If you visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, you see many items the Nazis confiscated from the Jews before they sent them to work camps or to extermination “showers.” One of the most moving displays is the collection of shoes—worn by Jewish women, men, and children who were persecuted and murdered. I was reminded of this today when reading an article in The Atlantic that showed photos of the many items that DHS is taking away from the current migrants seeking asylum—every possession, including rosaries, extra shoes, wallets and ID cards, children’s stuffed toys and even slips of paper on which the children’s parents had written the phone numbers of relatives in the U.S. DHS discards these possessions, including the only IDs these people have. There is no excuse for taking and discarding people’s possessions, other than to convince them that the U.S. is now a heartless place where they are not wanted.
On a recent trip to Nuremberg, I toured an exhibit that chronicled Hitler’s rise to power and the tactics he used to gain power. The building housing the exhibit is the enormous Congress Hall that Hitler planned to use only once a year for his party’s annual rally. Its purpose, along with the zeppelin field and the huge parade grounds surrounding it, was to demonstrate Hitler’s power and to showcase him as a larger-than-life figure saving Germany. As I moved from room to room, I was struck by the similarity of Hitler’s tactics to those Trump has been using. I’m not saying that Trump is another Hitler, but he is certainly using some of his techniques, among which are big lies and propaganda repeated over and over until people believe it, a gradual process of dehumanizing the “undesirables” (equivalent to migrants/illegal immigrants in the U.S.), false claims that Jews were taking good Germans’ jobs (as with Trump’s false claims about Mexicans and immigrants), and conditioning Germans over a period of time, again through state propaganda, to accept his false claims and his portrayal of himself as Germany’s savior. Trump uses Fox News in the same way to convince his followers that immigrants are not only illegal but also animals and indecent people who deserve anything done to them. Reportedly, he and Sean Hannity speak every night to cook up the false stories that Fox will broadcast the next day. Other media like hate radio and Internet sites like Breitbart echo his propaganda.
Using grandiose props to portray himself as a god-like figure (as Trump has done with his meetings with white evangelical leaders, his dramatic television staging, and his demand for a military parade to honor himself and demonstrate his importance), Hitler created a myth that he alone could solve Germany’s economic and social problems (most stemming from Germany’s losses in World War I). He used this myth to develop a cult of followers devoted to him rather than to Germany. Likewise, Trump claimed during his campaign that he alone could fix the problems in the U.S., and many writers have characterized his base as a cult believing anything that Trump says.
Just as The Art of the Deal enhanced Trump’s reputation, so too did Hitler create a flattering biography. Hitler wrote his own biography, but he was savvy enough to have it published under another German’s name because he knew that conservative Germans would not accept such self-praise. This paragraph is from the Smithsonian: “The Hitler of this episode belies the common misconception that he was a primitive, raging, and nihilistic dark elemental force. Rather, he was a man with an emerging deep understanding of how political processes, systems, and the public sphere worked. His study of propaganda techniques while serving in World War I had provided him with an appreciation for political narratives that would help him plot his way to power.” So too does Trump understand how to manipulate our political processes and to effectively promote himself and his agenda—at least to his base.
[Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hitler-created-fictional-persona-to-recast-himself-as-germanys-savior]
Trump praises himself constantly, often claiming that he is smarter than anyone else, and has surrounded himself with extremist advisers who will not challenge his warped world view and indeed support it. One of the worst is Stephen Miller (our own mini Goebbels), his white supremacist adviser who crafted the anti-Muslim bans and helped create the policy of stealing children from migrant parents and sending them throughout the country so their parents may never be able to reclaim them. Miller is already anticipating further actions like limiting foreign student visas (most likely allowing only white students in), limiting agricultural visas, tightening residency rules for legal immigrants, and collecting biometric data from certain people (I read this as Muslims and people of color) who are visiting this country.
It took Hitler several years to gain the power and government position to carry out his white supremacist policy of killing German citizens lacking pure Aryan ancestry. In just 18 months, Trump has been able to convince his base that he is doing a great job and he is their savior. The rest of us are just exhausted by his incessant tweets and the media’s coverage of every outrageous lie, his attacks on allies, his undermining of trust in the U.S. as an ally and world partner, his open admiration for brutal dictators, and his embrace of policies that are causing serious damage to the future of this country. He is conditioning us to accept more and more drastic behavior as normal.
So what is our tipping point as a country? Which of Trump’s increasingly cruel policies toward non-white people will finally convince us to take action? By “us” I’m really referring to Trump’s hardcore supporters who believe that he can do no wrong and to the current U.S. Congress. If Trump decides to send migrants and illegal immigrants working in the U.S. for years to internment camps (as the U.S. government did to the Japanese), perhaps falsely claiming that it’s for national security, would we as a country agree to that? If Trump decided that children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants or to Muslims are not really citizens, would we support that (even though the U.S. Constitution states that they are)? Trump has shown a willingness to ignore the Constitution, so if he convinced a Republican Congress to pass a law that only white Christians would be allowed to vote in future elections, would we support that? How far is too far? A CBS poll taken in August of 2017 revealed that 52% of Republicans would support Trump if he called off the 2020 election by claiming that voter fraud would taint the election. I know that 52% of Republicans is not a majority of citizens, but how would we stop it if Trump tried this? Who would stop it? If Republicans retain control of Congress after the 2018 elections (and we cannot count on those elections being fair), would they do anything or just support Trump because it would keep them in power also? Yes, we can and would use lawsuits to overturn such outrageous violations of law, but such lawsuits take time, and we have a Republican Supreme Court. Could we trust them to do the right thing?
During Hitler’s takeover of the German state, many German citizens simply went about their lives and ignored the atrocities that Hitler was perpetrating on the Jews, claiming after the war that they did not know what was going on. Our own citizens who rely solely on Fox News to form their opinions also do not know what is going on. Republicans have given Trump an approval rating that hovers around 80%, and his national approval hovers around 40%. This in spite of his pugnacious attitudes toward international norms of diplomacy, his trade wars, the scandals and ongoing legal investigations, his false claims that illegals are criminals and drug dealers, and his recent policy of persecuting those seeking asylum, including even tiny children. More than half of Republicans approve of that atrocity. How many more atrocities against people of color are “we the people” willing to accept in support of the carefully crafted Trump myth that he is making the country great again?
During my trip to Nuremberg, I was fortunate to visit the courtroom where the Nuremberg trials took place and to hear an excellent history of the prosecutors and the defendants. One bit of history that struck me is that the trials might not have taken place without American insistence and money to support them and an American prosecutor who became the key figure in bringing some of Hitler’s key accomplices to justice. That prosecutor was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson. President Truman appointed him as United States Chief of Counsel to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Obviously, the U.S. sent one of its best and brightest. Twenty-two Nazis were prosecuted, with twelve of them sentenced to death and summarily executed in a building behind the court building. Would we do the same today? Are we still a country willing to uphold the ideals that led us into WWII and to be the beacon for democratic principles throughout the world? One piece of information shared by my guide is that all German children are thoroughly taught the history of the Nazi regime, including its atrocities, because they are determined that this history will not be repeated. Contrast this to the whitewashing of history in favor of white people that has being going on in the U.S. for decades.
It is mind boggling to me that today we have Nazis in America, perhaps with sympathizers in the White House. My country is becoming less and less recognizable, and some of my fellow citizens are becoming inured to the onslaught of norm-violating behavior from Trump and his administration. I fear for our future. I have no solutions to our current situation (other than voting, contacting members of Congress, and protesting), only an observation that we should not underestimate Trump and his megalomania. Like Hitler, he is a savvy manipulator of propaganda who has no shame about being caught in lie after lie, and he has shown that he loves the attention and power of his position, not only to enrich himself and his family but also to impose his cruel policies on people who cannot fight back.
Travel opens eyes to a different reality, and being in a country where specific groups of people were put to death by their own government was a powerful reminder of the evil that can hide under under a cloak of doing great things for people. Seeing some parallels to actions between Nazi Germany and our own government gives me nightmares. I know that you on this site share my concern for our future, so thank you for reading this diary and allowing me a forum for sharing my observations. I do not mean to paint a picture of a dystopian future because I still believe that we have the institutions and the power of our law to overcome whatever comes next. My concern is what we will have to endure in the interim.