Sam Smith - Radio commentator Thom Hartmann had an interesting program on which he discussed the rise of Nazism -something he knew about in part having lived in Germany in the 1980s and talked to some ex-Nazis. What struck me was his mention of the fact that Nazism didn't arrive in one swoop; it was an incremental expansion of power. And the key aspect of this was that each change didn't seem all that dramatic because it was just an alteration compared to what had already been going on.
Donald Trump's disrespect for the law, for Congress, and for democratic decency falls into this same trend. Each step simply builds on the previous and hence does not seem as dramatic as it truly is. In fact, we have already moved far from traditional American values with the Trump regime and must bear in mind that fascism is not a one shot deal. It can happened, as it is right now, incrementally.
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Hitler, like Trump, was elected, supported by millions, excluded some from voting, and ordered the building of camps....
Hitler and the Nazis came to power with the support of more than 10 million workers. Further, that very month, March 1933, the first camp was opened - for the incarceration of officials of the Communist and Social Democratic Parties. And on May 10th 1933 in Berlin banned books were burnt openly by students from the Wilhelm Humboldt University, all of them members of right-wing student organizations and watched by some 70,000 people. The German poet Heinrich Heine wrote some one hundred and ten years earlier 'where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.'
Given that apparently Trump does not read books, and there is already a list of banned books, one wonders if he will object to them being burned...
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