By Vishwamithra –

“He who allows oppression shares the crime.” ~ Desiderius Erasmus

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country; they will destroy our blood and destroy our country’, those are the words uttered by Donald Trump, the leading candidate of the Republican Party at the forthcoming Presidential Elections in the USA. Words that we thought we would never hear again are reverberating in the American electorate now, in the twenty first century. 

The operative word is ‘vermin’, a word that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis used for Jews, Gypsies, invalids, and homosexuals, for all ‘non-Aryans’ in Germany at the time. Yet, the main segment was German Jews and the rest of European Jews. In Hitler’s catalog of vermin, as the Oxford dictionary describes ‘vermin’ is: parasitic worms or insects.

In another sense, it is absurd to compare Donald Trump with Hitler. Hitler belongs to the category those cruel and savage leaders the world has ever seen. His personal beliefs and action that was engineered to convert those beliefs into tangible results were remarkable and sickening to behold at the same time. Yet, Hitler was as remarkable as he was impatiently vicious. With no empathy for mankind in general and Jews in particular, Hitler achieved his political and military goals with ease at the beginning. How did he do it? Did he do it alone or was he ably and willingly sustained by a very partial and equally motivated populace, ethnic-Germans?

Furthermore, Hitler had an exceptionally efficient bureaucracy amongst whom were, Heinrich Himmler, Herman Goering, Joseph Gobbles and Albert Speer. Except perhaps, Speer all others were  very comfortable bedfellows within Hitler’s ideological space, Aryan supremacy and hatred of Jews. Mein Kampf, Hitler’s third-class creation was their Bible and his compelling demagoguery before a people of anxious white, blue-eyed and blond men and women created a gruesomely persuasive context for a nation reeling at the end of the First World War. The national humiliation caused by the Versailles Treaty gave birth to a collective sense of victim-hood in the minds of all Germans and Hitler recognized the uniqueness of the occasion. He played the victim-hood card well and he achieved the desired results of getting elected to the German Reichstag (German Parliament). 

All this happened when Germans were looking for a savior and a scapegoat. Hitler provided them with both: he was the savior and the Jews were the scapegoat.

More than anything else, the Great Depression helped boost Hitler. In the election after the Depression first struck the Nazis doubled their seats in the Reichstag, the German Parliament, going from 7% to 13.5% of the vote. And in the ensuing election they reached 21%. At their height they would reach about 40%.

At that point, he felt victory was in his grasp and let loose the brown shirts more than ever before. Pitched battles were fought with his political enemies – not only metaphorically but literally. German politicians engaged in fist fights on the floor of the Reichstag. The Nazis terrorized the opposition. It was open hooliganism.

The Weimar Republic had to make a hard choice between taking strong measures to stop Hitler or face the prospect of civil war. They chose the former. What they found – as the Western powers found later — was that the more they appeased Hitler the more powerless they were to stop him from taking even bolder steps.

The President of the Weimar Republic was the elderly war hero General Paul Von Hindenburg. Hitler wanted to be appointed chancellor, which was the second most powerful position to President, and only the President could grant that. Von Hindenburg had resisted the Nazis all along and disparagingly called Hitler the “Bohemian corporal.” Now, however, he felt he had to give in, hoping that being second-in-command would mollify Hitler and he would stop there.

Once Hitler got power, however, no one controlled him. He increased the activities of his brown shirts, even beating to death opposing politicians. Then he presented the Reichstag with the Enabling Act, a bill that would give him absolute powers, in effect making the Reichstag powerless. Although it was political suicide to vote for it, no one dared vote against Hitler and it was passed into law.

When the almost senile President Hindenburg died that summer Hitler had complete control of Germany. (Source: JewishHistory.org).

That is how Hitler, one of the most hated Leaders of human history rose to power. The vermin, as described by the Nazis, ultimately won the day and created space for the birth of Israel. That, of course, is the rest of the story, the human condition that created Hitler and the Nazis and murderous men of the Third Reich. The leading men died, sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials. But that cruel and nasty stream of man’s inhumanity man still remains, might have been dormant until another Hitler or a like-minded demon appears on the horizon. Is Donald Trump that demon? Are today’s White Americans the apathetic Germans who kept silent and helpless at the end of the First World War? 

Once again, I pain to compare the two: Hitler and Trump. The objective conditions are certainly not comparable. The technological advance of the times, the advent of the social media and the Smart Phone have revolutionized the information-transition industry beyond recognition. No way those concentration camps, Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and Mauthausen would have reached their set targets of killings and human destruction in the midst of heavy and the eager clicking of I-Phones and Androids.

At the same time, the use of the social media by Donald Trump and his busy surrogates does present a challenge to the survival of democracy and the way of life the average American has been used to. Trump’s references to those immigrants who come to America from Africa, Asia and South America do offer a powerful case for comparison with Hitler’s ‘non-Aryan’ remarks. Africans are the Blacks, Asians are Indians, Chinese, Thai, Japanese and immigrants who reach American shores from other Asian countries and people from South America are the ones from Hispanic communities. The Blacks, the Yellows and the Browns, according to Trump, are the vermin who poison the blood of America. No harsher dog-whistling for American Whiteism is necessary.

American media seems to be bewildered that most of the Republican Party is responding favorably to Trump’s appeal. How naive CNN, MSNBC and the rest of liberal media could be? With no feel for history and with no intellectual curiosity shown for inquiry of recent historical behavior of the global community, American media is playing with fire and eventually getting burnt. Trump’s appeal to an anti-immigration policy, especially who come from Africa, Asia and South America, is especially focused towards White America. As much as ethnic Germans were apathetic and indifferent to Hitler’s Nazism and racial policies, Trump is playing a very dangerous game with  an ethnically diverse America. 

As of 2020, US population is as follows: White 59%, Hispanic 19%, Black  12% Asian 6% and multiracial 4%. These population statistics are basically founded on a national level. American Presidents are not elected on a national voting pattern. Electoral Collage base had been a strong platform, albeit some charismatic Democrats like John Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, especially the rural America, which always preferred the Republican Party and a President representing that school of thought of American Whiteism first and everyone else second. Yet Barack Obama was elected, once beating John McCain and the other time Mitt Romney by this same electorate. 

A deeper polarization of the American political landscape began with the entry of Trump and some of the fringe elements such as Marjorie Tailor Green, Matt Gates, Jim Jordan and their Tea Party cohorts. The old conservative party-line is disappearing and in its place a culturally extreme fringe has emerged and Trump’s call for those elements in American society has been able to galvanize that fringe into an insurrection on January 6, 2021. Trump’s whistle managed to motivate and drive them  into the hallowed Congress halls and nearly to the brim of collapse of democracy in America. However, the strength and steadfastness of democratic institutions in the country saved it from a howling implosion.

Now faced with 4 indictments on 91 counts, determined to be President again by whatever means available to him in a so-called 5-star democracy, Trump is on his second appeal, and if not checked by the Supreme Court, would face the ultimate adjudicator at the forthcoming Presidential Elections, the American voter. Can he succeed? Despite what the polls indicate, despite what the conservative media led by FOX media group propagate, the average American voter will deliver a thrashing, come Presidential Elections in November 2024. America is too strong to collapse. She is too sturdy, too bright in her core to allow another term of Donald Trump. 

His vermin alone will be able to withstand every affront, endure every insult and every below-the-belt-punch and defeat him this time. If they fail to do so, it might not be a good day for America. A man who has no intellectual curiosity, a man who shows no compassion, a man whose only aim is win for himself and his alone should not be the leader of America. America may have endured many a sociopolitical setback but a return of Donald Trump to Presidency is not what America could suffer again.

*The writer can be contacted at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com