And then there's Hitler

 

When I read the fantastic JoJo from Jerz Substack “I’m fat and going to Hell” I was just going to post something about it as an addendum to today’s Substack.

Then I thought I wanted to make sure all my subscribers read it so I am posting it in an afternoon Substack.

The other day I wrote about Thom Hartmann referencing Hitler five times and fascism seven times in his Substack. I wrote “I’m not the only one harping on Hitler, Hartmann is too.”

That was my third Substack in a row about Hitler. I wondered if enough is enough. Now, with four, is this too many, I ask myself. 

Here’s what JoJo from Jerz wrote today.

She begins writing about the Nazi cosplayers caught writing about how they admire Hitler:

It’s late when I’m writing this. I’m up because my mind won’t shut off. My body wants sleep, but my brain’s doing backflips in steel-toed boots. Everyone’s talking about those Republican “youth leaders” who got caught “joking” about gas chambers and Hitler, and yeah, they’re vile. They’re not kids. They’re not naïve. They’re antisemitic, bigoted, misogynistic fascist cosplayers. They deserve scorn, condemnation, and unemployment. At best, their next job should be scrubbing truck-stop urinals with a toothbrush while humming God Bless America through a respirator that smells like diesel and shame.

Then she gets to Trump and Hitler:

He wants erections everywhere. A man infamously small in the pants trying to immortalize himself with towering erections of marble and fake gold.

He’s desperate to convince history that he was big at something.

And when people say we shouldn’t compare him to Hitler because there was only one Hitler, sure, that’s true.But a whole lotta shit still lines up uncomfortably well. The cult. The paranoia. The myth-making. The need for monuments. The difference is aesthetic. Hitler wanted architecture. Trump wants gaudy erections.

The crucial part for me is the last paragraph. I am as cognizant as she is about the “there was only one Hitler” argument. There was only one Holocaust too. Had it not happened I would have a lot more relatives than I do. Had World War II not happened the human population might be much greater than it is and one of them might have discovered the cure for cancer and many of our loved one, including my wife, might not have died an early death.

To answer to my own question about how many Substacks about Trump and Hitler are enough I have decided that there is no limit. As long as he acts like Hitler I will write about this.

Read JoJo’s entire Substack for some of the best descriptions of Trump you’ll find anywhere. For example:

He looks like a man who gave up halfway through being embalmed — pink, rubbery, overdone, a human shrimp left under the heat lamp of history. His skin has that glossy, radioactive sheen, the shade you’d get if you basted guilt in iodine and regret. The top of his right hand is still bruised and black, like it spent the weekend auditioning for the afterlife. His cankles have achieved the structural density of pudding. Every step he takes looks like a war crime against geometry. He moves through space like a haunted beanbag chair, listing sideways, one ankle begging for retirement while the other files a grievance with gravity.

The photo is of me with the flag and one of the two custom made signs we will be taking to the o Kings protest.

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In her inimitable style JoJo from Jerz shows why she has the well deserved thousands of followers as she write about my city in “No Kings, No Pants, No Problem” here.

KOIN

KGW

OPB

KATU (Sinclair)

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I'm not the only one harping on Hitler, Hartmann is too.

 

This is the third Substack I've posts about Hitler and Trump. I wasn’t going to write on this subject, but then I read Thom Hartmann’s “The Brutality is the message…” Substack.

In it he refers to Hitler five times and the Nazi’s seven times. Below I highlighted most of the references.

Of course, Trump referred to “nuclear” as the “N-word” during that cringeworthy speech to military leaders. He said “there are two N-words, and you can’t use either of them.” He was discussing U.S. nuclear capabilities. The generals sat in stunned silence. In fact, the other n-word which should send chills up and down our spines when applied to Trump and MAGA that people like Thom Hartmann (our number one progressive radio host) is starting to use is Nazi.

Below is the comment I posted on Hartmann’s Substack:

The subtitle “Every raid, every body slammed to the pavement, is a public ritual meant to teach us obedience. The goal isn’t enforcement — it’s submission...” is so true and should be incredibly terrifying. It is, as you say, without using the word “Hitlerian” right out of Hitler’s playbook. I haven’t read that this was spelled out in Project 2025. I don’t think there’s a chapter on the use of systematic sadistic terror as a major tactic in their overrall strategy. What has been transpiring with this use of brutality as major modus operandi to instill obediance through fear has led me to do my own rebranding for No Kings day. I hate to throw shade on the original intention and coining of the label, but King George III was not Adolph Hitler.

Trump is not Hitler either, but he is much closer in his actions and personality than he is to King George. This is why I compared Trump and Hitler in yesterday’s Substack.

I give huge credit to the “No Kings” protest organizers and recognize that when they selected the label for their first and hugely successful protest on June 14th (Trump’s birthday) the president hadn’t yet emerged as an Americanized and somewhat sanitized version of Alolph Hitler. 

I don’t advocate for a name change. “No Kings” is too well established. There is also a risk in going overboard with what can be seen as hyperbole and this plays right into the hand of Trump and MAGA accusing critics of having Trump derangement syndrome. 

Not to dwell on naming protests too much, but “No Kings” was a much better name than the “Workers over Billionaires” protests held on Labor Day. I had to look that up.

Having an American oligarchy is far less of a concern than the country turning into a facsist autocracy ruled by a brutal dictator. 

What I dread is looking back at the “No Kings” and other national protests, regardless of what they were called, and seeing that any protests had been made illegal, labeled acts of treason, with attempts to organize them punishable by imprisonment or worse.

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Comparing Trump to Hitler, By Hal M. Brown

 I see two primary reasons not to compare Trump to Hitler. The existential reason is that it may minimize the Holocaust and Hitler’s attempt to conquer as much of the world as possible. The other is that it gives ammunition to the Turmp and MAGA to accuse us of fomenting violence by trying to inflame emotions.

He’s been ranting about the so-called “radical left,” and a non-existent terror organization, Antifa, being behind rampant violence that is only occuring in his fevered mind if he even believes it.

Hitler never blamed Jews for violence in pre-war Germany. He just blamed them for everything else that made life difficult for other Germans.

Hitler is a metaphor, and maybe more than a metaphor, and making a poster like I did (it will come before we will use it at a No Kings Day protest) is intended to go beyond saying he aspires to be a king. King George was bad, but he was no Hitler. I expect we’ll see lots of NO KINGS signs like those shown above at the protest.

The wisdom and validity of a Hitler comparison is not a new subject for debate. For one example, see this article:

The article notes that, according to America’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the reason the comparison is so common is simply that it is the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.” 

This was written in 2017. Since then Trump was elected for a second time and the Hitler comparisons have become far more common because he is acting more and more like Hitler.

Here’s a recent article:

Certainly, Trump and Hitler lived in very different worlds and there’s no way we can compare Alligator Alcatraz to Aushwitz, or ICE agents brutalizing people to Gestapo agents having carte blanche to execute them in the street or in their homes.

We can use the adjective Hitlerian to describe Trump without saying he is exactly like Hitler. For example, he is trying to dominate other countries and he makes insane threats to invade Greenland. This is bluster. He isn’t about to mount a Nazi-like blitzkrieg to take over Greenland, or even Canada or Mexico. He might like to follow in his pal Putin’s footsteps and order U.S. troops to invade countries, but he knows that the attempt to subjugate Ukraine didn’t go all that well. Instead he is poised to use our military to take over major cities in blue states. 

Trump wants to take over my city of Portland by force. Force means sending armed soldiers. We could have armored vehicles on our streets. We already have Blackhawk helicopters buzzing the city. They are very loud. It is easy to tell when they fly over my house since they are much louder than ordinary helicopters. 

I have no doubt he’d like to have Airborne soldiers rapelling from them onto our streets.

I am sure he’d even like to have lethal and terrfying looking Apache attack helcopters swooping low over Macadam Avenue (a 16 minute drive from my place, see map here) in front of ICE headquarters.

As I typed this Ali Velshi had a segment about Portland.

Is it fair to compare Trump to Hitler? This all depends on what one means by the word “fair.” 

If his wishes could turn into reality, then I’ll go out on a limb and say it is fair. We can speculate as to whether he’d order death camps to be built. I really doubt this. It would lead to an actual civil war. Seniors like me (I’m 81) wouldn’t rush to the local gun store (there’s a large one a mile from my place) to buy an AR-15, but I’d volunteer to help those who do in any way I could.

I can see Trump having fantasies about having concentration camps built to send all of his enemies to. There would be many people in red states who would welcome the jobs such facilities would provide and we know from seeing the brutality of ICE and other agents that there are plenty of people who would be eager to work in them.

Addendum:

Addendum: I’m not the only one to invoke the name of the toothpaste mustache man:

This is a sequel to yesterday’s Substack:

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What can happen if lower case R resistance becomes upper case R Resistance? ICE agents may have turned tail and run in Rochester, but this is a dangerous precedent.

 

Excerpt from 'Gestapo!' Immigration agents swarmed and tires slashed in explosive standoff:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who moved to make an arrest in an upscale neighborhood of Rochester, New York, were blindsided as a crowd of angry protesters descended on them and vandalized their vehicles, according to WXXI.

"The group shouted 'shame' and 'Gestapo,' and applauded as agents in the ICE-led action drove a Border Patrol SUV away on four flat tires, which had been slashed," said the report. "One of the roofers was taken into custody, but agents left others apparently unchecked on the rooftop of the Westminster Road rental house."

The crowd in Park Avenue accosting ICE and CBP agents was said to be around 200 people.

Here’s another article:

This article has videos:

This is the first incident where citizens behaved something like the Resistance did during World War II. During the war the actions of the Resistance were planned and this was spontaneous. Resistance cells were small groups of men and women who conducted guerrilla warfare and published underground newspapers. 

The Resistance also spied on the Nazi and conveyed vital information to the Allies. 

Consider this from the DDay Center article: The Role of the French Resistance in Intelligence for the Allies: Strategies, Impact, and Legacy

The intelligence work of the French Resistance gave Allied forces critical details about German defenses, troop movements, and military plans. These men and women risked everything, collecting info on German positions along the Atlantic Wall, Wehrmacht deployments, and communication networks.

Their efforts helped Allied commanders make smarter decisions, saving lives and, honestly, probably shortening the war.

The story of French Resistance intelligence is full of ordinary people who became extraordinary spies when things got dangerous. University professors published underground newspapers, and farmers reported German troop movements.

These resistance fighters built networks that stretched all over occupied France. They worked with British and American intelligence, creating a tangled web of information sharing that played a crucial role in Allied victory.

Resistance spying was depcited in the Pulitizer Prize winning novel and NetFlix miniseries “All the Light We Cannot See” (reference). In the dramatic story a blind girl radioed coded messages about the Nazis to the Allies.

In real life well known entertainer, jazz singer Josephine Baker who was known as “The real Goddess,” became a spy for the French Resistance. Baker used her celebrity to gain access to high-ranking Axis officials. (Reference)

Lepa Svetozara Radić was a 17 year old Serbian Resistance fighter executed by the Nazis for shooting at German troops. This is from Wikipedia: 

“As her captors tied the noose around her neck, they offered her a reprieve from the gallows if she would reveal her comrades' and leaders' identities. She responded that she was not a traitor and that her comrades would reveal themselves when they avenged her death.”

The Nazis made villagers pay with their lives when the Resistance had successes against them. Residents would be rounded up and be shot or hung in the town square. If one Nazi was killed by the Resistance, many more would be murdered in retribution. Bodies would sometimes be hung on utility poles and noone was allowed to cut them down.

This was all done to send a message to others who dared go against them, whether through sabotage or actual violence. 

For example: “When the Nazis Massacred Greek Civilians to Send a Warning to Those Who Resisted. German soldiers killed an estimated 500 Cretans in Viannos and Ierapetra in retaliation for an attack by local partisans.” (Read article)

In the photo above I was struck by how “The Butcher of Crete” bears more than a passing resemblance to Tom Homan.

How soon will it be before a non-bloody version of retribution for resistance to immigration actions happens here?

While there is a visceral satistfaction to be had in the story about what the residents in Rochester did, such actions are unwise. If people are to use the World War II Resistance as a model, it is best to limit themselves to what the spies did and not do anything that will give an excuse for Trump to escalate towards either something that might as well be martial law whether of not he actually declares it. 

The non-violent, though illegal, sharing of information that may help people avoid imminent ICE raids would be similar to what Resistance and other allied spies (like Churchill’s three female spies) did. 

Check back later… it’s 5:00 AM here and I haven’t even read the news…..

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