Nah, you’re right.
You know, for this whole election cycle, many, many people have been commenting on the parallels between Trump/MAGA and the rise of the Nazi party. It hasn’t just been people on social media, there have been lots of well cited articles. Take a look at this Guardian piece from the summer.
So yes, the parallels are so significant that it makes people wonder if it’s coincidental or a playbook.
In your honest opinion do you think he will try to get rid of voting so he can remain in power like Hitler did?
I’ll be surprised if he lives long enough for that - he’s old and has a terrible diet - but he said at a fundraiser that people would only need to vote one more time, which many took to mean that’s all he’d need to stay in power. He tried a failed coup in 2020, so clearly doesn’t care if it’s lawful or not. Would anyone be surprised?
I would definitely not put it beyond him. The only thing that could really prevent this would be his death. Be glad that Trump is way older than Hitler was in 1933.
He doesn’t need to. Elections will happen as usual, but states with Republican-led governments will report favorable results for Republicans regardless of the reality.
We are already well along the road of elections being fairly meaningless. Not because the results aren’t counted accurately but because elections can be swayed by numerous mechanisms including voter suppression (voter ID laws, redistricting, restrictions on polling places and methods, etc) and propaganda. Combine that with economic suppression via wealth inequality that results in low-information voters being the norm and you have a relatively easy mechanism to “win” elections that’s legal and constitutional.
Hitler didn’t get into power by being a dictator, he became one through a series of events. The Reichstag fire was a pretext Hindenburg declaring a state of emergency which not only gave Nazi’s the ability to frame and dissent or opposition as traitorous, it also lent “credence” to their propaganda about the threat of communism, allowing them to further consolidate power in the 1933 election.
History rhymes.
Absolutely. If Trump dies till then someone else will just take over. America wont have free elections for decades to come.
The scary thing is that Republicans have the holy political trinity right now. Control of the executive as well as both legislative branches. They could easily pass an amendment to nix the 22nd.
That’s not how the amendment process works. They’d need a 2/3 majority vote in both the House and the Senate to launch a proposal or 2/3 of the states to hold a constitutional convention; once the amendment is proposed, 3/4 of the states would have to ratify it.
Besides, even a simple majority requirement wouldn’t guarantee success - for example, see the clown show for the GOP House speakership, Senators Manchin (I; D before 2024) and Sinema (I; D before Dec 2022) voting no on various Democratic initiatives, or Senator McCain (R) voting no on the ACA repeal.
There was actually a point where we were two state governorships away from the GOP being able to hold that convention, but that’s still just the proposal.
He’s got the supreme court on his side, what stopping him making up just forcing things through as emergency measures?
Nothing. The Supreme Court has no oversight whatsoever and can rule that anything is legal (or illegal) with no way to challenge it.
It doesn’t matter how things are should work or how they used to work. Nothing and no one will stop the repugs from doing anything they want.
The 2nd Weimar Republic has fallen. Americans should never again question how Hitler came to power.
No one with a brain ever “questioned” how. History has all the evidence needed
You cite a very crucial requirement that few people seem to have in abundance of late.
Republican governed states have the lowest rankings for education, health, and basically every measure of standards of living.
Poor, angry, uneducated. Trained to hate others, especially and specifically, democrats, lefties, and all things socialized.
Perfect obedient soldiers.
I’m in a deep red state. I’m poor, angry, but well educated.
I was raised to care about and respect others no matter their background and upbringing. I’m a social Democrat supporter. So what does that make me other than an anomaly.
It frustrates me to no end when people paint all the people in red states with such a broad brush.
You are not the problem.
What I said about red states is true. The states have those rankings, not every single individual.
I am also poor and angry. And educated. With an upbringing that taught empathy and service to others.
I sense an important theme here.
People say this to sound cool but they don’t think it through.
All watching it happen in real time has done is made it more clear that it still makes no sense.
I agree that it makes no sense, especially if you are a casual observer like so many. But I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the exact plan from the moment Jan 6 failed.
Make no mistake, the coup is complete. Nobody did what was necessary to prevent it.
This is why Republicans have been eroding education and trying to remove state and federal curriculum requirements.
They have been teaching their children. That Nazis were misunderstood.
This has always been the goal.
And they want to mainstream “selecting their own education” with federally funded education credits to make the tax payers fund their brainwashing camps.
Read some history books about Germany 1925-1945, and you will notice eerie similarities.
As an American thats what scares me.
You know how before he was elected, people would point out that his favourite book was mein campf and his favourite people were all dictators and that alot of the stuff he was saying and doing was the same stuff hitler was saying and doing to get into power? And also how literally every day people would say, “he’s the next hitler” or “he’s trying to become the next hitler”…
That is still true now after he is elected too.
His own damn VP pick called him americans Hitler.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer is a must read.
It should have been taught in school.
I first read this as “by William Shatner.” For a moment, I thought, “I didn’t know Mr. Shatner dabbled in academic historical analysis…”
Apparently he was an econ major. McGill’s a prestigious university as well, though I’m not sure what the rep was in the 50s.
No that’s what we’ve been saying for 8 years
Saying or screaming? I’ve been screaming
I’ve been calmly attempting to explain because people get very very mean when trans women show negative emotions
Ah thats fair, cis white dude here, so I’ve been wearing that privilege out on this issue
Wonderful! They’ll take frustration from someone like you seriously while what they need from me is someone kind, calculated, and adamant. They need to see me as a neighbor and a peer and when I get them to see that I gain a foothold you can’t in the same way that you gain ground by expressing that even people they’d otherwise find respectable is mad about their behavior
We’ve all got roles to play in the fight against fascism. I’m at WAY less risk so I’m happy to put myself in it
We’ve been saying it since Bush II’s WAR ON TERROR!
I called out the Patriot Act as the overt end of Constitutional law.
The propaganda tactics from the GOP are also the same. Take a look at Lügenpresse. Fomenting distrust in a free press is a necessity if you want to replace it with a controlled press.
It’s classic abuser behavior - “Don’t listen to anyone but me! No one else loves you!”
That’s true, but most press has been controlled by corporate interest for generations. I support actual independent press and fully reject all of the big players from MSNBC to Fox to Joe Rogan.
I’m hesitant to answer this in case I’m targetted. They just shot a black guy who called the police instead of his psychopath knife-wielding intruder.
Just now figuring this out are ya? Welcome to the present, glad your finally paying attention.
I read up on Kristallnacht after the SO brought it up in discussion. It was not comforting.
At least you know what to expect.
That is definitely a fresh take on Trump.
You’re not wrong, and congrats for waking up. So many people are now sitting up in the pod and pulling off the wires.
I think it has to do more with human nature. You can see a similar mentality with the Russian and French revolutions. The biggest difference is that people aren’t economically desperate here. People may be poor or feel poor but they aren’t truly desperate like Germany in the depression, Russia after the debacle of ww1, France with food shortages, etc. Here it is an ideological and cult of personality issue but not enough to get the majority of people and the major powers (the military, the very wealthy, etc) involved. This feels more like the Red Scare people of the 1950s.
One of my takeaways from the whole ordeal is that people don’t need to be economically desperate, just feeling so goes a long way. The US has had one of the best post covid recoveries. Objectively the US economy is in decent shape but then if you listen to Trump’s hustings’ you could think that the US is in a deep recession akin to the 1930s, whilst also on the brink of world war 3 and overrun by migrant crime gangs. Combine that with the massive amount of targeted misinformation on social media and you get a new situation in which people are relatively well off (on the grand scale of history) yet radicalized as if destitute.
I really didn’t want to believe it, but post-election I’ve come to the conclusion that a significant amount of these vibes are driven by YouTube and TikTok. My FYP is filled with videos that portray only the side of the U.S. that is decaying–abandoned shopping malls, blighted neighborhoods or towns that shut down for one reason or another, presented as memes about “liminality” or uncanniness. Admittedly I have a longstanding interest in urban exploration that predates the liminal space trend and its offshoots but you have to ask yourself why these media are being pushed so hard by algorithms and I don’t think it’s just that they appeal to people like me. I suspect that it’s part of a more concerted effort to portray the United States as a nation in decline, failing to keep up with authoritarian powers like China and Russia, leading to an obvious prescription: replace our democracy with our own authoritarian system… which will be easier for large corporations and foreign governments (even China whom Trump ostensibly opposes) to exploit and control.
still a dangerous time to be anything but white and privileged. even then, being labeled as a commie or pinko was a slow death sentence.
If you’re only valuing similarities, then your missing the differences. When you see the differences, you can see the points of tensions that can arise. And if you’re not historically contextualizing it, you won’t know how this moment is unique and conditioned.
Politically, you still need to organize with people, probe for weaknesses, and attack knowing how mucher weaker you are than the state. This is the same for all responses. But what you do needs to be a unique response to the unique moment with unique weaknesses.
Who they hate will continue to spread until they are executing people who put their carts back.
