Donald Trump’s attacks on opponents, minoirites are a chilling reminder of Adolph Hitler. (Photos: Getty; NYI collage)
Donald Trump’s choice of language is very often beyond the pale. It is dangerous rhetoric, and it is intended to be dangerous.
It has been inflammatory and way too reminiscent of the language used by Adolph Hitler nearly one century ago to describe elements of German society.
Trump‘s screeds against immigrants have substantial appeal to a large number of people that support his presidency, or at least did a few months ago, before the economy began to sour as a result of his tariff policies.
During his most recent rally in Pennsylvania this week, Trump used slurs while discussing Somali immigrants and other “disgusting” nations.
A widely circulated social media meme compares Trump’s and Hitler’s speech.
“I’ve also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries,” he said.
Trump’s verbiage smacks of white supremacy and fascism, and he is ramping it up as the economy worsens.
Trump refers to political opponents as ‘’vermin,’’ and says he ‘’hates’’ Democrats. He called a Congresswoman ‘’garbage.” He has referred to money interests as ‘’shylocks,” a term that disparages Jews.
He called Minnisota Gov. Tim Walz ‘’retarded.” Haiti, he said, was a shit hole; so we’re many African countries.
The ‘’press is the enemy of the people.”
Since the earliest days of his run for president, Trump has railed against immigrants to the United States as he has the ‘’lunatic left.”
This is how Hitler started, and today Trump uses some of the same concepts and language used by Hitler when he rails against immigrants. We know how Hitler’s “Jewish problem“ ended.
I am not saying that Trump and his main advisor on this subject, Stephen Miller, will result to mass murder to solve Trump’s self declared immigration problem, and a “poisoning of the blood” of America. Nor do I know whether Hitler intended to do so at the begining.
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I do know the language Trump uses is way too similar to Hitler’s. And I know it was dangerous then, and it’s dangerous now. And frankly, I think he likes the comparrison.
His language has conditioned some Americans to view other Americans as the enemy; diseased and dirty. Be mindful that Hitler did not start by placing Jews in concentration camps.
The German Führer built Dachau because Germany was running out of space in its civilian prisons for political prisoners, leftists, and liberals. He next imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses and then LGBTQ people. Jews followed.
Trump has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood “of America. He has fired up his followers by declaring that “immigrants are destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country.”
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Trump is not speaking of white, South African, or Norwegian, immigrants to the United States. No, he is referring to non-white immigrants from countries that he is described as garbage cans and shit holes.
“They come from Africa, they come from South America.”
In the past he has claimed without evidence that Mexican immigrants are rapists, drug carriers, and criminals. He has attempted to ban immigrants based on their religion.
He is now preventing people qualified to become citizens from doing so based on their countries of origin.
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Hitler did not use this language to disparage or dehumanize immigrants, however. Germany needed immigrants in the 1930s to provide manpower for its war preparations.
But he did use similar language to describe Jews and others living in Germany. Trump has lifted this language from Hitler’s playbook and for now applies it to immigrants. For now.
Hitler ruled Germany under a dictatorship from 1933 until he killed himself in 1945. During his dictatorship, he said the following:
“All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died from blood poisoning.”
“He poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own blood unadulterated,” referring to Jewish men who allowed Jewish women to marry white Christians.
“Whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race, the results have been the downfall of the people who are the standard bearers of a higher culture. “
In some ways, Trump’s approach to immigrants echos Hitler’s initial way of dealing with Jews. Dehumanize them, garner public support, round them up, segregate them from the rest of society and put them in a facility created for that purpose.
Or ship them out of the country if you can find somebody to take them.