We’re back to this again. Trump is Hitler, but he’s also not really or something. That’s the basis for this opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The piece was written by a former editor of the paper who is Jewish and whose parents survived the Holocaust. It’s not an explicit ‘Trump is Hitler’ piece. There is nuance, but it’s all garbage. It rehashes all the nonsensical aspects of Trumpism, which is that it’s a white nationalist ideology, but moreover, plays and brings out the darker aspects of our human nature. Seriously, that’s why we can make this historically illiterate comparison (via Philly Inquirer):
Many people find it offensive to use the Holocaust as a yardstick for the political excesses of the last four years that culminated in the storming of Washington on Jan. 6. They believe that to mention Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler in the same breath, as Spike Lee did on Sunday in an awards speech, disrespects the millions of innocent victims and survivors, diminishing the enormity of the Nazis’ crimes.
As a son of Holocaust survivors and a grandson of four murdered Jews, I might be expected to agree. But I do not.
I think Trump’s ability to incite followers under the banner of white nationalism has enabled us to better understand Hitler’s sway over the Germans, connecting us to the real people in the old black-and-white photo images and newsreels that show the masses with arms outstretched toward their führer.
[…]
Trump, years before the 2016 Republican convention nominated him for president, similarly signaled that his racism was not burdened by facts. In 1989, after the rape of a jogger in Central Park, he took out ads in New York newspapers calling for his state to adopt the death penalty. In that atmosphere of fear, five black and Latino teens were wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison.
In 2011, Trump embraced the debunked “birther” conspiracy theory surrounding President Barack Obama. Throughout the GOP primaries, Trump retweeted messages from neo-Nazi accounts and refused to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. This month, he professed love for the participants during the D.C. riot.
This is not to suggest that Trump would have become another Hitler, or that Trumpism is equatable to Nazism. But we now have a clearer understanding of the darker side of human nature.
Yeah, this makes no sense. First, it’s totally transparent. You just don’t like conservativism, Trump, or the rallies he held while running for office. By this standard, I can make the argument that Barack Obama is a Democratic version of ‘Hitler’ because he had large rallies. Is this for real? This is eye-roll material, folks.
Why are people attracted to Trump? I don’t know—maybe because he did a lot of what he promised on the 2016 campaign trail. He cut taxes, created millions of new jobs, including the best job market for black Americans ever until COVID hit, slashed regulations, got tough on the border, and renegotiated trade deals. This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding what this administration did in four years. None of it grounded in anti-Semitism, which is the hallmark characteristic of national socialism. Also, Trump is no longer president. He left office, so I don’t really get the Hitler or dictator nonsense that’s being hurled by the liberal media.
At its core, this piece can be grounded in ‘I don’t like Trump, and he might be Hitler, but also he isn’t.’ The mind reels. It’s James Franco in The Interview telling the North Koreans we’re “same-same, but different.”
If anything, the Democratic Party’s affinity to purging conservatives from social media platforms, shredding free speech rights, executing an agenda of indoctrination in our education system, and promoting or outright ignoring the rabid anti-Semites in their party is more in line with the authoritarian ethos exhibited by Nazis than Trump or the GOP has supposedly done in the minds of liberal America. And that’s by more than a few touchdowns. Anti-Semitism is the red flag in all things Nazi and right now—the Democratic Party and liberal America are full of them.
Look in the mirror, liberal America. The real ‘Nazis’ might be already inside your house.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member