Trump, Musk, & Fascism – An Historic Perspective

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Govt 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 taking place right now and weaving them collectively in a approach that’s entertaining and informative. If a bit studying takes place on the similar time, effectively, a lot the higher.

Her publish for October 21, 2024 focuses on the parallels between the rise of fascism in Germany after World Warfare One and the parallels with most 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 believe 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, by 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 have been unlawful. By Could, labor unions have been banned and college students have been burning banned books. Inside the 12 months, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was unlawful, and denouncing violators paid effectively 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, so as 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 very best occasion; in all places there will likely be accountability and authority above, self-discipline and obedience beneath.” She didn’t imagine he may succeed: “Think about a would-be dictator getting down to persuade a sovereign individuals 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 thousands and thousands of listeners. Employed in 1936 to put in writing a daily column three days every week for the New York Herald Tribune, she turned a number one voice in print, too, warning that what was taking place in Germany may additionally occur in America.

All Dictators Are Native

She wrote in a 1937 column: “No individuals ever acknowledge their dictator upfront… He all the time represents himself because the instrument for expressing the Integrated Nationwide Will. When Individuals consider dictators they all the time consider some international mannequin. If anybody turned up right here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he can be acknowledged and shunned…. However when our dictator turns up, you may rely upon it that he will likely be one of many boys, and he’ll stand for all the pieces 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 through the speeches and yelled “Bunk!” on the stage. After being escorted out, she returned to her seat, the place stormtroopers surrounded her. She later instructed a reporter: “I used to be amazed to see a replica 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 chunk for Harper’s Journal entitled “Who Goes Nazi?” She mentioned, “It’s an fascinating and considerably macabre parlor sport to play at a big gathering of 1’s acquaintances: to invest who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I believe I do know. I’ve gone by means of the expertise many occasions — in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I’ve come to know the categories: 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, beneath any conceivable circumstances, would grow to be Nazis.”

Analyzing a variety of forms of Individuals, she wrote that the road between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or training, 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 might all go Nazi in a disaster,” she wrote.

Suggesting her expulsion from Germany was due to her previous article disparaging Hitler, she wrote, “My offense was to suppose that Hitler is simply an peculiar 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 save lots of the German individuals…. To query this mystic mission is so heinous that, in case you are a German, you will be despatched to jail. I, thankfully, 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 all the time 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 facility — the facility to inform regulators to go pound sand and the facility to be the only real authority on Earth on what’s fact. Each males are incapable of caring about anybody apart from themselves. They’re sociopaths who belong in a psycho ward.

And but, polls counsel half of American voters are simply tremendous with being led by a lunatic. It’s hoped that the phrases of Heather Cox Richardson might 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 appreciate how many individuals are tremendous — even gleeful — with that outcome.

Right here is my takeaway from historical past: Weak leaders push others down; sturdy leaders carry others up. Trump and Musk each are weak leaders who need to power others to suppose and act the best way they inform them to. What they hate most is being ignored. That’s precisely what they each deserve most.