The inescapable reminiscence of 1933
It does not start with gas chambers...
“If he [Trump] loses, I’m fucked… How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?” Elon Musk
Monday, was one year anniversary of the horrific attack by Hamas. Ever since that day a year ago my internal journey of self-discovery continues to circle around the acceptance and proper understanding of me being Jewish. I am not ready to write about it yet, but I know that in a better world I would have preferred to appropriately commemorate October 7th, rather than keep thinking about the increasingly more real threat of fascism.
Trump on the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack said: "Israel has to do one thing. They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. It’s not reciprocal." When he says, "I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. It's not reciprocal" that's more of a Torquemada than a Schindler sentiment. One year since the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and Donald Trump exploits our pain, presenting his support of Israel as completely transactional, conflating American Jews and Israelis.
A couple of weeks ago I felt that I had to write “I Did Not Want to Say "I Told You So“ essay on how the Trump’s MAGA Republicanism has come full circle to embrace not just open fascism but normalize actual Nazis. Since then, we’ve learned that besides Mark Robinson, GOP has another black Nazi: Minnesota GOP Senate candidate: ‘The bad guys won in WWII.’
Today, on the 85th anniversary of the 1st Nazi rally at the Madison Square Garden, Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign event for his neo-nazi America First MAGA cult.
While the MAGAists continue to blame the Democrats, the liberals, and essentially anyone but themselves for rhetoric inciting violence, let’s check on “this… former President’s” rhetoric becoming more unhinged and with more Nazi undertones:
Trump wants to give immigrants “serial numbers.” Just think of the context and connotations. The other day, it was the 83rd anniversary of Nazi Germany mandate for Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing, aiming to isolate and humiliate them, marking the escalation of anti-Semitism and culminating in the Final Solution with “serial numbers.”
Trump’s anti-immigrant and especially anti-White sentiment in Trump’s speeches is now dialed up to 12 (out of 10):
“They are illegal immigrants as far as I’m concerned.” — Trump claims legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio are actually illegal immigrants.
“They will walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat."
“The migrants have taken over our hospitals. They've taken over our schools.”
Trump leans heavily into race science by telling Hugh Hewitt that you can tell whether migrants are predisposed to committing murder by "their genes." "We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now," he adds. Zero mention of Trump’s “bad genes” comment on the NYT homepage. There’s a mention of it several pages down on the WaPo homepage. Trump is trafficking in Nazi race science and has promised to put migrants into camps. The lack of coverage is unacceptable. Obviously he has “good genes” as he says things like this: "I didn't have to be here. I could be in a beautiful beach. I could be in a gorgeous beach somewhere in the world. The sun beaming down in this beautiful body in a bathing suit."
So, just to get the above clear, immigrants come into this country with fentanyl and guns to sell but steal your job demanding to work for less than minimum wage. Then, with all those sub-minimum wages, outbid you on a house. And may be eat your pets. Got it.
Here’s what Trump's promise of deporting 30 million people would actually mean.
It’s not just the anti-immigrant language either, the hatred is dialed up across the spectrum:
“But outside, we have thousands and thousands of people. 40 to 50,000 people at least out there.. It looked like when Lindbergh landed in New York., Do you remember that? Thousands of people.. they’re probably leaving and walking home.” Lindbergh landed in Paris and was also a Nazi.
Trump addresses women: "I am your protector. I want to be your protector ... you will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger ... you will no longer be thinking about abortion."
As always any thing even potentially critical of him or his own actions is being denied:
Yet again Trump found a new and creative way to showcase his ignorance:
Trump went straight from causing bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio to endangering people’s lives in wake of a natural disaster. Here’s some of the lies about Hurricane Helene:
It’s not just Trump either. This part is the entire game. Decades of austerity has intentionally gutted our government’s ability to help anyone besides a small group of oligarchs, corporations, and banks. To deflect from this, the Right always transfers the blame from the guilty to vulnerable people.
These two tweets sum up the issue of misinformation in the age of social media and hyper-partisan politics pretty well. There comes a point when posting false content doesn't even matter, so long as it confirms your worldview and elicits the approval of your side.
Elon Musk continues to be the superspreader of lies and misinformation, even when he gets personally fact-checked by Sec. Buttigieg, because just like the above person, he simply does not care:
In response to this one post below, which is a lie, an endless number of people on Twitter are threatening to kill FEMA workers:
Laura Loomer is also promoting militias. These conspiracy theories are beyond dangerous.
Republican officials in North Carolina are literally begging far right influencers to stop spreading conspiracy theories about FEMA stealing supplies, corpses stacking up, lithium heists, weather control, and the federal govt abandoning them.
Republican governors openly appreciate federal help:
Fox news has obtained a fact sheet assembled by the majority side of House Appropriations Committee about disaster aid. It says that FEMA “has enough funding in the short-term to address immediate needs for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.” It also declares there is “no funding connection between” the migrant shelter program and the Disaster Relief Fund. It adds there is “no intermingling of funding between these two programs.” It adds that “the only connection is that both programs are administered by FEMA.”
Yet, read the comments in this thread by the American Red Cross. This is what Donald Trump and the people in his orbit have done to our country while Russia is smiling: “Misinformation can spread quickly after a disaster, causing confusion and distrust within communities struggling to recover. Unfortunately, we’re seeing this during our response to Hurricane Helene.”
FEMA attempting to address the lies about Helene is a noble but doomed effort. Nobody who wants to believe the lies will trust the source, and the denials will just be rolled into the conspiracy theories. Check the comments on FEMA's tweet for proof. Wall to wall insanity.
North Carolina National Guard shares updates like this regularly:
Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) issues letter to debunk myths - "Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock. Nobody can control the weather."
Random people on the internet are trying their best to keep the record straight:
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It is worth noting that Trump is using disasters as a way to spread lies and division is no different than his use of anti-immigrant rhetoric just a week earlier. Trumpism isn't politics. It’s a long-standing violence-and-intimidation machine right out of the Nazi textbook. It’s racism, fascism, and lies combined to further fracture social divisions and deteriorate societal stress points. From Central Park 5 to Floyd to the Big Lie/Jan 6 insurrection to the Haitian fearmongering in Ohio and Pennsylvania to establishing doubt in the reality of federal response to the Helene tragedy.
And then of course there’s Trump openly calling for Kristallnacht: “If you had one really violent day.. .. … One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately”. Trump is proposing a state pogrom in which police are empowered to murder marginalized people. If Kristallnacht seems too distant, there are American analogs. He's proposing mass lynchings. He's proposing the Tulsa massacre on a national scale.
At the same time Trump says it’s “very dangerous” for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll “get hurt.”
The GOP is now an autocratic party dependent on institutionalized lying, corruption (election denial being a form of corruption) and the threat and reality of violence (Jan. 6 as deadly outcome). With all the arguments over whether MAGA Republicans are fascists, Mark Jacob reread William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to see how much the rise of Hitler and the rise of MAGA are similar.
Mark’s conclusion: They do. Here are some clear parallels:
1. A big lie about treachery is used to foment resentment.
Nazis: We didn’t lose World War I. It was a “stab in the back” by Jews and other criminals.
MAGA: Trump did not lose the 2020 election. It was a “steal” by politicians and Blacks in big cities. It’s immigrants eating pets! It’s the government that controls the weather! They still cannot admit that he lost:
America isn't debating if Trump and Co. attempted a coup, conspiring to overthrow the Constitution to keep power despite losing reelection. Not really. They did it. America is debating whether it was bad or good—or at least acceptable—and if the perpetrators should be empowered.
As JD Vance declared, though, they are looking forward to the future, thus the big lie is not only the “stolen election in 2020,” but the seeds of the idea of the stolen 2024 one and the anti-Haitian lies along with spread of the lies about Helene response are nothing more than just more building blocks to declare the next election stolen.
2. There’s an obsession with purity of the culture.
Nazis: “Racial mixture” was a threat to Aryan culture, Hitler wrote.
MAGA: “Great replacement theory” says immigrants and Jews threaten white culture. Scroll up and re-read Trump’s commentary on immigrants again.
3. Chaos is something to be exploited.
Nazis: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.
MAGA: Economic distress is a great political opportunity, even if the economy is at all time best. The U.S. economy recovered so much better since the pandemic that we've actually grown better than projected in 2019.
The misery index is lower than 89 out of the last 100 years:
This is why there is a need to create a myth about failed response to the Helene tragedy - things are worse than they really are.
Conspiracy theories about weather manipulation are, unfortunately, the logical next step in climate denialism, and the traction they are getting shows how hard it is to get out of this absurdly terrifying loop.
4. The super-rich bankroll the right-wing seizure of power.
Nazis: I.G. Farben, Deutsche Bank, Thyssen, Krupp, Henry Ford, etc.
MAGA: The Mercers, DeVos, Thiel, Musk, Ackman, etc.:
Trump’s “Freedom Cities” are weird, but let's go deeper. Peter Thiel & other pro-Trump tech billionaires are OBSESSED with building new corporate-run territories -- “network states.” They want to change how the entire planet is governed.
Elon Musk Gave Tens of Millions to Republican Causes Far Earlier Than Previously Known.
“X is the only place to find the truth” says Elon Musk; NYT says that a third of 171 posts last week by Musk were false, misleading or out of context. I am willing to bet that number goes up if we include retweets.
Meta and Google have joined Elon’s censorship campaign against the JD Vance dossier. Google will not even allow you to share the pdf on Google Drive. Clearly, a lot of people complying in advance, as they fear reprisals from a fascist Trump admin. Trump threatened on Friday to direct the Justice Dept to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, because the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not Kamala Harris.
5. There’s a cult of personality.
Nazis: The German army made a pledge of loyalty to Hitler personally.
MAGA: Trump’s supporters bill him as “the most moral president” in U.S. history while practically literally making him into the modern version of the heretical golden calf:
We all know what he has said and done, but this 165-page redacted motion on presidential immunity from Jack Smith's filing explaining why Trump's alleged criminal conduct in attempting to overturn the 2020 election is not immunized from prosecution, perfectly captures what Trump did and provides perfect context to the idea of Trump as MAGA Savior.
6.Christianity is used to legitimize the movement.
Nazis: “The party stands for positive Christianity.”
MAGA: Trump is described as the “Chosen One” protecting American Christianity.
They're trying to make Trump-endorsed Bibles part of the curriculum in Oklahoma public schools.
This is before we even get into the Dominion Theology of the Seven Mountain Mandate supported by Speaker Johnson, Supreme Court Justice Alito among many others.
7. Books are the enemy.
Nazis: Any book that “acts subversively on our future” must be burned.
MAGA: “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” says a Virginia school board member: In Tennessee pastor leads burning of Harry Potter and Twilight novels. During the first half of the 2022-23 school year PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists 1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles, an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months.
8. An independent news media is the enemy.
Nazis: Any newspaper that “offends the honor and dignity of Germany” must be banned.
MAGA: The press is the “enemy of the people.” Shortly after assuming office in January 2017, President Donald Trump accused the press of being an “enemy of the American people.” Attacks on the media had been a hallmark of Trump’s presidential campaign, but this charge marked a dramatic turning point: language like this ventured into dangerous territory. Twentieth-century dictators—notably, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao—had all denounced their critics, especially the press, as “enemies of the people.” Their goal was to delegitimize the work of the press as “fake news” and create confusion in the public mind about what’s real and what isn’t; what can be trusted and what can’t be. That, it seems, is also Trump’s goal.
9. Educators are pressured to be politically compliant.
Nazis: Teachers took an oath to “be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.”
MAGA: Florida’s DeSantis accuses teachers of “indoctrination” and pressures them to avoid references to America’s racist history and LGBTQ people.
I'm not saying that MAGA will definitely end up as horrifically as Nazism. I am saying that America today feels too much like Germany 1933, and I don't want to take the risk of watching MAGA cultism play out. We have to stop it now.
Any historian of our era will say that the Jack Smith dossier about Donald Trump is 1000 times more important than Hillary Clinton’s emails found on Anthony Weiner's cell phone. My question: Do we detect any subtle difference in the way these two news breaks were played?
Yet, with all of that rhetoric, the 4th Estate continues to fail us: “When Trump says immigrants are “animals” who will invade your kitchen and slit your throat, Bloomberg sane-washes him by saying he “sharpened his criticism.” This is a stain on journalism. It’s utter malpractice that endangers our country.”
This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.
Soft speaking is prized as a rhetorical skill. It makes social violence more palatable (in the family and nation). It's more likely to draw women in (see also the pink tie). The contrast is when he talked over the female moderators and flashed anger at being fact-checked. His repeated strategy of pointing to alleged similarities to Walz is designed to move the Dems right and manufactures consent for the GOP agenda.
Calling Walz by his first name produced an implied intimacy but also equality between the two men's accomplishments, despite the fact that Vance is wildly unqualified. Trying to be chummy in a gentler voice produces a softer fascism alongside the lies about his support for a pregnancy registry, a national abortion ban, and forced labor for grandma (who will now be raising the grandkids, despite the fact that he's slashing Medicare).
Aesthetically, we see this in the fascist women with Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her prairie dresses or with Casey DeSantis and her Disney princess schtick. Given the attention to Vance's goth eyeliner, the pink tie and soft speech attempted to normalize his violence. Given that Vance lies like he breathes, this was an attempt to create some aesthetic coherence to his completely unmoored and opportunistic politics. But you can't put lipstick on a pig.
Don't get it twisted, though: Vance is the most overtly bloodthirsty candidate at the top of a presidential ticket since Andrew Jackson. The sexual politics of fascism is actually quite widely studied & the extremely oppressive natalism, restrictions on contraception and abortion, support for misogynist violence, and anti-immigrant sentiment converge in race/sex panic to justify widespread violence. His wife functioned a prop to justify the hypermasculine worldview, particularly as he distanced himself from any responsibility for housework/childcare/balancing the family with labor. He doesn't see himself as a father but as a breeder with echoes of Musk & other fascist dads.
It's no wonder that they are all so preoccupied with the slur "cuck." It speaks to the internal dynamics of white masculinity in the fascist movement. They're all so unmoored and anxious about being exposed. This was the dynamic at midcentury because J. Edgar Hoover had so much sexual dirt on men operating in the political sphere and he used it as interpersonal (and sometimes political) leverage against them. This dynamic around "cucks" is just insecure white masculinity peacocking for each other trying to outdo the most extreme version of themselves. This is why the contrast with Walz was painful at times to watch. But soft fascism is THE mask for the racial and sexual violence.
On the other hand, while Vance tries to normalize soft fascism, Trump has always been discursive and often untethered to truth, but with the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past. According to NYT analysis, Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13% more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did 8 years ago. Similarly, he uses 32% more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21% in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swear words 69% more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. “Trump is knitting together a full story that is utterly bogus, trying to convince tens of millions of a reality that does not exist: They’re living in a dangerous hellhole in which they’re imperiled by…people of color.”
While Trump is complaining about the bogus election interference against him, he is creating more and more loopholes to enable election interference for him: for example, foreign countries are not permitted to donate to American political campaigns. But there's probably nothing to stop, say, Saudi Arabia from buying 50 Trump Watches.
There are continues attempts to remove or suppress voters, especially in the South and the battleground states. Yet at the same time, there is all the propaganda that prepares to undermine and question the results of elections if Kamala Harris wins. The GOP-led noncitizen voting scare has a purpose. To set the stage for the next Stop the Steal. But this scheme is even more hare-brained than 2020's nightmare scenario. If you have any illusion that they will accept the results of the elections:
Even if we somehow dodge the bullet and I am absolutely wrong about the next 4 years, what, then, would prevent Trump from announcing in say, mid-2028, that radical Marxists had infiltrated the U.S. election systems and that he was declaring a national emergency and postponing the November election?”
The danger we face today isn't that Americans will gullibly be fooled into supporting fascism when they didn't intend to; the danger is that large swaths of Americans are knowingly demanding it.
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Mark Twain
