The derangement of the anti-Trumpers, which encompasses many Democrats and some neo-conservative Republicans, has entered crazy land, especially when Trump critics try to draw parallels between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler and/or Benito Mussolini. The ignorance and stupidity displayed by this so-called thought process would be understandable if those spewing the nonsense were 18 year olds with a public education. But they are not. We are talking about men and women with college and post graduate education.
One of the earliest examples of this bizarre smear came courtesy of Newsweek:
At the Emmy awards ceremony on Sunday night, Transparent creator Jill Soloway compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Many others have made the same comparison before her: the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News in December 2015; the Council on America-Islamic Relations; the Holocaust survivor Zeev Hod. . . .
What makes the comparison between Hitler and Trump so poignant is not just the rhetorical marginalization of groups, lifestyles or beliefs, but the fact that both men represent their personal character as the antidote to all social and political problems.
Neither Hitler nor Trump campaign on specific policies, beyond a few slogans. Instead, both promise a new vision of leadership. They portray the existing political systems as fundamentally corrupt, incompetent, and, most importantly, unable to generate decisive action in the face of pressing problems.
Was I asleep in 2008 or did Barack Obama also promise "a new vision of leadership?" I recall all of the "specific policies" that President Obama promised to implement:
Exit the bad war in Iraq. Win the good war in Afghanistan. Close Guantánamo. Ban torture, and pursue a “reckoning” for the torturers, in the words of Obama’s soon-to-be attorney general, Eric Holder. What’s more, Obama said he would reform the habit of unnecessary state secrecy that had given rise to such malignant policies.
After 8 years in office Obama still had not won the "good war," Guantanamo was still open, his Justice Department gave everyone associated with the CIA torture program a pass and he pursued more journalists for having the audacity to report on classified material. Oh, and he helped start a new war in Syria; one that has left tens of thousands dead and more than a million displaced.
Then there is the additional fact that Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, got a free pass from the Obama DOJ despite there being clear evidence that she violated Federal law by putting classified material on her unclassified server. Not only did she use her status as Secretary of State to enrich herself and her husband, but she led the way in betraying Muamar Qaddafi and starting a new war in North Africa.
Trying to claim that Trump's campaign rhetoric, which was at times crass and confrontational, was Hitlerian, displays a fundamental lack of what Hitler was and what he did to ascend to power.
When Hitler won the 1933 election he set about immediately wiping out political opponents:
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries-old tradition of local political independence. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners.
Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp system.
At this time, these early concentration camps were loosely organized under the control of the SA and the rival SS. Many were little more than barbed-wire stockades know as 'wild' concentration camps, set up by local Gauleiters and SA leaders.
How many political opponents has Trumped imprisoned in the 18 months that he has been in office? (I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with HERO). How many concentration camps has he set up? Yep. Correct. NONE.
Rather than follow in Hitler's footsteps and suspend the Constitution and declare himself the Führer, Trump has opted for the Twitter Tsunami and working on defeating the Democrats at the polls come November. After March 1933 Hitler never troubled himself with elections again.
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf:
In Mein Kampf, Hitler used the main thesis of "the Jewish peril", which posits a Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership.[8] The narrative describes the process by which he became increasingly antisemitic and militaristic, especially during his years in Vienna. He speaks of not having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he first encountered the antisemitic press, he says, he dismissed it as unworthy of serious consideration. Later he accepted the same antisemitic views, which became crucial to his program of national reconstruction of Germany.
Mein Kampf has also been studied as a work on political theory. For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world's two evils: Communism and Judaism.
In the book Hitler blamed Germany's chief woes on the parliament of the Weimar Republic, the Jews, and Social Democrats, as well as Marxists, though he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish interests.[9] He announced that he wanted to completely destroy the parliamentary system, believing it to be corrupt in principle, as those who reach power are inherent opportunists.
Trump? The Art of the Deal (which was written with the help of a journalist) shares nothing in common with Hitler's Mean Kampf. Hitler was an angry, frustrated man who had never known success in life. Trump? Big, brash and successful, both in real estate and in marketing Trump. Unlike Hitler, who made it very clear that he intended to wipe the world of Jews and Communists, Trump's world view for business success is summarized in 11 pithy points:
- Think big
- Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself
- Maximize your options
- Know your market
- Use your leverage
- Enhance your location
- Get the word out
- Fight back
- Deliver the goods
- Contain the costs
- Have fun
Hitler made it quite clear that he was going to embark on global conquest:
And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states. (Joachim C. Fest (1 February 2013). Hitler. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 216. ISBN 0-544-19554-X.)
Trump, by contrast, spent a lot of his campaign talking about withdrawing U.S. forces from military engagements and focusing U.S. resources, instead, on making America great again. His dismissive statements about NATO, seeking reapproachment with the Russians and the Chinese, and getting out of the nation building mission in Syria simply enraged the foreign policy establishment, especially the neo-conservatives.
It is more accurate to view Trump as the anti-Hitler. He is not consumed with taking over other countries. He simply wants the United States to stop getting the short end of the stick when it comes to trade or immigration.
Hitler hated Jews and oversaw the Holocaust. Trump's beloved oldest daughter is a Jew and Trump is a fav among the Hasidic community. Polar opposites on the Jewish question.
The anti-Trumpers seem to imagine that they are the 21st Century version of Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg – the key figure in the 1944 "20 July plot" to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Hitler led Germany into a world war. Trump? Talking peace with North Korea and trying to make nice with the Russians.
If you dare to equate Trump with Hitler let me make it very clear that you are a cretin. It shows that you lack any understanding of the history of Germany in the 20th Century and, by making such an analogy, you are shitting on the memory of those who actually fought against genuine evil. (If you want a quick but thorough education on the subject I recommend the 2009 Academy award winning documentary, The Restless Conscience.)
If Donald Trump is anything he is an obnoxious version of the Road Runner (the Warner Brothers' cartoon character). Instead of "beeping" he is tweeting and running rings around the anti-Trumpers, who increasingly appear to resemble Wylie Coyote. The anti-Trumpers are working furiously to attack Trump at every opportunity. Yet, their schemes, both the simple and the complex, keep blowing up in their faces or putting them on the defensive. Think of Maxine Waters as the anvil that Wylie tried to drop on the Road Runner. Result? It landed on the Democrats and she is now in the process of becoming the face of the Democrat party for the November election. And God, what a face (put that mug on a bill boards and it is a sure fire cure for teen age pregnancy--who can pop wood with Maxine glaring at you).
If Democrats want to be smart and have a chance of beating Trump, they need to stop with the Nazi and Hitler insults and start respecting Trump. Once they respect him and realize that he actually is a formidable politician and that he had genuine success as a marketing genius they might be able to formulate a plan to actually beat him. But, like I said, "if they are smart." With Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schummer running the show the word smart is merely an oxymoron. Beep, beep.
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