Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Rhetoric has a history. The words democracy and tyranny were debated in ancient Greece; the phrase separation of powers became important in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description of his opponents as “radical-left thugs” who “live like vermin.”
This language isn’t merely ugly or repellant: These words belong to a particular tradition. Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped “cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and the People.” In occupied Warsaw, a 1941 poster displayed a drawing of a louse with a caricature of a Jewish face. The slogan: “Jews are lice: they cause typhus.” Germans, by contrast, were clean, pure, healthy, and vermin-free. Hitler once described the Nazi flag as “the victorious sign of freedom and the purity of our blood.”
Stalin used the same kind of language at about the same time. He called his opponents the “enemies of the people,” implying that they were not citizens and that they enjoyed no rights. He portrayed them as vermin, pollution, filth that had to be “subjected to ongoing purification,” and he inspired his fellow communists to employ similar rhetoric. In my files, I have the notes from a 1955 meeting of the leaders of the Stasi, the East German secret police, during which one of them called for a struggle against “vermin activities ” (there is, inevitably, a German word for this: Schädlingstätigkeiten ), by which he meant the purge and arrest of the regime’s critics. In this same era, the Stasi forcibly moved suspicious people away from the border with West Germany, a project nicknamed “Operation Vermin.”
This kind of language was not limited to Europe. Mao Zedong also described his political opponents as “poisonous weeds.” Pol Pot spoke of “cleansing” hundreds of thousands of his compatriots so that Cambodia would be “purified.”
In each of these very different societies, the purpose of this kind of rhetoric was the same. If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them. If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If they are vermin, they don’t get to enjoy freedom of speech, or freedoms of any kind. And if you squash them, you won’t be held accountable.
Until recently, this kind of language was not a normal part of American presidential politics. Even George Wallace’s notorious, racist, neo-Confederate 1963 speech, his inaugural speech as Alabama governor and the prelude to his first presidential campaign, avoided such language. Wallace called for “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” But he did not speak of his political opponents as “vermin” or talk about them poisoning the nation’s blood. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 , which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps following the outbreak of World War II, spoke of “alien enemies” but not parasites.
In the 2024 campaign, that line has been crossed. Trump blurs the distinction between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants—the latter including his wife, his late ex-wife, the in-laws of his running mate, and many others. He has said of immigrants , “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.” He has claimed that many have “bad genes.” He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.” He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.” Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing . He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf ,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer , “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”
His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.
These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held up prefabricated signs : Mass Deportation Now . Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally , he did so in front of a huge slogan : Trump Was Right About Everything . This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right .
These phrases have not been put on posters and banners at random in the final weeks of an American election season. With less than three weeks left to go, most candidates would be fighting for the middle ground, for the swing voters. Trump is doing the exact opposite. Why? There can be only one answer: because he and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win. The deliberate dehumanization of whole groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “bloodbath” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; the cultivation of hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents—none of this has been used successfully in modern American politics.
But neither has this rhetoric been tried in modern American politics. Several generations of American politicians have assumed that American voters, most of whom learned to pledge allegiance to the flag in school, grew up with the rule of law, and have never experienced occupation or invasion, would be resistant to this kind of language and imagery. Trump is gambling—knowingly and cynically—that we are not.
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Can't wait for Vermin Bloodbath Day ...
" In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing . He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf ,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer , “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”
His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.
These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held up prefabricated signs : Mass Deportation Now . Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally , he did so in front of a huge slogan : Trump Was Right About Everything . This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right ."
I believe it to be correct he hasn't read Mein Kampf, I believe he would have had to have someone read it to him. Too many words with more thana one syllable and LOTS OF THEM.
I meant to comment on that slogan 'trump was right about everything'. I know this doesn't have to be said, but obviously, no one is RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.
Yup, every day, every time he opens his mouth it's getting worse and worse. Look at what he said at that charity dinner the other night - 'I don't give a shit if it's supposed to be funny' when talking about Bill DiBlasio 'he's a terrible person.' A hateful nasty petty spiteful vengeful bitter evil old man standing there and cursing and falling apart further mentally before our eyes. The world cringes at this horrible excuse of a human being, a waste of flesh, all of the worst qualities to be found in a person rolled up into one.
JFC
let's see ...
it does give one pause ...
Is it too late to become Canadian?
oh shit, don't leave. I was planning on parking my RV in your driveway when maga transitions to rats at the dump ...
The truth.
Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini? Oh My! Seriously, Trump talks like them...
He also dances like them.
He dances like as spastic baboon.
Nah, Hermann Munster on coke.
no need to drag kim guilfoyle into this ...
Yeah, who'd a thunk it?
A rather disturbing admission.
That is just it: His view of the world involves pushing people around to conform to his ideals . You may not have to tell certain people to be mean, but it hedges his bets to do so. Whether or not he gets the chance to implement these mean ideals, the fact that we are yet again trying to contain a hateful-ideologue from turning the United States into a self-devouring nation (that looks very much like the nation he says we are now ) he will still effect the conversation and tremendously stress the constitutional underpinnings of our democracy.
Why on earth would people want Trump to occur?
He and the right wing media machine have spent years priming the pump for authoritarian/fascist rule by not just questioning the accuracy of the mainstream media but by denying it and presenting "alternate facts" to concoct a false narrative. In this false narrative, the country is staggering under an onslaught of evil people coming across our borders to kill, rape and otherwise defile "innocent Americans" (Ohhh, you had better be afraid of them); The country is in the greatest economic downturn ever; The country is being run by a "deep state" authoritarian regime who persecute their enemies using "Lawfare"; The voting system is rigged by Democrats and the Deep-State... the list of lies goes on and o n.
But somehow, the person to fix this is the person who created it out of a fact here, a distortion there, a lot of misleading, deception, and a whole bunch of outright lies? I personally don't think so, but Don-the-Con has a whole bunch of people hornswoggled into believing his phony theories.
Trump lies. Trump cheats. Trump doubles down on falsehoods. Trump is a traitor, not only to the Constitution and the Oath that he took to defend it, but he is a traitor to the people whom he claims to give a shit about. He just wants their votes, wants to be elevated to the presidency for himself . He is anachronistic, a throwback to the caveman ideology of oppression equals strength when what the country and the world need right now is not a big, swinging dickhead who will remove rights from certain people, but rather someone more statesmanlike, who can calmly asses various plans and make choices based on fact and reason instead of who paid them the biggest compliment lately.
Harris/Walz 2024 The ONLY sane choice. Unless one is a Traitor, Too
well done
Thank you.
Crooked Donald is a talk-queen. What we now have is this liar talk queen Crooked Donald teaming up with the world's richest man Elon Musk (and his professional 'baggage') to form the biggest, well-funded, set of lies this nation has ever seen, heard of, and will experience. (God help future elections if candidates keep wasting these wildly exorbitant funds on trying to buy votes!).
Crooked Donald is a strong male figure only if you like a 'daddy' figure who is unreliable and a extreme LIAR. Voting for Crooked Donald will give the nation four more years of noise, extreme politics, and chaos masquerading as "leadership." If that is what some conservatives want to vote for then do it. . . they will be enjoined on the political field of 'battle.'
And his supporters either agree him or don’t care.
as some here have said and would say about this 'I don't give a fuck' and about things in the past - like 1/6.
cause Y wood any patriotic American care if Trump was not really elected and used every and any which way he thought he could, to falsely, and illegally, a tempt to remain in power against the wishes of the voting public as he lied till people died to subvert and like him, pervert, our countries since inception peace full transfer of power to hang the Pence gallows hour, whilst grabbin pussies and attempting to deflower, bout any and all if able to crawl.
Who the fck thinx its ok for our president to override our Constitution, to satisfy one who should be in an institution....
If trump spends the rest of his life in prison let me be clear…..I don’t give a shit.
I am for whatever will get Crooked Donald off my television and out of public service. That 'thing' needs to shut-up for once (and a long time)!
Even after his death, certain people will keep treating him like Nostradamus and keep repeating his worst comments.
That would be better than having 'it" continue addressing the public. Think about it: Crooked Donald - 47th President of the United States. Four more years of his own state court cases, further new indictments, further public denials-whinings about his victimhood at the hands of honest officials, insulting policy changes, PROJECT 2025, vulgarities (this time from a mature elderly president without a filter, and a bogus SCOTUS under Chief Justice Roberts who is no-good, new dynamic chaos, persecutions of innocent people simply following the law to witness against him, persecution of the prosecutors, and finally . . . four more years of bearing up to the 'onslaught' of Crooked Donald ruining 'everything' we have positively come to believe in or accept about this country. Worse, CJ Roberts court of conservative justices have made the office of the president- politically 'bulletproof!"
BTW, the DOJ won't be able to act independent of Crooked Donald, . . . and so many career officials will walk away from their jobs because he will most definitely ask them to do crooked stuff that leaves a bad taste and a mark (only the president will have immunity). And so Crooked Donald won't care about it. He will simply call in the 'second string' and give them their jobs. . . and, we really won't recognize the country or its government anymore.
This is the SHIT Crooked Donald is crafting for 'us.'!
That simply is no way for 'us' to live! We have to do all that we can to end this now. Nip it in the bud! We have got to get deeply SERIOUS. Vote like your way of life depends on it, people!