All across Germany people are protesting, with up to as many as a million people taking to the streets. At issue: the far right, Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, were said to be discussing mass deportations of immigrants if they garner enough control in the next election (they are currently polling as high as second as a party). The website Correctiv broke the story, and even though the AfD have pushed back against these claims, German citizens were still angry enough to brave the cold and to march in remarkable numbers to denounce the AfD’s fascist agenda.
When I set this alongside the outwardly stated radical immigration policies of the current shoe-in for the Republican presidential candidate here in the U.S., I’m, once again, baffled and deeply disappointed (and terrified) with the many millions of people in this country who support him. Despite the Statue of Liberty hearkening to “Bring us your poor….,” despite being a nation of immigrants, Trump and his minions (Stephen Miller, surely the evil mastermind), champion not only mass deportations but also internment camps that would make the shameful Japanese internments of the 1940s look like child’s play.
How is that when mere whispers of a cruel, radical immigration policy are reported, millions march against it in Germany, insisting that they will “never again” return to the fascist polices of the Nazi era, yet when a still more cruel and radical immigration policy is outwardly, repeatedly stated by a man who may become the next president, 1/3 of the voting public here in the U.S. cheer, and those in the rest of the party largely remain silent?
When running against Trump, Lindsay Graham warned of Trump’s “hateful, xenophobic tendencies.” Now, knowing he needs the MAGA segment to remain in power, he gives his full-throated support.
In an interview a few days ago on Democracy Now, historian Rick Perlstein had a lot to say about this all, looking directly to Germany and the history of Nazism for echoes, lessons. He reminds us that with the background of communist fears and a desire to retain his own power, then vice chancellor of Germany, Fritz von Papen, made a coalition with Hitler, though he outwardly opposed him—because it was politically expedient. He wonders how many politically expedient coalitions with Trump may well become the dark subjects of future historians.
Perlstein is also deeply fearful of a range of current political realities, and he notes that 82% of voting Republicans supported Trump’s comment about immigrants “poisoning the blood of America,” a statement with perhaps the strongest echoes yet with Nazi history. He also reminds us that 70,000,000 people voted for Trump in the last election, a significant increase from 2016 (where he got some 63,000,000 votes).
In a 2021 article in The Nation, author Dan Simon takes a close look at the 1982 book, Who Voted for Hitler, by Richard F. Hamilton, underscoring and analyzing the ways Graham “predicted Trump back in the early 80s.” Simon looks to Graham’s close analysis of voting records from both of Hitler’s elections, and teases out a range of startlingly relevant facts. One that stood out for me was that despite Hitler being convicted of high treason for a failed insurrection and serving 8 months (of a 5 year sentence) in prison, this likely made him a more appealing candidate to many.
Those who want to downplay any possibility of Trump’s return to power like to highlight that at best he is only supported by 1/3 of the voters, but Simon and Graham remind us that: “In the decisive July 31, 1932, election, Hitler received exactly 37.3 percent of the overall vote across Germany (up from 18% in his earlier election). He fared less well in the cities, averaging 32.3 percent in urban centers with populations over 100,000. However, in towns with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants he scored better, averaging 41.3 percent of the vote. And in some of the smallest rural communities across Germany, he scored 80 percent or more of the votes, and in several the Nazi vote was 100 percent.” These numbers bear an eerie similarity with Trump’s numbers, and just as with Hitler, Trump’s votes went up significantly in the second election (fortunately, Biden, who won both the popular and electoral vote, far out-paced Hillary Clinton).
Simon points to many a disconcerting echo from Hitler’s rise to power. “The Nazis spoke of ‘national renewal,’ and Germans would have listened to that rhetoric more closely having been given permission…. In a word, there came to be, if not a consensus, then at least irresistible momentum around the idea that what Germany needed wasn’t a democracy so much as a strong leader, a Führer…”
In Trump’s closing remarks in New Hampshire last night, he spent a significant amount of time talking about the “great, strong, leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán” (who recently endorsed Trump for the 2024 election). The MAGAs cheered and hooted, perhaps remembering Tucker Carlson’s many kind words about Orbán over the years and his “illiberal state.” But I wonder how many of them are aware of Orbán’s many misdeeds that started to be implemented soon after he was elected (like Hitler, after several failed election efforts). Election laws were promptly modified to allow for extensive gerrymandering (guaranteeing his party, Fidesz, ongoing control). According to Zsuzsanna Szelényi writing in The New Republic, “In the 2014 election, Fidesz needed only 45% of the vote to win 67% of parliamentary seats.” Fidesz went on to rewrite the constitution and what is known as “The Fundamental Law” to help consolidate power and remove systems of checks and balances: “In 10 years, the Fundamental Law was amended nine times, allowing the governing party to abuse power while appearing to be following the law.”
Furthermore, Orbán removed voices of dissent from the media, which “culminated in a hugely surprising move in 2018, when over 450 Fidesz-friendly private media outlets merged into one giant media holding company in a single day.” In a move that Trump seems to be following to the letter, Orbán won the 2018 election based on fear mongering and anti-immigrant rhetoric (not based in fact, but supported by the new media machine he had created). Szelényi’s words summarizing Orbán’s political trajectory bear a disturbingly disconcerting similarity with Trump’s:
Orbán’s illiberalism was a direct consequence of his 2002 defeat, after which he introduced morally stigmatizing language, casting his political rivals as an existential threat and presenting himself as the savior of the nation….Many former supporters of Orbán have turned away from him over the years. His confrontational and hate-mongering politics, his embrace of Russia and China, and his continual infringements of European legal norms alienated many former followers. To maintain his popular base, Orbán’s party organized conspiracy theory campaigns to mobilize more frustrated and uninformed voters…..Political language is radicalized, elite polarization is toxic, political tribes are firm, the distribution of state resources is perverse, and democratic institutions are subverted.
PBS news recently concluded that: “Orbán’s Hungary is a textbook case of democratic backsliding, characterized by state capture of public institutions; assaults on minority rights, especially migrant, Roma, and LGBTQ rights; aggressive nationalist rhetoric; and attacks on the rule of law.”
In some ways it’s both alarming and logical that Trump would repeatedly praise Orbán even as he so closely follows his lead. But do his Republican supporters who should know better really understand what’s happening right in front of their noses? Somewhere deep in his dark heart, does Lindsay Graham agree with Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy group, quoted in a recent New York Times article, who claims that “the Trump team’s plans relied on ‘xenophobic demagoguery’ that appeals to his hardest-core political base. ‘Americans should understand these policy proposals are an authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life— tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike’”?
As Germans take to the streets to protest any hint of an Orbán-like, anti-immigrant push, Trump supporters again chant for walls, for mass deportations, for huge “holding facilities” of “impure” aliens. What was once whispered behind closed doors or hinted at with bold dog whistles is fast becoming ever more blatant and terrifying.
Anyone who doesn’t see the Republican party’s steady march toward fascism needs to read more history or only look closely at what’s been happening in Hungary for the past decade (and is on the rise throughout Europe).
To again quote historian Rick Perlstein from his Democracy Now interview:
It’s the Führerprinzip. It’s that German word that all truth, all reality, all redemption flows from the person of Donald Trump. You know, it’s a cult of personality. There’s no breaking that spell, right? If the charge is coming from, you know, a state attorney general, well, that just means that it’s an African American, and they’re alien to real Americans, right? And the jury in a place like Washington is going to be Black, so they’re not real Americans. If it’s federal charges, it’s just somehow an extension of, you know, the deep state and Joseph Biden trying to delegitimize Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, right? This is a fascist dream space, a space of myth, in which there are bad guys and there are good guys, and Donald Trump is the good guy, and anyone associated with him is temporarily a good guy, and anyone against him is a bad guy and has to be terminated. That’s the situation we’re facing right now. We have to look it squarely in the eye, and we have to resist it with everything we have.
This is me resisting, raising my small outcry, turning from the contemplation of writing, poetry, philosophy, literature, the joys of immersing myself in trout streams and nature…to briefly address the current political situation in this critical election year. I’m certain to do this more throughout the year—in large part to work to educate myself on the dangers lurking in our imminent future.
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I don’t believe Trump can win, except perhaps by violence. I worry that I’m wrong to believe and right about the violence.
We’ve had our fair share of tumultuous politics here in the U.K. over the past 8 years, beginning with the vote to leave the European Union and then the Covid years of buffoon Boris Johnson, also a fan of Trump. We had some American friends to stay shortly after 23 June 2016 as we were all reeling from the shock, and like me before the referendum, were in the complacent space of disbelief that people would ever actually vote against their best interests. The phrase ‘the greatest act of self-harm’ we’ve done to ourselves as a nation seems to sum up where America is poised. And like the scoundrels who pushed the Brexit agenda, it was all lies and smoke and mirrors and it’s only now we’re reaping the full terrible costs. Nations gotta do what they’ve gotta do, I guess, but I’m not sure I can watch anymore.