A TALE OF TWO FASCISTS

Hitler's Statements

"There is living among us a non-German foreign race"

            -- Letter, September 16. 1916.

"The feelings of the Jew are concerns with purely material things . . . From this feeling emerges that concern and striving for money and for power which can protect it, which makes the Jew unscrupulous in his means, ruthless in his use of them to achieve his aim.

             -- Id.

"The final aim  . . . must be the uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether [and is] possible only under a government of national strength, never under a government of national impotence."

            -- Id.

"If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world . . . the planet will move through the ether devoid of men."

            -- Mein Kampf, 1925.

"[The] Jew is not the attacked but the attacker . . . The means by which he seeks to break . . . upright souls is not honest warfare, but lies and slander."

            --  Id.

"The personification of the devil as the symbol of evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."

            -- Id.

"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundation of the people always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race."

            -- Id.

"The time seemed to have arrived for proceeding against the whole Jewish gang of public pests . . . [I]t ought to have been the duty of any  government which had the care of the people in its keeping . . . to exterminate this vermin."

            -- Id.

"We shall exterminate the Jews."

            -- To Czech foreign minister, January 21, 1939.

"We are resolved to prevent the settlement in our country of a strange people which are capable of snatching for itself all the leading positions of the land, and to oust it . . . Above all, German culture is . . . German and not Jewish."

            -- Speech, January 30, 1939.

"The criminal race had two million dead of the [First] World War on their conscience."

              -- To Command Headquarters,  October 25, 1941.

"The sole German objective in the region will be to liquidate all the Jews who live in the Arab countries, under the patronage of Great Britain."

            --  To the Mufti of Jerusalem, November 28,1941

Trump's Statements

 Migrants commit violent acts because being "a murderer -- I believe -- it's in their genes."

            -- To Hugh Hewitt, October 9, 2024.

"It takes centuries to build the unique character of each state. But reckless migration policy can change it very quickly and destroy everything in its way."

            --  Id.

"And you see how bad it's getting. With the migrants attacking villages and cities all throughout the Midwest in particular right now, but it's all over."

            -- Campaign Rally, September 21, 2024.

"A vote for Kamala Harris means 40 or 50 more illegal aliens . . .  stealing your money, stealing your jobs, stealing your life."

            -- Id.

"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs . . . They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people who live there. And this is what's happening in our country."

            -- Debate, September 1, 2024

"On Day 1 of my new administration, I will seal the border and send [11 million] illegal aliens back home where they belong."

            -- Wildwood, New Jersey, May 2024.

Migrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" and are being sent from "prisons, jails, mental institutions [and] insane asylums."

            -- Campaign, 2024.

"No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals."

            -- Green Bay, Wisconsin, 4/2/24.

"They're coming in as terrorists. Many . . . are coming in with very contagious disease. You know, like all of a sudden there's a run on tuberculosis."

            -- WABC Interview, May 22, 2024.

"The ones in South America are sending all of their criminals and their prisoners and their gangs."

            --  To National Rifle Association, May 18, 2024.

"[The] conduct on our border is a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America. [They] want to nullify the will of actual American voters and establish a base of power that gives them control for generations."

            -- Greensboro, North Carolina, March 2, 2024.

"It's a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing you can have."

            -- New Hampshire Rally, December 2023.

"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out."

            -- Oval Office, January 2018.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best . . . They're sending people that have lots of problems . . . They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."

            -- Opening Campaign Speech at Trump Tower, 2015.

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On November 11, 2023, at a Veterans Day speech in Claremont, New Hampshire, Trump said "We will root out . . . the vermin within the confines of our country."

This, said Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works, "doesn't echo Mein Kampf; it is textbook Mein Kampf."

Last week, the following exchange between Howard Kurtz and Trump took place in an interview on FOX News:

KURTZ: "You call Americans who don't support you 'the enemy within.' That is a pretty ominous phrase to use about other Americans".

TRUMP:  "I think that's accurate. These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. [W]hen you look at . . . Schiff and some of the others, yeah,they are to me the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within."

Hearing Trump's claims, Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor and author of How Democracies Die, called it "classic authoritarian discourse." 

In Europe in the 1930s and Latin America in the 1960s, Levitsky explained, "[A]utocrats used exactly this language: there's an enemy within that's more dangerous than our external enemies and that justifies the use of extra-constitutional measures."

"How many times," he asked,  "does Trump have to use this rhetoric before we realize that this is not a normal election."

In The New York Times today, John Kelly, Trump's longest serving chief of staff and his first Secretary of Homeland Security, explicitly stated that Trump is a fascist. 

"[L]ooking at the definition of fascism," Kelly explained, "It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, [and] belief in a natural social hierarchy."

"[C]ertainly, in my experience," he concluded, "those are the kind of things [Trump] thinks would work better in terms of running America. Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators ".

"So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."

Textbook Mein Kampf.

Classic authoritarian.

Fascist, for sure.

To all those who think they will or might still vote for Trump, it's not too late.

If you want . . .

There's still time . . .

To smell the coffee.