Last month, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jay Gonzalez appeared on a Boston radio show and the hosts asked him if he thought Donald Trump is “like Hitler.” This got me to thinking, so I did a bit of light research. Based on my endeavors, I can answer the Is-Trump-like-Hitler question with certainty: Not really.
Here’s why.
- Hitler engaged in a shooting war with his enemies. Trump has ignited a trade war with his allies.
- Hitler despised the strongman in Moscow and launched a full-scale military invasion of Russia. Trump has a man-crush on the strongman in Moscow and is undisturbed by Russia’s invasion of the American electoral system.
- Hitler created mechanisms like the People’s Court, Preventative Arrest, and Protective Custody to eliminate due process for German citizens. Trump has suggested eliminating due process only for migrants. And, arguably, for Hillary Clinton (“Lock her up!”).
- Hitler didn’t publicly criticize his national police force. Trump and his associates have waged open warfare against America’s national police force.
- Hitler separated children from their parents for murderous reasons. Trump separated children from their parents for political reasons.
- Hitler was responsible for tens of millions of deaths. Trump merely bragged about his ability to shoot someone in the middle of 5thAvenue and get away with it.
- Hitler lost the 1932 German presidential election by six million votes but was appointed Chancellor by the German president.Trump lost the 2016 American presidential election by three million votes but was elected president by the Electoral College.
- Hitler made it difficult for people fearing persecution and death to leave his country. Trump has made it difficult for people fearing persecution and death to enter his.
- Hitler heaped hyperbolic blame for societal ills on those who identified with a certain culture and religion. Trump has heaped hyperbolic blame for societal ills on those who identify with a certain organization.
- In order to embarrass France and enact revenge for the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler demanded that the 1940 Franco-German Armistice be signed in the exact spot—even the same railroad carriage—as was the Versailles treaty 22 years earlier. In order to embarrass Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and enact revenge for perceived trade inequities, Trump refused to sign the joint G-7 statement in Canada, the site of the 1981 G-7 summit hosted by Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau.
- Hitler’s racial ideology led to policies that restricted, and eventually banned, specific races from German universities. Trump is merely encouraging universities to end the practice of considering race as a factor in diversifying their campuses.
- Hitler, through his Propaganda Ministry, abolished free speech and the German free press. Trump has only attacked reporters as purveyors of “fake news” and has called the national media “the enemy of the American people” while vowing to “do something” about the use of anonymous sources, a standard journalistic practice for decades.
- Hitler quietly snubbed a team of American athletes, including numerous African-Americans, and never invited them to the Reich Chancellery. Trump has loudly attacked numerous African-American athletes, but did—twice—invite championship teams, including numerous African-American players, to the White House. He rescinded both invitations.
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In one, crucial, way is Trump just like Hitler: the people Trump enables are as bad, or worse, than Trump. Yeah, Hitler was an aggressive sociopath. Goering was even more so. Yeah, Hitler was a vicious spiteful anti-semitic propagandist… but he couldn’t hold a candle to Joseph Goebbels. You think Hitler was crazy? Not when he stood next to Himmler or Rohm… And Himmler repeated the exercise, putting Heydrich in charge of the SS. A cascading hierarchy of the vicious and the venal all the way down to Eichmann. It’s scary to think that Hitler, as evil as he was, was surrounded by people even more vile. Scarier even is the notion that Trump can do no other than to pick lesser intellects and greater venality: Manafort, Cohen, Sessions, Pruitt, Pence, Huckabee Sanders, Gorsuch, Guiliani, Kavanaugh and the Mooch. And the list goes on. All these people are as least as devoid of real character and integrity as Trump is himself.
The other way in which the situations have clear similarities, at least — if the similarities between the actual participants doesn’t necessarily meet well– is the vagueness, indeed paucity of detail, that pervades the administration: Hitler largely absented himself from day-to-day administration and would express vague wishes and/or articulate a hand-wavy future vision that had to be parsed and interpreted. Underlings had to, essentially, guess what outcome Hitler wanted or how he wanted a given outcome to be realized and, substituting their initiative for details, work to deliver such outcomes. The historian Ian Kershaw called this ‘working towards the fuhrer.’ In the limit bounded by their administrative incompetence and personal venality, this left only room in one direction: to push the envelope of expected behavior and results towards more venality. Similarly, nobody really knows what Trump wants (likely not even Trump) and yet they work to please him and enact outcomes and deliver results while, in the same vein, they fend off resistance and justify after-the-fact… and in doing so dig themselves deeper and deeper in venal behavior.