#American NAZIs

[canadianabroadvery]

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Unfortunately not an April Fools joke: two members of the American Nazi Party sign up a new member in the headquarters of the German National Socialist Party, April 1, 1932. A portrait of Adolf Hitler hangs on the wall at left.

Photo: Associated Press via iEidiseis

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The window of Morris Richman's confectionery store in New York after it had been smashed with a brick bearing a Nazi swastika label, Richman said he had been threatened with death if he persisted with his boycott of German confectionery. His own sentiments are prominently displayed beside the alleged Nazi brick (arrow)." - from the Kingston Whig-Standard. October 25, 1933. page 7. The sign reads:

"THE NAZIS BROKE THE WINDOW NOT OUR SPIRIT"

[pettypendagrass]

Trump 2024🇺🇸

[notyourmoderate]

Saying it now: if I see anyone pivot from "law and order" rhetoric to start talking about prison abolition starting today, I'm going to assume they're a not-very-covert qanon nazi.

[onenakedfarmer]

GEORGE CONWAY C-SPAN - October 30, 2024

I don't want to see a Republican Party led by a fascist, but he is a fascist. He cannot help but be a fascist. His personality disorders make him a fascist. He does not care about anyone else. He does not care about the rule of law. He does not care about justice. He does not care about right and wrong.

He's a convicted criminal. He's an adjudicated sexual abuser. He is by any colloquial standard a rapist, He is a bad man. And why all of you out theresem to want to excuse him and pretend that that reality is something other than what it is and what you want it to be is the problem.

[hussyknee]

This article describes what is essentially a McCarthyist wet dream. Uncritical support for genocide and imperial expansionism has been made non-negotiable for the US Jewish community.

[ceilidhtransing]

Having spent pretty much the entire year immersed in studying Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and genocide more broadly, my heart is bursting with the need to stress how much you should take Project 2025 seriously. This is a long post but please stick with me.

Don't take this post as an attempt to concretely predict anything. We can't ever fully know the future and I think it's silly to say with total certainty “if Trump wins then America will become just like Nazi Germany” - not only because the future isn't written yet, but also because Germany under the Nazis was a very specific regime with its own quirks and peculiarities and I don't think that even a worst-case-scenario Trump regime would look exactly like Hitler's Germany. No two regimes ever look exactly alike: it would use the same colour palette as all far-right dictatorships but be constructed from a different medium, like what a watercolour is to an oil painting.

But just because Trump is a very different person from Hitler, and a worst-case-scenario Trump dictatorship would not literally be “Nazi Germany all over again”, that doesn't mean that what happened in Germany isn't instructive here. Forget the specifics of whether or not Trump as a dictator would organise a state identically to how the Nazis organised Germany or whatever; on a far broader and more relevant level, there is a distressing number of similarities. And too many people are falling into the same thought traps as they did then.

Please don't assume that Trump is “way too incompetent” to achieve what's in Project 2025 or Agenda 47. They said the same thing about Hitler. They said that there was no way this showman could govern effectively - holding big rallies and making speeches that get people riled up isn't the same as being good at running a functioning state and achieving what you want. The New York Times even wrote after he became Chancellor of Germany that this would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility”. And in many ways Hitler was pretty incompetent. But that didn't end up mattering. The greatest crime of the Nazi regime, the Holocaust, was masterminded mostly by a whole load of people besides Hitler, who were delegated the nitty-gritty task of actually orchestrating it. Hitler's personal incompetence didn't prevent war or genocide.

Please don't assume that Trump is “just a wacky nutcase” who “can't possibly be a real risk”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The mainstream media gave constant coverage to all the crazy extreme things Hitler said as if he was merely a bit of a joke and not a massive threat. The Nazis were quite happy with this. To quote Goebbels repeatedly in his diary, “The main thing is they're talking about us.”

Please don't assume that being in power will “moderate” Trump and that “of course he won't be able to do all the crazy stuff once he actually has to govern”. They said the same thing about Hitler. It was a common sentiment in the early 1930s that all the sensible politicians around him would force him to moderate his stances. Fritz von Papen, the last Chancellor of Weimar Germany, persuaded President Hindenburg to make Hitler the Chancellor by assuring him, “In a few months, we will have pushed [Hitler] so far into the corner that he will squeak.” It turns out that power doesn't “moderate” people who are openly talking about a dictatorship.

Please don't assume that there's any truth to the whole “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025 and trying to link it to him is just liberal hysteria” line. They said the same thing about Hitler. People repeatedly asserted that Nazi street violence wasn't really representative of the party leadership; it wasn't representative of Hitler. He was even subpoenaed by a very brave lawyer in 1931 in a bid to prove that recent violence by Nazi stormtroopers was committed with the knowledge and encouragement of the party leadership, with part of the prosecution's argument hanging on a pamphlet by Goebbels that promised a violent overthrow of the state if the Nazis couldn't come to power legitimately. Surely no legal political party could be publishing that. In a successful attempt to escape criminal charges, Hitler repeatedly lied that the pamphlet was not official Nazi Party material and that he didn't know anything about it. No Trump didn't write it, no it isn't an official GOP manifesto, but the links between Project 2025 and Trump, the previous Trump administration, and Trump allies are extremely well documented. Just the other day, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought was caught calling Trump's disavowals of the document “graduate-level politics” and saying, “what he's doing is just very, very conscious distancing himself from a brand ... he's in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”

Please don't assume that “there's no way something like that could happen here; we're way too educated and advanced”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The Germany of the 1920s and 1930s was one of the most educated and most scientifically and industrially advanced nations in the world, and its cities were some of the most progressive in the world. People were stunned and horrified that it was in Germany of all places - Germany, land of music and art and science and literature! - that fascism took root. Germany's economic and social advancement didn't stop about 40% of its voters choosing the Nazis. It didn't stop them taking power.

Please don't assume that Project 2025 is “just a wishlist” and “not actually a serious plan”. They said the same thing about Hitler. As is hopefully very clear by now, plenty of people did not think that the Nazis were capable of, or would dare to try, putting into actual practice the horrific ideas about race that undergirded so much of their ideology. “I like Hitler; he talks sense economically and I think all this stuff about Jews is just bluff and bluster.” “Every party has a loony wing, right? You have to understand they're not serious when they talk about this stuff; they're just telling their base what they want to hear.” “God have you heard this crazy race science shit about head shapes and stuff? It's hilarious! I'm sure none of them at the top really believe that; there's no way they'd be that nuts.” When a group of people like this tells you what they believe and tells you what they want to do with power, believe them. No matter how ridiculous they seem, they're not joking.

In the words of Hans Litten, the lawyer who subpoenaed and cross-examined Hitler in that court case in 1931, “Don't listen to him; he's telling the truth.” Litten was arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and spent the rest of his life being tortured in concentration camps before dying in Dachau in 1938 at the age of 34.

A tyrannical dictatorship can often be seen coming a mile away. I don't want to imply for a second that what the Nazis did came as a surprise to everyone and couldn't possibly have been predicted. There were people who saw this coming in the 1920s and 1930s and tried to sound the alarm while they still had a chance. But they were too often in the minority, taking the threat seriously while others had convinced themselves that there was no need for concern because the Nazis wouldn't really do all the things they repeatedly talked about wanting to do. Everyone should have seen this coming, but too many people wanted to believe it couldn't be true.

Don't let this scare you. Let it energise you. Talk to the people in your life about Project 2025 and Agenda 47. Push back against people who assert that “they'd never actually do all that stuff” or “Trump didn't even write Project 2025” or “it's not a real plan, just a list of crazy shit to get the base riled up”. Have conversations with folks you know who are on the fence about voting or about who to vote for and who seem persuadable. Make sure you're registered to vote, and keep making sure, especially if you live in a red state where people keep mysteriously dropping off voter rolls.

Now, again, please don't read this as some confident prediction that Trump will be a Hitler figure. I want to stress that is a worst-case scenario. If a Trump presidency is what happens, I would much prefer the best-case scenario: that he spends four years fumbling around and not really accomplishing anything and then gives up power at the end without much of a fight. But it would also be a folly to be smugly overconfident that the worst-case scenario “won't” or “can't” happen. It could. It has happened before. There is no reason it couldn't happen again.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

This is no April Fool's joke. The American Nazi Party opened its New York headquarters on April 1, 1932. At this time, Hitler wasn't even in power yet; he was just a candidate for the German presidency.

Photo: Associated Press via Flickriver

[rejectingrepublicans]

[komsomolka]

From 1884 to 1915, the German Reich ruled over what is now Namibia, brutally suppressing local uprisings. The Herero and Nama War from 1904 to 1908 saw mass killings, with historians estimating that 65,000 out of 80,000 Herero and at least 10,000 out of 20,000 Nama were killed in retaliation for their anti-colonial resistance. Even today, the legacy of this violence lingers. Seventy percent of Namibia's farmland remains in the hands of the descendants of German settlers, while the destruction of Herero and Nama culture has led to widespread poverty among their communities.

[batboyblog]

Link

[onenakedfarmer]

What people don't seem to understand is that Trump actually does speak for his cult on this topic, especially the white christians in his cult, want Nazi generals. I interact with these people every day. They, and (again) especially the white christians in his cult, are absolutely ravenous to see a "final solution" in the US.