by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It’s comical to try to make some sort of 1-to-1 between Hitler and Germany 1933 and Trump 2025 if he wins. I’m not saying it’s not POSSIBLE that Trump might somehow peacefully transition us into autocracy, just that if it’s Trump doing it, things might not go according to plan.
I have a lot of reasons to believe this.
People keep telling me to read up on the rise of the Nazis….and I have already done it and continue to do it! And the more I read and learn, the more I just don’t see there being a direct 1-to-1 between Trump and Hitler. So the fact that people who claim to have read ever so much more than me about this situation would claim some sort of 1-to-1 is very, very curious — and very annoying — to me.
But let’s go through some reasons why I believe that we can’t just assume that America will peacefully transition into a fascist state if Trump becomes POTUS again.
First, in general terms, Nazism was an expansionistic political philosophy, while MAGA is one of retrenchment. Some of these next differences are pretty obvious.
Germany in 1933 was a smallish, pretty centralized nation that had only become a democracy about a decade before after a horrible loss as part of WW1. America, meanwhile, is a very prosperous, very decentralize and diverse nation where we have a very strong sense of ourselves as being a “free country.”
Furthermore, Hitler was a Great Man of History. He bent history to his will. He was willing to knock heads — using the SA — and he was also, just in general, willing to put in the hard work necessary to transition Germany into a fascist state.
Trump, meanwhile, is a complete lazy idiot. And, what’s more, he’s not a Great Man of History. He’s just an avatar, a vessel for some pretty severe issues in American politics and culture. He just assumes that if he invokes the Insurrection Act that somehow, magically, that will be enough to subdue the Blue parts of a nation of 335 million people.
If it was anyone else in Trump’s historical position, then, yeah, I might be willing to believe America will soon be a true fascist MAGA state. But this is Trump we’re talking about. If Trump just pushes America straight into the cold dark waters of fascism overnight…there will be some sort of consequences.
I’m not advocating anything! I’m just saying if you do a back-of-the-envelope scenario, it just doesn’t make any sense that Trump could whip out his fascist MAGA cock and get freedom loving Americans to willfully suck on it. It’s just not going to happen.
One last thing — a key element of Hitler maintaining control in the early days was the SA making it clear to the average German that they had better be Good Germans…or else. And just from my discussions with my far more conservative relatives, it seems as though if Trump started to come after cranks like me that even Traditionalists in America might sit up and taken notice at such tyrannical behavior.
But I can’t predict the future. Who knows. But I still have hope that, in the end, we will save ourselves because no one else will.
