Trump, Musk, & Fascism – An Historic Perspective

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Government editor Zachary Shahan has printed his ideas about how proper wing extremists like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are distorting the notion of free speech to show it right into a weapon to dismantle democracy. Most CleanTechnica readers know I’m an avid follower of historian Heather Cox Richardson on Substack. She has a present for taking occasions up to now and occasions occurring at the moment and weaving them collectively in a approach that’s entertaining and informative. If a bit studying takes place on the identical time, nicely, a lot the higher.

Her submit for October 21, 2024 focuses on the parallels between the rise of fascism in Germany after World Conflict One and the parallels with lots of the positions and insurance policies espoused by Donald Trump and Elon Musk right here within the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election season. I feel it’s worthy of being shared with our readers.

Richardson refers to a current article by political scientist Rachel Bitecofer entitled “What (Actually) Occurs If Trump Wins?” In it, Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of workplace, during which he promised Germans he would uphold the structure, and the three months he took to dismantle that structure. By March, she notes, the focus camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners weren’t Jews, however fairly Hitler’s distinguished political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political events had been unlawful. By Might, labor unions had been banned and college students had been burning banned books. Throughout the yr, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was unlawful, and denouncing violators paid nicely for many who did it.

Bitecofer writes that Trump might want to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into workplace these loyal to him, fairly than the Structure, with the intention to perform his plans. In actual fact, that’s what he meant to do when he mentioned in 2016 he was going to Washington to “drain the swamp.” Then he’ll purge his political opponents, for as soon as those that would stand in opposition to him are purged, Trump can act as he needs in opposition to immigrants, for instance, and others.

Dorothy Thompson Meets Adolf Hitler

Ninety years in the past, Dorothy Thompson was the primary American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany. When she visited Germany, she met Adolf Hitler whom she described as a person of “startling insignificance.” She requested him if he would “abolish the structure of the German Republic.” He answered: “I’ll get into energy legally” and, as soon as in energy, abolish the parliament and the structure and “discovered an authority-state, from the bottom cell to the best occasion; in all places there will probably be duty and authority above, self-discipline and obedience under.” She didn’t imagine he may succeed: “Think about a would-be dictator getting down to persuade a sovereign folks to vote away their rights,” she wrote in obvious astonishment.

When she returned to America, Thompson lectured in opposition to fascism throughout the nation in 1935, then started a radio program that reached tens of tens of millions of listeners. Employed in 1936 to put in writing a daily column three days every week for the New York Herald Tribune, she grew to become a number one voice in print, too, warning that what was occurring in Germany may additionally occur in America.

All Dictators Are Native

She wrote in a 1937 column: “No folks ever acknowledge their dictator prematurely… He at all times represents himself because the instrument for expressing the Integrated Nationwide Will. When Individuals consider dictators they at all times consider some overseas mannequin. If anybody turned up right here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he could be acknowledged and shunned…. However when our dictator turns up, you possibly can depend upon it that he will probably be one of many boys, and he’ll stand for every thing historically American.”

When 22,000 American Nazis held a rally at New York Metropolis’s Madison Sq. Backyard in honor of President George Washington’s birthday on February 20, 1939, Thompson sat within the entrance row of the press field, the place she laughed loudly in the course of the speeches and yelled “Bunk!” on the stage. After being escorted out, she returned to her seat, the place stormtroopers surrounded her. She later advised a reporter: “I used to be amazed to see a reproduction of what I noticed seven years in the past in Germany. Tonight I listened to phrases taken out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler.”

In 1941, Thompson a bit for Harper’s Journal entitled “Who Goes Nazi?” She mentioned, “It’s an attention-grabbing and considerably macabre parlor recreation to play at a big gathering of 1’s acquaintances: to take a position who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I feel I do know. I’ve gone by means of the expertise many instances — in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I’ve come to know the kinds: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I additionally know those that by no means, underneath any conceivable circumstances, would turn into Nazis.”

Inspecting a lot of kinds of Individuals, she wrote that the road between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or schooling, or race, or age, or nationality. The annoyed and humiliated mental, the wealthy and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the guy who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success — they’d all go Nazi in a disaster,” she wrote.

Suggesting her expulsion from Germany was due to her outdated article disparaging Hitler, she wrote, “My offense was to suppose that Hitler is simply an unusual man, in spite of everything. That could be a crime in opposition to the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah despatched by God to avoid wasting the German folks…. To query this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you’re a German, you may be despatched to jail. I, happily, am an American, so I merely was despatched to Paris. Worse issues can occur….”

Cash & Energy

What do Donald Trump and Elon Musk get if their efforts to subvert democracy are profitable? Cash, for one factor. Trump has at all times been a grifter who used his identify to advertise any variety of failed companies — Trump College, Trump Steaks, and Trump Airways amongst them. Musk is in it for the ability — the ability to inform regulators to go pound sand and the ability to be the only real authority on Earth on what’s fact. Each males are incapable of caring about anybody aside from themselves. They’re sociopaths who belong in a psycho ward.

And but, polls recommend half of American voters are simply high-quality with being led by a lunatic. It’s hoped that the phrases of Heather Cox Richardson could sway some to step again from the brink and vote for sanity as an alternative of anarchy. If Trump is elected, the American Experiment will finish. It’s astonishing to understand how many individuals are high-quality — even gleeful — with that outcome.

Right here is my takeaway from historical past: Weak leaders push others down; robust leaders elevate others up. Trump and Musk each are weak leaders who wish to drive others to suppose and act the way in which they inform them to. What they hate most is being ignored. That’s precisely what they each deserve most.