Fascism – American Style

 

By David Starr

 

“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”
–Adolph Hitler

 

Hitler’s remark wouldn’t be possible in the United States years ago, where the U.S. citizenry would rebel against such a state.

 

 But considering the words and actions of the Trump regime, it’s more and more clear that Trump wants to try and impose a totalitarian state, like fascism which is corporate private monopolies aligned with government in a heavily centralized state. It can occur when there is a crisis in capitalism and leading to outright fascism.

 

More and more it’s being proven that Trump is employing similar words and actions Adolph Hitler used. The comparison is becoming more evident.

 

Los Angeles is a shocking example of ICE and LAPD thugs attacking peaceful protesters who are justifiably angered by the fascist actions, spurred on by Trump, of said thugs abducting immigrants–those who became citizens and the undocumented– and deporting them to places like the gulag in El Salvador, whose current leader is as fascist as they come.

 

The Humanist Report showed a segment of what Trump and his fellow Nazis are up to nowadays.

 

The words and actions of Trump are eerily similar to Hitler. 

 

Robert Zarestky, a professor at the University of Houston, provided historical details of Nazi Germany in an article published in Forward, starting with the Reichstag fire:

 

“Flames, of course, were the proximate cause to the power grab by the Nazis a little more than 90 years ago in Weimar Germany. On the evening of Feb. 27, 1933, a fire began inside the Reichstag, the home of the German parliament. Several hours later, firefighters managed to control the conflagration, but not before it destroyed the gilded cupola, turned the debating chamber into a smoldering ruin, and riveted the attention of the government.”

 

It, of course, got the attention of Hitler, who was chancellor. His propagandist Joseph Goebbels made a claim adopted by the Nazis that it was Germany’s Communist Party that started the fire. Zarestky writes that Hermann Goring “deputized the dreaded Sturmabtellung, or stormtroopers, as auxiliary policemen. They poured across the city, picking up and packing off Communist Party members to makeshift prisons that doubled as torture centers.” 

 

Trump and his ICE Gestapo have proceeded to abduct immigrants in particular, as well as cracking down on other “undesirables” who dare to protest his policies. But he has a special dislike for people of color, especially if they are from the Global South. Sounding like a Nazi, Trump once said that there are foreigners who are poisoning the blood of the country. Meaning, people from the Global South.

 

Zarestky also writes how Trump is trying to accumulate power, similar to what Hitler was doing. For example, “As for the Communists who were arrested, the courts, which were still independent, found them innocent of the charges.” Hitler was angered and fashioned a “court system designed to deliver the decisions he demanded.” Just like Trump has demanded.

 

Trump’s cult of personality has gotten to the point where Trump is calling himself a king. University of Connecticut’s newspaper, The Daily Campus, made this clear: “Recently, after Trump called himself a king, a new photograph of Donald Trump was posted by the White House titled ‘Trump: Long Hail the King.’ Trump poses a large threat to democracy and exhibits clear fascist traits, similarly to a man who took over a country many decades ago: Adolf Hitler.”

 

Hitler was determined to make Germany, with its economic problems at the time, return to the status of a great power. The Trump slogan, “Make America Great Again,” reflects the goal of returning the USA to the status of a great power, despite the fact that the USA is already a power, but one that is on a path to self-destruction if it continues to impose itself as leader of a unipolar world.

 

Another comparison of Trump and Hitler was published in the Daily Campus: “Additionally, both Hitler and Trump place a large focus on purifying the blood of their countries.” This was, and is, done by scapegoating people without corporate or institutional power, and has been done to vilify Jews and other “undesirables” by Hitler, and to vilify immigrants as Trump has done to those who are people of color.

 

Truthout published an op-ed which went into detail about the oppression in Los Angeles and the reactions from Angelinos. ICE thugs went there “firing flash-bang grenades, teargas and rubber bullets at civilians” at civilians who were angered by ICE’s intent to abduct immigrants. 

 

According to the op-ed, ICE thugs have “come for immigrants, as they aways said they would. Tackling day laborers at Home Depot, but also seizing whoever, wherever. Workers, students, shoppers, tourists, parents, and little children have been abducted from schools, homes, restaurants, construction sites, and courthouses.”

 

Thus, the anger of civilians in Los Angeles when ICE went there. It sounds similar to the Nazis in Germany who abducted Jews, etc. and put them into “detention centers” in Germany and other countries occupied by the Nazis. 

 

Trump has shown his racist mindset. He called countries in the Global South “shithole countries.” During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly lied about immigrants eating cats and dogs. He killed the policy of Temporary Protected Status. And from the op-ed, the Trump regime “started sending busloads and planeloads of migrants into gulags foreign and domestic.” The largely right-wing Supreme Court, rather than judging Trump as a criminal, give its support to Trump’s Nazi-like policies.

 

The conclusion in the op-ed: “Our friends, neighbors, and coworkers are being targeted. Our communities and our country are under siege. It’s time for us to defend them.”

 

In a further example of his madness, Trump said he may use the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that would allow him to unleash the military on protesters, thus a potential violation of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution protecting the right to protest. Trump’s fellow Nazis also are craving similar moves. The so-called Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth threatened to send in the marines to Los Angeles. And the “border czar” Tom Homan considered the idea of having the feds arrest California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass if they prevented Trump from carrying out his demented policies.

 

Quoting the Rolling Stone’s Fascism Watch, “Trump has wanted his own personal police state, with himself sitting at the top as its undisputed boss, since his first administration.” Hitler wanted, and got, the same thing.

 

The USA, however, isn’t quite the same as Nazi Germany, and thus rebellion by many within the U.S. population. It is matter of self-defense against the Trump regime and its mindless followers.