On Springfield OH, Trump/Vance and Nazis


Godwin’s Law states that as an online thread gets longer, the chances that someone will mention Hitler or Nazis approaches unity. Comparing Hitler or Nazis to contemporary people is the conversational equivalent to going nuclear. For that reason, I try to avoid such comparisons except in discussions around WWII and Holocaust history.

But the comparison between the language of Trump/Vance and the Nazis is unavoidable:

• Trump and his people have stated plans to round up immigrants in the US and put them in concentration camps until they can be deported. Yes, I know the British herded Boers into concentration camps before Hitler came along—the Nazis didn’t invent them, they just perfected them. And historian Timothy Snyder points out that the Nazi death camps were all outside of German soil. And yes, I know that American citizens of Japanese descent were rounded up and put in concentration camps here in the US after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor;

• Often forgotten is that the original plan of the Nazis was to *deport* Jews, not to exterminate them. One discussed destination was Madagascar;

• The lies being told about immigrants by Trump/Vance are eerily similar to the vilification of Jews by Hitler and the Nazis—that they are dirty, ignorant, criminals and disease-ridden. This abuse has reached a recent apotheosis in their attacks on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

Don’t think the lies being spread about Haitians in Ohio rises to Nazi levels? American neo-Nazis disagree. They marched there in support of Trump/Vance xenophobia, replete with swastika flags. There have been bomb threats and death threats in the wake of baseless claims that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets and spreading AIDS and TB.

The right-wing Germans in the military and government in 1933 Germany believed that Hitler and his brownshirts could be controlled. They were wrong. I’m not saying Trump/Vance *are* Hitler, but they’re using the same toolkit to foment violence in America that the Hitler used to foment violence in Germany. 

In the 1920s and early ‘30s, Hitler and the Nazis were weak and unpopular. Had good Germans stood up to Hitler then, European history would be different and tens of millions of lives would have been saved. Now is the time for Americans to stand up to Hitler/Nazi wannabes. 

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-jd-vance-and-a-virulent-neo-nazi-group-inflamed-tensions-over-migrants-in-springfield

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