Musk/Trump: The Ominous Echo of Nazidom Is Getting Louder
Russ Baker 02/10/25
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column headlined: Trump and Hitler: The Headline That Dare Not Speak Its Name
The echoes are growing stronger — but who is listening? I feel it’s urgent, given that things have only gotten gob-smackingly worse since then, to continue examining the direct parallels. In the late 1920s into the 1930s, before most people fell into line, Germans, like Americans, were divided, with decent and educated people trying to understand what was happening.
And trying to decide how (and whether) to respond, first to the extreme rhetoric, and then to the extreme measures by key figures in Adolf Hitler’s movement — which evolved before their eyes into the regime in power. Hitler both created and exploited grievances against the Allies for imposing measures against Germany post World War I. This far preceded the collapse of the international economy in 1929. Donald Trump and his people created and exploited grievances around the theft of an election and subsequently raged over the course taken by the supposed thief of that election and “illegitimate” president, Joe Biden — as well as the impeachments and legal actions against the “victim,” Trump. Hitler’s rhetoric was about the “evil” and “dangerous” and “inferior” people responsible for the country’s overwhelming woes — all of which compelled “urgently needed” actions. These included assembling cadres of extreme and violent individuals to gain control of the government and harass, attack, and intimidate critics and political opponents. Once control was attained, unqualified ultra-loyalists were put into positions of great power.
Much of the strategy and tactical planning came from the secondary players, who manipulated or persuaded the charismatic “visionary” man in charge to greenlight their initiatives, while typically pursuing their own competitive agendas and wild schemes. The explanations and justifications frequently shifted. The leadership often denied certain things, harms done, laws broken, before changing tack and implicitly owning the original allegation — without acknowledging they had previously lied, much less confessing to the shift. Position B was denounced as “fake news” promulgated by their opponents until Position A was simply abandoned and replaced by B, which was now embraced as the truth.
Hitler and his acolytes went viciously after media of all kinds — and created their own alternative means of distributing and amplifying their message. Waves of functionaries, too, were replaced by technocrats. The Nazis’ original core group — the Brown Shirts of the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers — were common, vulgar, odious, and openly violent. Their utility was eventually eclipsed by Heinrich Himmler’s precise and impeccable SS officers who stealthily undertook a sweeping savagery, later known as the “night of the long knives” — getting rid of the crude human tools Hitler no longer needed and settling a slew of internecine scores into the bargain. The Nazi path to power was in direct violation of existing German law, to say nothing of the canon of morality and human decency. Today, we can see how Trump built his movement to regain power on the backs of the MAGA Red-Hat ruffians and via the raw violence of January 6.
https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/musk-trump-the-ominous-echo-of-nazidom-is-getting-louder/