As Trump has risen to power (insofar as media attention is power) over recent months, one hears a lot the Hitler analogy. The comparison is made seriously and fearfully in these very pages in letters to editors and op-ed columns: Trump is a dangerous demagogue, playing to racism and other fears of disaffected white workers, making wild, macho promises to restore us to our former greatness (and look out world!) Certainly the style is there; and it’s certainly obnoxious and scary to many of us that it’s appealing to so many.
But are there not crucial differences? Structural differences? I’m no expert on this, but Hitler’s small army of “brownshirt” thugs—were they not an important part of his rise? Would that be legal here? Would it be likely or even possible? Is not the structure of our government and laws such that if Trumpery got beyond style it would be shut down (for instance, if the very few thug incidents at rallies became larger and more systematic)?
If Trump became Commander in Chief of our mostly mercenary armed forces, of course, it might be a whole new ballgame.
Can anyone recommend a succinct, expert comparison of the men, os the circumstances of their rise, of the U.S. now and Germany then, both style and structure? (Or of Trump and Mussolini, which a friend suggested is the more apt analogy.) It would be welcome as a guide to thinking about the threat of Trump(ism).
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