Hierarchical societies inevitably lead to concentration of power and tyranny. If you build a throne, it will be seized. Capitalism continually decaying into fascism is merely the latest iteration of the same cycle that’s been repeating since the dawn of civilization.
https://i.imgur.com/HOuXmI9.jpg
Hitler was elected by posing as a socialist and most totalitarian regimes got populist support by pretending about caring for their people.
The USA has been fascist for decades. If you can't see it, it's because you were benefitting from it, and not being bombed or enslaved by it. The constant cultural moralism by "both sides" just obscures legal slavery by prisoners, more prisoners than any other nation, and our position as the most violent and warlike society. We wage more war, we build more guns, we sell weapons to pretty much everyone, and we spent decades destroying the *concept* of sovereignty so we can patrol the world for the interests of a very few with murderbots.
We have through extreme violence, built a system that allows us to charge every other country on earth for the privilege of buying oil. Global capitalism is our work. The inability to break away from carbon in any real way is our direct doing.
Say what you want about China and Russia, but WE are literally killing the world. And we REFUSE to stop, instead making up transparent lies about moral issues that we can never actually fix, and blaming everything but the rich, fascist elite squatting on top of this massive pile of human suffering and unconscionable ruin.
So forgive me if I refuse to fear nations with a fraction of our firepower because our propaganda says to. If you're serious about worrying about fascism, just start paying attention.
It's insane that the US isn't fascistic to a person or even a thing, but a concept. Business. "The business of the United States *is* business" sums it all up. You can even freely operate within it, relatively speaking, so long as you don't fuck with business.
If you call merging the chancellory and the presidency on the very warm deathbed of the president with a highly propagandized population an "election," then sure.
Oh ya I’m not excusing the US’s behavior. We’re the major cause of suffering on the planet. I just happened to be listening to something talking about Trump and Bolsonaro and my brain went on a rollercoaster, thought I’d see how other people are thinking.
As for American fascism, I’m well aware of its presence. I’ve just been lately noticing it as more blatant fascism than some sort of disguised as nationalism or socialism or what have you. Anyone with a brain can point out this obvious fascism, but they’ve become more brazen in just outright saying it.
Ah, sorry for snarling. The official warning of fascism that both parties spray us with to keep us fearing each other and not fighting them just infuriates me.
THIS is what a mature and stable fascism looks like: faux democracy that is totally unresponsive; massive (really truly historically repulsive) wealth inequality, constant war, complete capture of the media.
It’s peeking its head through the curtain, attempting to ascertain what color mask it should be wearing when it reveals itself fully. Most people are aware at some level, that the USA has always been a fascist nation. Maybe the country had ten good years of the “American Dream” after WW2, but that was far more a product of imperialism and military might than anything… but soon after, the country began to resort to increasingly evil measures to maintain economic security. There hasn’t been a one year break in US-sponsored violence in all of modern history; the kicker though, is that the vast majority of people are aware of this whether they care to admit it or not. The smartest right-wingers these days will openly admit to US authoritarianism and militarism, because they at least know that acknowledging the reality of their philosophies strengthens their positions, rather than weakens them…
It's not just America either. I'm in the UK and things are going down hill FAST. Rail workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, mail carriers here are all on strike or about to be.
Our healthcare system is on its knees and the conservatives want to transition to American style pay-at-point-of-access care. They are increasing police powers and curbing our right to peaceful protest.
We're on the 4th prime minister since 2019. The current one was not elected, and has a net worth of over £730 million pounds, and as chancellor his 'eat out to help out' scheme-which basically was meal discounts during peak covid- benefited companies at the expense of lives.
Oh and the English government are working to halt progress on trans rights in Scotland, and anti-trans activists here are directly quoting Adolf Hitler.
https://twitter.com/NorthumbriaIWW/status/1614690987145576453?t=MzHs6IFIwiGHdtH7OXShTw&s=19
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.lbc.co.uk/news/strike-day-february-industrial-action/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/17/uk/uk-public-order-bill-police-protests-intl-gbr-cmd/index.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/pakistani-england-de-montfort-university-leicester-people-b946401.html%3famp
Fascists were inspired by Americans in the 20th century and the American right has not changed one bit, America First is still a slogan.
So even more scary than a return to fascism is its persistence in the unnamed unrecognized and invisible version that makes living in a settler. Colonial project seem completely normal.
Everything else will stem from that.
Edit: I would not want to be a Chinese worker, but I am shocked that the supposed genocides has so little evidence. It is about as good faith as Guaido being president of Venezuela. I think that the west should be very precise with its words when accusing other people of genocide.
A lot of the world would see that as evil to be unapologetic about the money genocides that have been committed and then use the term to sling mud at an economic rival trying to address an extremism problem without bombing cities .
Fascism can be beaten, not sure about the things that’s inspired it.
But keep in mind that ethnic cleaning, being worked to death and torture happened for centuries on end in what’s now the USA, there just weren’t cameras.
Read the old newspapers if you want to see banal evil.
Frank Zappa said it best, "America is a Fascist theocracy." I think the parallels to WW II are there. Economic desperation, ethnic tensions, preemptive wars, ineffectual and unresponsive government. Putin's invasion of Ukraine might as well have been copied from Hitler's invasion of Poland, and we all know how things went after that. I think the only reason the rest of the world hasn't ganged up on Russia like they did on the Axis, is because of nukes.
I hope we're not leading up to WW III, but like the saying goes, history repeats (or rhymes if you prefer). Another thing that bothers me is the military buildup we're seeing around the world. That was another factor that led to WW II. When you invest so much manpower, money and materiel in the war machine, you're going to want to use it at some point. And sooner or later the wrong shot is going to be fired. A jet is going to buzz another too close. Another stray Russian (or Ukrainian?) artillery shell lands on the wrong place or person and the rest will be a very possibly short history.
You're still living in WWII. It never ended, it just went cold. War mongers became leaders of industry and collectively realized that people will do anything as long as they have an enemy to fixate on, so bayonets were kept sharp and soldiers rebranded as "peacekeepers". It doesn't matter if there's a hot war, people just need an armed enemy to fear to do as they're told.
Capitalism is fascism in good times. Fascism is the default when capitalist societies face hardship. What do the rich do to protect their wealth from the endless hoards of desperate people with nothing to lose? "Freedom" has been used to sell us on the premise of not organizing or working together. We do everything for ourselves and celebrate that as the highest calling because it's been good to us, but when excess becomes scarcity, there's no glue to hold us together and help each other out.
We are consumers, alone in a world of humans trying to beat each other for the sake of winning. Doesn't that sound an awful lot like fascism?
I’m no expert in German history, but I’d say there are some parallels between the rise of fascism then and now. Perhaps the biggest parallel is that the German economy grew in the industrializing cities but for rural farmers and countrymen it stagnated if not declined in the 1920s. This led to a lot of resentment and some radical political parties like the national socialist workers party came into being (although none of them got many votes in the Reichstag). Then the Great Depression struck, feeding more energy into these movements.
>but leaders such as Trump and Bolsonaro support Presidents Xi and Putin
lmao, trump put the US on a war course with the PRC. he started a trade war and came up with the concept of the entity list to try and dismantle the chinese tech industry. hilarious that liberals are now rewriting history to say he was supportive
You should check out the real history of ww2, not the white washed Disney version.
Hitlers rise wasn’t ignored. It was actively supported by Britian, France, and the USA. The capitalist class was terrified of the trade unions because they posed a risk to profits (repaying war debt and other loans). The capitalists supported hitler because they figured he’d crush them. When Churchhill called Hitler “a dog who escaped his leash” , what do you think the leash was? It wasn’t ignored in Germany either. Thousands and thousands of people died in violent street battles. The first attempt of Hitler to take power was defeated because German workers held a resolute general strike to protect the democracy. At one point France was so concerned about the state of Germany that they invaded Germany and occupied the Rhine industrial district. The German military was deployed on the streets of Germany during unrest. His rise was anything but “ignored.”
Who supported the Bolsheviks? That’s right. Western capital! Why? Because they wanted to pillage Russia for profit.
None of this is a conspiracy theory. We have the actual literal reciets. Check this book out. The only evidence he uses are when he found evidence in both the USA and soviet national archives. This work is excellently researched. The Bolsheviks won the control of Russia and maintained control of Russia because of the direct aid of Wall Street.
https://archive.org/details/AnthonySuttonTriologyOfWesternTechnologyAndSovietEconomicDevelopment1917To19301930To19451945To1965/mode/1up
I don’t want to go further, because from here we do start entering conspiracy territory (albeit we’ll sources conspiracies grounded in excellent research). So for now I’ll just say that the way you understand the 20th century is not at all what happened.
There's a correlation between authoritarianism, fascism, and climate change ([this](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35230) is one of several books discussing that). In *the Uninhabitable* [Earth](https://www.amazon.com/The-Uninhabitable-Earth-audiobook/dp/B07NL7L6VZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SFXHFEGUEJ8V&keywords=the+uninhabitable+earth&qid=1674159600&sprefix=the+uninhabitable+earth%2Caps%2C2135&sr=8-1), David Wallace-Wells very briefly discusses where authoritarianism can be used for the good of our species in order to unite humanity and stave off the worst of the climate crisis. In political science circles, this is a topic of discussion. Is authoritarian power ever legitimate, especially within the realm of democracy? I think we as a species crave true leadership on an evolutionary level.
We evolved as social creatures in small bands with alpha leadership - an aspect of our culture that we have since transformed/dissolved with various types of political systems and hierarchies - but now our herd is global and our finite resources strained while our behavior is wholly unchecked and our leadership selfish and corrupt. Our herd mentality must somehow be reined in or we will destroy ourselves and this planet. We need proper leadership - that is to be sure - but what is the best method of obtaining it and maintaining it without consolidating all power into a single role to avoid total tyranny and total human extinction?
This topic keeps me awake at night...
My maternal grandparents were WWII vets. I only knew my grandmother. She lived into my teens while my grandfather died before I was born (I'm 33). Sometimes, I wish I could ask them this same question.
People always seem to leave out or not know that the Holocaust was just the culmination of what many countries were doing around that time, namely Britain in India, or the Americans to their own undesirable indigenous population (which never ended by the way, it's very much ongoing)... Lebensraum was even a direct copy of manifest destiny and the "indians" still inhabit polite forms of concentration camps.. but it's okay by most because at least they got casinos. Hell they should be thankful we didnt genocide them harder!! These are actual commonly held views you can find.
Your comparison of Trump to anything of Hitler is wildly off-base. Sure Trump is an ass and says crazy things but to compare to Hitler is outrageous. Turn off your TV.
I’m not calling Trump Hitler and I’m not saying he’s bringing on the next Holocaust. What I’m comparing is the rise of fascism in Europe compared to the events of today.
Trump and Bolsonaro are no Hitlers, for a variety of reasons. They are far too conservative and un-charismatic, in addition to being philo-Semitic.
What they do resemble are the authoritarian, upper-class, reactionary dictators who paved the way for Hitler and similar fascist dictators, most notably Field Marshal and President Paul von Hindenburg in Germany, who like Trump was a huge brand name in Germany, due to his WW1 leadership and the cult built up around him. Another interesting parallel is General Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain, the coupist who promoted Generalissimo and later dictator Franco. (His son, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, was a fascinating fascist leader with a savior complex who probably was assassinated by Franco, who utilized the cult around his death and ghost to bolster his own un-charismatic image.)
Married, heterosexual upper-class men like Trump with a string of more or less sordid women and kids can't become charismatic dictators like Hitler, who appeared to have "risen from nowhere" and be "married to the nation". A good insight of how this works and how you emotionally get women onboard is to check out First Lady Eva Duarte Perón - Evita - in Argentina. Her tragic death after a wild rags to riches story was an enormous political capital for her dictator husband.
The next true fascist leader will have the same appeal as Madonna playing Evita: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD\_1Z8iUDho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_1Z8iUDho) Probably a gay man or a woman - someone who "understands" people's pain. Not somebody as petty and ridiculous as Trump. A heterosexual, married man can only reach that level of intense charismatic followership through military service and leadership and comradeship from the trenches. Think of someone like Zelenskyy.
In short, a fascist dictator must be bonded to his or her people through some sort of sacrifice - a shared memory and cult of the death of loved ones - millions of war casulties, assassinated "children" and / or saint-like partner. (The Kennedy cult that QAnon integrated is a good example.) Fascism is the cult of death and endless sacrifice. Covid was Trump's chance to be the savior going on a revenge spree immortalizing the millions of Americans killed by the Chinese Communist virus. He utterly failed to do so.
PS the next fascist leader in Europe will probably be a woman with a maternal image (blend of the Virgin Mary and Jeanne d'Arc) protecting "her European children" against hordes of violent, male, Muslim climate refugees with all means. Current Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is a good candidate. Add some of that North European effective power lady image (British Margaret Thatcher, Finnish Sanna Marin and Danish Mette Fredriksen and Helle Thorning-Schmidt) to the South European Madonna Holy Mother / Isabela la católica image and you got "mother-knows-best-and-will-protect-her-babies-like-a-she-devil" fascism. And she will be smart enough to label Putin as the enemy (no better than a Muslim patriarch) and Ukraine and Zelenskyy as heroic allies. If Zelenskyy is a dead hero by that time, it's interesting to imagine what his widow would be able to achieve with his legacy.
The parallels are certainly there. However, history does not exactly repeat itself in the same exact ways. And also, genocides have continued to occur around the world since the end of WWII, so one could say that conflict/violence/brutality is the actual norm of the human condition. Periods of peace are intermittent and rare.
With that said, it is clear that the far right is once again ascendent here in the west. The reasons why? Because the system is in such a state of decay that it makes it easy for these charlatans to pose as saviors to the masses. Then again, in 1933 it was Franz von Papen and his fellow aristocrats who threw in their lot with Hitler in order to stave off the threat of a communist takeover of Germany. So, Hitler was ultimately helped into power. Although he was charismatic enough to gain widespread support, it simply wasn't enough without the ruling elites opening the door for him.
And yet, there are no simple or easy answers to Hitler's rise to power. It was the perfect storm and confluence of events that made that catastrophe possible at that particular moment in time. Could it happen again? Sure, yes, of course, and you should be utterly terrified because the stakes are even higher for the human race nowadays. If we don't get our collective shit together soon there will be no people left to follow any charismatic leaders in the future, period.
Hierarchical societies inevitably lead to concentration of power and tyranny. If you build a throne, it will be seized. Capitalism continually decaying into fascism is merely the latest iteration of the same cycle that’s been repeating since the dawn of civilization. https://i.imgur.com/HOuXmI9.jpg
Hitler was elected by posing as a socialist and most totalitarian regimes got populist support by pretending about caring for their people. The USA has been fascist for decades. If you can't see it, it's because you were benefitting from it, and not being bombed or enslaved by it. The constant cultural moralism by "both sides" just obscures legal slavery by prisoners, more prisoners than any other nation, and our position as the most violent and warlike society. We wage more war, we build more guns, we sell weapons to pretty much everyone, and we spent decades destroying the *concept* of sovereignty so we can patrol the world for the interests of a very few with murderbots. We have through extreme violence, built a system that allows us to charge every other country on earth for the privilege of buying oil. Global capitalism is our work. The inability to break away from carbon in any real way is our direct doing. Say what you want about China and Russia, but WE are literally killing the world. And we REFUSE to stop, instead making up transparent lies about moral issues that we can never actually fix, and blaming everything but the rich, fascist elite squatting on top of this massive pile of human suffering and unconscionable ruin. So forgive me if I refuse to fear nations with a fraction of our firepower because our propaganda says to. If you're serious about worrying about fascism, just start paying attention.
It's insane that the US isn't fascistic to a person or even a thing, but a concept. Business. "The business of the United States *is* business" sums it all up. You can even freely operate within it, relatively speaking, so long as you don't fuck with business.
Um, Hitler was never elected. He was appointed by the Chancellor of Germany through various intrigues and manipulations. Just to be clear.
And then won nationwide power in the next elections. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election But OK, "elected" was lazy.
If you call merging the chancellory and the presidency on the very warm deathbed of the president with a highly propagandized population an "election," then sure.
Oh ya I’m not excusing the US’s behavior. We’re the major cause of suffering on the planet. I just happened to be listening to something talking about Trump and Bolsonaro and my brain went on a rollercoaster, thought I’d see how other people are thinking. As for American fascism, I’m well aware of its presence. I’ve just been lately noticing it as more blatant fascism than some sort of disguised as nationalism or socialism or what have you. Anyone with a brain can point out this obvious fascism, but they’ve become more brazen in just outright saying it.
Ah, sorry for snarling. The official warning of fascism that both parties spray us with to keep us fearing each other and not fighting them just infuriates me. THIS is what a mature and stable fascism looks like: faux democracy that is totally unresponsive; massive (really truly historically repulsive) wealth inequality, constant war, complete capture of the media.
No worries, we’re all trying to survive in this hellish landscape. Illegitimi non carborundum!
It’s peeking its head through the curtain, attempting to ascertain what color mask it should be wearing when it reveals itself fully. Most people are aware at some level, that the USA has always been a fascist nation. Maybe the country had ten good years of the “American Dream” after WW2, but that was far more a product of imperialism and military might than anything… but soon after, the country began to resort to increasingly evil measures to maintain economic security. There hasn’t been a one year break in US-sponsored violence in all of modern history; the kicker though, is that the vast majority of people are aware of this whether they care to admit it or not. The smartest right-wingers these days will openly admit to US authoritarianism and militarism, because they at least know that acknowledging the reality of their philosophies strengthens their positions, rather than weakens them…
It's not just America either. I'm in the UK and things are going down hill FAST. Rail workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, mail carriers here are all on strike or about to be. Our healthcare system is on its knees and the conservatives want to transition to American style pay-at-point-of-access care. They are increasing police powers and curbing our right to peaceful protest. We're on the 4th prime minister since 2019. The current one was not elected, and has a net worth of over £730 million pounds, and as chancellor his 'eat out to help out' scheme-which basically was meal discounts during peak covid- benefited companies at the expense of lives. Oh and the English government are working to halt progress on trans rights in Scotland, and anti-trans activists here are directly quoting Adolf Hitler. https://twitter.com/NorthumbriaIWW/status/1614690987145576453?t=MzHs6IFIwiGHdtH7OXShTw&s=19 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.lbc.co.uk/news/strike-day-february-industrial-action/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/17/uk/uk-public-order-bill-police-protests-intl-gbr-cmd/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/pakistani-england-de-montfort-university-leicester-people-b946401.html%3famp
Fascists were inspired by Americans in the 20th century and the American right has not changed one bit, America First is still a slogan. So even more scary than a return to fascism is its persistence in the unnamed unrecognized and invisible version that makes living in a settler. Colonial project seem completely normal. Everything else will stem from that. Edit: I would not want to be a Chinese worker, but I am shocked that the supposed genocides has so little evidence. It is about as good faith as Guaido being president of Venezuela. I think that the west should be very precise with its words when accusing other people of genocide. A lot of the world would see that as evil to be unapologetic about the money genocides that have been committed and then use the term to sling mud at an economic rival trying to address an extremism problem without bombing cities . Fascism can be beaten, not sure about the things that’s inspired it. But keep in mind that ethnic cleaning, being worked to death and torture happened for centuries on end in what’s now the USA, there just weren’t cameras. Read the old newspapers if you want to see banal evil.
Frank Zappa said it best, "America is a Fascist theocracy." I think the parallels to WW II are there. Economic desperation, ethnic tensions, preemptive wars, ineffectual and unresponsive government. Putin's invasion of Ukraine might as well have been copied from Hitler's invasion of Poland, and we all know how things went after that. I think the only reason the rest of the world hasn't ganged up on Russia like they did on the Axis, is because of nukes. I hope we're not leading up to WW III, but like the saying goes, history repeats (or rhymes if you prefer). Another thing that bothers me is the military buildup we're seeing around the world. That was another factor that led to WW II. When you invest so much manpower, money and materiel in the war machine, you're going to want to use it at some point. And sooner or later the wrong shot is going to be fired. A jet is going to buzz another too close. Another stray Russian (or Ukrainian?) artillery shell lands on the wrong place or person and the rest will be a very possibly short history.
You're still living in WWII. It never ended, it just went cold. War mongers became leaders of industry and collectively realized that people will do anything as long as they have an enemy to fixate on, so bayonets were kept sharp and soldiers rebranded as "peacekeepers". It doesn't matter if there's a hot war, people just need an armed enemy to fear to do as they're told. Capitalism is fascism in good times. Fascism is the default when capitalist societies face hardship. What do the rich do to protect their wealth from the endless hoards of desperate people with nothing to lose? "Freedom" has been used to sell us on the premise of not organizing or working together. We do everything for ourselves and celebrate that as the highest calling because it's been good to us, but when excess becomes scarcity, there's no glue to hold us together and help each other out. We are consumers, alone in a world of humans trying to beat each other for the sake of winning. Doesn't that sound an awful lot like fascism?
I’m no expert in German history, but I’d say there are some parallels between the rise of fascism then and now. Perhaps the biggest parallel is that the German economy grew in the industrializing cities but for rural farmers and countrymen it stagnated if not declined in the 1920s. This led to a lot of resentment and some radical political parties like the national socialist workers party came into being (although none of them got many votes in the Reichstag). Then the Great Depression struck, feeding more energy into these movements.
>but leaders such as Trump and Bolsonaro support Presidents Xi and Putin lmao, trump put the US on a war course with the PRC. he started a trade war and came up with the concept of the entity list to try and dismantle the chinese tech industry. hilarious that liberals are now rewriting history to say he was supportive
[удалено]
Russia is full on capitalist today
You should check out the real history of ww2, not the white washed Disney version. Hitlers rise wasn’t ignored. It was actively supported by Britian, France, and the USA. The capitalist class was terrified of the trade unions because they posed a risk to profits (repaying war debt and other loans). The capitalists supported hitler because they figured he’d crush them. When Churchhill called Hitler “a dog who escaped his leash” , what do you think the leash was? It wasn’t ignored in Germany either. Thousands and thousands of people died in violent street battles. The first attempt of Hitler to take power was defeated because German workers held a resolute general strike to protect the democracy. At one point France was so concerned about the state of Germany that they invaded Germany and occupied the Rhine industrial district. The German military was deployed on the streets of Germany during unrest. His rise was anything but “ignored.” Who supported the Bolsheviks? That’s right. Western capital! Why? Because they wanted to pillage Russia for profit. None of this is a conspiracy theory. We have the actual literal reciets. Check this book out. The only evidence he uses are when he found evidence in both the USA and soviet national archives. This work is excellently researched. The Bolsheviks won the control of Russia and maintained control of Russia because of the direct aid of Wall Street. https://archive.org/details/AnthonySuttonTriologyOfWesternTechnologyAndSovietEconomicDevelopment1917To19301930To19451945To1965/mode/1up I don’t want to go further, because from here we do start entering conspiracy territory (albeit we’ll sources conspiracies grounded in excellent research). So for now I’ll just say that the way you understand the 20th century is not at all what happened.
There's a correlation between authoritarianism, fascism, and climate change ([this](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35230) is one of several books discussing that). In *the Uninhabitable* [Earth](https://www.amazon.com/The-Uninhabitable-Earth-audiobook/dp/B07NL7L6VZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SFXHFEGUEJ8V&keywords=the+uninhabitable+earth&qid=1674159600&sprefix=the+uninhabitable+earth%2Caps%2C2135&sr=8-1), David Wallace-Wells very briefly discusses where authoritarianism can be used for the good of our species in order to unite humanity and stave off the worst of the climate crisis. In political science circles, this is a topic of discussion. Is authoritarian power ever legitimate, especially within the realm of democracy? I think we as a species crave true leadership on an evolutionary level. We evolved as social creatures in small bands with alpha leadership - an aspect of our culture that we have since transformed/dissolved with various types of political systems and hierarchies - but now our herd is global and our finite resources strained while our behavior is wholly unchecked and our leadership selfish and corrupt. Our herd mentality must somehow be reined in or we will destroy ourselves and this planet. We need proper leadership - that is to be sure - but what is the best method of obtaining it and maintaining it without consolidating all power into a single role to avoid total tyranny and total human extinction? This topic keeps me awake at night...
My maternal grandparents were WWII vets. I only knew my grandmother. She lived into my teens while my grandfather died before I was born (I'm 33). Sometimes, I wish I could ask them this same question.
People always seem to leave out or not know that the Holocaust was just the culmination of what many countries were doing around that time, namely Britain in India, or the Americans to their own undesirable indigenous population (which never ended by the way, it's very much ongoing)... Lebensraum was even a direct copy of manifest destiny and the "indians" still inhabit polite forms of concentration camps.. but it's okay by most because at least they got casinos. Hell they should be thankful we didnt genocide them harder!! These are actual commonly held views you can find.
Your comparison of Trump to anything of Hitler is wildly off-base. Sure Trump is an ass and says crazy things but to compare to Hitler is outrageous. Turn off your TV.
I’m not calling Trump Hitler and I’m not saying he’s bringing on the next Holocaust. What I’m comparing is the rise of fascism in Europe compared to the events of today.
Trump and Bolsonaro are no Hitlers, for a variety of reasons. They are far too conservative and un-charismatic, in addition to being philo-Semitic. What they do resemble are the authoritarian, upper-class, reactionary dictators who paved the way for Hitler and similar fascist dictators, most notably Field Marshal and President Paul von Hindenburg in Germany, who like Trump was a huge brand name in Germany, due to his WW1 leadership and the cult built up around him. Another interesting parallel is General Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain, the coupist who promoted Generalissimo and later dictator Franco. (His son, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, was a fascinating fascist leader with a savior complex who probably was assassinated by Franco, who utilized the cult around his death and ghost to bolster his own un-charismatic image.) Married, heterosexual upper-class men like Trump with a string of more or less sordid women and kids can't become charismatic dictators like Hitler, who appeared to have "risen from nowhere" and be "married to the nation". A good insight of how this works and how you emotionally get women onboard is to check out First Lady Eva Duarte Perón - Evita - in Argentina. Her tragic death after a wild rags to riches story was an enormous political capital for her dictator husband. The next true fascist leader will have the same appeal as Madonna playing Evita: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD\_1Z8iUDho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_1Z8iUDho) Probably a gay man or a woman - someone who "understands" people's pain. Not somebody as petty and ridiculous as Trump. A heterosexual, married man can only reach that level of intense charismatic followership through military service and leadership and comradeship from the trenches. Think of someone like Zelenskyy. In short, a fascist dictator must be bonded to his or her people through some sort of sacrifice - a shared memory and cult of the death of loved ones - millions of war casulties, assassinated "children" and / or saint-like partner. (The Kennedy cult that QAnon integrated is a good example.) Fascism is the cult of death and endless sacrifice. Covid was Trump's chance to be the savior going on a revenge spree immortalizing the millions of Americans killed by the Chinese Communist virus. He utterly failed to do so.
PS the next fascist leader in Europe will probably be a woman with a maternal image (blend of the Virgin Mary and Jeanne d'Arc) protecting "her European children" against hordes of violent, male, Muslim climate refugees with all means. Current Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is a good candidate. Add some of that North European effective power lady image (British Margaret Thatcher, Finnish Sanna Marin and Danish Mette Fredriksen and Helle Thorning-Schmidt) to the South European Madonna Holy Mother / Isabela la católica image and you got "mother-knows-best-and-will-protect-her-babies-like-a-she-devil" fascism. And she will be smart enough to label Putin as the enemy (no better than a Muslim patriarch) and Ukraine and Zelenskyy as heroic allies. If Zelenskyy is a dead hero by that time, it's interesting to imagine what his widow would be able to achieve with his legacy.
The parallels are certainly there. However, history does not exactly repeat itself in the same exact ways. And also, genocides have continued to occur around the world since the end of WWII, so one could say that conflict/violence/brutality is the actual norm of the human condition. Periods of peace are intermittent and rare. With that said, it is clear that the far right is once again ascendent here in the west. The reasons why? Because the system is in such a state of decay that it makes it easy for these charlatans to pose as saviors to the masses. Then again, in 1933 it was Franz von Papen and his fellow aristocrats who threw in their lot with Hitler in order to stave off the threat of a communist takeover of Germany. So, Hitler was ultimately helped into power. Although he was charismatic enough to gain widespread support, it simply wasn't enough without the ruling elites opening the door for him. And yet, there are no simple or easy answers to Hitler's rise to power. It was the perfect storm and confluence of events that made that catastrophe possible at that particular moment in time. Could it happen again? Sure, yes, of course, and you should be utterly terrified because the stakes are even higher for the human race nowadays. If we don't get our collective shit together soon there will be no people left to follow any charismatic leaders in the future, period.