138 Comments

Thank you Thom, for a very informative and thorough discussion of the similarities between Hitler and Trump. It isn't just one man, though. It's a base of wannabe Hitlers and that is the real problem. I personally think his followers over sixty-five are in early (or later) stage dementia. They never got to have the power they thought they should have in their lives, so they bask in Trump's reflected image. Also, in my experience, most of the hard-core MAGA are drunks. Again, my experience; others may have different views. All of it is a reactionary movement against the equality gains for women, gays and POC of the '60s that was accompanied by the rise of the fundamentalist evangelicals who never accepted equality. Authoritarianism and religious extremism always go hand in hand. And somehow hatred of Jews also seems to be comorbid with this authoritarian disease. Something I just don't get is why they hate Jews so much. They've contributed a lot to the world.

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Trump has signs of dementia. Trump isn't the actual leader. He is somebody's puppet.

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Putin's puppet.

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Yes he's a puppet, but a dangerous one.

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Trump does have signs of dementia, and while he is someone's puppet, he also has his own agenda. The leaders of industry in Germany who bankrolled Hitler thinking they were in charge learned that they were not once he was in power. And, there were those who needed to leave. I recommend reading When Hitler Stole White Rabbit by Judith Kerr. It points out how people were unable to see through Hitler until it was too late.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54283.When_Hitler_Stole_Pink_Rabbit

It has also been made into a movie with English subtitles.

https://youtu.be/32PWCMHxViE?si=M04jER1ngxglCpSy

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...film is on free Tubi ....PANGO

book app has ~8 copies, fm a well read $2 to like new $10

...i am a helping sort😇

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Thanks. I think I saw it once on Tubi, and once on Netflix in Germany. I had forgotten about Tubi.

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This is absolutely correct. Trump is not amenable to anyone’s control, and he has made quite clear that he intends to place sycophants in cabinet and regulatory offices, to fire many protected civil servants, to require those who stay to become employees personally loyal to him, and to build detention camps for undocumented people. I can guarantee he will also unlawfully imprison other citizens in his camps. He also wants to strip native-born Americans of birthright citizenship in violation of the 14th Amendment, to arrest journalists or anyone else who criticizes him, to invoke the Insurrection Act upon taking office, and to use the Department of Justice as a tool to persecute his critics. Trump is often a compulsive liar at many things, but he is not lying about what he plans to do if he connives his way back into office. We should keep in mind Masha Gessen’s admonition to take the dictator at his word.

The wealthy people as well as his base who fund his campaign will discover out the hard way that they will not be able to control Trump and his unlawful behavior. They will learn that just as German industrialists soon learned they could not control Adolf Hitler.

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...wow: great site goodreads.com

$3.99 -- maybe 1000 copies, varying editions... explanatory notes and all very good thank you thank you

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My daughter and I are friends on Goodreads so when it is time to buy a gift, I can look at her list of several hundred books she would like to read and pick from that. Very handy.

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He’s definitely decompensating, that is, he’s undergoing a psychological breakdown from over the criminal trials he’s facing. He could have dementia, but the definite problem is that he shows signs of both malignant narcissism and sociopathy. The mainstream press is obsessed with the horse race and doesn’t pay attention to the serious policy differences between the parties, nor do they pay attention to Trump’s fundamental abnormality as a candidate.

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@ SuZieCoyote "why they hate Jews so much?"

Ans. Collective Racial subconscious.

Besides hate, it gives them feelings of superiority. Trump uses the Stanislavski acting method -- he emotes Hitler. Some Trump cultists get euphoric. But they miss that his body language is filled with "tells" when he lies or exaggerates.

Hitler substantiated his stage presence with "science." When my father was in college he had to take eugenics, a required science class. Learned that our people are mostly feeble minded, sustain ourselves with criminal behavior, and can't benefit from a liberal education. Guess who got the highest grades?

We started the eugenics movement. Hitler had a picture of Henry Ford behind his desk. The Soros' of his day were the Rothschilds and his "Jewish" competitor Daimler Benz.

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Interesting. My biological father was Jewish, a fact I didn't know until I was almost 20 years old. Of course, in Judaism, ethnicity is pass through the mother. So I was never Jewish despite more than half my DNA being European Jew. My parents lied about their wedding date to hide this from me and told me my step-father was my biological father. They even had my birth certificate changed (which was doable in those days.) Everyone knew but me - the extended families, school administrators, and others.

I was put into a Southern Baptist church; I suppose to cure me of any inherent Jewishness. At seven years old, I was treated to anti-semitism in school with a teacher throwing me into a stack of chairs screeching "You don't love Jesus, do you? Why don't you love Jesus?" and I was completely bewildered about the event because I had no idea what she was talking about. She set me up by asking me to stay in the room to "help her" while the others went out to recess.

I wasn't Jewish, according to the Jews, and I wasn't Christian, according to the Christians. None of the anti-semitism made any sense until after I found out my true heritage.

I never met my biological father as he and my mother divorced while she was pregnant with me. The family would not let him see me. This was Kansas in the 50's. If I had been told my DNA was half-Jewish, I would have had to ask, "What's Jewish?" That how many Jews there were in my sphere.

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As it turns out, most of eugenics is pure bullshit. But many people have a predisposition to hate "the other." That could be due to the collective racist subconscious.

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Spot on Dan. In fact the worst liars, thiefs, grifters in America are Christians.

Like Rick Scott, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Pete Peterson and the tech bros.

I am not so sure of a collective racist subconscious, as you don't see it in kids, and people who were not raised racist. I think it is more of a cultural artifact, meaning growing up in a culture of racism. Like my fathers family who climbed down the social ladder from planters to pig farmers and lumberjacks, but all raised in a culture which considered blacks to be inferior, despite the fact that from the end of the civil war, to 1900 all of their neighbors were black, and the family refers to my grandparents as Mammy and Pappy, which are the endearing names that slaves used for their parents and loved ones.

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This is a petty little footnote, but I still remember the worst gas station boss my 1st husband ever had, the "Christian." Two incidents without honor or honesty; I don't like long stories, but lookout if your employer claims to love Jesus.

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I've been saying something like that for yours. I overheard a dude tell my landlord, you can trust me I'm a Christian. I told the landlord to grab his wallet and run.

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You’re right, eugenics is bullshit, but despite this it is making an entirely undeserved comeback.

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There is science behind DNA and epigenitics, so much so that DNA testing companies want to know your families history, where your parents were born, their environment. But it is not racial, it is personal, and the info is curated for later use by PhRMA and AHIP. PhRMA is an investor in 23andme and thus has access to their DNA data base. AHIP is forbidden by a law (GINA) that prohibits using DNA to underwrite HEALTH insurance, not life insurance which is exempt., and that can change anytime there is a Republican controlled Congress and Executive.

Physical characteristics, as well propensity for or immunity to diseases is also genetic, via autosomal and mitochondrial DNA, YDNA is considered junk DNA, but has one salient feature it is passed down via the male line, and has enabled me to trace my paternal heritage back to Yorkshire in the 1400's and further back to the steppes in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea.

And it also affects such things as personality and intelligence, but not the bullshit of condemning or categorizing an entire peoples.

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I haven’t submitted any genetic profiles to any of the companies, and I’m aware of GINA. However, I find it interesting to see the use of genetic genealogy to identify unidentified deceased persons or suspects in rape and murder cases.

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I used to teach fourth graders about racism by using the 3 part series on Race: The Power of an Illusion at the Facing History Facing Ourselves. It discusses how the USA was build on the fallacious concept of racism and White Supremacy.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library?keys=Race+the+power+of+an+illusion&sort_by=search_api_relevance&items_per_page=12

The Episodes are The Differences Between Us, The Story We Tell, The House We Live In. It points out that differences in physical appearance are not race, but just the variation found in human beings. It also looks at the ideas historically. I think Barbara Kingsolver is somewhat addressing this idea in her book Demon Copperhead. It was hard for me to get my colleagues to understand that their ideas were quite outdated, and that the way that there are other understandings out there.

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It sounds like the sort of program that we need in our schools, but that governors like DeSantis and Abbott would prevent in public schools. Our Ohio General Assembly and Senate are gerrymandered heavily to favor Republicans, and they placed the Department of Education under Governor DeWine’s control as a cabinet level office. Members of the General Assembly also want to have Ohio adopt the Heritage Foundation’s model curriculum, which would further miseducate Ohio’s students. One good thing did happen, of 10 candidates that supported Moms for Liberty (Moms for Censorship,) 8 of them lost their elections. In my own town, we didn’t have any Moms for Censorship candidates.

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I think it's coming about more because of a need to deny responsibility and blame others? Racism and religious beliefs are just scapegoats?

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"Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God‐​given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God‐​given sense of justice in your heart." Voltaire

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All of the above! Blaming race and letting religion explain things facilitate denial of personal responsibility. But I think there is a big component of desperate clinging to Trump because it is so hard to admit (even to yourself!) that you have been duped, manipulated, screwed. If "Trump University" had taken me for (hundreds of thousands?) of dollars, I like to think I would have said, put your non-disclosure agreement where the sun don't shine. But never a peep out of them. Huh. Embarrassment can be tough.

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It sounds like Trump supporters are clinging to the “sunk cost” fallacy. They have invested so much time and energy in supporting Trump that they will continue to back him.

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Sounds like me Suzi. My mothers great grandmother (Philipinna Schaum) was a Sephardic Jew from the Rhineland, per the Talmud my great grandmother was a Jew, however she wasn't raised in the tradition, neither was my grandmother and mother. They never discussed the Jewish origins.I only found out after I became involved in genetic genealogy and traced down, my ancestry. Did have help from my great grandmother who told me, when I was 8 or 9, that her mother was Jewish and her father was Catholic, she was neither.

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Suzie, I just wanted to reach out with love and empathy. In my family, Jewish was not an issue, but they still scapegoated irrationally (me and my dad) and relatively late in life I experienced the never suspected hatred, and the "complete bewilderment." It is hard to sort out personal slights from terrible suffering of others in this world.

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And I don't think we CAN or SHOULD sort out personal slights from the suffering of others. Suffering often creates the humility to see how others are affected by the same situation. I listened to a report on NPR where they studied people who read vs those who don't, especially novels. People who read mentally and emotionally vicariously experience what a character in a book experiences. Those who don't read show less of an ability to bring empathy or sympathy to their views of others. Remember the phrase, "The personal IS political?"

I have a half sister who participated in some of the exclusionary behaviors that came from the family. Recently, she believed she was slighted by the other sister. Sister one sent me a long message, apologizing for her childhood behaviors saying, "I had no idea how much it hurts to be excluded by family. I am so sorry." Well, she was a child; she hasn't done it in years and she was only following the lead of adults around her. I carry no grudge, even against those in the family who should have been kinder. It did teach me about their world.

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Amen and Amen. Look at the rational, informative sharing in Hartmannworld.

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Thank you; it was a long time ago, but there are scars. Psychologists say we get stronger at the broken spots. I'm tough as nails!

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Great comment Daniel, fits with my assessment. What I can't understand are the Jews that support him and/or in his inner circle. Like the racist Steve Miller, Michael Cohen,Allen Weisselberg, David Weiss. Cohen fell out of love, but did pay off "Stormy Daniels", out of his own pocket.

Then again I don't understand Gays for Trump, Blacks for Trump, Hispanics for Trump and the camp followers like Boebert, Virignia Foxx, MTG and female MAGAts. Ore even Muslims for Trump like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Alexander#:~:text=Ali%20Alexander%20(born%20Ali%20Abdul%2DRazaq%20Akbar

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I too find it difficult that someone like Stephen Miller could support someone like Donald Trump. Miller’s own ancestors found refuge in the United States after being persecuted in Russia and Poland, and his own ancestors were treated like unwelcome pariahs in their own time, and he forgets this. Miller has the cold, dead eyes reminiscent of photos of some prominent Nazis like Himmler and Goebbels. Miller’s maternal uncle has spoken on behalf of the family to utterly reject Stephen Miller’s ideologies rejecting modern migrants.

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I once thought that Miller was just an opportunist, glomming on to what he perceived was the power. I think differently now. he is a Zionist, it is in his DNA, and he overlooks and ignores the antisemites, which he doesn't take serious. His goal is to evict Muslims, and that is why he is anti immigration and has convinced Trump to evict people not born in the U.S., and even the 2nd generation Americans. The other Jews that support and work for Trump are secular Jews and their motivation is the same as all Trump humpers,money, power. and self aggrandizement, just like Cassidy Hutchinson, who was star struck, she was trying to establish her career and was star struck. She was to Mark Meadows as Monica to Bill. Except she came to her senses, and I doubt she fell on her knees for Mark.

It is heady, especially for a young person, looking to embellish their resume, to include worked in the White House.

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There you go Suzie, you, I and many others are over age 65, not included in your early or late state of dementia. Well not so sure about myself, wife tells me I have Sometimers Disease. But great comment.

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Oh, I have that too. Two times out of three, something about going up the stairs makes me forget WHY I went up the stairs.

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LOL, same problem, wife has it too. Sometimes it helps to go back to the starting point and begin again. Not sure fire, but works once in awhile.

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Sounds like the senior moments I periodically have.

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Old cowboy friend of mine said it was CRS." (Can't remember s...t.)

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"Base of wannabe Hitlers" scores with me: my authoritarian birth family definitely thought they were the ones who knew how everybody else oughtta be and think. No dementia required. Born Birchers, died (mostly) Birthers, would have taught the MAGA's their business!

Thanks for mentioning women! The concept of females having any rights at all is a blink in history's eye. (insert half-hour lecture re: "Comstock Act" and Kasczmaryk (sp) Hatred of Jews: Thom probably (?) has gone into this: it's said to trace back to the Jews who demanded Jesus be crucified while the Roman washed his hands: "blood guilt." But it then gets tangled up with medieval Popish squeamishness about "filthy lucre." Only the filthy could handle the lucre, but somebody had to do it. Catch 22. Fast forward to The Protocols of Zion. (two copies on display in Mom's house!) and Henry Ford's propaganda book (yes, FORD the car guy) and my best reference is to : "Warrant for Genocide." old Oxford Prof. Cohn, if I remember, probably rare.

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My folks weren't Birchers; but Kansas was saturated with Bircher ideology in the 50's. We were very, very poor. Once my mother purchased a beautiful jacket at a thrift store for my stepfather; he reacted badly, yelling, "How do I know this wasn't take off a dead "N_____!" Nobody I knew had any experience with Jews. But they hated them anyway.

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Matthew Kacsmaryk is an awful replacement for a judicial seat once held by Mary Lou Robinson (whom Carter appointed.) Henry Ford received the Protocols and helped circulate this vile screed into the body politic. The late Oxford professor Norman Cohn wrote “Warrant for Genocide” and it was published in 1966, and yes, it’s a very difficult book to find. I’d also recommend one of Professor Cohn’s other books, “Europe’s Inner Demons. In this book, Professor Cohn studies a number of conspiracy theories that led to massacre and expulsion of Jews in Europe, and also Philip IV of France’s successful effort to destroy the Knights Templar.

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Hav you ever looked at knightstemplar.com? ;)

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Ha ha! The real reason Philippe wanted to eliminate them were because he wanted to grab considerable wealth from the Templars, and Philippe was eager to eliminate the considerable debt he owed to the Templars. He also wanted to launch a new crusade several decades after Arab armies had chased the Western soldiers out of the Near East. The Templars were opposed to Philippe’s grandiose plans and openly objected to them.

Knights Templar had originally been an order tasked to fight for and also act as bankers to finance the wars in the Near East. They had received special tax privileges and worked as bankers for the Crusades. With the loss of the Near East to the Arab armies, the knights had lost their essential reason for existence and people began to resent their wealth and tax privileges as they were no longer seen as necessary. It was rather easy for Philippe to torture the Templars into making false confessions, having them executed, and canceling his debts to them. Philippe was also a relative of Pope Clement V, the Avignon Pope, and he was able to pressure the Pope to issue an order condemning the Templars. The order was later withdrawn .The Templars’ wealth passed to other orders, and Philippe died in a hunting accident the same year he ordered the execution of several of the knights. It seems that karma came knocking on Philippe’s door for what he had done.

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Jew hatred is perhaps the oldest hatred on the planet. It goes back to the pagan priest Manetho, who wrote an anti-Jewish screed long before Christianity developed. Unfortunately, Christians continued antisemitism because Jews did not want to adopt Christianity and wanted to continue their own traditions and faith. Christian antisemitism led to the development of the ethnic antisemitism that developed in 19th century Germany as emancipated Jews started becoming successful. The ethnic antisemitism was what Hitler built upon in order to create his program to murder European Jews. Some Christian churches have recognized their complicity in antisemitism and are working to atone for it and respect Jews as human beings with legitimate traditions of their own.

Jewish people have contributed a great deal of good to the world in their dedication to learning, sciences, arts and many other endeavors. There is also a common tendency for antisemitism to come out at times of political and economic turmoil, even though Jews are not responsible for it and often suffer the same problems as their Christian or non religious neighbors. The attacks on George Soros are a case in point. Mr. Soros’s primary concern is to ensure the survival of democratic civil societies both in the United States and in Europe. Viktor Orban was once one of Mr. Soros’s protégés and Mr. Soros paid for Orban to study at a British university. Unfortunately, when Orban was elected as PM, power went to his head and he became frankly undemocratic and gerrymandered Hungary to ensure his own party, Fidesz, would hold a perpetual majority. Orban also sold off newspapers to his cronies to ensure accurate news coverage would never occur.

Right-wingers have accused Mr. Soros of funding “socialism” and refugees. Both accusations are false. Mr. Soros is not a socialist, but supports democratic societies. He is not encouraging undocumented immigration. Migration is occurring because of political turmoil and climate change.

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... i am full of joy today

joy because I can recommend a film to you … Documentary:

"WHY THE JEWS" 2018 ....

... Director curtin ( with Alan Dershowitz, Dr. Ruth, Noam Chompski) begins our incredible trip thru a startling history... much

unknown to lulie....

.... I don't look elsewhere because I'm satisfied with Tubi -- drastic number of documentaries, including of course conspiracy theories, and regular TV... with mandatory 2023 specials daily news Canada and Europe -- Europe pretty much covers east and west

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What are you folks prepared to do about him and his supporters?

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Tried to follow the thread up, but anyway, heroic efforts are being made to re-enfranchise the disenfranchised and to bring some sanity to gerrymandering. Maybe try gregpalast.com?

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I will tell the story of my first husband’s parents. We were married in 1978. I was 21 he was 25.

His parents, Zbignew and Sofia emigrated to the United States from Poland after WWII. They both came from well to do Polish families from Krakow. They were educated, one as an engineer and one an attorney. When the war broke out, Z became an officer in the Polish army. Sofia was married and an attorney at her father’s law firm. Sofia’s husband was a fighter pilot. When the Germans invaded Poland, they went to Sofia’s parents home where the family lived. They shot her father and brother in the street and forced Sofia and her 3 sisters into German work camps where they built roads for the German Army for 7 years. Through brutal winters with thin clothing and shoes, they were marched to the work sites, build roads and marched back in the darkness to little warmth or food. Sofia’s husband had been shot down, she was never able to find much information on him, only that he’d been killed. When the Americans liberated the work camps, Sofia was near death and was transported to an English hospital being the only member of her family to make out of Poland.

Zibignew spent several years as an intelligence officer before being captured and placed in a POW camp. He was treated precious little better than Sofia being an officer. He did continue working on getting information to counteract the Germans at the daily risk of being found out and executed. When the POW camps were liberated, he also ended up in a English Hospital.

They both booked passage on the same ship headed to America as they had friends sponsorship already American citizens from Krakow. They met on the voyage and found work in New York City where they married. They were headed to Chicago where their friends were waiting for them. Zbignew became senior design engineer for US Steel and Sofia an interpreter at the University of Chicago. They had 2 sons later in life than what was social norm at the time.

I met my first husband in Pittsburgh as his father was transferred here from Chicago.

There are many parts of their story I didn’t include to avoid my post becoming a novel, but I remember everything they told me about their experiences with fascism, antisemitism and cruelty. Everything that happened to them can happen right here. I promise you all it most definitely can.

The false belief that is can’t has been debunked.

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Glad both my parents are dead. My mother actually would say to me it can’t happen here. She died in 2000. I already knew it could and was already happening the moment Reagan was elected given the long term careful foundations laid by the far right Birchers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Farewell and their ilk. Of course I had the added advantage of having experience antisemitism and the signs at the Arthur Godfrey Kenniworth hotel on Miami Beach. No blacks, no Jews, No Dogs!

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Hitler's crowds cheered then. Trump's crowds cheer now.

They are among us.

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People want to associate with the winner, so if Hitler or Trump seem to be winning, people will join their cause - if not for belief, then for self-protection - in case the authoritarian gains power. To many, including myself, it appears that our system of justice is losing out to Trump (as did the Germans' to Hitler, ) and our justice system is going overboard to protect his (unconstitutional and criminal) rights, and those of his supporters...and shortchanging the rights of Americans who want to keep democracy.

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Yes. I think the single MOST important missed points is the Judiciary. It seems already lost however.

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Our judges have been confined too long to their ivory towers, and are oblivious to the real dangers to democracy posed by Trump and his ignorant, malicious legions. Compared to Trump's brand of populous Fascism, anything else they have ever experienced has been penny-ante stuff. Our system of justice is clearly not prepared (or willing) to deal with this brazen, outright criminality.

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I ponder the "ivory tower" question a lot. Did Injustice Alito really not know that multiple states were poised with "trigger laws" ready to slam down bans? I tend to think it was disingenuous gaslighting on his part. But these candidates have been cocooned/groomed for a long time. Now we know (thanks to the remnant free press!) just how heavy is the side their bread is buttered on. They surely have no incentive to blink past their blinkers, (metaphor overkill, sorry) if truly ignorant.

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I think he knew, but he wanted it to happen.

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What should we do about it!

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I was born 2 weeks after Pearl Harbor. I vaguely remember a man bringing my father a gas mask and how frighten I was seeing my dad turned into an alien monster and ran crying out of the room. I collected stamps for buying cups and other things from the market. We saved all kinds of things. My father the youngest son was the fire chief of our small mainly Jewish town in Woodridge,NY his older brother was in the army fighting for our freedom. Make no mistake about it our democracy is hanging by a thread! The situation in Israel is further pulling us apart. The Jews once again are the scape goats of choice. Our privileged young people are having the wool pulled over their eyes by operatives and Bannon inspired operatives. We must not let them deter Israel from destroying Hamas, forcing a surrender, returning the hostages and finally recognizing that the state of Israel is not going away and, as we do, has the right to defend its existence. Here at home as you point out creeping fascism is a real threat to our democracy and Trump is its figure head and no joke. My generation understand this, you understand this, will there be enough of us to hold the line is the only question left? Can we get a fair election?

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Briefly, I like your comment about Fascism being about the rich trying to avoid paying taxes; of course, it's more complicated than that, but basically, that's how it started - that, and trying to avoid regulations.

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What really pisses me off is that the media, the UN, Red Cross and NGO's are taking the claims of HAMAS, in the guise of Health Ministry as gospel truth, then criticizing Israel, and not criticizing (thus choosing winners) HAMAS for using civilians as shields, which they are doing in Gaza especially the hospitals like al Shifa, and when given proof that the hospitals are used as safe places for HAMAS command posts, ammo dumps and weapons storage they don't believe the IDF, and use the words alledged and supposed.

The victims of HAMAS terrorism if mentioned at all, is quickly passed on, to get to the sob story about innocent civilians, yet the same media has been totally mum about the innocent civilians killed by Putin in Ukraine.

CNN and PBS show Amanpour and Co, she will briefly, if at all, mention the killing of Israelis by HAMAS, but then launches into half of all of her show, about the innocent civilians of Gaza. she is British Iranian and thus biased. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_Amanpour

MSNC has three Muslims on its staff Ayman Mohyeldin,Mehdi Raza Hasan , an Indian Muslim

Ali Velshi aSomaili Muslim of Gujarati Indian descent. And you don't have to guess where their true allegiances lie.

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I’ll agree with you they Israel doesn’t entirely deserve the criticism it is getting, as HAMAS is using its locations to endanger others to protect themselves. I don’t think most Muslims like HAMAS, Al Qaeda or ISIS (which we foolishly helped to create with the Iraq war) as they have all expressed the desire to create a caliphate in the Muslim world. They want to avoid death and destruction and don’t share the crazy ambitions these groups have. The goals of Al Qaeda, HAMAS and ISIS would not go over too well with the kings, presidents or dictators who currently rule these nations.

I do believe HAMAS does bear a considerable amount of blame for embedding themselves in Gaza in such a way that ordinary people are getting killed. I also wish to see the remaining hostages from Israel returned safely. I know that an IDF reservist who was a hostage was found murdered, as was an older woman who had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer. I don’t like what I’ve heard about people tearing down pictures of people HAMAS kidnapped, or the attacks on all Jews for supposedly supporting everything the IDF government is doing. I also think Rashida Tlaib should not have made the offensive remarks she made. I hate the fact a Chicago area landlord is charged with murdering a little 6 year old Muslim boy and seriously injuring his mother. I also hate the fact that an older Jewish man was hit in the head with a megaphone, felll and died after suffering a massive head injury. I also hate the fact that Jewish people in the United States feel fearful to wear outward symbols of their faith, less they suffer physical attacks or worse.

At the same time, I don’t like people attacked for being Muslims, or blaming all Muslims for HAMAS’s atrocities, and I am sad to see all the deaths of ordinary people killed in this war, whether in Gaza or Israel. The sad thing is that HAMAS is just as despicable and as unconcerned with human life as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

The lack of preparation for the attack also rests to some respect on Mr. Netanyahu’s shoulders. His behavior before the war reminds me of George W. Bush’s behavior before September 11. Mr. Netanyahu was more interested in keeping the courts from prosecuting him for accepting illegal gifts and bribes, and he failed to heed intelligence that something was to occur. He doesn’t want to accept responsibility for his errors, but I think chances are good that he might have to call an election and that he could lose the prime minister’s seat. Many Israelis were opposing Mr. Netanyahu’s power grab by showing up at frequent protests and picketing his home to show their unhappiness with his attempted power grab. I think the ranks of voters opposed to him will only grow.

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Ignored by history is the meeting on February 20, 1933 of Hitler with the 25 richest men in Europe and the agreement that they would provide financial support of 2 million Reichmakrs, and that these men would take a portion of each of their workers' paychecks and give the money to the Nazi leadership slush fund, so long as Hitler agreed to ban unions when he was placed in power. Hitler did exactly that once elected to be the chancellor.

His election to chancellor depended on the support of the roughly 30% of the members of the German parliament who were Catholics. He received their support as a result of being supported by Pope Pius XI. The pope feared that "communists" would take control of the German government in the same manner as they had done in Russia and the closure of the churches. The pope decided that the Nazi were the best option for the Catholic churches and being anti-Semitic was the icing on the cake.

It took the German elites and the religious extremists in the Catholic church to put Hitler in power. It took the American billionaires and right wing Christian evangelists to put Trump into power so history continues to be repeated. Few appreciate that the elites favor fascist states over a democracy and that is why the American military has been used to exterminate democracies around the world for the past 300 plus years. This has taken place in the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, eastern Europe, and anywhere that governments arise that put the welfare of their people above that of the elites, internal and external.

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A person could get real prejudiced against Catholics, more a person knew down through history, but just to observe what the heck is it, 22% general population, but now 67% on the "Supreme" Court and what good is that for the "general welfare?" Pope Francis just "fired" a Texas crackpot bishop, but there seems to be a Zeitgeist that the Pope isn't really the Pope if he actually cares about regular folks, like Jesus. Nobody is holy but Trump.

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Out standing. Supports what I wrote. American Fascism: It has happened here: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2020/06/22/american-fascism-it-has-happened-here/

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What? The pro-life party wants to kill millions of Americans? Why, that is not logical. The emotional thinkers and instinctual thinkers have never been very good at connecting the dots especially when they are to blame for Reaganomic neoliberalism. This fascist movement is just the rich trying to avoid paying taxes. Which will cause a huge amount of poverty which causes crime. Very few hungry or starving adults will be able to go by a grocery store and not shoplift. The thugs and greedy capitalists just want all of your stuff. While Russia, Saudi Arabia and China don't really care about that, just as long as they destroy America and the idea of a happy middle class that is sustainable. Leaving capitalistic Christians which is an oxymoron to defend freedom was not very bright. Thom is a true Christian so he wouldn't pass the religious test that Mike Johnson is handing out. You must be able to lie, be narcissistic and have no humanity to pass that religious test.

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MAGA isn't logical. It's a purely reptilian brain disorder.

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It's what Thom says: People want to be on the winning side. The US loves winners.

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Question remains what are they exactly winning as the planet heats up, bees are dying and hate infects every place on this small, spinning spec of earth as billionaires pollute the skies with various space junk?

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Obviously there is a particular irrationality that goes with power and privilege. The human race seems congenitally programmed to lift up some individuals into a zone of imaginary invulnerability to conditions that inconvenience lesser folks. Our existential problem is, we can't make sense to them. Ponder Betsy DeVoss and her surplus of mega-yachts, trying to get her head around why the inferior mass of troglodytes need educating, anyway?

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“Reptilian Brain Disorder”; that’s it. I am going to use that whenever I can, especially when I embrace my TDS, a thinking person’s syndrome.

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A brain disorder? So how do we fix this?

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We don't. We can't. Call me a cynic.

It's a cycle that humanity seems to go through periodically. These people are trapped in their delusions and cannot get out. They are intractable and only the severe pain that a revolution brings will shake them out of it, if then. The majority of human history has not been democratic, but autocratic.

My personal belief (which does not matter in the grand scheme of things) is that they have been brainwashed by religious leaders into perpetual paranoia. In fact, that is the whole purpose of religion - all of them. Oh, they make pretty about loving their neighbors, etc., but they really don't or we would see much different policies in the USA. When one believes in virgin births, gimmicky miracles and resurrection, one is easy prey to con men and women. Why else, in a nation of majority Christians, are they terrified they are going to be put in jail any minute now (right after we storm their homes and take their guns.) Here's an interesting example from history (per wiki):

"A spirit medium named Kinjikitile Ngwale, who practiced folk Islam that incorporated animist beliefs, claimed to be possessed by a snake spirit called Hongo. Ngwale began calling himself Bokero and developed a belief that the people of German East Africa had been called upon to eliminate the Germans. German anthropologists recorded that he gave his followers war medicine that would turn German bullets into water. This "war medicine" was in fact water (maji in Kiswahili) mixed with castor oil and millet seeds. Empowered with this new liquid, Bokero's followers began what would become known as the Maji Maji Rebellion."

Do I need to tell you how that came out? And what came afterwards?

We have a vote, and in 2024, it is sort of our "last chance" out of a dictatorship, but often our votes don't count much, as the Republicans have gamed the system via gerrymandering and voter suppression. Republicans cannot win otherwise, and when they DO lose, they simply say the vote was "rigged." Handy, that. An overwhelming victory at the polls would stave off the inevitable for a while, depending upon the violence of the MAGA, but I think upheaval is coming anyway.

Like I said, call me a cynic.

Our downfall was built into a Constitution that was meant to protect slaveholders/elites and their "property," (that would include women) from the hoi polloi (that would be most of us.)

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Glimmer of hope? "Moms for Liberty" seem to have been figured out by local folks across the country ( Joy Reid, MSNBC today)

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LOL good one Suzie.

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It appeals to the lizard brain.

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I want the earth plus 5% https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/i-want-the-earth-plus-5/ and it is just not about financial institutions. Plutocrats run everything, directly and more important indirectly from Russia, to Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the U.S., of A.

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I have made this comparison and got my head bitten off by a German immigrant who felt I was trivializing the holocaust by doing this. As a student of history, I see the parallels too. I have worried how the amount of time people spend on social media and streaming has a drugging effect of making them complacent. Thank you for laying the parallels out there.

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Thom--A compelling comparison!

Like you have known people who grew up and lived through the Nazi times. One dear friend grew up on Lahr. His stories of daily life were chilling.

Even more chilling are the narratives of a neighbor who lived in Berlin during the final years of the war. When the Russians were shelling and bombing the city, the civil protection authorities were often hapless at helping the general population. She ultimately was able to flee to the U.S. Zone.

My neighbor bought into MAGA but now tells me she is terrified of what she is seeing in the U.S.

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One of the finest people I have ever known was my boss at the Michigan Attorney General’s office when I was attending law school. He was born and raised in the northern Hesse town of Fritzlar in Germany. His father was a teacher and his mother was a housewife. When he was a young boy, Hitler came to power, and he and his father were forced to leave their schools and attend an exclusively Jewish school, as Hitler had decreed Jewish students and teachers could no longer attend school or teach at schools with non-Jewish students. Later on, his parents were fortunate enough to get their son a sponsor in the United States, and he attended school there, and when war broke out, my boss enlisted in the U.S. Army and served. After the war, since he spoke fluent German and English, he served as an interpreter for Allied forces who were interrogating captured Nazis after the war. He never exactly told me what happened to his parents, and I never asked, but I later learned that his parents were deported to Chelmno in occupied Poland, and gassed there. He told me that his father was considered to be a civil servant, and during one meeting, he mentioned that his father continued to receive his pension payments up until the time that his parents were deported and murdered.

My former boss and one of our close family friends, whose husband served as an army medic during World War II, both died in 1995, and I’ve never seen it as a coincidence that they died just before we had Trump become President. I really think they would be horrified to see history “rhyming.”

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These types of horrors can happen again today but would likely be far worse and swift. People need to wake up when there are threats like we have heard in the past weeks and get behind strong efforts to counter the craven bunch.

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Don’t let DeSantis off the hook. He also wants to shred up the country. Look to Florida for the damage authoritarians do. We have extreme high property insurance, no prep for future climate issues, over 92,000 Floridians dead from COVID, and distorted information on vaccines and COVID. Infighting with Disney and tons of lawsuits. America is lost its marbles under these clowns.

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DeSantis refuses to regulate property insurers, acknowledge the reality of climate change, and the COVID death toll. He appointed an antivax physician as his head of the Florida Department of Health, and Dr. Ladapo does nothing but repeat DeSantis’s lies. DeSantis refuses to speak to any press outlets who are less than friendly toward him, and gives the bum’s rush to citizens who have the right to question some of the dubious decisions he’s made as governor.

DeSantis also wants to create a police force that is personally loyal to him, rather than the citizens of Florida, and under his watch, several property insurers have fled he state because of significant losses due to storm damage. The only consolation that I have is that outside of Florida, voters found his personality unappealing. DeSantis would be far more dangerous than Trump as a dictator because DeSantis is far more intelligent than Trump.

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totally agree

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Franklin Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union address recognized the role of financial insecurity in laying the basis for a dictator:

":Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made”.

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Mr. Hartman. Mark Twain said "History never repeats itself but it does often rhyme."

Excellent piece. However, there are important historical differences between Germany and the U.S. So there is room for hope today. I agree the similarities are enough to be frightening.

1) There is however, no equivalent situation here in the U.S. At the cessation of fighting of World War one there was not one foreign soldier with their foot on German soil. Which made it easy for the Fascists to claim the political class had sold out the brave German soldiers: "stabbed them in the back." There is no parallel in the U.S today. American Right Wingers tried to claim the same thing after Vietnam. But failed.

2) After WWl Germany had seriously deficient industrial capacity because of the Versailles Treaty, as you point out. The German economy was devastated beyond American comprehension after WWl. Russia sent trains into Germany to literally transport German factory machinery into Russia. The parallel in the U.S. is the out-sourcing of American manufacturing since "The Reagan Revolution," which has been a significantly similar series of historical events as Germany's post WWl experience. But not quite the same thing. Especially since the Americans have given birth to the semiconductor revolution which has swept, and also shaken, the world and partly made up for the lost industrial jobs in the Midwest and limited the decline in America's international prestige. This American-generated semiconductor revolution has provided many Americans, as well as Asians and Europeans with employment.

3) It is true that American prestige, power and influence have wained in the wake of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other military failures. But this is not the same as Germany's colossal failure of WWl.

I do not believe history is repeating itself. So there is hope. But we are hearing a warning rhyme.

Thank you for pointing this out.

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Might I add, Hitler came to power with financing provided by financiers (like Prescott Bush, grandfather of Dubya,) and industrialists (capitalists) like Fritz Thyssen, the corporations IG Farben and Bayer (which made Zyklon B), Willy Messerschmidt for using slave labor, the list goes on.

Trump has been bankrolled by our own Plutocrats, financiers, industrialists and even foreign corporations like Deutsche Bank, and the Saudi Sovereign fund.

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Thanks Thom a good read.

Obviously Trump doesn't have ideas of his own!

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Bannon set the template for him on destroying our fraying democracy. I fear the fates are ready to clip the last strand if our passivity and stupidity allows

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Bannon is a self declared Leninist, meaning he wants to destroy everything and rebuild it in his own image.

Bannon is sour grapes personified, because America and Hollywood did not recognize his "greatness" He wanted to be a movie star, and a producer. He was rejected by Hollywood, and "everyone" knows that Hollywood is run by Jews (sarcasm).

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/20/558906151/how-steve-bannon-s-time-in-hollywood-changed-him

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Bannon is a dangerous pseudo-intellectual who hopes to repeat his previous coup at putting Trump in the Oval Offices. Bannon knows nothing about government and how it should function, but it doesn’t prevent him from claiming he does. What he would actually do is wreck the government to prevent it from functioning. He relies on the racist novel “Camp of the Saints” as some sort of holy text rather than the fascist fiction it actually is. Not everything Bannon has done has proven to be successful. Bannon was caught red handed along with another man running a scam to collect money to build a border wall, but they were actually pocketing the money to use for personal gain, and of course Trump pardoned him. Bannon’s efforts at creating a neotraditional cult in Catholicism failed as well, and I was particularly happy with this. We already have Opus Dei, Communion and Liberation, Legionaries of Christ, Tradition, Family and Property and Focolare. We don’t need more cults of personality in the church, and we should get rid of the ones that already exist.

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