{"id":6263,"date":"2020-09-01T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T00:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/?p=6263"},"modified":"2024-01-08T09:33:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T00:33:43","slug":"top-civil-rights-lawyer-questions-whether-usa-gov-can-contain-trump-and-gop-power-grabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/news\/top-civil-rights-lawyer-questions-whether-usa-gov-can-contain-trump-and-gop-power-grabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Civil Rights Lawyer Questions Whether USA Gov can contain Trump and GOP Power Grabs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Burt Neuborne Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler\u2019s Early Rhetoric and Policies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Steven Rosenfeld<\/a> *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The <\/em>writer<\/em> is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth<\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (IDN) \u2013 A new book by one of the nation\u2019s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America\u2019s constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler\u2019s extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s\u2014when the Nazis took power in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen\u2019s Guide to Defending Our Republic<\/a><\/em>, Burt Neuborne mostly focuses on how America\u2019s constitutional foundation in 2019\u2014an unrepresentative Congress, the Electoral College and a right-wing Supreme Court majority\u2014is not positioned to withstand Trump\u2019s extreme polarization and GOP power grabs. However, its second chapter, \u201cWhy the Sudden Concern About Fixing the Brakes?,\u201d extensively details Trump\u2019s mimicry of Hitler\u2019s pre-war rhetoric and strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neuborne doesn\u2019t make this comparison lightly. His 55-year career began by challenging the constitutionality of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. He became the ACLU\u2019s national legal director in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He was founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in the 1990s. He has been part of more than 200 Supreme Court cases and Holocaust reparation litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy does an ignorant, narcissistic buffoon like Trump trigger such anxiety? Why do so many Americans feel it existentially (not just politically) important to resist our forty-fifth president?\u201d he writes. \u201cPartly it\u2019s just aesthetics. Trump is such a coarse and appalling man that it\u2019s hard to stomach his presence in Abraham Lincoln\u2019s house. But that\u2019s not enough to explain the intensity of my dread. LBJ was coarse. Gerald Ford and George W. Bush were dumb as rocks. Richard Nixon was an anti-Semite. Bill Clinton\u2019s mistreatment of women dishonored his office. Ronald Reagan was a dangerous ideologue. I opposed each of them when they appeared to exceed their constitutional powers. But I never felt a sense of existential dread. I never sensed that the very existence of a tolerant democracy was in play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A younger Trump, according to his first wife\u2019s divorce filings, kept and studied a book translating and annotating<\/a> Adolf Hitler\u2019s pre-World War II speeches in a locked bedside cabinet, Neuborne noted. The English edition of My New Order<\/a>, published in 1941, also had analyses<\/a> of the speeches\u2019 impact on his era\u2019s press and politics. \u201cUgly and appalling as they are, those speeches are masterpieces of demagogic manipulation,\u201d Neuborne says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWatching Trump work his crowds, though, I see a dangerously manipulative narcissist unleashing the demagogic spells that he learned from studying Hitler\u2019s speeches\u2014spells that he cannot control and that are capable of eroding the fabric of American democracy,\u201d Neuborne says. \u201cYou see, we\u2019ve seen what these rhetorical techniques can do. Much of Trump\u2019s rhetoric\u2014as a candidate and in office\u2014mirrors the strategies, even the language, used by Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s to erode German democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Americans may seize or condemn Neuborne\u2019s analysis, which has more than 20 major points of comparison. The author repeatedly says his goal is not \u201cequating\u201d the men\u2014as \u201cit trivializes Hitler\u2019s obscene crimes to compare them to Trump\u2019s often pathetic foibles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the book has a larger frame: whether federal checks and balances\u2014Congress, the Supreme Court, the Electoral College\u2014can contain the havoc that Trump thrives on and the Republican Party at large has embraced. But the Trump-Hitler compilation is a stunning warning, because, as many Holocaust survivors have said, few Germans or Europeans expected what unfolded in the years after Hitler amassed power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how Neuborne introduces this section. Many recent presidents have been awful, \u201cBut then there was Donald Trump, the only president in recent American history to openly despise the twin ideals\u2014individual dignity and fundamental equality\u2014upon which the contemporary United States is built. When you confront the reality of a president like Trump, the state of both sets of brakes\u2014internal [constitutional] and external [public resistance]\u2014become hugely important because Donald Trump\u2019s political train runs on the most potent and dangerous fuel of all: a steady diet of fear, greed, loathing, lies, and envy. It\u2019s a toxic mixture that has destroyed democracies before, and can do so again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGive Trump credit,\u201d he (Neuborne) continues. \u201cHe did his homework well and became the twenty-first-century master of divisive rhetoric. We\u2019re used to thinking of Hitler\u2019s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn\u2019t take power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump\u2019s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. The Nazis did not overthrow the Weimar Republic. It fell into their hands as the fruit of Hitler\u2019s satanic ability to mesmerize enough Germans to trade their birthright for a pottage of scapegoating, short-term economic gain, xenophobia, and racism. It could happen here.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

20 Common Themes, Rhetorical Tactics and Dangerous Policies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are 20 serious points of comparison between the early Hitler and Trump:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Neither was elected by a majority. Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, receiving votes by 25.3 percent of all eligible American voters. \u201cThat\u2019s just a little less than the percentage of the German electorate that turned to the Nazi Party in 1932\u201333,\u201d Neuborne writes. \u201cUnlike the low turnouts in the United States, turnout in Weimar Germany averaged just over 80 percent of eligible voters.\u201d He continues, \u201cOnce installed as a minority chancellor in January 1933, Hitler set about demonizing his political opponents, and no one\u2014not the vaunted, intellectually brilliant German judiciary; not the respected, well-trained German police; not the revered, aristocratic German military; not the widely admired, efficient German government bureaucracy; not the wealthy, immensely powerful leaders of German industry; and not the powerful center-right political leaders of the Reichstag\u2014mounted a serious effort to stop him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Both found direct communication channels to their base. By 1936\u2019s Olympics, Nazi narratives dominated German cultural and political life. \u201cHow on earth did Hitler pull it off? What satanic magic did Trump find in Hitler\u2019s speeches?\u201d Neuborne asks. He addresses Hitler\u2019s extreme rhetoric soon enough, but notes that Hitler found a direct communication pathway\u2014the Nazi Party gave out radios with only one channel, tuned to Hitler\u2019s voice, bypassing Germany\u2019s news media. Trump has an online equivalent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDonald Trump\u2019s tweets, often delivered between midnight and dawn, are the twenty-first century\u2019s technological embodiment of Hitler\u2019s free plastic radios,\u201d Neuborne says. \u201cTrump\u2019s Twitter account, like Hitler\u2019s radios, enables a charismatic leader to establish and maintain a personal, unfiltered line of communication with an adoring political base of about 30\u201340 percent of the population, many (but not all) of whom are only too willing, even anxious, to swallow Trump\u2019s witches\u2019 brew of falsehoods, half-truths, personal invective, threats, xenophobia, national security scares, religious bigotry, white racism, exploitation of economic insecurity, and a never ending-search for scapegoats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Both blame others and divide on racial lines. As Neuborne notes, \u201cHitler used his single-frequency radios to wax hysterical to his adoring base about his pathological racial and religious fantasies glorifying Aryans and demonizing Jews, blaming Jews (among other racial and religious scapegoats) for German society\u2019s ills.\u201d That is comparable to \u201cTrump\u2019s tweets and public statements, whether dealing with black-led demonstrations against police violence, white-led racist mob violence, threats posed by undocumented aliens, immigration policy generally, protests by black and white professional athletes, college admission policies, hate speech, even response to hurricane damage in Puerto Rico,\u201d he says. Again and again, Trump uses \u201cracially tinged messages calculated to divide whites from people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Both relentlessly demonize opponents. \u201cHitler\u2019s radio harangues demonized his domestic political opponents, calling them parasites, criminals, cockroaches, and various categories of leftist scum,\u201d Neuborne notes. \u201cTrump\u2019s tweets and speeches similarly demonize his political opponents. Trump talks about the country being \u2018infested\u2019 with dangerous aliens of color. He fantasizes about jailing Hillary Clinton, calls Mexicans rapists, refers to \u2018shithole countries,\u2019 degrades anyone who disagrees with him, and dreams of uprooting thousands of allegedly disloyal bureaucrats in the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA, who he calls \u2018the deep state\u2019 and who, he claims, are sabotaging American greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. They unceasingly attack objective truth. \u201cBoth Trump and Hitler maintained a relentless assault on the very idea of objective truth,\u201d he continues. \u201cEach began the assault by seeking to delegitimize the mainstream press. Hitler quickly coined the epithet L\u00fcgenpresse (literally \u2018lying press\u2019) to denigrate the mainstream press. Trump uses a paraphrase of Hitler\u2019s lying press epithet\u2014\u2018fake news\u2019\u2014cribbed, no doubt, from one of Hitler\u2019s speeches. For Trump, the mainstream press is a \u2018lying press\u2019 that publishes \u2018fake news.\u2019\u201d Hitler attacked his opponents as spreading false information to undermine his positions, Neuborne says, just as Trump has attacked \u201celites\u201d for disseminating false news, \u201cespecially his possible links to the Kremlin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. They relentlessly attack mainstream media. Trump\u2019s assaults on the media echo Hitler\u2019s, Neuborne says, noting that he \u201crepeatedly attacks the \u2018failing New York Times,\u2019 leads crowds in chanting \u2018CNN sucks,\u2019 [and] is personally hostile to most reporters.\u201d He cites the White House\u2019s refusal to fly the flag at half-mast after the murder of five journalists in Annapolis in June 2018, Trump\u2019s efforts to punish CNN by blocking a merger of its corporate parent, and trying to revoke federal Postal Service contracts held by Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Their attacks on truth include science. Neuborne notes, \u201cBoth Trump and Hitler intensified their assault on objective truth by deriding scientific experts, especially academics who question Hitler\u2019s views on race or Trump\u2019s views on climate change, immigration, or economics. For both Trump and Hitler, the goal is (and was) to eviscerate the very idea of objective truth, turning everything into grist for a populist jury subject to manipulation by a master puppeteer. In both Trump\u2019s and Hitler\u2019s worlds, public opinion ultimately defines what is true and what is false.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. Their lies blur reality\u2014and supporters spread them. \u201cTrump\u2019s pathological penchant for repeatedly lying about his behavior can only succeed in a world where his supporters feel free to embrace Trump\u2019s \u2018alternative facts\u2019 and treat his hyperbolic exaggerations as the gospel truth,\u201d Neuborne says. \u201cOnce Hitler had delegitimized the mainstream media by a series of systematic attacks on its integrity, he constructed a fawning alternative mass media designed to reinforce his direct radio messages and enhance his personal power. Trump is following the same path, simultaneously launching bitter attacks on the mainstream press while embracing the so-called alt-right media, co-opting both Sinclair Broadcasting and the Rupert Murdoch\u2013owned Fox Broadcasting Company as, essentially, a Trump Broadcasting Network.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. Both orchestrated mass rallies to show status. \u201cOnce Hitler had cemented his personal communications link with his base via free radios and a fawning media and had badly eroded the idea of objective truth, he reinforced his emotional bond with his base by holding a series of carefully orchestrated mass meetings dedicated to cementing his status as a charismatic leader, or F\u00fchrer,\u201d Neuborne writes. \u201cThe powerful personal bonds nurtured by Trump\u2019s tweets and Fox\u2019s fawning are also systematically reinforced by periodic, carefully orchestrated mass rallies (even going so far as to co-opt a Boy Scout Jamboree in 2017), reinforcing Trump\u2019s insatiable narcissism and his status as a charismatic leader.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10. They embrace extreme nationalism. \u201cHitler\u2019s strident appeals to the base invoked an extreme version of German nationalism, extolling a brilliant German past and promising to restore Germany to its rightful place as a preeminent nation,\u201d Neuborne says. \u201cTrump echoes Hitler\u2019s jingoistic appeal to ultranationalist fervor, extolling American exceptionalism right down to the slogan \u2018Make America Great Again,\u2019 a paraphrase of Hitler\u2019s promise to restore German greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11. Both made closing borders a centerpiece. \u201cHitler all but closed Germany\u2019s borders, freezing non-Aryan migration into the country and rendering it impossible for Germans to escape without official permission. Like Hitler, Trump has also made closed borders a centerpiece of his administration,\u201d Neuborne continues. \u201cHitler barred Jews. Trump bars Muslims and seekers of sanctuary from Central America. When the lower courts blocked Trump\u2019s Muslim travel ban, he unilaterally issued executive orders replacing it with a thinly disguised substitute that ultimately narrowly won Supreme Court approval under a theory of extreme deference to the president.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12. They embraced mass detention and deportations. \u201cHitler promised to make Germany free from Jews and Slavs. Trump promises to slow, stop, and even reverse the flow of non-white immigrants, substituting Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, and Central Americans of color for Jews and Slavs as scapegoats for the nation\u2019s ills. Trump\u2019s efforts to cast dragnets to arrest undocumented aliens where they work, live, and worship, followed by mass deportation\u2026 echo Hitler\u2019s promise to defend Germany\u2019s racial identity,\u201d he writes, also noting that Trump has \u201cstooped to tearing children from their parents [as Nazis in World War II would do] to punish desperate efforts by migrants to find a better life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13. Both used borders to protect selected industries. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump seeks to use national borders to protect his favored national interests, threatening to ignite protectionist trade wars with Europe, China, and Japan similar to the trade wars that, in earlier incarnations, helped to ignite World War I and World War II,\u201d Neuborne writes. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump aggressively uses our nation\u2019s political and economic power to favor selected American corporate interests at the expense of foreign competitors and the environment, even at the price of international conflict, massive inefficiency, and irreversible pollution [climate change].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14. They cemented their rule by enriching elites. \u201cHitler\u2019s version of fascism shifted immense power\u2014both political and financial\u2014to the leaders of German industry. In fact, Hitler governed Germany largely through corporate executives,\u201d he continues. \u201cTrump has also presided over a massive empowerment\u2014and enrichment\u2014of corporate America. Under Trump, large corporations exercise immense political power while receiving huge economic windfalls and freedom from regulations designed to protect consumers and the labor force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHitler despised the German labor movement, eventually destroying it and imprisoning its leaders. Trump also detests strong unions, seeking to undermine any effort to interfere with the prerogatives of management.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

15. Both rejected international norms. \u201cHitler\u2019s foreign policy rejected international cooperation in favor of military and economic coercion, culminating in the annexation of the Sudetenland, the phony Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the horrors of global war,\u201d Neuborne notes. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump is deeply hostile to multinational cooperation, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the nuclear agreement with Iran, threatening to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, abandoning our Kurdish allies in Syria, and even going so far as to question the value of NATO, our post-World War II military alliance with European democracies against Soviet expansionism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

16. They attack domestic democratic processes. \u201cHitler attacked the legitimacy of democracy itself, purging the voting rolls, challenging the integrity of the electoral process, and questioning the ability of democratic government to solve Germany\u2019s problems,\u201d Neuborne notes. \u201cTrump has also attacked the democratic process, declining to agree to be bound by the outcome of the 2016 elections when he thought he might lose, supporting the massive purge of the voting rolls allegedly designed to avoid (nonexistent) fraud, championing measures that make it harder to vote, tolerating\u2014if not fomenting\u2014massive Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, encouraging mob violence at rallies, darkly hinting at violence if Democrats hold power, and constantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections unless he wins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

17. Both attack the judiciary and rule of law. \u201cHitler politicized and eventually destroyed the vaunted German justice system. Trump also seeks to turn the American justice system into his personal playground,\u201d Neuborne writes. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump threatens the judicially enforced rule of law, bitterly attacking American judges who rule against him, slyly praising Andrew Jackson for defying the Supreme Court, and abusing the pardon power by pardoning an Arizona sheriff found guilty of criminal contempt of court for disobeying federal court orders to cease violating the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18. Both glorify the military and demand loyalty oaths. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump glorifies the military, staffing his administration with layers of retired generals (who eventually were fired or resigned), relaxing control over the use of lethal force by the military and the police, and demanding a massive increase in military spending,\u201d Neuborne writes. Just as Hitler \u201cimposed an oath of personal loyalty on all German judges\u201d and demanded courts defer to him, \u201cTrump\u2019s already gotten enough deference from five Republican [Supreme Court] justices to uphold a largely Muslim travel ban that is the epitome of racial and religious bigotry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has also demanded loyalty oaths. \u201cHe fired James Comey, a Republican appointed in 2013 as FBI director by President Obama, for refusing to swear an oath of personal loyalty to the president; excoriated and then sacked Jeff Sessions, his handpicked attorney general, for failing to suppress the criminal investigation into\u2026 Trump\u2019s possible collusion with Russia in influencing the 2016 elections; repeatedly threatened to dismiss Robert Mueller, the special counsel carrying out the investigation; and called again and again for the jailing of Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, leading crowds in chants of \u2018lock her up.\u2019\u201d A new chant, \u201csend her back,\u201d has since emerged at Trump rallies directed at non-white Democratic congresswomen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

19. They proclaim unchecked power. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump has intensified a disturbing trend that predated his administration of governing unilaterally, largely through executive orders or proclamations,\u201d Neuborne says, citing the Muslim travel ban, trade tariffs, unraveling of health and environmental safety nets, ban on transgender military service, and efforts to end President Obama\u2019s protection for Dreamers. \u201cLike Hitler, Trump claims the power to overrule Congress and govern all by himself. In 1933, Hitler used the pretext of the Reichstag fire to declare a national emergency and seize the power to govern unilaterally. The German judiciary did nothing to stop him. German democracy never recovered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Congress refused to give Trump funds for his border wall even after he threw a tantrum and shut down the government, Trump, like Hitler, declared a phony national emergency and claimed the power to ignore Congress,\u201d Neuborne continues. \u201cDon\u2019t count on the Supreme Court to stop him. Five justices gave the game away on the President\u2019s unilateral travel ban. They just might do the same thing on the border wall.\u201d It did in late July, ruling that Trump could divert congressionally appropriated funds from the Pentagon budget\u2014undermining constitutional separation of powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20. Both relegate women to subordinate roles. \u201cFinally,\u201d writes Neuborne, \u201cHitler propounded a misogynistic, stereotypical view of women, valuing them exclusively as wives and mothers while excluding them from full participation in German political and economic life. Trump may be the most openly misogynist figure ever to hold high public office in the United States, crassly treating women as sexual objects, using nondisclosure agreements and violating campaign finance laws to shield his sexual misbehavior from public knowledge, attacking women who come forward to accuse men of abusive behavior, undermining reproductive freedom, and opposing efforts by women to achieve economic equality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whither Constitutional Checks and Balances?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of Neuborne\u2019s book is not centered on Trump\u2019s fealty to Hitler\u2019s methods and early policies. He notes, as many commentators have, that Trump is following the well-known contours of authoritarian populists and dictators: \u201cthere\u2019s always a charismatic leader, a disaffected mass, an adroit use of communications media, economic insecurity, racial or religious fault lines, xenophobia, a turn to violence, and a search for scapegoats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bigger problem, and the subject of most of the book, is that the federal architecture intended to be a check and balance against tyrants, is not poised to act. Congressional representation is fundamentally anti-democratic. In the Senate, politicians representing 18 percent of the national population\u2014epicenters of Trump\u2019s base\u2014can cast 51 percent of the chamber\u2019s votes. A Republican majority from rural states, representing barely 40 percent of the population, controls the chamber. It repeatedly thwarts legislation reflecting multicultural America\u2019s values\u2014and creates a brick wall for impeachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House of Representatives is not much better. Until 2018, this decade\u2019s GOP-majority House, a product of 2011\u2019s extreme Republican gerrymanders, was also unrepresentative of the nation\u2019s demographics. That bias still exists in the Electoral College, as the size of a state\u2019s congressional delegation equals its allocation of votes. That formula is fair as far as House members go, but allocating votes based on two senators per state hurts urban America. Consider that California\u2019s population is 65 times larger than Wyoming\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court\u2019s majority remains in the hands of justices appointed by Republican presidents\u2014and favors that party\u2019s agenda. Most Americans are unaware that the court\u2019s partisan majority has only changed twice since the Civil War\u2014in 1937, when a Democratic-appointed majority took over, and in 1972, when a Republican-appointed majority took over. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell\u2019s blocking of President Obama\u2019s final nominee thwarted a twice-a-century change. Today\u2019s hijacked Supreme Court majority has only just begun deferring to Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neuborne wants to be optimistic that a wave of state-based resistance, call it progressive federalism, could blunt Trump\u2019s power grabs and help the country return to a system embracing, rather than demonizing, individual dignity and fundamental equality. But he predicts that many Americans who supported Trump in 2016 (largely, he suggests, because their plights have been overlooked for many years by federal power centers and by America\u2019s capitalist hubs) won\u2019t desert Trump\u2014not while he\u2019s in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen tyrants like Hitler are ultimately overthrown, their mass support vanishes retroactively\u2014everyone turns out to have been in the resistance\u2014but the mass support was undeniably there,\u201d he writes. \u201cThere will, of course, be American quislings who will enthusiastically support an American tyrant. There always are\u2014everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, Neuborne doesn\u2019t expect there will be a \u201cconstitutional mechanic in the sky ready to swoop down and save American democracy from Donald Trump at the head of a populist mob.\u201d Whatever Trump thinks he is or isn\u2019t doing, his rhetorical and strategic role model\u2014the early Hitler\u2014is what makes Trump and today\u2019s GOP so dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven if all that Trump is doing is marching to that populist drum, he is unleashing forces that imperil the fragile fabric of a multicultural democracy,\u201d Neuborne writes. \u201cBut I think there\u2019s more. The parallels\u2014especially the links between L\u00fcgenpresse and \u2018fake news,\u2019 and promises to restore German greatness and \u2018Make America Great Again\u2019\u2014are just too close to be coincidental. I\u2019m pretty sure that Trump\u2019s bedside study of Hitler\u2019s speeches\u2014especially the use of personal invective, white racism, and xenophobia\u2014has shaped the way Trump seeks to gain political power in our time. I don\u2019t for a moment believe that Trump admires what Hitler eventually did with his power [genocide], but he damn well admires\u2014and is successfully copying\u2014the way that Hitler got it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Note: This article is published courtesy of Common Dreams<\/a>. Views expressed are the writer\u2019s and not necessarily shared by the International Press Syndicate and its flagship agency IDN. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely. <\/em>[IDN-InDepthNews \u2013 01 September 2020].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: We\u2019re used to thinking of Hitler\u2019s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn\u2019t take power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump\u2019s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. (Photo: photolibrarian\/Flickr\/cc)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burt Neuborne Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler\u2019s Early Rhetoric and Policies By Steven Rosenfeld * The writer is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (IDN) \u2013 A new book by one of the nation\u2019s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,39,93,32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-north-america","9":"category-politics","10":"category-regions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6265,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6263\/revisions\/6265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}