The Mythic Past

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Political Violence, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Invariably, fascist political leaders justify their ideas by destroying the common view of history and replacing it with a mythic past to which they aspire to return. Some thinkers have said this is the predominant trait of fascism. Fascists use propaganda to change the perception of them and disarm their opponents by promoting anti-intellectualism or anti-reason in order to insulate their false myths from reasoned attack.

 

As a result, they often attack the educational system to ensure that only their rosy view of history is taught and challenges are discredited. For example, although not yet fascists, this is what American conservatives have been doing in the US by making sure that their children only hear comfortable stories which won’t challenge them. They don’t want their children to be challenged. They want their children to preach the party line that Americans have always been good and their children need never feel bad about their history.  Again, the Nazis were masters of such techniques.

As Jason Stanley said in his book How Fascism Works, ,

“Eventually with these techniques and racist politics create a state of unreality, in which conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned debate.

As the common understanding of reality crumbles, fascist politics makes room for dangerous and false beliefs to take root. First, fascist ideology seeks to naturalize group difference thereby giving the appearance of natural, scientific support for a hierarchy of human worth. When social rankings and division solidify, fear fills in for a understanding between groups. Any progress for a minority stokes feelings of victimhood among the dominant population.”

 

I have seen this happening many times in the US and Canada. Dominant groups like Christians, or heterosexuals, or whites see any progress for minorities as taking away from their rights and privileges. They begin to see themselves as the beleaguered group, even though they are the dominant group. They feel unmoored by the perceived disappearance of their privilege. It is very disturbing to see privileges slip away. It seems not only unfair, but unreasonable. So long for a time they thought it was better. A time when their beloved country was great.

But we must remember that the mythic past is just that—a myth. It is unreal. We must hang on to reality. It is our only way to ensure that we get out of this mess.

When we are in the grip of such myths we ourselves, “us”, as lawful citizens, as the  good guys and “them” as criminals who are threatening the society we love. Stanley put it this way:

“As fear of “them” grows, “we” come to represent everything virtuous. “We” live in the rural heartland, where pure values and traditions of the nation still miraculously exist despite the major  threat of cosmopolitan from the nation’s cities, alongside hordes of minorities who live there, emboldened by  liberal tolerance. “We” are hardworking, and have earned our pride of place by struggle and merit. “They” are lazy, surviving off the goods we produce by exploiting the generosity of welfare systems, or employing corrupt institutions, such as labour unions, meant to separate honest, hardworking citizens from their pay. “We” are the maker; “they” are the takers.”

 

These of course are myths. History is replete with them. Many countries have harboured them. Fascist Italy. Nazi Germany. America, Canada and many others. We have them. We must not give in to them. We must recognize their holes. Their big holes that weak leaders try to fill with bombast and lies. It happened in the 1930s. It is happening again today.

Let me comment briefly on the election for an American president tomorrow. I will feel the same unease tomorrow I feel today no matter who wins the election. Such feelings won’t disappear in a day. The myths are too engrained. They are deep. Millions of people in America and Canada and elsewhere believe those myths and are drawn to them. They must be challenged by an awakened electorate that is on its guard. Or we will suffer a heavy price. We can still do it, but will we do it? Only time will tell.

 

How Fascism Works

American Fascism, Books, Death of Truth, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Philosopher Jason Stanley argued  in his excellent book How Fascism Works, that in essence “fascist politics dehumanizes minority groups.” It does that even if the state is not fascist. I have called this the philosophy of the bully. Pick on the vulnerable. In the recent election in the US the Republicans have made this a major part of their platform.  Pick on the immigrants and the trans kids in particular. Easy targets for bullies. The shocking thing is how many Americans love this.

 

What fascist policies do, according to Stanley is amplify the divisions in society. It takes advantage of them. For example, in Nazi German the Nazis intensified the beliefs that were already pretty common that German society had been undermined and sold out by Jews and their supporters, even though the percentage of Jews was very small. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia:

“According to the census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of Germany, including the Saar region (which at that time was still under the administration of the League of Nations), was approximately 505,000 people out of a total population of 67 million, or somewhat less than 0.75 percent. That number represented a reduction from the estimated 523,000 Jews living in Germany in January 1933; the decrease was due in part to emigration following the Nazi takeover in January. (An estimated 37,000 Jews emigrated from Germany during 1933.)’

 

This was really a very small percentage of the people and it was absurd and immoral to lay the blame for Germany’s decline on such small numbers, just as it is absurd and immoral to blame Trans-gender people and their sympathizers for poisoning the United States as so many Conservatives have been claiming.

 

What fascists do is turn the hated group (the others) into an enemy—i.e. “them.”  Then the world is turned into one of “Us” versus “Them.” And, of course, they [or them] can be dehumanized into something non-human, which makes them ripe for targeting. This is what Jason Stanley said about fascist politics:

“The most telling symptom of fascist politics is division. It aims to separate a population into an “us” and a “them.”  Many kinds of political movements involve such a division; for example, Communist politics involves describing the very specific way that fascist politics distinguishes “us” from “them,” appealing to ethnic, religious, or racial distinctions, and using this division to shape ideology and, ultimately policy. Every mechanism of fascist politics works to create or solidify this distinction.’

 

 

And of course, the most extreme manner of “Us’ vs “them” is to dehumanize them. Since it is the most extreme version of this, it can lead to the most extreme consequences—such as placing them into concentration camps and killing them.  That is why it is so disturbing to see Donald Trump and millions of his supporters start this awful process. Once the process is begun it is not clear how we can stop it or how far it can go. Germany demonstrated it can go very far indeed.

 

Often fascist politicians justify their abhorrent ideas by appealing to a common belief in a mythic past—a golden age where things were great.  For example, Donald Trump says he wants to bring America back to greatness whatever that means. But clearly it was some time in the past where things were great. At least for some—i.e. the privileged. It might be a time when men were men and women were women. Or the whites were in ascendance without any fear that they would be replaced. Again, whatever that means.

What it really means is that it justifies pummelling the others to make things better for those doing the pummelling.

 

To me it really seems that this is where America is headed.  And Canada, as usual, is not that far behind.

 

 

Is it extremism to call Trump a fascist?

2017 Trip to Southwest USA, American Fascism, Evolution, Extremism, Populism, Right-wing Extremism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Sometimes the truth is extreme. In Rwanda when Hutus launched genocidal attacks against the Tuttis minority in rhw  1990’s people were right to call it genocide. When Mussolini and Hitler launched their attacks on Jews it was right to call this fascism. These were extreme charges, but they were justified. They were fascists.

Yesterday, Donald Trump got angry at Liz Cheney. He sees her as a traitor. This is what Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin,

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

 

Trump is saying a political opponent who disagrees with him which of course she has the right to do, should be put in front of a firing squad. Is that not fascism clear and simple?  It is admittedly an extreme thing to say that Trump is a fascist.  But is he not nailed by his own words? He is a fascist.

This what CNN reported,

“Trump’s suggestion that Cheney be fired upon represents an escalation of the violent language he has used to target his political foes. And it comes days before an election in which the former president — who never accepted his 2020 loss — has already undermined public confidence. In recent weeks, he has also suggested a military crackdown on political opponents he has described as “the enemy within.”

 

Trump has suggested the military be used against his political foes. Trump’s rhetoric has increasingly become so unhinged that it is very difficult to deny that Trump is a fascist. Eventually, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck it must be a duck.

I think Trump must be a fascist. That is extreme, but I think it is true.

 

A License to Kill

American Fascism, Extremism, Political Violence, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

The problem—the serious problem—with words that contain dehumanizing designations is that such words license the foulest actions. They can license murder and even genocide. This was made clear in the era of authoritarian dictators in the 1930s and again in Rwanda and many other violent places. We should not go there again.

Language that dehumanizes the other is acutely dangerous.  When we come to believe—often unconsciously—that the other is not human that gives us a license to kill.  We need no Double 00 formal appointment. We are allowed to kill. That is what happened in Nazi Germany. That is what happened in Rwanda. That is what could happen in modern America, or Hungary, or the United States or Canada.

Dehumanizing ideas or words can push people to exclude the dehumanized groups because as Jason Stanley said in his book How Fascism Works.

“the process of dehumanization limits the capacity empathy among citizens leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme circumstances, mass extermination.”

 

This sounds extreme, because it is extreme, but it has happened in advanced countries such as Germany. Genocides and campaigns of ethnic cleansing are preceded by periods of dehumanization by words. Words are important. Words issue licenses to kill. . We should never ignore them.

As Jason Stanley reminded us in his book ,

“In the cases of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and contemporary Myanmar, the victims of ethnic cleansing were subjected to vicious rhetorical attacks by leaders and in the press for months or years before the regime turned genocidal. With these precedents it should concern all Americans that as a candidate  and as president, Donald Trump has publicly and explicitly insulted immigrant groups.”

 

And, disturbingly since Stanley wrote these words Trump’s rhetoric has become broader and more vicious. Things are getting more dangerous. It’s time for us to take heed.

The Language of Pestilence

American Fascism, Decline of the west, Extremism, Immigration and Refugees, Political Violence, Populism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

By now people around the world have realized the dangers of dehumanization.  The Republicans in the American election led by Donald Trump are using dehumanizing language to rile up their own supporters against immigrants, woke adults and children, and the political opposition.

I remember when I first heard about dehumanizing language during the genocide in in Rwanda in 1994.  At the time Hutus were a majority in Rwanda even though the Tutsi minority dominated the country for many years thanks to former European colonizers who preferred the Tutsi as their allies when Europeans imposed their will on the country. Naturally, this was resented by the majority Hutus for many years, but they did little about it until the 1990s.

In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries such as Uganda. The Tutsi in exile always yearned to come back to power in Rwanda which they thought of as “their country”.  You might say they wanted to make Rwanda great again. A group of Tutsi exiles formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and their purpose was to restore the Tutsi minority to power. This group invaded Rwanda in 1990.

Then on April 6, 1994 an aircraft carrying the President of Rwanda and the president of the neighbouring country of Burundi was shot down. Both presidents were Hutus. This was the spark that turned dehumanzing language into action. Violent action.

As a result, the Hutus of Rwanda used this as an excuse to slaughter the Tutsi and it turned genocidal later that year, in a 100 day reign of terror in which about 800,000 Tutsi were murdered.  As the BBC reported,

“Neighbours killed neighbours and some husbands even killed their Tutsi wives, saying they would be killed if they refused. At the time, ID cards had people’s ethnic group on them, so militias set up roadblocks where Tutsis were slaughtered, often with machetes which most Rwandans kept around the house. Thousands of Tutsi women were taken away and kept as sex slaves.”

 

Even though Tutsi and Hutus had lived together in Rwanda  as neighbours for decades, the slaughter was incredibly vicious. Why was that? The  BBC tried to answer the question, ‘Why was it so vicious’? This is what they said,

“Rwanda has always been a tightly controlled society, organised like a pyramid from each district up to the top of government. The then-governing party, MRND, had a youth wing called the Interahamwe, which was turned into a militia to carry out the slaughter.

Weapons and hit-lists were handed out to local groups, who knew exactly where to find their targets.

The Hutu extremists set up a radio station, RTLM, and newspapers which circulated hate propaganda, urging people to “weed out the cockroaches” meaning kill the Tutsis. The names of prominent people to be killed were read out on radio.

Even priests and nuns have been convicted of killing people, including some who sought shelter in churches.”

 

Such language has been used by Donald Trump during the current presidential election campaign. He has referred to immigration and his political foes as “vermin.” This is the language of dehumanization. And it is incredibly dangerous, as Rwanda demonstrated. No one should assume it is not significant.

 

Hutus were convinced by their own propaganda that the Tutsi were not human. They were cockroaches! And everyone knows cockroaches can be killed at any time with absolute impunity.

The lesson here is that words are important. With language that dehumanizes people into vermin or insects, ordinary people can turn into savage murderers. Dehumanization is the key. If you think your foes are people like you, it is difficult to slaughter them, but not if they are insects or vermin.

This is precisely what Trump has been doing with his rhetoric. He has called them vermin or enemies of the people. He has said he will use the American military to do the job. Hitler did the same thing and we know the result.

This is ugly stuff, but I would submit can lead to worse—namely hate crimes or even worse. This happened in Germany, Rwanda, and other places. Such language can create a slippery slope to atrocities. No country is immune to the problems. Not even the United States.

 

The Loveable Fascist

American Fascism, Conservative, Death of Democracy, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Conservatives in America dismiss the idea that Donald Trump is a fascist. They think the liberals are overreacting. Liberals can’t understand how Americans continue to support Donald Trump after it became obvious, to them at least, that he was a fascist.

Bill Maher had a pretty good explanation. Though it was disturbing. The people in Trump’s administration, like John Kelly who knew him best have said he talks like a fascist, he acts like a fascist, he wants to do fascist things, so he must be a fascist. All of that is true. But as Bill Maher said,

“The problem with pointing out these things is, that’s what his fans like about him. That’s the real problem. Especially men, he is killing it with men, even minority men.”

The Uncomfortable truth is that many Americans—millions of them—love fascists!

Trump does not hide his fascist tendencies. He revels in them. And his fans love it.

It is becoming obvious—Americans love fascism. Particularly American men love fascism.  They love Donald Trump, no matter how crazy he gets. In fact, the crazier he gets the more they like him.

Trump is their loveable fascist!

 

 

Will Trump become a dictator?

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Some people say they are confident that Trump will not become a dictator because he didn’t when he was president last time. Is that good enough?

Adolf Hitler actually got elected as the leader of Nazi Germany. It was only later that he abandoned democracy in favor of fascism. Former General John Kelly, not a liberal and a strong Trump supporter in the past has come out and said Donald Trump meets the definition of a fascist. Yet Trump is very close to winning the election for president of the United States. Should we not be extremely concerned about this?

As New York Times reporter said,

“Few top officials spent more time behind closed doors in the White House with President Donald J. Trump than John F. Kelly, the former Marine general who was his longest-serving chief of staff.”

 

Kelly told the Times that voters should consider fitness and character when selecting a president, even more than a candidate’s stances on the issues. Kelly also told the Times reporter that he had grown disenchanted and distressed by conduct on the part of the president that he considered at times to be inappropriate and showed that Trump had no understanding of the Constitution. That really is not surprising.

According to Kelly, “In many cases, I would agree with some of his policies …but again, it’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected to high office.”

 This is what Kelly told the New York Times,

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said. Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.”

 

It is hardly surprising that after working with Trump, Kelly concluded Trump was unfit for the office of the presidency. New York Times reporter Schmidt also expanded on those remarks as follows,

He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The Atlantic.

How can any American, let alone good conservatives, vote for such a man?

Kelly also said that “on more than one occasion Mr. Trump spoke positively of Hitler.”

None of this proves Trump will become a dictator if elected again. All of it is concerning. To me at least.

 

 

Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

I have always been a bit reluctant to call Donald Trump a fascist.  But now something happened that is tilting me to go all out.

As reported on CNN and reported as well by the New York Times, John Kelly Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff recently said,

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that.  So certainly, he falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

As White House Chief of staff in the Trump administration in which he served as a loyal lieutenant to now come out and warn us that Trump is a fascist is a game changer.  He worked with Trump for a long time. He is not bleeding-heart liberal. To say his former boss is a fascist a very powerful statement.

Kelly is no bleeding-heart liberal. He is a former American General who served as Secretary of Homeland Security before taking the position as White House Chief of Staff in the Trump administration for about a year and a half. And he says Trump is a fascist. How can we not take that seriously?

There is even more. Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said this to CNN, “Clearly, he has a predilection for leaders he perceives to be strong. And that’s just how he breaks the world down. He breaks things down between strong and weak.”  That is precisely, the essential element of fascism, in my view.  Fascism is the political philosophy of the bully.  And Donald Trump is clearly the quintessential bully.

Jacob Heilbrunn the Editor of The National Interest said, this, “he fantasizes the strong man. And that’s the blue print. Crush the media. Eviscerate the independent judiciary and establish his own rule over the country.”

Trump himself, said, “as president you have extreme power.” In his own words, he makes it clear that he has a deep fascination with power and in fact, worships power.  And his own lawyers have persuaded the US Supreme court to adopt this view of presidential power.  No one should assume he won’t abuse that extreme power.  His words have made it clear that he intends to go after his enemies this time around, if he is elected president. Esper said we should take Trump’s words seriously when he says he will use the military against private American citizens. And, as his Defense Secretary, Esper knew Trump well.

Trump has said the country is being pressed by “leftist lunatics…who, if necessary, should be handled by the national guard…or the military.”

According to Kelly, Donald Trump also said, “Hitler did some good things too.” That might be literally true—after all no one is purely evil just as no one is perfectly good—but politically it is dynamite to say so without proper exceptions. How can America Jews vote for Trump? How can we avoid inferring that Donald Trump is a fascist?

Now I am convinced that none of this will make any difference to Trump’s support, except perhaps to inflate it.  His supporters don’t take anything from liberal chatter except that they are out to get Trump and every time they mention such things his support just rises. The more liberals yell, the more Trumpsters are joyful.  Liberal squealing is the music they want to hear. As CNN commentator and Republican strategist Erin Perrine said, “Everybody has already seen this before from Donald Trump or stories about Donald Trump and it hasn’t moved the voters.”  She said Kamala Harris should not waste her time trying to drumbeat opposition to Trump. She should instead push her positive optimistic story instead. Others think it will remind Democrats why they must show up to vote.  We will have to wait for election results. Let me say, I am not optimistic about that.  I fear that deep racial unease and hatred in the US will rise to the surface and hand political victory to Trump. I hope I am wrong. Thank goodness I am wrong so often.

 

Dehumanization: the language of Hate

American Fascism, Extremism, Hate, Immigration and Refugees, Right-wing Extremism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Anne Applebaum understands well the language of dehumanization. Extremists around the world have used it because they know it works. It allows ordinary people to become vicious killers. Even, in some circumstances genocidal killers.

This is how Applebaum described such language:

“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.

It is profoundly disappointing to see such dehumanizing language used by the former American President Donald Trump. It is even more disappointing to see such language electrify a large part of the American public. Until recently such language was not common in American politics, but ever since the arrival of Donald Trump on the scene it has become common.

Applebaum pointed out how George Wallace, whom she called a “notorious racists,” did not use such incendiary language when he advocated for “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He never spoke about blacks as vermin.  He did not say they “poisoned the blood of the nation.” No that is the language of Donald Trump.

Similarly, Franklin D. Roosevelt who sadly ordered the corralling of Japanese Americans into internment camps and he called them “enemy aliens” but never parasites or vermin.  All of this changed with Donald Trump. As Applebaum said,

“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.”

 

According to Applebaum the use of such dehumanizing language by the former president is no accident:

“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.”

 And if you do use such words too much happens!

 Dehumanizing language is the language of hate. Its use by political leaders is sickening. Those who use it  clearly belong in the “basket of deplorables.”

Everyone needs an Uncle Abe”

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

A friend of mine has an uncle Abe. We should all have an uncle Abe. Uncle Abe told my friend, “you know, I know about Stalin.”  Uncle Abe said Stalin could talk about himself for 2 hours straight and people would listen. The same thing happened in Germany where they had Hitler who could talk for 2 hours straight about himself and people listened with rapt attention. Now America has Donald Trump and he does exactly the same thing. These men all love themselves exorbitantly. Watch out for men who like themselves that much!

 

Another person who understands autocrats and fascists is Anne Applebaum. She is an intellectual who has studied autocrats for many years and written profoundly about them. She is sort of an intellectual Uncle Abe.

 

This is what she said in an article in the Atlantic, where she is a frequent contributor:

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.”

 

History is important. We must remember it. We must not make the same mistakes again that we did when Hitler and Stalin came to power. Hitler was elected the leader of his country, but soon after being elected he deep-sixed the democratic garb.  And the people of Germany bought his rhetoric just as Americans have bought, and seem to buying again, his despicable rhetoric. What I have called the rhetoric of the bully. It is hateful rhetoric and every civilization must guard against it. This is what Applebaum said:

“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.”

 

As Anne Applebaum said,

“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.”

 

It is remarkable and deeply troubling the extent to which Trump’s rhetoric mirrors that of Hitler and Stalin. The people of Germany and Russia bought into it.  It could happen again in the United States. According to Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, Trump is a fascist.  We must constantly guard against such rhetoric because it lessens their humanity in the ears of the listener. We don’t empathize with such people because they are different from us. They are not really human.  If we believe that, we can do anything to them with impunity. That is the danger.