As a student of history, mostly self-taught, I find the comparisons between Trump and Hitler to be yet another instance of reductio ad Hitlerum. There are many right-wing democratic populist politicians in Europe, including some leaders, and yet Trump has not been compared to any of those, nor even less murderous populist tyrants e.g. Mussolini, Chavez, Castro, Franco, Putin, etc.
The comparison between the contemporary United States and Wiemar Germany is equally ridiculous. The latter had weak and mistrusted institutions, had faced a series of armed rebellions, had to contend with a Freikorps that was larger and better armed than its humbled armed forces and police, was suffering from major economic problems and in which the overall sentiment was one of chaos and betrayal. Wiemar was more reminiscent of the Russian Republic’s Provisional Government, and Hitler’s seizure of power was more reminiscent of the Stalinist takeover of Czechoslovakia over 1945-1948.
If every Hitler comparison was true, then Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr., would all have much in common with the Fuhrer. Yet now we are to believe that the Democratic media only cried wolf before, and that this time there is a wolf i.e. Trump.
White supremacists, including white nationalists, would support any candidate that promises to deport illegal aliens and improve border security. In whichever presidential election, one candidate is perceived to be tougher on the issue than the other.
With respect to terrorism and hate crimes, the FBI will issue a report for 2016 next year. I have seen all manner of commentary attempting to tie Trump’s rhetoric to a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes, yet historically, they have been in fact tied to acts of Muslim terror. We have seen attacks in San Bernardino, Paris and Orlando that have coincided with a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment among Americans. Looking at the number of hate crime and terrorism attacks and deaths since September 11, 2001 (which would obviously skew the statistics), we can see that over 100 people have been killed in Muslim supremacist terrorism in the United States. In comparison, under 20 people have been killed in anti-Muslim hate crimes over the same period. This contrast is rather stark.
Nor do I believe that the mainstream media suppressed a story about Trump’s connections to the Kremlin. I have seen repeated news articles and opinion pieces on the matter to the extent that people might as well conclude that Trump is a “Manchurian Candidate” in addition to being a reincarnation of Hitler.
If you disagree with the First Amendment and believe in the state’s right to suppress hate groups and hate speech, then you would agree with deeming all Wahhabi and Salafi congregations as cults and banning them, correct?
Unfortunately, the German government is not necessarily the best judge of what is a threat and what is not. Today, Germans who oppose Merkel’s open border policy face official censorship and censure for discussing it on social media, in addition to being victims of migrant crime. Tomorrow, the German government may change and people or Turkish, Arab, Kurdish or African descent may find themselves forced to assimilate into Germans and censored and censured when they attempt to practise their cultures. Given your knowledge of history, you should know how rapidly German society can transform itself.
In conclusion, the Hitler smear and the GRU/SVR canard were efforts at negative campaigning that failed. They were attempts to scare American Jews and the historically ignorant into voting for Hillary Clinton, and to convince the foreign policy hawks to cross the aisle. Hitler has notoriety and name-recognition that other tyrants don’t, and Americans have forgotten how confronting Putin was a Cold War anachronism for both Obama and Hillary and how relations needed to be “reset”…
If, as John Kerry bloviates, global warming is the biggest threat to humanity, then they should have left Hitler and Putin out of it…
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