The book outlines how Germany’s political and financial leaders paid dearly for believing they could control a man they knew to be a psychopath.
The parallels with today’s Republican party and Trump’s wealthy backers are astounding. You repeatedly will be reminded, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana,
The Life of Reason, 1905. The MAGA movement allows for no memory of Hitler’s rise to power and his disastrous use of it.
Hitler created a world in which women were transported with their children for days in closed train cars and then had to watch those children die alongside them, naked, gasping for breath in a gas chamber.
Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” (Knopf), an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one.
Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following.
Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him.
Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power.
The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money.
This is what really matters.
Hello, today’s wealthy people, Elon Musk, Kenny Troutt, Woody Johnson, Geoffrey Harrison, Saul Fox, Howard Lutnick, John Paulson, Mike Hodges, John Blanchard, Scott Bessent, David Frecka, George Bishop, Steven Witkoff, Tim Dunn, Diane Hendricks, Linda and Vince McMahon.
Trump doesn’t care about protecting your money. He cares only about protecting his money.
Many of you are billionaires who’ve supported Trump because he promises to eliminate regulations that protect customers.
Some of you gave to him in return for his political and/or financial support for their schemes.
If you notice any Jewish-sounding names in the bunch, you are right, which I, as a Jew, find particularly ironic and loathsome.
Trump is an undisguised bigot, and history shows that when a group supports bigotry, eventually, they themselves become targets of bigotry.
When a government supports bigotry, no one is spared, but the victims learn their lesson too late.
Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution.
The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long.
The decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader.
In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.
National Socialist German Workers’ Party (its German initials were N.S.D.A.P.) had been in existence since right after the Great War, as one of many völkisch, or populist, groups; its label, by including “national” and “socialist,” was intended to appeal to both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists, who were thought to share a common enemy: the élite class of Jewish bankers who, they said, manipulated Germany behind the scenes and had been responsible for the German surrender.
Those American Jews who support Hitleresque Trump have conveniently forgotten that right-wingers blamed Jews Germany’s loss in WWI.
The lure of money then and now overcomes morals and sense.
The Nazis, as they were called—a put-down made into a popular label, like “Impressionists”—began as one of many fringe and populist antisemitic groups in Germany, including the Thule Society, which was filled with bizarre pre-QAnon conspiracy adepts.
Hitler’s plans were deliberately ambiguous, but his purposes were not. Ever since his unsuccessful putsch in Munich, he had, Ryback writes, “been driven by a single ambition: to destroy the political system that he held responsible for the myriad ills plaguing the German people.”
Trump’s efforts to destroy American democracy and to install himself as dictator are clouded by his frequent changes in publicly stated goals.
Example: His repeated flip-flops about ending or not ending ACA (“Obamacare”).
These changes require his followers repeatedly to go into “What he really meant was” mode to homogenize his extremism for the voting public.
Most recently, many of his acolytes explained that “he really doesn’t intend to deport millions of men, women, and children. He just wants to strengthen the border.” (Then why did he instruct his GOP minions to vote against the bipartisan border-strengthening law created by a Republican?)
Ryback skips past the underlying mechanics of the July, 1932, election on the way to his real subject—Hitler’s manipulation of the conservative politicians and tycoons who thought that they were manipulating him—but there’s a notable academic literature on what actually happened when Germans voted that summer.
The political scientists and historians who study it tell us that the election was a “normal” one, in the sense that the behavior of groups and subgroups proceeded in the usual way, responding more to the perception of political interests than to some convulsions of apocalyptic feeling.
The popular picture of the decline of the Weimar Republic—in which hyperinflation produced mass unemployment, which produced an unstoppable wave of fascism—is far from the truth. The hyperinflation had ended in 1923, and the period right afterward, in the mid-twenties, was, in Germany as elsewhere, golden.
Still, the results of the July, 1932, election weren’t obviously catastrophic. Both Hitler and Goebbels were bitterly disappointed by their standing.
As was Trump following the 2020 election– so disappointed he denied the results.
The unemployed actually opposed Hitler and voted en masse for the parties of the left.
What was once called the petite bourgeoisie, then, was key to his support—not people feeling the brunt of economic precarity but people feeling the possibility of it.
Having nothing to fear but fear itself is having something significant to fear.
Trump, like Hitler before him, is a fear-monger.
He sows fear of “marauding immigrant gangs and rapists.”
Trump also promulgates the lies that immigrants don’t pay taxes and that they take jobs from native-born American workers.
Claiming that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is often used as an intentional distraction from dynamics that are actually hurting working people—such as weak labor standards and enforcement, anti-worker deregulation, weak labor law that fails to protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining in the face of coordinated and well-funded attacks, and other dynamics that result in too much power in the hands of corporations and employers.
A newstudy from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that undocumented immigrants actually contributed almost $100 billion in taxes during 2022 while not being able to use many of the programs they thought their tax dollars funded.
It is Trump and his wealthy backers who favor laws that weaken American workers while benefiting the rich.
The Germans were voting, in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere, for easy reassurances, for stability, with classes siding against their historical enemies.
They weren’t wild-eyed nationalists voting for a millennial authoritarian regime that would rule forever and restore Germany to glory, and, certainly, they weren’t voting for an apocalyptic nightmare that would leave tens of millions of people dead and the cities of Germany destroyed.
This is how we cast our vote.
They were voting for specific programs that they thought would benefit them, and for a year’s insurance against the people they feared.
The rich give their money and votes to Trump because they believe he will make them even richer.
The not-rich vote for Trump because they fear the imaginary dangers Trump claims immigrants and liberals pose.
Ryback, focussing on the self-entrapped German conservatives, generally avoids the question that seems most obvious to a contemporary reader: Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it?
That is the key question even today.
Given that Trump attempted to overturn an election he lost in both the electoral college and by 7 million popular votes, why would people committed to democracy now vote for him?
Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly—the ones who had survived, that is—for his study.
His conclusion was that they simply “trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters.”
Trump’s followers burn “woke” books to avoid discussing bigotry
Most Americans understand Trump’s faults and ambitions.
Still, they cannot believe that he actually could do what he repeatedly says he will do: Destroy the legal system that protects democracy (He calls it “draining the swamp.”) and install himself as dictator.
Most Americans have a deep faith that democracy will always survive here and that we’re not like those foreign countries.
Yet, democracy constantly teeters on the edge, and we have been remarkably fortunate so far despite our individual foolishness. Today, the election is predicted to be a close call even though:
Trump disparages blacks as coming from “shithole countries” and being criminals
He disparages browns as being “rapists and criminals.”
He is supported by right-wing Christian nationalists who believe in the virtual enslavement of women and who oppose women even having voting or abortion rights.
He openly expresses his bigotry toward all religions other than Christian nationalism.
His followers engage in book burning and other anti-free-speech efforts.
He disparages gays.
He disparages women.
He opposes unions and worker’s rights while supporting rich business owners.
He repeatedly has tried to end ACA (Obamacare), even going so far as repeatedly to reach out to the Supreme Court.
He admires dictators like Putin and Kim and has admitted he would be a dictator if elected.
He has committed and been convicted by juries of many crimes, including tax fraud and other forms of fraud (for instance, Trump U., cheating his foreign workers, etc.)
He made repeated attempts to overthrow the U.S. government and continues to claim the election was tainted despite his loss of 60+ lawsuits proving otherwise.
His endless lying has become crazier and crazier, indicating his mental deterioration.
By any rational measure, Trump would not receive a single vote other than from the greedy rich and the Christian nationalists, none of whom seem to worry about democracy.
But these are not rational times, and sadly, history is filled with horrifying examples of what happens to a population that departs from rationality.
Is this the America you love? Is this the America you want? Trump is telling you exactly what he plans to do. Believe him.
Palm Beach Sun Sentinel
Gestapo in the Streets. Trump’s America
ELECTION 2024Trump leans into mass deportationsEx-president asserts plan would target up to 20 million people
By Stephen Groves Associated PressWASHINGTON — “Mass Deportation Now!” declared the signs at the Republican National Convention, giving a full embrace to Donald Trump’s pledge to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history.
Some Republicans aren’t quite ready for that.
Lauren B. Peña, a Republican activist from Texas, said that hearing Trump’s calls for mass deportations, as well as terms like “illegals” and “invasion” thrown around at the convention, made her feel uncomfortable.
Like some Republicans in Congress who have advanced balanced approaches to immigration, she hopes Trump is just blustering.
Families into boxcars. Trump’s America
“He’s not meaning to go and deport every family that crosses the border, he means deport the criminals and the sex offenders,” Peña, 33, said.
But Trump and his advisers have other plans.
He is putting immigration at the heart of his campaign to retake the White House and pushing the Republican Party toward a bellicose strategy that hearkens back to the 1950s when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a deportation policy known by a racial slur — “Operation Wetback.”
Trump, when pressed for specifics on his plan in an interview with Time Magazine this year, suggested he would use the National Guard, and possibly even the military, to target 15 million to 20 million people — though the government estimated in 2022 there were 11 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal permission.
His plans have raised the stakes of this year’s election beyond fortifying the southern border, a longtime conservative priority, to the question of whether America should make a fundamental change in its approach to immigration.
After the southern border saw a historic number of crossings during the Biden administration, Democrats have also moved rightward on the issue, often leading with promises of border security before talking about relief for the immigrants who are already in the country.
Latino voters could be pivotal in many swing states.
Trump won 35% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and support for stronger border enforcement measures has grown among Hispanic voters.
But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls conducted in June by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about half of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump.
Dragged from Homes. Trump’s America
GOP lawmakers have largely embraced Trump’s plans.
“It’s needed,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a July interview at the conservative Hudson Institute.
Some, however, have shown tacit skepticism by suggesting more modest goals.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, pointed to over 1 million people who have already received a final order of removal from an immigration judge and said, “There’s a difference between those that are in the process right now and those that are finished with the process.”
Mass deportation to concentration camps. Trump’s America
Are we as ignorant as the Germans and Italians were when Hitler and Mussolini told them what would happen?
Even Hitler didn’t round up 15-20 million people. During the war, Nazi military forces rounded up 11 million victims.
Trump says he will outdo that.
Is this the America you want?
Hitler had Heinrich Himmler. Trump has Stephen Miller. Himmler/Miller, odd how similar the names are.
Trump entered office in 2016 with similar promises of mass deportation but “only” succeeded in deporting about 1.5 million people.
This time, though, there’s a plan.
Trump has worked with Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins.
Miller describes a Trump administration that will work with “utter determination” to accomplish two goals: “Seal the border. Deport all the illegals.”
To accomplish that, Trump would revive travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, such as majority-Muslim countries.
The banal faces of evil
He would launch a sweeping operation by deputizing the National Guard to round up immigrants, hold them in massive camps and put them on deportation flights before they could make legal appeals.
Beyond that, Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship— a 125-year-old right in the United States.
Trump even would deport many children who were born in America.
And several of his top advisers have laid out a sweeping policy vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that would choke off other forms of legal migration.
“Hold them in camps.” Trump’s America.
The Trump administration, under those plans, could also grind to a halt temporary programs for over 1 million migrants, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ukrainians and Afghans who fled recent conflicts as well as others who receive temporary protection due to unrest in their home country.
The policies would have far-reaching disruptions in major industries like housing and agriculture.
“If the 75,000-plus immigrants who perform the hardest of work in Wisconsin’s dairy and agriculture were gone tomorrow, the state economy would tank,” said Jorge Franco, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, Democrats feel Trump’s threats are motivating Latino voters.
“The mass deportation put a lot of people on high alert,” said María Teresa Kumar, the CEO of Voto Latino, a leading voter registration organization that is backing Democrat Kamala Harris.
If you ever have flown a foreign airline and compared it to an American airline, you noticed a marked difference.
Foreign air carriers like ANA, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, and Qatar Airways offer better food options, and more comfortable seating, better in-flight entertainment, and superior amenities.
Many foreign airlines operate newer and more modern aircraft with lie-flat seats in business class, advanced in-flight entertainment systems, and luxurious first-class suites.
Why the difference?
I ask because of a recent experience my daughter had flying United Airlines, first class, from Chicago to Denver.
It was a two-hour and 43-minute flight that took off at 11:02AM Central time and landed at 12:45PM Mountain time.
Here is a photo of the “meal” she was served in First Class during that 2 hours and 45 minutes (Coach got nothing):
This is United Airlines’s lunch in first class.
Yes, that’s right. In “First Class,” i.e. United Airlines version of “First Class,” this nearly three-hour flight warranted a 1 oz. bag of gummies for lunch.
The “explanation,” if you can call it that, was “We don’t offer meals on all our flights.”
I guess that sitting in a plane for nearly three hours during lunchtime doesn’t qualify for a meal on United Airlines, not even when you pay sky-high First Class rates.
And if that isn’t a disgusting enough example of United Airlines service, my daughter, who had a round-trip First Class ticket, was bumped from the return flight and had to take a later coach flight.
(Did I mention that my daughter is a transplant recipient who flies first class because her immune system is compromised, so she tries to keep whatever seating distance she can from other travelers?)
So, aside from the inconvenience of being bumped and the tighter seating,
Eventually she will get her $500+ refund for the difference between coach and First Class if she files paperwork, argues on the phone, and jumps through whatever other hoops United demands.
How does United Airlines get away with this awful service? Government restrictions on competition:
Once other air travelers have experienced the impressive service some foreign airlines offer, they often wonder: Why can’t they do business in the USA?
Of course, international airlines do operate in this country, but the government forbids them from flying point-to-point destinations domestically.
These laws, meant to protect American consumers and jobs, are having the exact opposite effect. Eliminating — or at least partially lifting — outdated restrictions could significantly increase competition and improve customer service.
Industry watchers say that banning foreign carriers from offering domestic flights might have made sense a generation ago when the American airline industry was tightly regulated by the federal government. But today, with only a few megacarriers remaining and the security concerns of the Cold War a distant memory, it’s harder to justify the laws.
“Foreign airline competition and capital investment in U.S. airlines could quickly improve passenger service, lower fares, result in new start-up airlines, and relieve overcrowding,” says Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org.
When trying to protect U.S. businesses, the federal government has two alternatives: Supportthe domestic industry to provide better quality and service or punish and restrict the foreign business so it can’t provide better quality and service.
Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Singapore Airlines are examples of the former approach. These airlines benefit from significant state backing, enabling them to offer high-end services.
The result is a better overall flying experience for those who can access these airlines.
Our Monetarily Sovereign government could do the same.
Levying import duties and restricting foreign businesses are examples of the “punish-and-restrict” approach.
This results in higher prices and poorer quality of service for Americans.
Expressing fear of federal deficits and so-called “socialism.” the U.S. government invariably uses the “punish and restrict” foreigners, so Americans are the ones punished and restricted.
Inflation is a general increase in prices. The most common reason why prices increase is scarcity.
The current inflation was caused by COVID-related scarcities of oil, food, shipping, computer chips, metals, lumber, labor, and other commodities.
How the fed puts out a fire,
The cure for this inflation is to cure the scarcities that caused the inflation, oil and food being the most important.
The Federal Reserve wrongly believes inflation is caused by too-low interest rates and can be cured by raising them. However, interest is a business cost—a cost for manufacturers, sellers, and buyers.
It should be obvious that raising manufacturing, selling, and buying costs will not cure inflation.
All interest rate increases do is raise costs, slow the economy, and eventually cause a recession.
We repeatedly have written that raising costs via interest rate increases is a terrible way to lower prices.
The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
(Ever wonder why federal spending cuts demanded by debt nuts are designed to widen the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest, while the few federal spending increases they want are designed to reward and protect the rich?)
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 