The Hitler-Trump Connections

Now that the 2024 presidential election is approaching, it’s time we looked at the myriad links that connect Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Begin with the words of Trump’s first wife, Ivana.  Her divorce papers said he kept a book translating and annotating Hitler’s pre-World War II speeches in a locked bedside cabinet, and he studied them constantly.  Those speeches have been described by Burt Neuborne, one of America’s leading civil liberties lawyers, as “masterpieces of demagogic manipulation” that guided Hitler to ordering the murders of 6 million Jews and as many as 500,000 gypsies – all because they did not look like him – while he was Germany’s dictator from 1933-45.

In his 2019 book When at Times the Mob is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic, Neuborne lists 20 serious points of comparison between the early Hitler and Trump.  Like Hitler, Trump was not elected by a majority, found direct communication channels to his base, uses racially tinged messages calculated to divide white people from people of color, relentlessly demonizes opponents, unceasingly attacks objective truth, including science, ceaselessly attacks mainstream news media, his lies blur reality and his supporters spread them, he orchestrates mass rallies to show status, embraces extreme nationalism, makes closing borders a centerpiece, embraces mass detention and deportations, uses borders to protect selected industries, cemented his rule by enriching elites, rejects international norms in favor of nationalism, attacks domestic democratic processes, attacks the judiciary and rule of law, glorifies the military, demands loyalty oaths, proclaims unchecked power, and relegates women to subordinate roles – all right out of Hitler’s written words.

Even beyond that, Trump has made it clear that if he is reelected president he will run the country like an all-out dictator.  He has said he will fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with people who will do whatever he tells them to do.  He said in a speech that the U.S. should start executing drug dealers after sham trials.  Vanity Fair once said he demanded his military leaders act like he was Adolf Hitler and they were German generals during World War II.

Just last week one of his attorneys, testifying in court on Trump’s behalf, said Trump did not have to follow the Constitution because the Constitution only said he had to “preserve, protect and defend” it, not follow it.

And the most obvious Hitler-Trump connection of all, one that we must never forget, is that Hitler told anyone who wanted to be a dictator to lie, lie big, and keep on lying even if it is proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are lying.  That’s what Trump unabashedly does. He lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden in a landslide, popular vote and the Electoral College vote, and despite admitting privately that night that he knew he lost, he still claims publicly  that he won.  The Washington Post counted 30,573 lies Trump told during his four years as president.  And people still believe him.

Trump has heard all this Hitler talk, of course.  He’s heard it for years. And yet, despite all the evidence that proves he has the heart of a Nazi, he vehemently denies it.  As proof, he says, he has fiercely denounced racism and the Ku Klux Klan, and has praised such anti-Nazi heroes as Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  And, he says, he loves Democracy.  Do you think he might be lying?

He also claims he’s innocent of all 91 federal felonies he’s been charged with, innocent of the charge he ran (is running?) a criminal empire dedicated to destroying America as we know it, innocent of all the other federal and state felony charges that have been lodged against him.  He’s been convicted of sexually molesting a woman, and later insulted her so badly she successfully sued him for slander. He’s bragged about grabbing other women’s crotches.  He might even have committed treason by sharing top-secret information about our nuclear submarines with an Australian, who blabbed it widely from there.

Donald Trump is evil.  His past is evil.  His present is evil.  His future promises to be evil. Donald Trump is very carefully, and very openly, walking in Adolf Hitler’s footprints toward establishing a dictatorship.  And his minions are following him like sheep to the slaughter.  Polls show that as many as 80 percent of Republicans say they would vote for Trump even if he were convicted of a felony.  What more proof do we need that the Republican Party intends to destroy our democracy?

And what about the people who follow Trump?  Either they’re being duped or they want to destroy our democracy, they want a Nazi-like dictatorship, and they know Trump will lead them there.  Or maybe they just don’t care; other things are more important to them.

It’s also plain that Republicans have reached this level by overcoming the problem that Democrats outnumber them. They’ve depended on two things to get to this level: 1) they know Democrats just don’t vote, because if we did we would have squashed them long ago and we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now; and 2) they also know how to keep those of us who do want to vote as far away from the polls as possible.

Republican-controlled state legislatures pass laws that make it hard for us to vote, and often impossible for us to vote.  Republicans also have used supercomputers that were never available before to gerrymander district lines so accurately they can guarantee they will win no matter how many Democrats vote.

I was one of those gerrymandering victims.  I live in Charleston and I was gerrymandered out of a district that GOP extremist Nancy Mace eventually won, and  I was put into an always reliable Democratic district, home of longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn.  Clyburn didn’t need my vote; Mace’s opponent badly did.  South Carolina is one of those super gerrymandered states where only one Democrat can win a seat in Congress.  The case is before the Supreme Court now and it doesn’t look good for Democrats.

And look at what Republicans are doing to Congress.  Congress can’t do anything because of these right-wing nut jobs.  Republicans don’t even qualify as a mob.  Mobs have leaders, and Republicans can’t even choose a leader.  They’re a herd.

Our only way out of this is the democratic way: vote our way out.  We must make everyone, everyone, aware of the crucial need to vote, now more than ever.  Only if we vote in big numbers will  this nightmare end.

In the meantime, I have been accused of being a hack because I present only one side of the story.  I plead guilty to that, but honestly it’s because I can’t find anything good to say about the Republicans’ direction, or anything likeable about Donald Trump (thank goodness Jesus tells me I don’t have to like him, I just have to love him).

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe there is a good side to the direction Republicans are taking.  Maybe Trump is not a neo-Nazi.  Maybe his followers honestly do want a democracy that works for all of us.  Maybe.  But I don’t see it.

So we’ve made it easy as possible for those who disagree with me to show me and people who agree with me where we’re wrong.  Just click on the blue box at the end of this column and tell me.  Replies will be posted without editing and will only be subject to such common-sense limits as taste and length.  The only other requirement is that you use your name. Anonymous replies will not be printed and probably won’t even be read.

Thank you!