The Hitler – Trump comparison: George Santayana wrote that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, but what about those who remember history and WANT to repeat it? By Hal Brown, MSW
The lead column (here) by Chauncey DeVega in Salon is a must read. That is, it ought to be read by everyone who cares about keeping the United States as a democracy. The quote “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it” is accurately stated by American philosopher George Santayana as “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” in his work The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Santayana’s philosophical works, including this quote, were influenced by his early life in Spain and his philosophical mentors at Harvard. The quote’s popularity may also be attributed to its use in William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. (Reference)
Chauncey DeVega begins his column this way:
Convicted felon Donald Trump recently shared a video on his Truth Social disinformation platform that celebrated the rise of a “unified” Trump Reich if he takes power as the country’s first dictator. The imagery, language, and narrative of the video evoke the rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. As is their tactic, Trump’s campaign claimed that sharing the “unified Reich” video was an “error.” They left the video on the Truth Social disinformation site for hours before deleting it.
The second paragraph makes a crucial point:
Hitler’s Third Reich was supposed to last at least 1,000 years. In reality, it only lasted 12 years. With World War II and the Holocaust, Hitler and the Nazis tried to turn Europe and the world into a necropolis — and they almost succeeded.
There are many “what ifs” which would have enabled Hitler to achieve his dream. Primarily, what if the Japanese hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor enabling FDR to get the United States into the war? There are Hitler’s military errors, especially Operation Barbarossa, his decision to open an eastern front and attack Russia. There are other factors which lead to the defeat of the Axis from the Allies obtaining the Enigma code machine to the D-Day deception with the fake army (reference) to the United States developing the atomic bomb before Germany did.
Hitler was a hero to millions of ordinary Germans. They supported him with the the same fervor minus the MAGA hats and ludicrous outfits that millions of Americans who support Trump wear.
Americans shouldnt need to be reminded what happened when a Machiavellian psychopathic dictator led or leads a country. We know about the Jews and others murdered in the Holocaust though appallingly there are some American who deny this happened and others who think it was a good thing or don’t particularly care. These bigots and anti-Semites should be reminded that World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the estimated global population of 2.3 billion in 1940. That is what Hitler inflicted on his own country and the world.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Trump and Hitler is that the former aspires to govern his own country like a ruthless dictator and doesn’t have designs on conquering a continent.
DeVega concludes his column as follows:
The American people and their responsible leaders who believe in democracy have a choice to make. They can learn from history and stop the Age of Trump (Donald Trump the man is less of a problem than what he represents and has empowered) and the ascendance of American neofascism with its increasingly Hitlerian intent (which includes the violence, pain, and destruction) or they can pretend that somehow everything will magically be okay because somehow, in their minds at least, it always has been. Such individual, collective, and social immaturity is how we arrived at such a bad place and on the precipice of a Trump Reich.
Here’s the rub in this. There may not be enough American people who believe in democracy to stop Trump. There also many not be enough MAGA leaders who want to stop Trump even though they know there is at least a risk that he means what he says when he talks about wanting to run the country like a Hitler. Perhaps they don’t believe it when he says he will fire generals who don’t pass a loyalty test, jail his political enemies merely for being his enemies, make sure all federal agencies are purged of non-MAGA personnel (read about his plans for intelligence agencies), pull out of NATO, cozy up to Putin and other authoritarian leaders, deport “undesirables, and so on.
Trump could have his own Gestapo. You know he wants this! Instead of being run by Hermann Göring Stephen Miller could be in charge.
Trump’s denial that he ever said that Hillary Clinton should be “locked up” is in the news. What stood out to me aside from what his lapse in memory signifies about his cognition is that he also said that he could have locked her if if he wanted to. This demonstrates that he thinks that he as president would have the power to lock someone up without due process.
There may be just be enough voters who want the kind of country Trump promises or who are too ignorant to realize that a vote for him goes against their own self interest. For example, read my blog “Gays for Trump, and there’s something wrong with that.”
