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.
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:
