I was startled to learn in an essay in the Indianapolis Recorder (7/1) that Trump used to read Hitler's speeches, apparently impressed by his use of propaganda. The essay, by Dr. E Faye Williams, entitled "A clear and present danger" worries about "a fascistic takeover" of the US. For the Hitler reference, she cites a 1990 Vanity Fair article in which Ivana Trump says that her husband occasionally read from a book of Hitler's collected speeches called "My New Order." I tracked down the article, "After the Gold Rush," (it's on the Vanity Fair site), and sure enough!
I've always worried that Trump displayed many of the characteristics of both Hitler and Mussolini--ethnic nationalism, white supremacy, violence, "the big lie," and hositility to "foreigners."
Furthermore, the January 6 assault on the Capitol bore striking resemblences both to Mussolini's 1922 "March on Rome" and Hitler's 1923 "Beer Hall Putsch" (which was partly modeled on and inspired by Mussolini's march.) In the former, Mussolini used fascist armed squads (known as Blackshirts) to march on the capital, intimidating the government sufficiently that they handed power over to Mussolini. Hitler's putsch was an attempt to seize power in Bavaria, using his own armed goons (Stormtroopers), after which he planned to march on Berlin. Hitler's attempt failed, he was convicted of high treason, and spent 8 months in jail. Afterwards, he decided that instead of a violent overthrow of the Weimar Republic, he would manipulate the political system to achieve power--which he finally did in 1933.
The parallels to January 6 are scary.
Dr. Williams frets too about Trump following these patterns "If the functions of our government can be distorted to reflect the will of a malignant minority rather than the will of the majority."
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