• It’s no secret I was not a good student, especially as a college undergrad. So when I actually read an assigned book…. One of those resonated so strongly from the late ‘60s and is on my “20 Books that Changed Me” list.
• As I’ve observed history unfold over the past few years (as much as we can really see it in the moment), the nagging feeling that our path resembles that of Nazi Germany kept tapping me on the shoulder. Was I being an alarmist, overstating the danger because of the anathema I had toward Trump? Maybe my memory was selective.
• Which is why I ordered the book calling me from over five decades past, Allan J. Bullock’s historical masterpiece, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. It took only a few pages to confirm that the parallels I thought I remembered were, in fact, actually there, that the rise of Facism in Germany under Hitler is frighteningly similar in many ways to the rise of Trumpism, that Hitler and Trump are kindred spirits, conclusions ignored at our peril.
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The underline at the top is From Hitler’s own writings,
followed by Bullock’s analysis.
Only willful blindness prevents a comparison to Trump.
• You don’t have to take my word for it, of course. Although out of print, the book is readily available, no doubt through your local library. Because it is an inconvenient narrative, however, I doubt that those who reject this observation out of hand will bother to actually do the reading. I can only urge them to remember that it wasn’t just Germans who, after the fact, wondered how such evil could come to power.
Trump is not a Republican, never was until it was convenient (for him).
The Party is just the means to an end, and that end is autocratic power. |
As I progress in my reading, I may drop in other parallels and similarities. But for now, I’ll leave you with this:
