THE DUOPOLY WATCH |
Steven
Jonas, MD, MPH
In
America anything goes, given the appalling level of political illiteracy in the
political class and media, not to mention the masses, so you can believe that,
yes, there is now an increasing amount of speculation —the new “buzz”—that
Donald Trump has one or more characteristics in common with the German Nazi
Chancellor/President/Dictator (yes, he was all of those things) Adolf Hitler:
And
there has been at least one plea to stop doing so: http://www.frontpagemag.com/
So,
I thought, I might as well enter the game.
First,
the similarities. There’s the racism, the xenophobia, and in Trump’s case
substituting for Hitler’s extreme prejudice against one religious grouping, the
Jews, it’s another, the Muslims. There’s the speaking style and with it
the ability to whip up the right audiences into a frenzy. (One difference: Hitler’s was apparently
well-practiced, while Trump’s apparently isn’t.)There’s the frequent
name-calling in re opponents.
There’s
the “our nation must be great again.”
Germany had lost the last big war it fought. Now while the U.S. cannot be said to
have “won” the last big one it engaged in, the War on Iraq, while millions of
people on the region have clearly lost much, starting with their lives,
militarily at least the U.S. did not lose. (However, the U.S. may actually
be on the verge of losing militarily in Afghanistan, joining a long line of
foreign forces, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union that failed there,
militarily.) But that doesn’t stop
Trump from trumpeting on the “great again” theme, just like Hitler did.
For
Hitler, after the Jews, the Great Enemy was “Soviet Bolshevism.” For Trump
it seems to be Russia (although I do think that bunches of U.S. persons are
confused on the point of whether the U.S. enemy is Russia or the Soviet Union,
especially with the constant demonization of Russian President Putin who is the
new “Stalin”, of course). (And yes folks, on a newscast on MSNBC on the
morning of October 1, 2015 I actually heard a reporter refer to Russia as “the
Soviet Union,” not once but twice, before she caught herself. Well, you
know there’s that new Steven Spielberg movie about Gary Powers and the swap
coming out.)
Then
there are the vague promises of a great future, without telling much about
exactly how they planned/plan to get there. There’s the ample use of the
Big Lie Technique (but that is common to all of the current crop of Republican
leaders, and most of the rest of the political class in America). There
are other similarities too, but among the most important, a characteristic that
kept/keeps both men going is that they didn’t/don’t embarrass. They never
had/have to apologize, explain, defend. They were/are the prefect avatars
of Lee Atwater’s consummate principle of politics: “Always attack; never
defend.” (Would that the Democrats would learn this principle, but that’s
another story.) Finally, it is clear that Trump just loves personal power,
just like Hitler did.
Now
for the differences. First, as most readers of this site are well aware,
Trump does not have nearly the mass following that Hitler had. While
before the functional coup d’etat of January 30-31, 1933, Hitler’s Nazi Party
did never command more than about 37% of the vote (in a country where most
people voted), Trump has only gotten into the 30’s, of Republican voters, which amounts to
about 15% of the total. Of course, we do have to remember that in a
Presidential election, only about 50% of the eligibles vote and in 2016,
Republican voter suppression will begin to exact a major impact on the number of
Democratic votes recorded.
Second,
Trump does not have a mass, very well-organized political party behind him,
personally. For Hitler the National Socialist German Workers Party (yes,
hard to believe, but that was indeed the literal translation of what “Nazi” in
German stood for, a calculated move to steal some wind from the Socialist Party
of Germany’s [SPD] sails and other genuine workers’ formations including the
Communist Party of Germany [KPD]) provided huge electoral clout in the
localities in which it was powerful. If Trump does get the Repub.
nomination, we really don’t know what the National Republican Party will do for
him. But whatever that would be, it could not compare to the personally
loyal Nazi Partei.
Third,
Hitler had a huge (up to three million part-timers strong) private army, the
“Sturmabteilung,” the SA, the Storm Troopers, the much feared and despised—and
in other quarters admired—“Brownshirts.” They were his enforcers,
frequently engaging in violence against his primary opponents, the Communists
and the Socialists. As documented by numerous historians and journalists,
the NSDAP was cradled from inception by the Reichswehr (the German Army under
the post-World War I Weimar Republic) and paid for from the beginning by major
members of the German ruling class led by the steel magnate Friedrich “Fritz”
Thyssen. (An early [1923] foreign supporter of the Nazis was a U.S. person
named George Herbert Walker. [Sound familiar?].) Trump has nothing like
this. But since there is no organized resistance at present to the kind of
long-term authoritarian threat that Trump might become —or suggest to better
skilled politicos—in the future, that is immaterial.
Fourth,
one huge (huuuuge [!]) difference in practice is that while Hitler was arguably
the world’s greatest Keynesian political economist, in terms of his vision of
the government’s role in making the economy hum, Trump would likely get as far
away from that as he possibly could.
The one exception might be the U.S. massively crumbling infra-structure,
which might be as big a focus for Trump as it was for Hitler (except that Trump
would likely attempt to privatize any major
expansion).
Fifth,
as far as we can tell so far, Trump has no Thyssen equivalents. He is
wealthy (although it is not known for sure just how wealthy he is). And he
seems—as part of his calculated appeal of being “unbribable” —not to be seeking
outside ruling class money. So we
don’t know how much he could attract.
Finally,
and this is certainly another major difference, obvious to many here but
important to note for the record: Trump seems to have no firm belief
system. Presently, he is of course riding racism of two types: a) no one
who supports him has forgotten his racism-based, dog-whistled “birtherism,” you
can count on that, and b) of course the anti-Latino (especially Mexican for some
unknown reason — maybe because they are the closest ones) variety. His
tax plan clearly benefits the wealthy (including himself) even more than they
are already benefited. His xenophobia is right out front — see his attack
on the Syrian refugees. As noted has grandiose ideas for “making America
great again” (as if it were not, militarily at least, right now). But, characteristically, he has given no
clear ideas on how will do that, on either the financial or the military
side. And so on and so forth.
But
Trump has moved around on the ideological side of things. He has in the past been rather a
liberal, endorsing a single-payer health care payment system and freedom of
choice in the outcome of pregnancy, being some sort of friend of the Clintons,
and was certainly not until 2012 not an outspoken Republican. Hitler, in
contrast, had his malignant political philosophy --- a very firm belief system
--- based on the relatively new political anti-Semitism that was first formed in
his native Austria in the 1880s, as well as his xenophobia, probably based in
part on the fact that he was not German himself. For Hitler, this was all firmly
wrapped around his messianic ego (in that sense like Trump, who appears to also
be a raging megalomaniac). Just read Mein Kampf.
But
Hitler was not an anti-Semite in the first instance for electoral purposes
(although he used it in that way). He really believed that “The Jews” were
not only the cause of every single problem facing Germany, but the rest of
Europe as well. He really believed that if “The Jew” were all killed, the
world would be a much better place. He really believed that the “Aryan”
German people (you know, blond like Hitler, slim like Goering, and tall like
Goebbels, as the old joke goes) amounted to a “race,” were superior to everyone
else, and deserved to rule the Earth. He really believed that “The Slavs”
were an inferior people too (a belief that may well have remained with him even
when the Red Army was closing in on the entrance to his Berlin bunker). Trump doesn’t seem to have that level of
racialism or even that degree of intellectualism. In that area, Trump is a
midget.
And
so, do I think that “Trump” equals “Hitler?” Well, not yet. But hey,
you never know in a land as benighted as America. And remember: international events
always play a big role in how the capitalist ruling class plays its cards at
home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, is a Professor
Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and
author/co-author/editor/co-
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