma that could win an election. They don’t.
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that’s interesting, i’m not a nazi buff, but a preliminary wiki search (and some stuff here from back in the day eg phrenology etc) reveals a whole ‘mythology’ and classing of ppl by the nazis according to their origins, and how they made a whole pseudo-science out of the aryan race, i mean that was par for the course in the 20’s-30’s as everyone was doing it, the OTO, theosophists, mormons, etc! but it was a whole thing for them, and while I don’t think it diverged from their war effort in WWII (running the concentration camps on occupied soil probably was not a major hit monetarily or personnel wise), it probably helped ‘philosophically’ during the siege of leningrad/invading russia during the winter etc, since slavic was not considered ‘pure’. just like ‘they hate us for our freedoms’ …
I just don’t think trump has that much initiative or interest in anything but ‘business’ in the vaguest sense of the word to a. found an ideal, b. invest resources in it, or c. even care.
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Democrats use black people for their vote , while helping every group under the Sun.
The liberals say what they will do for Feminist, Illegals, Gays, and people of color AKA no blacks. Trump should close the border and kick all illegals out. And these African immigrants too.
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On immigrants: it’s like hiring a kid just out of college instead of a seasoned professional; or golden parachute in, just business as usual.
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I stumbled into the interview below and found it interesting. He echoed some things I’ve thought about which felt a little like validation.
For example, that
-Trump has no ideology but is a vessel for others such as the Christian Fascists
-There were deficiencies in the system before Trump
-There is a corporatist bipartisan consensus on the big issues
-Establishment Dems have uniform ideology but resort to identity to give the appearance of change
-That the corporate establishment would rather someone more polished that Trump but would rather work with him than anyone who gives off a whiff of socialism such as Sanders
Chris Hedges and Abby Martin:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dQW4X6oC-c)
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What are the leftwingers like, no morals homosexuality, feminists, abortions all the young woman are whores and the men want to be girls. The white democrats are against reparations for AODS , well all whites are against that. Lol and you compare Trump with Hitler, what you compare the slimy Democrats with, Satan.
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I compare Democrats to Satan, look at all the evil stuff they do.
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Democrats are a curse to America they have no morals .
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Democrats and Republicans agree on most of the things that are bad for ordinary people.
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Trump is more like Hitler than he was when I wrote this post 14 months ago, because now you can add this similarity: “tried to overthrow the government” – where the storming of the Capitol becomes his Beer Hall Putsch.
Still on Trump’s bucket list: Reichstag Fire.
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Wasn’t Hitler arrested in the Putsch? Keep an eye on Derrick Evans. Perhaps when we’re old and the TikTok short attention span generation is coming of age.
https://www.herald-dispatch.com/elections/wv_candidates/w-va-house-19-candidate-derrick-evans-r/article_2a98fc40-618f-11ea-8dcf-83013f1c29e0.html
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