MAGA Republicans Are Nazis Now

The Party of Lincoln is dead.  The Party of Reagan is dead.  Even the  MAGA Republican Party is dead.  It’s the Party of Trump now, pure and simple, and it no longer deserves the honor of calling itself Republican.  It’s the Nazi Party now.

That does not exaggerate.  Remember that Trump’s first wife, Ivana, said under oath that Trump used to keep a book in a locked cabinet beside his bed that translated and annotated  Hitler’s speeches,  and he studied them intently.  Those were speeches that Burt Neuborne, one of America’s leading civil liberties lawyers, described as “masterpieces of demagogic manipulation” that led Hitler to order the murder of 6 million Jews and a half-million gypsies.

Trump even uses Hitler’s words as his own when he describes what he wants to do as America’s  president.  MeidasTouch Network unearthed these juxtapositions:

• Hitler: I will get rid of the “communist” “vermin.”  Trump: I will get rid of the “communist” “vermin.”  (Note: Strongmen throughout history have used words like vermin and cockroaches to describe their opponents because it dehumanizes them and makes it easier to kill them.)
• Hitler: I will take care of the “enemy within.”  Trump: I will take care of the “threat from within.”
• Hitler: Jews and migrants are poisoning Aryan blood.  Trump: Migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Trump is openly doing everything Hitler advised would-be dictators to do, beginning with telling big lies and sticking with them even though they are proven lies beyond any possible doubt.  The Washington Post Fact Checker team counted 30,573 untruths he told during his presidency, a mind-boggling average of about 21 lies a day for four years. He even claimed – still claims – that he signed into law the Veterans Choice health care act even though Barack Obama signed it two years before Trump took office.

Then, during his Veterans Day speech last Monday, Trump left no doubt as to who he is. He told us in several ways.

He promised to revive his “Muslim ban” that disallows people from some majority-Muslim nations entry into the United States.

He said he will refuse asylum claims even though such claims are a guaranteed right under the Refugee Act of 1980.

He pledged to arrest an estimated 10 million unauthorized people in the United States and put them in “sprawling camps” (housed in freight cars, perhaps?) until they can be deported.  Economists say that would shatter our economy and lead to sky-high prices, especially the prices of food.

He vowed to fire thousands of government workers who have taken oaths of loyalty to the Constitution and replace them with people who will profess loyalty to him personally.

He declared that he would challenge the principle that anyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen, although that right is guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment.  (Incidentally,    that is the same amendment that would appear to prevent him from holding any public office because he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against his nation during the Capitol riot.)

He committed to “weaponize” the Justice Department against his enemies, although that is the same thing he accused Joe Biden of doing to him.

And he has repeatedly expressed admiration for Hitler, and especially for the grip Hitler held on the Nazi military.

I realize that some people will think I’m being an alarmist, that I’m overstating my case, but if I am I’m in excellent company.  I especially call your attention to Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic and a former professor of political science and international relations.

Nichols writes that he used to make his students think hard about casually using words such as war – as in war on crime and war on drugs — which we often use for their emotional impact without thinking about their accuracy.  He especially dug in his heels when he heard someone describe Trump as a fascist.  Authoritarian?  Yes, some.  Illiberal?  Definitely.  But fascist?  Absolutely not.

Fascism, he writes, has a distinct meaning and denotes a specific form of government that is beyond undemocratic, and — until now — Trump did not fit that definition.  Now, however, after that Veterans Day speech, he most certainly does.

“Fascism is not mere oppression.  It is a more holistic ideology that elevates the state over the individual (except for a sole leader, around whom there is a cult of personality), glorifies hypernationalism and racism, worships military power, hates liberal democracy, and wallows in nostalgia and historical grievances. It asserts that all public activity  should serve the regime, and that all power must be gathered in the fist of the leader and exercised only by his party.”

Trump checks all those boxes, so he might as well just say out loud that he’s a Nazi.  He’s running for president on the Republican ticket, but at heart he is a Nazi.  And it looks like that’s who the Republicans want as their presidential nominee.

Trump and the Republican Party can’t hide any longer, because if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.  So please, Republicans, come out into the open and say out loud who you really are: Nazis in Republican clothing.  Let’s get this election on an honest footing and go from there.

I cannot understand how anyone, given the opportunity to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people, could possibly prefer a government led by one person, especially a person who faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records,  40 felony charges of mishandling of sensitive documents and conspiring to obstruct the government in retrieving these documents, four felony charges of conspiring to defraud the government and disenfranchise voters, and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, and 13 felony charges related to allegedly attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia (and many of those charges involve laws that were designed to prosecute Mafia dons); and a person who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman and now faces charges of slandering her; a person caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s crotches; a person about whom 37 psychiatrists and other mental health experts wrote a book (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, 2017, updated in 2019) saying he is “criminally mentally ill and represents a physical threat to Americans’ safety;” a person who was impeached twice while he was president; a person who illegally used the power of his office while president to make money; a person who separated children from their parents, many of whom will never be reunited; a person who is undeniably a white supremist racist, a pathological and unapologetic liar, a misogynist, a demagogue, a narcissist, a male supremacist, and on, and on, and on.   I cannot understand how anyone could want a loser like that to be our president, but many will vote for him anyway.  It’s mind-spinning, isn’t it?

All this might sound depressing at first, especially in light of that recent New York Times/Sienna College poll that revealed Trump and Biden are running neck-and-neck nationally and Trump is leading by 4 to 10 points in five of the six battleground states.  But there is really no cause to be concerned, and there is every reason to be optimistic.  

Look on the bright side.  A recent Gallup poll showed that only 32 percent of Americans are paying close attention to the news right now but at least 70 percent are expected  to vote next November.   When all those sleeping Americans wake up to the fact that our next president could be a Nazi, they’ll turn out in record numbers and crush him.  Especially when they look at what Hitler did to the world and ask themselves if that’s what they want America to be.   They might not like Biden, but they’ll abhor Trump. 

Trump’s current numbers are his ceiling, Biden’s are his floor.  Biden’s  coattail vote, plus especially the abortion vote, among other issues, should be enough to protect the Senate’s Democratic majority, take back the House, and restore sanity to Washington.

It sure looks like a blue tsunami to me – if we will only vote.