We’ve all heard of the Godwin Rule, which essentially is that in any on-line discussion, someone will compare someone with whom they disagree to a Nazi. And that means that they have lost the argument. There is an important exception to this, and that is that it is legitimate argument to compare a present day Nazi (or a Neo-Nazi) to the Nazis of the 1930-40s Germany,
How do Trump and his various bootlickers compare to Nazis? Obviously we have not yet seen anything like the worst Nazi deeds, in particular the invasion of almost all the countries in Europe, establishment of death camps and the mass shootings of Jews and many others in Russia. So of course a comparison to Nazis would be highly inappropriate if these later acts are the grounds of comparison. But as Adam Roy writes in the Forward :
Does it need to flower into something truly monstrous before we recognize it for what it really is? Hitler also did things by degrees, nipping away at freedoms and piling one small indignity on top of another.
The worst acts of the Nazis are naturally the ones we remember them for. But this did not happen all at once. It was first necessary to isolate their targets from their fellow citizens. Hence the early sloganeering and picketing: “Deutsche, wehrt euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!” (Germans, protect yourselves. Don’t buy from Jews.”).
When there was no meaningful opposition, the Nazis went further. Thus in 1935, there came the Nuremburg Laws, which defined who was a Jew, imposed substantial restrictions on persons considered to be Jews, and stripped Jews of their citizenship. Again, there was no significant opposition.
Later came laws which barred Jewish lawyers from representing non-Jewish clients, Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients, and even barring Jews from owning pets. Again there was no real opposition.
The Nazis were not the stiff-necked fools so often depicted in movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark. They worried about international perceptions so long as Germany was too weak to wage war. So in 1936, in preparation from the Berlin Olympics, the anti-Semitism was tamped down.
By late 1938, with Czechoslovakia and Austria having been seized, the Nazis felt liberated from the burden of caring about international reaction, and, on November 9-10, 1938, instituted the nation-wide orgy of killing and destruction called Night of the Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht.
In May 1939, over 900 Jews fled Germany on the passenger ship St. Louis, but they were refused admission to the United States, and Cuba. Some were landed in other countries, but others were forced to return to Germany. The Nazis concluded that the world did not much care about the Jews, and this encouraged them in their persecution. Our current asylum and refugee laws stem from a desire never to repeat the St. Louis incident.
Where does Trump fall? He’s already well past the “Kauft nicht bei Juden” phase; the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant speeches, tweets, etc. pile up in heaps. Trump’s even used the same terms as the Nazis (“infestation”). He’s called immigrants “rapists,” standard for Nazis such as Julius Streicher, and part of Nazi anti-Jewish films such as Jud Süß.
Trump has called the media “enemies of the people”, (although this is more of a Stalinist term). And of course he favors “Norway” (also one of Hitler’s favorite “Aryan” countries) as a source of immigrants, rather than the “shithole” countries“ with non-white populations. Trump has also given aid and comfort to Nazis, as he did in the Charlottesville Virginia violence last year.
Now we move from words to deeds. Until Trump began kidnapping children of immigrants, I would not have made the comparison to Nazis. Now he’s earned it. Trump doesn’t dare do this to white children of white immigrants, nor indeed does he wish to. (See Norway).
The imprisoned girls and smaller children were (and I guess still remain) hidden from us; they had not yet fully dehumanized them. Now comes news that the U.S. Navy (!) is preparing to jail 119,000 immigrants at military bases, such as Camp Pendleton, which would incarcerate 47,000 people, far from inconvenient protests that have, for example, shut down the ICE field office in Portland, Oregon, and far from the meddling lawyers that keep wanting to get people due process of law.
Demonization, isolation, incarceration. All these steps we have now passed. Certainly we have not reached anything like the Nazi’s worst deeds, and I trust we never shall. But Nazi Germany was still a racist dictatorship well beforehand, and Trump has taken us well down that road.