Parallels - Trump & Hitler...

There are parallels between Trump and Hitler. And they are chilling. The following is an excerpt from an article using partial history of Hitler's rise to power and it should send chills down the spine of every real American patriot. Trump is using tactics right out of Hitlers play book in how to destroy a democratic republic. It worked for Hitler and if Americans are not vigilant it will work again. This time in America and for Donald J. Trump.


By David Plymyer -  Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist. So was Adolph Hitler, and Trump is exhibiting more and more Hitler-like behavior as he sees his political fortunes dimming. Two events during Hitler’s time in power in Germany, the Reichstag Fire and the Nero Decree, invite comparison.

The exaggerated threat to federal property and domestic order, used by the Trump administration as a pretext for introducing federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Oregon, and other cities, is Trump’s Reichstag Fire. He hopes to provoke an “insurrection” that he can use to justify calling in active duty military troops and even declare martial law. Like Hitler, he is attracted to authoritarianism and will go to any lengths to maintain his grip on power.

Trump’s deadly demand that society and the economy return to “normal” in the face of the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic is his Nero Decree. He has abandoned any role in managing the pandemic other than hectoring state public school officials into resuming classroom instruction in the fall, a measure sure to increase the death toll, including among children. Like Hitler, he is a sadist, without regard for human life.

The obvious limitation of a comparison between any other malignant narcissist and Hitler lies in the scale of the harm done by Hitler. I am not suggesting that anything Trump has done or will do is comparable to the Holocaust. But that does not mean that we should not look to Hitler’s behavior for clues for what we can expect from Trump. It is how we learn from history — or at least should learn — to protect ourselves from leaders like Trump.

Analogies by pundits to the Reichstag Fire and Nero Decree are so commonplace that they tend to lose their impact. That should not be the case when applied to Trump. In his case, the comparisons raise the gravest of concerns. They serve to warn us of what may lie ahead.

Trump’s malignant narcissism makes him extraordinarily dangerous. He will stop at nothing to meet the needs of his insatiable ego, including attacking our democracy and precipitating the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans or more from COVID-19.

The Reichstag Fire


In an interview published in early June, Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, warned of drastic action by Trump to prevent the election in November if he believed that he was going to lose.

“In order to have an excuse for ending democracy, [Trump] is likely to have his own ‘Reichstag Fire’ incident.”

And within a month he did.

German president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolph Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. The Reichstag Fire occurred on February 27, 1933, burning the building that housed the German parliament, the Reichstag, in Berlin. An unemployed Dutch laborer with Communist sympathies confessed to and was convicted of starting the fire, although questions linger as to whether he was put up to the arson by the Nazis.

In any case, Hitler seized upon the fire as a pretext to seize absolute power in Germany. He persuaded Hindenburg to invoke a provision of German law giving Hitler dictatorial powers, allegedly to protect Germany from the dreaded Bolsheviks. The Reichstag Fire triggered a series of events paving the way for the rise of the Nazi regime.

On June 26th, Trump issued an executive order instructing federal law enforcement agencies and the Department of Justice to prosecute the desecration or destruction of monuments, memorials, and statues “to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law.” Suffice it to say that vast majority of such structures in Portland, Oregon are on private, state, or municipal property over which federal law enforcement agencies have no jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, numerous officers from various federal agencies began arriving in Portland shortly thereafter. Their mission evolved into protection of the federal courthouse in Portland, over which they do have jurisdiction, although they strayed far from the perimeter of federal property and began removing protesters from city streets — a role for which they have no legal authority.

The federal officers came from a variety of federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, the United States Marshals Service, and the Department of Homeland Security. They now number in the hundreds, wear camouflage uniforms with no identifying markings or nameplates, employ aggressive tactics, and appear to be under the general supervision of Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.

The responsibility for policing the protests on the streets of Portland falls to city and state officials, who want the federal officers gone, or at least off the streets. The mayor and governor accuse the federal officers of inciting violence and inflaming the situation in the city.

Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli stated that not only are the officers staying in Portland, their deployment may be expanded to cities “nationwide.” Trump suggested over the weekend that New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore will be next.

Trump, Wolf, and Cuccinelli have pushed a false narrative of cities in ruin, wracked with violence, under siege by leftist guerrillas, and governed by Democratic mayors too weak to act to protect them. Trump claimed, without evidence of course, that the use of federal law enforcement in Portland had prevented the city from being overrun by protesters. According to Trump:

“If you look at what’s gone on in Portland — those are anarchists, and we’ve taken a very tough stand. If we didn’t take a stand in Portland — you know we’ve arrested many of these leaders –if we didn’t take that stand, right now you would have a problem like you — they were going to lose Portland.”

The rhetoric of Trump and his cronies could not be more chilling if they were speaking in German. Make no mistake, the intent of the Trump administration is to make situations in the cities worse, not better. The federal law enforcement officers and their aggressive tactics are a deliberate provocation, an effort to spark confrontations and escalate the level of violence and destruction.

Trump’s endgame is not to place a few hundred federal law enforcement officers here and there to impress his base. Trump wants to trigger an “insurrection.”

Trump, coached by Attorney General William Barr, is itching to invoke the Insurrection Act, a series of laws enacted by Congress in the early 1800’s that allow the president to dispatch active duty military troops to “suppress insurrections” within the United States with or without the consent of mayors or governors. Trump wants to declare martial law. Trump has hinted at it before. On June 1st he said:

“If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

Trump wants to use an “insurrection” in a manner similar to the way that Hitler used the Reichstag Fire. It represents his last best chance to avoid defeat in November and cling to power. He is not above using federal troops to close down state institutions and interfere with the ability of states to hold elections.

If you believe that I am exaggerating his megalomania and malevolence, it is time for you to wake up.

Please continue on BELOW the FOLD!


Additional reading on the subject:


“The main thing is, they’re talking about us.”
Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1932-34

Comparing Trump’s presidency with past fascist regimes, and particularly that of Hitler’s Germany, is generally seen as partisan hyperbole. Past warnings of a Nazi-like leader taking hold in America — like Sinclair Lewis’s ironically titled It Can’t Happen Here — were belied by history. America’s constitutional system can withstand even Trump. Can’t it?

The Trump presidency is certainly not the emergent Third Reich. Adolf Hitler, once handed power, acted swiftly to supplant the existing constitution by emergency decree, directed widespread repression against political opponents, purged Jews from state institutions, and held elections and referenda under conditions of mass intimidation to cement Nazi rule. By contrast, America saw three years of generally unhindered political opposition, media criticism, and free (if flawed) elections in which an opposition party made serious gains. 

Yet events keep giving resonance to the warnings about Donald Trump’s rise to power. In response to national protests and unrest over brutal police violence against African Americans, Trump had peaceful demonstrators in front of the White House attacked and ordered the military to “expand the battlespace” to U.S. soil. What is happening here?

Several recent histories of Weimar Germany and Hitler’s rise to power make analogies to that of Donald Trump more credible — even acute.1 Considering the prospect of a Trump re-election, their insights point to an alarming level of danger that too many dismiss.2

Comparisons do jump out: Trump’s reliance on myths of national betrayal and decline to pursue political power; his use of existing and new forms of media to dominate news and politics; the holding of mass rallies to build a political movement; the subordination of a national party to a dominant leader asserting sole capacity to save the nation. It is striking how many similarities one can identify. While these aspects of Trump’s political playbook are usually defined as generic populism, it is their specific similarity to Germany’s actual example that resound...



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