Did… did I just slide to a parallel universe? Do I get to meet Jerry O’Connell? What the hell is going on?!
To expand on this for the unaware: Hitler came back into power for his second term in 1932. His first term, similar to trumps, was rife with turmoil and political/administrative blunders. One of the first things he did, upon returning to power, was a German version of The New Deal. They massively invested in their country’s infrastructure and provided tens of millions of jobs for the young working class, who had been suffering the worst unemployment crisis in an age. For the first time in their lives, young Germans had good jobs (with great benefits) and were contributing towards building a better, cleaner, safer Germany, all facilitated by “the national socialist party”. This was the part of nazi history that actually included socialism, and it’s how the nazi party duped an entire generation into becoming their foot soldiers. They actually delivered substantive, positive change for the people, allowed people to get comfortable with the new status quo while they further built propaganda machines, then turned that status quo into a carrot on a stick. Young nazi’s were very fearful of a backslide, so when nazi propaganda started saying all these bad people were trying to take away their newfound financial freedom, it was very easy to convince these young, relatively ignorant, working class people to “defend” the country they proudly built with their own hands.
If the GOP did a 180° on all of their economic policy, of the last 60+ years, to follow a similar story arc, I would be extremely concerned. With how down-trodden our 3 youngest generations are, the conditions for an American copy of nazi Germany couldn’t be more perfect than they are right now.
I’m not a historian. I just read a book on this subject recently. Feel free to correct or add to anything I got wrong/missed!
Well, it started with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, which is more about what happened after the coup, until nazi’s downfall. Then, I read parts of The Third Reich by Thomas Childers, which prompted a documentary watch and I haven’t gone much further than that. But both of those books are amazing and very informative. I can try to find that documentary too, if you’re interested.
If you appreciate books on history and this history specifically, check out what came right before it: Takeover: HITLER’S FINAL RISE TO POWER. It’s about the final six months before Hitler got there. It was surprising to me how much of an accident of history his reign was when I’d long thought it had been inevitable.
If they flipped on their last 60 years of policy though… I’d be much happier with the status quo though. A new new deal and a thriving economy that helps the working class would be great. It would give far fewer issues that we need to address at once. Shit, if you got them flipped, since Republicans tend to fall in line they’ll take it as a win and celebrate it as they believed he would be good the entire time ignoring all of his policies changing. And it lands the Republicans left of the Democrats. Meaning when the Democrats lean towards the pubs to get voters … they’ll be moving left as well. If we somehow got healthcare and fair wages and taxation better through this… Then we only have to focus on ensuring they don’t subjugate populations like minorities, and get policing under control which all would be easier with a thriving economy and workforce. Less people are scared when more people are doing well. Whether someone is racist or not, the stereotypes become harder to push on people. A few other huge things like climate change, but with high taxes on the rich pushes companies to invest their money into their companies to avoid paying those taxes which in turn will churn out good things. (Either more quality, efficiency, research and expansion). Maybe we could finally catch up on battery tech and secure our own energy sources and grid for the future. That would be a great way to put America to work. Building an upgraded grid with storage and modularity for natural disasters.
Don’t get my hopes up on this shit just to
While I generally agree, I would still be extremely skeptical of those changes coming from the people that have spent the last 60 years sliding us into a situation were we desperately need those changes. If that was the play, I would see it as a decades long scam with the intent being to purchase legitimacy with a lie. The logical conclusion being they want absolute power and see a working strategy to obtain that by following in the nazi’s footsteps, with some modern revisions.
The difference being that the Nazis were often competent people, and there was not the same massive base of crony capitalism with its fingers firmly enmeshed around every single area of government like there is in the US currently.
I won’t say it’s impossible, and I think they might be able to leverage social media to construct the exact same mass movement of loyal followers with the exact same horrifying results, but I don’t think the type of economic populism that did it for the Reich is feasible for the MAGA people to pull off. Definitely not with Trump at the helm.
I mean, they took over the country and then more than half of Europe. Hitler fought in the infantry and wrote a whole book. I’m not saying they were geniuses and some parts were a pure clown show, especially after Hitler took over for real, but Trump literally just shuffles around shitting in his pants and doing whatever the last person who talked to him convinced him is a good idea.
