Tag: neo-Nazis

Should we ever compare modern situations to Hitler’s fascism?

We originally posted this in 2018:

Good historians are extremely cautious about comparing problems–even very serious ones–to Nazism. Claiming that someone is “like Hitler” or “as bad as Hitler” cannot be done lightly. The enormity of the crimes committed by fascists in Europe before and during WWII is so overpowering that a slipshod or weak comparison diminishes both the horror of the Nazis and the credibility of the warning one is trying to raise in the present day.

So we were cautious when we heard about this short video by Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale, that’s been going around. But we feel it is on target, and so we link you to If you’re not scared about fascism in the U.S., you should be.

This post is even more relevant today, and we were never more furious and distraught at being right.

If the link doesn’t work, or you don’t have access to the NYT, here’s the outline, with terrible yet completely foreseen updates.

2018: Historian Jason Stanley begins by saying “it might seem like an exaggeration to call Trump a fascist: after all, he’s not imprisoning his own people without due process.”

2026 update: there will always be those who cling to what Trump and his lackeys are not yet doing, no matter how much what they are doing clearly demonstrate what they are eventually going to do.

2018: “Fascism begins when politicians conjure up faith in a mythic past supposedly destroyed by liberals, feminists, and immigrants. Fascists create an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a past that is racially pure, traditional, and patriarchal.”

2026: We’re living this every day in America, where a white male straight Christian past that never happened must be our future. Which can also never happen, and the fascists know that, and they embrace the perpetual war this creates, because that gives people a sense that someone powerful should be in charge during wartime…

2018: “As long as he remains in power, everything is possible. Without him the whole system collapses.”

2026: And that’s why the U.S. will either have rigged mid-term elections this year or no elections at all.

2018: “Once you’ve got your mythic past, you need the next ingredient: division. Whether it’s citizens and foreigners, whites and blacks, fascists succeed by turning groups against each other. The Nazis said Jews had no value because they supposedly did not mental or physical work… When you divide, it’s easier to control.”

2026: The obvious relevance of this to the war on people of color, all of whom are now treated as some kind of “immigrant” because America is naturally white, and on all women who must be reduced to service animals to bear white children, is infuriating.

2018: Then you attack the truth because truth is central to a free democracy. This creates a petrie dish of conspiracy theories… including that the “deep state” is trying to bring down Trump. With truth under attack and lies running wild, no one can agree on what’s true anymore, and fascists love that.

2026: We are now barricaded behind whatever we choose to believe is true, and those who believe fascism is truth walk our streets with submachine guns and unlimited license to kill.

2018: “I want you to be scared about encroaching fascism in America, because if you don’t, before long, it will start to feel normal. And when that happens, we’re all in trouble.”

2026: That has happened, and we’re all in trouble.

We all celebrated the holidays last month as if we still lived in a democratic America. We all talk about summer vacation and school, we commute to work and try to make our deadlines. We watch TV and shovel snow. Those things have to go on, maybe, but they should be what we do in our spare time, time we’re not devoting to fighting fascists in our government, local and state and federal.

Demand more of your elected officials. Attend protests. And be ready to fight right now to protect what should be our mid-term elections. Those happen locally, in your local school gyms and town halls. Don’t let anyone tamper with those elections, and if federal officials interfere, be ready to protest to whatever level is required to stop them.

Fascism is not entirely in place right now. Real Americans will put demolishing it ahead of any other work or concern in 2026.

…those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it: Trump’s America First policy

So many world events seem to be trending toward a repeat of World War II: China’s decision to “own” all the islands in the East China Sea and its vocal and powerful minority calling for a return to strict Maoism; Japan’s corresponding military build-up and refusal to acknowledge war crimes its soldiers committed before and during WWII; ethnic violence and the upswing in the growth of neo-Nazi groups (both official political parties and grassroots organizations) in Europe…

…and the racial, ethnic, and xenophobic hatred being brought to its logical conclusion by the Trump campaign in the U.S. Since the 1970s, the Republican party has been taken over by neoconservatives who have urged white Americans—rich and poor—to hate any American who isn’t white and to blame them for all the white people’s (perceived) problems. The hatred has extended to gay Americans, non-Republicans, feminists, and any other group that isn’t toeing a traditional line.

The hatred has also been extended to the federal government. It has been openly described as “the problem” since Reagan, and white Americans have been relentlessly urged to destroy it by starving it of tax money, electing people to office who are devoted to tearing it apart from the inside, and, frankly, ignoring it.

Now there is a man who is willing to admit this is the party policy and reap the harvest of all those decades of hate-mongering, who is not afraid to actually destroy our system of federal government. Other Republicans had not been willing to do this because they make their living in government work. Trump does not, and he is happy to wreck our federal government for a few reasons: he doesn’t understand how it works, and therefore will push it to do things it can’t and then blame it/shut it down; his most passionate supporters want this and he wants their admiration; and since he will be incapable of serving as president, he will appoint people to do that work for him from the ground up.

Trump has contributed to the 1930s feel of the world today in many ways, but his “America First” foreign policy, delivered in a speech on April 27, is very clear. As CNN.com reminds us:

It is extremely unfortunate that in his speech Wednesday outlining his foreign policy goals,Donald Trump chose to brand his foreign policy with the noxious slogan “America First,” the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.

The America First Committee actually began at Yale University, where Douglas Stuart Jr., the son of a vice president of Quaker Oats, began organizing his fellow students in spring 1940. He and Gerald Ford, the future American president, and Potter Stewart, the future Supreme Court justice, drafted a petition stating, “We demand that Congress refrain from war, even if England is on the verge of defeat.”

—We have to break in to say that Stuart’s involvement is no surprise. For decades into the 20th century the Quaker Oats slogan outside the U.S. was “Wherever white men live, Quaker Oats will be sold.”

Their solution to the international crisis lay in a negotiated peace with Hitler. Other Yale students — including Sargent Shriver, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and Kingman Brewster, the chairman of the Yale Daily News, future president of Yale and ambassador to the Court of St. James — joined their isolationist crusade.

Robert Wood, the board chairman of Sears, Roebuck, agreed to act as their group’s temporary chair. The growing organization soon included powerful men like Col. Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune; Minnesota meatpacker Jay Hormel; Sterling Morton, the president of Morton Salt Company; U.S. Rep. Bruce Barton of New York; and Lessing Rosenwald, the former chairman of Sears.

…After Pearl Harbor, the America First Committee closed its doors, but not before Lindbergh made his infamous speech at an America First rally in Des Moines, Iowa, in September 1941. After charging that President Roosevelt had manufactured “incidents” to propel the country into war, Lindbergh proceeded to blurt out his true thoughts.

“The British and the Jewish races,” he declared, “for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.” The nation’s enemy was an internal one, a Jewish one.
“Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government,” he contended. Booing began to drown out the cheers, forcing him again and again to stop, wait out the catcalls, and start his sentences over.

The America First foreign policy announcement comes after Trump began asking his supporters to stretch out their right arms as a sign of support… in a gesture that can only be described as the Hitler salute.

Trump’s response? The Republican front-runner at first dismissed the controversial comparison, calling it “ridiculous” and “a big stretch,” and insisting rally attendees were just “having fun.” “Well, I think it’s ridiculous, I mean we’re having such a great time,” Trump said. “Sometimes we’ll do it for fun, and they’ll start screaming at me, ‘do the swear-in, do the swear-in!'” …pressed [to state whether] he would stop asking supporters to make the pledge now that he was aware of the controversy, Trump said, “Well, I’ll certainly look into it.” “I mean I’d like to find out that that’s true, but I would certainly look into it, because I don’t want to offend anybody. But I can tell you that it’s been amazingly received, but I will certainly look into that.”

The more important Hitler comparison lies not with Trump, but with the American people. Most Germans though Hitler was a nut when he came on the scene. But he stayed, and after a few years people accepted him as a part of the political scene, albeit a nut. The shock and annoyance of hearing his crazy statements wore off as people became used to it. As he grew in power with the fringe, mainstream Germans began to shift from saying he would never be in power to speculating about what it would be like, and how he could be managed by “real” politicians. And then he took power, and that was that.
Let’s hope mainstream Americans are not doing the same thing. Would a Trump presidency  mean fascism? Not all at once. But even this election campaign has been the thin end of a wedge that will allow more radical, more hate-filled candidates to run in the future, and each time they do the shock will wear off a little more, and we will treat them a little more like normal candidates, and eventually, the worst will happen, if we are not vigilant. Historians always watch the long-tail past and the long-horizon future. Let’s hope non-historians will start doing the same.