In 1934 & 35, the average German citizen couldn't believe that the man that was rising to pre-eminence on the political scene was a pathologic racist and murderer. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late. By 1940 it was too late, all that was left for citizens was to close their eyes, put up their mental blinders, and make excuses and construct elaborate rationalizations.
Fast forward to 2019, but this time in the US, Trump and his supporters. This time, instead of rising out of poverty, our leader rises out of exceptional white privilege. He is no less pathologic or any less a dangerous racist and narcissist than that leader in 1940 Germany. Our leader is more similar to this German leader than most of us would dare to imagine.
He stands in a hospital room displaying the thumbs up while his equally tone deaf wife stands next to him holding a swaddling infant just made orphaned by an assailant. An assailant made radical by this leaders racist diatribes and rants decrying the inferiority of this child and his parents and people..
He is tone deaf, he surrounds himself by sycophants and toadies, who like him, lack empathy and also arose from protected white privilege.
Meanwhile, his supporters avert their eyes, raise their mental blinders and construct their elaborate rationalizations. One day these spineless cretins will look back at what they and their leader have wrought and claim impotently, " We didn't know? There was no way of knowing?" When they do, they should be spurned and ostracized for their complicity.
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13 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Numerous presidents have been compared to Hitler. As recently as Obama, people thought he would turn into being a Hitler and that he was going to declare martial law and take everyone's guns away. I suppose if people predict it enough it might happen again. That generality is pretty much like a horoscope. This argument is made all the time, and I will not deny that Trump and his administration fit the bill in some of the accusations, but it's hardly accurate to say he's going to actually become what Hitler became, or that the entire U.S. government including the military would allow it. Unless they're all in on it or severely facilitate it.
Also, since there has been a president in our United States (and even before that), there has also been institutionalized racism against minorities. Almost each and every president has been partly responsible for that and has done next to nothing to really change the system. Are they all white supremacists? They are definitely hardcore capitalists, but white supremacists?
Don't you also think if Trump was a Hitler that he would have tried to do all he can to become that Hitler within his first term as to actually become a dictator and carry out his white supremacist agenda fearing that he might be voted out in his second election? The clock is ticking. Hitler came to power under a completely different system.
Piece2YourPuzzle
Level 8
Aug 10, 2019
0
Nobody besides you said he was trying to become a Hitler. The point was that his Adminstration has morphed into a repressive institution with supporters that on the surface act like and resemble the elements that persisted in Naxi Germany. Same indifference, same intolerance, same racism, same recriminations towards people that look different than them.
@t1nick Come on, don't act like you weren't alluding to that without actually saying it or else you wouldn't have prefaced everything with the German 1930s-1940s rise to prominence of Hitler.
@Piece2YourPuzzl
Sorry to disappoint. I was alluding to percieved similarities in his actions and the actions of his supporters. But I have a large enough command of history to recognize the differences as well.
@t1nick Whatever you say lol
Whatever
The majority of people in the USA know who and what Trump is, and also know what damage he is doing. We can and must defeat him.
There ae huge differences between Germy in the early 1930s and the USA today. Germany had lost WWI and was saddled with huge reparations. Those reparations bankrupted their economy and resulted in hyperinflation like we have never see before -- so bad that it took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a box of matches. It wiped out the German middle class and resulted in the fall of the fledging democratic government of the Weimar Republic. Then the worldwide Great Depression. German was in absolute chaos. That chaos and the resentment of how the reparations had ruined their economy led suffering Germans to look to a strong leader who appeared to offer a way out. We have no such conditions here, but if Trump stays in power, we may have in the future.
wordywalt
Level 9
Aug 10, 2019
0
Again, people are trying to draw one-to-one comparisons between what Trump is doing and what happened in Germany. It isnt necessary. Outcomes can eminate from different circumstance but still feel and appear the same.
Marriage of the corporations, the church, the State is Fascism!
trump is the poster boy and the judas goat for the wealthy and their corporations!
While the media and most of this nation focus on trump moronic idiotic manners, the Wealthy and their Obstructionist Republican Party are tearing down, dismantling, destroying, and rolling back all our protections and safeguards we have earned in the last 242 years!
The people of 1933 Germany had a constitution, protections and safeguards!
We all know how that ended!!!
of-the-mountain
Level 9
Aug 10, 2019
2
Exactly so. Currently they go along with it for love of power or mistaken belief that they are the supreme white race. No, this is not the left. It is the Trump Swamp GOP which has no empathy or backbone for common humanity. When Trump is gone they will cry out that they did not know. Everyone said "it cannot happen here" and they set back and did all they could to bring it on.
DenoPenno
Level 9
Aug 10, 2019
2
The important difference is, they had no history to look back & be warned by....we do!
AnneWimsey
Level 9
Aug 10, 2019
5
I wonder if public discussions like this were occurring as Hitler morphed the laws to fit his needs
@btroje not much... no precedent!
Most of the people who were shot refused to see him
Jolanta
Level 9
Aug 10, 2019
3
Exactly but he said they treated him like a rock star. He rocked up, yes! but was not the star. I don't know what his head tells him. He's full of himself!
...just looked up Trump's grandfather's roots and what the town's people are saying about Donald Trump
TimeOutForMe
Level 8
Aug 10, 2019
4
Your last paragraph is true! Right-wingers here in South Africa claim they didn't know the brunt of atrocities inflicted on the majority of the nation by their leaders and the church. They turned a blind eye then and now. The church assisted in the spread of division and racism. They preached that black people were the son's of Isaac, they have no crown, therefore they are non-believers should be called kaffirs and should be banished to the outskirts of this country. Hence the derogatory term (kaffirs) for blacks in South Africa imposed by the right-winger's church.
They used the bible to advocate apartheid and slavery.
TimeOutForMe
Level 8
Aug 10, 2019
5
The apple didn't fall far from the apple tree. Trump's grandfather or great grandfather was born in Germany. was ordered to leave Germany. German surname Drumpf. Trump has a Nazi approach to politics. He's very much a right-wingers offspring.
TimeOutForMe
Level 8
Aug 10, 2019
5
Trumps father had connections to the KKK, and his grandfather fled Bavaria to avoid having to serve in the Bavarian military. He moved to the Seattle area and made his fortune in brothels and restaurants.
@t1nick
That explains "Drumpf's" acquisition of the miss USA pageant. His inherent fondness for girls 
Not sure who wrote this, but it is worth sharing.
Me: Hey what did they call the people who supported Hitler but didn't hate Jews?
History: Nazis
Me: No, no. Just the ones who wanted a better economy and wanted to "make Germany great again."
History: Nazis
Me: But, like, the ones who didn't condone all the rhetoric or the cruel policies, but liked what he was doing for the country?
History: Nazis
Me: Yeah but the people who just stayed quiet, but if they had it to do over again they wouldn-
History: NAZIS
mcgeo52
Level 8
Aug 10, 2019
7
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