Hitler did not pounce on Germany suddenly and unannounced. His rise was a lengthy story of norms broken, lies told, prejudices nurtured, institutions destroyed, brilliant propaganda, judicious bullying, and the age-old scapegoating alchemy of victimization and hate. We are in the midst of a similar process, with the worser angels of our natures being seduced and exemplified by the current president. Trump loves authoritarian leaders, pines for authoritarian methods, (reads authoritarian speeches), and, overall, seems to use a playbook from one of the greatest authoritarians of all time. Maybe it is worth counting up the similarities. One of the best books on this remains William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Propaganda
Trump had a few difficulties with FOX at first, as they had a few components still beholden to the old GOP, or with principles otherwise. But nothing succeeds like success, and FOX could not deny the beast they themselves had created through years of alternative reality and hate-filled programming. It is now a fully consumated marriage, with daily hate, direct policy integration, and personnel going back and forth. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud, though he would have criticized us for still allowing free media to exist. Trump has been doing his best to discredit all responsible media, and is getting a sympathetic hearing from those in his camp. Whether this infection of corrupt media values spreads into the rest of the culture is one of the biggest questions of our time.
Novel modes of communication
The Nazis used film, radio, graphics, and other media in very innovative ways, still admired today in some instances. Mass communication was still young, and they made great use of it for their propaganda. Now we have the first twitter president, marrying his lack of self-control and need to bully and lash out at every source of anxiety with the new media of our time which narrow-casts and broadcasts simultaneously and instantly. These new media themselves are not the problem, rather it is the content, obviously. The issue is whether we neglect to take a longer view and are able to maintain our intellects and moral values while marinating involuntarily in this cesspool of Newspeak.
Scapegoats and concentration camps
Immigrants are the current administration's scapegoats and objects of hatred. No insult is too vile, no policy too harsh. Walls are to be built, detention centers filled, children ruined. Germany never had organized and nation-wide resistance to the antisemitism of the Nazis, so we are slightly ahead there. But in Germany too, the concentration camp system started slowly, first only holding communists and political opponents, and only gradually developing into the slaughterhouses found by the allies in the end. Immigrants are right now an easy target, not being citizens, with nebulous rights, if any.
Bullying
Trump's bullying is instinctive, relentless, and always personal. (Just ask Stormy Daniels!) If there is policy involved, it is decades out of date, and uninformed. The Nazis were obviously bullies as well, with far more lattitude, given their paramilitary organizations and eventual totalitarian control. Hitler's temper tantrums were evidently very Trumpian. But in foreign policy, they directed their bullying more sensibly- against their enemies rather than their friends. First Austria, then Czechoslovakia, were crushed by propaganda and threats. England was cowed from interfering, Russia was subborned and bribed, before being turned on later. There was method to the madness, where with Trump, we have daily lashing out without much sense let alone long term strategy. China is our friend, then our enemy. Russia is complemented on one hand, and sanctioned with the other. Canada is turned from our best friend to a bitter spouse. The authoritarian instinct is obviously the same, but with Trump, the point gets lost in personal narcissim, short attention span, and poor judgement.
Narcissism
Was Hitler a narcissist? Perhaps not as flagrantly as Trump, but anyone who starts a world war and ends up incinerating his own country in the pyre of his ambition probably gets the nod. There was also the personality cult, Führer, etc. So yes, he and Trump are cut from the same cloth there. Trump has tried mightily to identify himself with the nation and its wounds and salvation- just listen to his clunky inauguration speech. He is the only one who can fix what is wrong with the nation! The instincts are there, and the charismatic connection to at least some of his base. But he is far, far, from closing the deal with the country at large, and also has such appalling lack of judgement, intellect, and self-control that the whole project simply falls flat on purely operational grounds.
Economic policy
Here we get to a big constrast between the two. Trump has talked alot about infrastructure spending and beautiful airports and roads. But he has not lifted a finger to get there. His version of deficit spending is to give a lot more money to the rich- he's no national socialist! Hitler, on the other hand, really built the autobahn, the Beetle and other infrastructure. His Keynesian policies put everyone to work, as well as re-arming the nation. Of course all this led to tears, but it illustrates the difference between someone who really wants to rebuild the nation, and someone who only wants to get a feeling from a crowd of believers, while selling them down the river to his rich friends.
Crony capitalism
Yes, Hitler's economics put the big companies in control. But the program was obviously derigiste- under the state, and secondly, with the ultimate goals, successfully achieved, of rebuilding both the economy and the armed forces. Trump, in contrast, is spending all his efforts in strightforward Republican projects of favoring the corporate class generally over the wroking class. The tarriffs, the death of consumer protection, the death of the EPA, the corporate tax cuts- none of that is making America as a whole better let alone great. The nationalist rhetoric expresses Trump's authoritarian instincts, but his heart and whatever else passes for his head is with his corporate cronies, not with workers, or the nation at large.
Tastelessness
Here, Trump is almost in a class of his own. Hitler was a notoriously bad painter, but not entirely talent-less, and led a party that innovated in media, graphics, public displays, and architecture (if of an oppressively bombastic and brutalist style). Trump's style is more classic mobster and nouveau-riche. Both cases betray a lack of empathy and human feeling. As the Greeks and many after them maintained, aethetics are moral. We express ourselves and our vision of humanity through the art we make, support, and appreciate. It is a window into the soul or lack thereof of our leaders to see what they are capable of appreciating. Trump's case is one of edifice complex with a slather of gilt.
Fighting the last war
Hitler took a great deal of his ultimate program from America. We shamelessly swept Native Americans from our fertile prairies. We had slavery. We supported eugenics. He thought that the Ukrainian and Russian breadbasket could be the great fertile frontier for Germany. Too bad that the people already living there had airplanes and tanks! In this case, Hitler was several decades, if not centuries out of date, and paid grievously for it. For all his prowess in harnessing modern technology and economics to a program of national rebuilding and totalitarian control, Hitler was additionally obsessed with the the defeat by France in World War 1. It was all very backward-looking. Trump's errors of history are smaller-bore, but analogous, in that his conceptions, such as they are, are generally decades out of date. Is coal going to come back? That is absurd, not to mention environmentally suicidal. Is manufacturing coming back? Only with robots. He is harping on the nefarious trade policies of China (and Canada!). Well, that ship has mostly sailed. China has developed with our implicit help and support (not to mention funding our prodigious deficits). The remaking of a poverty-stricken communist basket case into a prosperous capitalist nation over the recent decades is the strongest possible compliment to our ideology and generous guidance of the international system. (Though further work remains to make our democracy functional and attractive as an alternative to China and Russia's new model of authoritarian capitalism). We should concentrate on fostering an increasingly rule-based and legitimate international system that keeps China on a responsible and lawful path, rather than introducing instability that only diminishes our current and future standing.
Love for fellow authoritarians
Whether there is a compromising Russian dossier on Trump or not, his love for Putin is unfeigned. G. W. Bush looking into Putin's eyes was bad enough, but this is revolting. Whether Duterte, Jinping, bin Salman, or Jong Un, Trump seems to love them all. Naked power is his elixir and dream. How sad that America's power has been built over the last century on more subtle foundations- the attractiveness of a properous, lawful, and respectful system that other peoples and nations can aspire to rather than cow before. Making America great used to involve opposing dictatorships rather then trying to emulate them.
- A linguistic emergency.
- State of the border.
- Turning the international order upside down.. on Putin's orders?
- Mental illness.
- Remember the dust bowl?
- Empathy is not weakness.
