After WWII, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned us, “.… those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” I fear that our nation is close to following Donald Trump into the black hole of authoritarianism and oppression similar to Hitler’s Germany of the 1930s and 40s. If you don’t think this is possible, consider the many similarities in the actions and policies of those two.
Attempt insurrection
In 1923, Adolf Hitler was arrested for attempting to overthrow the government in Munich.
In 2023, Trump was charged with scheming to illegally overturn his election loss and with conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the duly elected winner.
Enable authoritarian rule
Enabling Act (of 1933), which gave the government the power to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag (parliament), marked the formal transition from the democratic Weimar Republic to the totalitarian Nazi dictatorship.
In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the former president is at least presumptively immune from criminal liability for his official acts, and is absolutely immune for some “core” of them.
Suspend parts of the Constitution to reduce civil rights and freedoms
In 1933, Hitler’s cabinet suspended 7 sections of the German Constitution, thereby restricting personal liberty, the right of free expression, including freedom of the press, the right of assembly and the right of association, and the privacy of communications.
In 2022, Trump supported the suspension of parts of the US Constitution if he disagreed with election results, stating, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” – Trump
Replacement of government officials with “loyalists”
In 1934, Hitler began removing non-Nazi officials together with Hitler’s rivals within the Nazi Party. Once the purges of the government were concluded, Hitler had total control over Germany.
“I will immediately (upon becoming President) reissue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats and I will wield that power very aggressively,” said Trump.
Oppose immigration of diverse peoples
In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote that, “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”
Immigrants coming to the U.S. are “poisoning the blood of our country.” – Trump, 2024. Trump specifically questioned why the U.S. would want to admit more people from Haiti. As for Africa, he asked why more people from “shithole countries” should be allowed into the U.S. – AP, 2017
Censor books that disagree with the ruling party’s cultural ideology
“On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller and Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames while students gave the Nazi salute.” PBS.org
“There were over 4,000 instances of book bans in the first half of this school year—more than all of last school year as a whole. This is a marked increase in comparison to the last spring semester, in which PEN America recorded 1,841 book bans.” CNN, 2024
Control youth programs and school curriculum
“… in 1936, they (the Nazis) banned all youth groups—including the Boy Scouts—and forced members to become part of the Hitler Youth instead.” “By 1939, over 90 percent of German children were part of the Hitler Youth organization. “ History.com
Pack school boards with MAGA loyalists and require extremely conservative curriculum and history in schools.
Oppose racial equity and inclusion, and oppress minorities
History “shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people.” (Mein Kampf).The Nazi’s eliminated civil rights and freedom of Jews, followed by their arrest, placement in concentration camps and mass execution.
In 2020, Trump issued “Executive Order 13950 (wherein) trainings that explore implicit bias and systemic racism are labeled as ‘anti-American’ and ‘divisive’ literature.” – Fordham Law Review. Trump plans to detain millions of undocumented, primarily Latino, immigrants, place them in camps and deport them, dividing husbands from wives and children from their families, and is willing to employ the military.
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Trump’s admiration of autocrats like Putin, Kim Jung-il and Hitler is nothing new. In 1990, Trump’s ex-wife, Ivana Trump, told her lawyer that “from time-to-time, her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, ‘My New Order,’ which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.”
During the recent Presidential Debate, the only world leader that Trump could claim as a supporter was Victor Orban, the autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister who has been in power for 14 year,s during which time has steadily undermined democracy. That same night, Trump continued to claim that he won the 2020 election, even after he was reminded that his claims of fraud were denied by over 60 judges. Trump has also refused to commit to accepting the results in the upcoming election.
With the protection of immunity provided to a reelected Trump by the recent Supreme Court, the only certain way to block Trump’s autocratic rule and the weakening of our rights and freedoms is at the ballot box. I urge all freedom loving Americans to vote for Kamala Harris on Nov. 5.
