The SA had millions of members. There is just no comparison. The Proud Boys and Oathkeepers were never big, but they’ve been weakened further by the Jan. 6 trials.
Trump is not “out of trouble.” He’s got lots of it. I don’t know if SCOTUS is completely in the tank for him or not, but SCOTUS does completely suck right now.
I don’t think Trump has the same “pieces” in place as Hitler. Hitler was able to completely take over the government within six months of being in power and eliminate most potential opposition within a year. Trump is not going to be able to do that.
Just IMO, but Flynn seems like an undisciplined clown at this point, which is not to say that he never had accomplishments (looking at Trump videos from the 1990s, he seems like a totally different, mostly normal person).
Mind you, they are not the kind of “smart” I personally admire, but it’s clear that Bannon at least has a high IQ and knows a lot of shit. I know less about Miller.
Well, we’re kinda arguing about the details, which is fine, but let’s take a step back and look at the big picture and see if we agree.
I don’t think Trump, were he to win, could pull off what Hitler did, owing to the following factors:
Trump can’t lead. He also doesn’t have the knowledge base or mental sophistication to understand what his followers tell him and make decisions based on that. His accelerating dementia won’t help any.
The US has much stronger institutions than Weimar Germany did. We have large, powerful, and blue state governments that can and will act on their own. (In contrast, Prussia had already been taken over even before Hitler came to power.)
The US military is unlikely to comply with Trump commands, and Trump has probably ruined his relationship with the leaders via aforementioned comments, etc. Hitler was always very respectful of and careful with the military.
I do think that Trump will try to do some crazy shit, but I don’t think it’s going to work.
He was president for four years, so that should give him a leg up on becoming a fascist dictator were he to win again; though, in Trump’s case, I don’t think it will help him that much. It could help others, however (both those who were in his administration before and those who can use the results of the past Trump administration as a stress test to understand what is possible going forward).
I would say his greatest military achievements were still attributable to his political savvy—i.e., the ongoing invasions that finally, as Churchill warned, led to a world war. Hitler’s advisors strongly warned him, at several junctures, that “this one will be too much,” that the Allies (whatever they called them at that point) would not stand for it. Hitler alone read the political environment properly. The Chamberlains of the world would do anything to avoid all-out war.
And even when they finally were forced to face a committed Allied opponent, he still had chances to turn the war in his favor, chances he largely ignored. Had he not diverted forces to teach Yugoslavia a lesson for their arrogance, had he not ordered forces to Leningrad and Kyiv, he could well have established significant strategic strongholds. Perhaps he would have taken Moscow! Instead he wasted time and resources and permitted the Soviets to replenish.
It’s hard to a recall a single strategic military decision Hitler made once it was WW that wasn’t the exact wrong one. I’m sure there were some good decisions, but, man, was he a terrible supreme leader for a huge two-front war. And his “never cede territory, never surrender, never retreat” policy destroyed his military.
@Aeschines, I do agree that while there are alarming parallels, we can take comfort in Trump’s overall incompetence. Like Hitler, Trump has the inexplicable charisma, the populist appeal, to gain the devoted support of tens of millions of adoring citizens.
But Hitler was a disciplined political strategist, with a cohesive, multi-faceted plan. He learned important lessons from the Beer Hall Putsch, the allegiances that were vital to establish, the incremental steps needed.
Trump is neither disciplined nor strategic, and he learns nothing. Yes, like Hitler, he’s the glue that holds together a power-hungry coalition. Unlike Hitler, he doesn’t really seem to have a plan, nor does he seem inclined to listen to those who might.
The invasions of Poland and then of Western Europe seemed to go pretty darn well, and he got past the Maginot Line very effectively. Dunkirk and then the Battle of Britain were perhaps the first real fuckups. Once the Battle of Britain was lost, he should have cut his losses and tried to keep as much territory under his control while keeping the Soviet Union as a literal ally for as long as possible.
I agree. Hitler’s belief that it was Germany’s right and destiny to have dominion over the continent (and ultimately the world) was his downfall. If he’d have stopped after the Anschluss, he’d have gained a lot and would likely have kept it.
Indeed. And had he stopped after the Anschluss, he actually would not have killed that many people by then and most likely would have gone down in history as an effective and slightly evil dictator but not the greatest monster of all time. /ah
IMHO the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers aren’t militia, they aren’t even proto-militia. At best they’re proto-proto-militia. In insurrectionist terms, they’re a bunch of guys down at the local diner griping and talking shit over their coffee and hash browns. For them to evolve into a real threat- the kind of political terrorists that break up opposition rallies with baseball bats and steel pipes- it would be necessary for everyone to forget the lessons of history we didn’t have the first time around with re. to organizations like the S.A… The very fact that there’s so much alarm over them at so nascent a stage shows my point.
Certainly can’t argue with any of that, except that I feel the military is closer to acquiescence than you think. And I agree that Trump doesn’t have the exact pieces that Hitler did, it’s not the same scenario, but Trump has different pieces that will aid him.
Really the biggest difference I see is the fact that the US is really too big and decentralized to “take over”. A more likely scenario that I see is something I coined “reverse secession”, where Trump takes over the federal government and starts ruling in such a wildly unconstitutional fashion to the point that blue states simply start ignoring him. Trump then declares them to be in rebellion, that they have “BASICALLY SECEDED FROM OUR WONDERFUL UNION”, and starts recruiting red states to take action against “rebels” (read: Democrats and blue-state civic leaders, large city mayors, etc). That’s a scenario that worries me.
Which would be even more troubling because the “constitutionalists” would in this scenario be the rebels. So the country would be divided into two camps both claiming they were maintaining the USA as it was and that it’s the other side who are the usurpers.
That’s why it’s so worrying! The first civil war of course awful, but at least it ideologically distinct. A rogue separatist government declared they were separating. Their rogue army headed by their rogue retired colonel was soundly defeated, most of the rebels gave up their cause and signed loyalty oaths, abolition was codified, and we went back to being a country.
OTOH if the federal government does a reverse secession, and pre-emptively declares blue states to be “in rebellion” then there are no good offramps. It can’t be resolved via an election, it can’t be resolved legislatively, of course we know how SCOTUS will go. There will be at least two competing claims to governmental legitimacy and all kinds of other problems.
