Donald Trump made a claim at his rally on Saturday that had people worrying about what he meant.
Trump, who spoke in Mosinee, Wisconsin, was called out by CNN for a "lie" about transgender kids. But he also made another statement that caught the attention of political observers on social media, ...
Since 1930s Germany is mentioned, it also didn’t really work there. Hitler only won with 35 percent of the popular vote. So Trump in the US is already more popular as Hitler was then.
That statement kind of elides the whole electoral and legislative structure of the Weimar Republic at the time, though. It was a parliamentary system (whose legislative body was - and was again, after the fall of the Third Reich - the Reichstag). So in point of fact, though the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) received a plurality of the votes in the WR’s last three elections, nobody “voted for Hitler”. So the analogy of political tribalism being leveraged by a fascist party with a fascist cult-of-personality head actually holds up a good bit better than the numbers you present here might lead one to assume.
It’s fair to point out that the NSDAP sort of formed around Hitler, where as the GOP (“Weimar” Republicans? Might have to start using that as a sneaky jab in conversation, hah) was subsumed by Trumpism, but all he really did was to turn the quiet parts of their platform up to 11 and emphasize populist and tribal (not as in “First Nation”) sentiments. However, I’d argue that that makes the GOP/Trump combination a good bit more insidious than the NSDAP - especially considering how much the GOP loves to lean on the technically-true-but-deeply-misleading line of “we’re the party that ended slavery”, since it utterly ignores the ideological shift of the party over the intervening 160 or so years.
Note: absolutely none of this should be construed in any way as Nazi apologia. It is simply a technical clarification on the system of government and the electoral and leadership-selection mechanics that existed in the Weimar Republic at the time, and my thoughts as to how that matches up with some parts of our current situation, in terms of the political analogies.
Absolutely correct, as a German it just irks me that the popular belief about Hitler Germany was that all Germans were in favour of it. Many very much weren’t, at least at the beginning before all media was turned into a pure propaganda apparatus.
France is a bit more analogous. The left had the most votes and Macron just appointed the conservatives to be Prime Minister.
Kind of scary to think if we had parliamentary type elections Trump has a dedicated 35. There may be a larger coalition of liberal parties still but this election wouldn’t be the moratorium of Trump as we hope it turns out. Him and his party would win a substantial amount of seats.
Then you see the example Macron in France just set. Overwhelming liberal victory and he’s handing the PM spot to a very old, homophobic conservative.
Hitler could only take over because the conservatives were more afraid of the communists and thought they could control Hitler and use him. He used them instead.
Something similar seems to happen again now in Germany.
As the other comment or noted, that still works for trump. That’s basically 2016 in a nutshell
That kind of talk has been consistent with the conservatives now too. The big bad scary socialist coming to the white house to destroy the economy. Same playbook. My point stands
Hitler only became Chancellor because “moderates” were more afraid to form a coalition with leftists than allow a fascist to rise to power. Sound familiar?
If we had a parliamentary system, we would have been able to organize a much larger coalition against Trump, especially the second time around.
Most people don’t realize this. You might enjoy this book:
Takeover: HITLER’S FINAL RISE TO POWER
It’s frightening to realize how the nazis were barely clinging to power and almost disappeared before becoming dominant. We’re right there now.
There’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal as they say…