A short thread on the Nazi/Trump parallels, drawn from research from How To Stop Fascism (see bio): 1/ The modern far right grows from the same ideological rootstock as Hitler/Mussolini - Nietzsche, Sorel, Chamberlain - it's the same crap... but...
2/ In the immediate aftermath of WW1 the German far right was splintered, with the biggest action - not words - being perpetrated by the Freikorps, first against the Spartakist uprising (exactly 102 years ago), then Baltic States...
3/ ... then the Bavarian Soviet. So when Hitlers NSDAP took off it was as a magnet for all paramilitaries, militias, aristocratic fascists etc... but there still remained Trump-style authoritarian conservatives, some even "populist"...
4/ The Beer Hall Putsch was the result of the authoritarians bottling out of their own coup against the Stresemann government... crazed generals, a power-crazed triumvirate, and Hitler's SA and a big militia movement...
5/ The Munich police ended the BHP by opening fire on Hitler's armed mob (who fired first). That's an unfortunate lesson all modern police forces have to remember... so there are clear parallels but let\s be careful...
6/ Trump is not a fascist in his modus operandi - or was not as president, or before the presidency: he has white supremacist and violent misogynist ideas, and he is creating an oligarchic dynasty...
7/ The project of modern fascism, esp in the USA, is to elect right wing populist leaders and make them irremovable democratically, through violent resistance, while operating in the space they provide. [paste that on your fridge door, gonna need it]...
8/ Since Unite the Right (C'ville) Trump has knowingly colluded with the fascists, and the Proud Boys muscled their way into prime position, above the militias etc. Investigations WILL FIND links between WH and the Proud Boys on the day...
9/ But Trump can't operate without the GOP, and no matter how infiltrated it is by fascism/r-w populism, its electoral core remains bourgeois - hence even DeVos and Loeffler jumped ship once the tear gas started...
10/ So there are no parallels with "Nazi Germany" but with the rise of the Nazis, yes, the interplay between authoritarian r-w populism and outright fascism is there, and with the same result: the bourgeois element crapped themselves on the day so no coup... but one was intended
11/ Now what happens after? Hitler was jailed, but only served 5 months. He changed his strategy - to win power through elections rather than a coup. Hence the Capitol attack leaders need to do decades jail time, not months...
12/ The logical route to power for the "Camp Auschwitz" t-shirt wearers is to build a party that can mobilise all of Trump's voters again, gerrymander the states, suppress minority votes and terrorise liberalism and the left...
13/ They probably won't take that route. If they do, that's the American Nazi Party. Significantly @TomCotton disavowal of Trump points to what the German bourgeoisie tried, 1930-33 - right wing authoritarian government...
14/ Let's remember it was the right-wing authoritarians, not the Nazis, who hollowed the constitution so that Hitler could campaign on the slogan "Finish it!" (Schluss Jetzt!) in 1932 presidential election...
15/ The other non-parallel is this: Trump at no stage embraced austerity. He went down fighting for $2000 checks. If Biden does austerity, that will pave the way for a far-right/conservative coalition in 2024...
16/ But not doing austerity is not enough. The Weimar Republic failed because the left never took the far right seriously. Much of my upcoming book is about the failure of Marxism, in Itay and Germany, to see the threat clearly...
17/ The key, going forward, is to remove the stigma from anti-fa and turn America into an ANTI FASCIST REPUBLIC. That's what the modern German Federal Republic is. Look at its laws, its policing, its media culture...
18/ It's not perfect, and a lot of neo-Nazis have slipped thru the net, but the USA needs to de facto, if it cannot de jure, become a "militant democracy". Read my upcoming book for more.
19/ Finally the left needs to get its head straight about the state. Either you want state power through elections, in which case you support the state having a legal monopoly of armed force (not guns bcos 2nd Am). Or not...
20/ Either you want the state to do its job, under the rule of law, with legislative oversight, or you don't. As I say in the book there is NO EXAMPLE IN HISTORY of the labour movement defeating mass fascism on its own...
21// The Reichsbanner, a socialist militia, had 2m members, 200,000 rifle-trained by the cops (!) and it could not stop HItler getting 13 million votes; and as Eve Rosenhaft points out, the KPD had no chance of beating Hitler on its own...
22/ One final parallel with the Nazis: the absolutely useless performance of the media, then and now. Great that some excellent reporters documented the Capitol riot; a shame that most networks, anchors, editors are completely blindsided by WHAT THIS IS. ENDS.
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