Where Have We Heard This Before?

Could it have been in the 1930s?

What Trump's lawyer was really advocating
America is not the Weimar Republic in its final days and Trump is not Hitler, but …
Robert Reich
January 11, 2024

 

 Friends,

Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued on Tuesday (before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) that a precondition for a president to face criminal trial is impeachment by Congress.

As Doug Gilbert noted in the comments to yesterday’s substack letter, a rogue president could avoid impeachment by simply imprisoning members of Congress who’d otherwise vote to impeach him.

In effect, John Sauer was arguing for the equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Law in Germany.

 

[...]

 

 But the parallels need to be understood.

Hitler’s success in moving Germany from democracy to fascism was not the result of a coup. Hitler used the democratic process to gain and then consolidate power. Once he had the power, he destroyed what remained of Germany’s democracy — and did it with remarkable speed.

This is why John Sauer’s argument on Tuesday before the D.C. Court of appeals is so chilling.

And the similarities keep on mounting!

Over the next four months, Hitler and his Nazi henchmen swept away most of the guarantees of freedom and the rule of law in the German constitution. They did this remarkably quickly by destroying every countervailing center of power.

 [...]

 

They rounded up political opponents. Hitler said he planned to bring “ruthlessly to account” his political opponents and “the whole clique around this vermin."

Does this sound familiar? 

 

Former Secretary of Labor goes on to write,

Trump compares political opponents to 'vermin' who he will 'root out,' alarming historians
Experts noted parallels to dictators in the past, which his campaign dismissed.
ABC News
By Soo Rin Kim and Lalee Ibssa
November 13, 2023

Former President Donald Trump vowed this weekend to "root out" his political opponents, who he said "live like vermin" as he warned supporters that America's greatest threats come "from within" -- extreme rhetoric that echoes the words of fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, experts and Trump's critics said.

[...]

"To call your opponent 'vermin,' to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes," writer and historian Jon Meacham said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

[...]

He accused these groups of doing anything "to destroy America and to destroy the American dream" and he went on to repeat his baseless claims of election fraud.

It is like Trump is using the 1930s as a blueprint to fascism.

All democracies are fragile. They depend on political leaders who believe in them and put the constitution and rule of law over their personal ambitions. They depend on media that tell the truth. They depend on citizens who are intent on retaining their rights and freedoms, who feel deep allegiance to democratic norms, and who refuse to follow demagogues.

We are not the Weimar Republic in early 1933, but there is cause for concern nonetheless.