Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
You know, we keep saying “Never again,” but it always happens again and again. Despite our protests on the left, the right wing has seized control of all three houses, has started to rip families apart to place them into death camps, and has also launched an invasion on a smaller country.
If you feel that weird pall of suspicion, anger, and icy change, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s happened before. This, my friends, is what Nazi Germany felt like back in the 1930s and 1940s.
America is now a fascist country, just like Germany was.
Right now, America is a rogue state in the eyes of NATO and the UN. Oh, how far we’ve fallen from being the Land of the Free! In all my years, I never expected the United States to get this bad. It’s all due to the rise of Donald Trump and the right-wing disaster we see.
So far, everything that Donald Trump has done had a predecessor: Adolf Hitler. Everything from scrapping sex education, villainizing minorities, and arresting “illegal” families was done by Hitler. Even the crazy fanfare shows he does was a Hitler move.
The effects of the GOP’s rise have been horrific.
We’re in the beginning stages of genocide against trans people and minorities. We are dealing with an increasingly corrupt court system, unwilling to charge the wealthy with serious crimes.
People are getting arrested and disappeared on LIVE television for the crime of protesting Donald Trump. Our freedom of speech is eroding fast and people don’t seem to understand how bad it’s getting.
Like, you can’t even protest without the chance of getting picked up — even when you have the permits. Permits, by the way, seem to be increasingly difficult to get unless you’re protesting a right-wing cause.
Everything you’re seeing on the news, from the large-scale Epstein coverup to the way people are going missing, is a sign of a fascist country taking hold of its people.
Fascism is all about removing freedom in exchange for “safety,” while also harming the very people who put it into place.
Fascism is about maintaining a strict status quo that favors the upper class and those who are deemed “superior.” In America, “superior” people are white, cisgender, male, and wealthy.
Much like in the United States, many people wrongfully assumed that they’d be treated better in Nazi Germany. In fact, we’re already seeing people turn on their own families in hopes of ingratiating themselves to the dictators in charge.
In Nazi Germany, there were a lot of allies for Hitler who thought they would be spared because they were “one of the good ones.” That obviously didn’t work out for them. Without fail, those who didn’t fit the Aryan mold were killed in camps.
How interesting it is to see that same pattern in America, almost 100 years later. In fact, a large percentage (24 percent!) of ICE agents are Hispanic. Oh, and just like Adolf Hitler, Trump was voted into office.
The recent invasion of Venezuela is only one more step in the Hitler playbook.
Fascist states cannot actually survive on their own. They need the resources from other countries to keep afloat because they can’t produce everything they need to survive.
So, invasions and genocides get carried out to make ends meet.
Venezuela was invaded — not because of drugs, but because of oil. We all know this to be true. Trump even called billionaire company owners to ensure they knew about the oil they’d be getting out of the country.
Maduro was a monster, yes, but he won’t be half the monster that Trump will be. Venezuela will be a lot like Austria or France was treated by the Nazis in the 1940s.
Considering that Miller has already said that the US “has the right to take over any country for its resources,” it’s safe to say that Venezuela is going to be the first of several countries facing US aggression.
Hitler wasn’t going to stop invading countries until people fought back. The same can be said of Trump. The next country will probably be Greenland or Mexico, depending on the rationale behind it.
So, now what happens?
Trump has made a show of displaying his ability to do whatever the fuck he wants without any sort of consequences. America’s government is too chickenshit to stand up to him.
Until we grow a spine or until some other country saves us from ourselves, we’re going to be in this era for a while. Looking at post-WW2 Germany, we can see a little glimpse of what’s to come when this dictatorship falls.
Those who aided the billionaire oligarchs and genocidal agents will suffer.
They will likely be publicly humiliated. Some have already experienced their families cutting ties to them. Many high-ranking MAGAs might see all their assets seized.
If justice is to be carried out in full, they may be tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity and genocide. Some might even get put to death for their crimes.
In the future, those who aided the Trump presidency will be stigmatized. It’ll be like hearing that your grandfather was a part of the Wehrmacht.
The only difference is how much damage people got from the military junta in charge.
Hitler was a socialist who offered free healthcare, free entertainment, and free schooling to all Germans. The current fascist regime doesn’t do that. In fact, they do the opposite. That’s why they bombed Iran and why we’re currently dealing with seven different wars at the same time.
War is expensive and profitable.
Trump wants profit.
He does not, nor will he ever, care about how many people he kills to fatten that bottom line. This is something that is clear to leftists, but for some reason, doesn’t faze his own voter base.
Trump caters to billionaire businesses and has already admitted American taxpayers will be on the hook for his stint in Venezuela, too. So, Americans will suffer more short-term and long-term from electing our Hitler versus German.
America will lose a lot of its pride because of the actions our government carried out in recent months. We will never have the good reputation we once did anymore.
Here’s what survivors of genocidal dictatorships have said about changing things around.
Wanna change the course of history? Cool. I’ve spoken to multiple survivors of dictatorships, ranging from Duterte to Ceaușescu. Here’s what I’ve been told by others:
Do not comply in advance. Make them make you comply. If fascists gain the full power of the law, you’re doomed anyway. You might as well stand up for what you believe in.
If you are in the military, you have the right to refuse orders. Do not partake in the slaughter of innocent people. The Nuremberg Defense does not work! You can no longer say you were “just following orders” and get away with it.
The people they’re villainizing are not the true enemy. The brown guy cutting your lawn is not the enemy. The transperson sitting at a bar is not your enemy. Your enemies are the people who divided this country and made you hate your neighbors over nothing. Remember that.
Do not trust fascists. Fascists will sell each other out to gain rank in their party. If you are a minority or a leftist, they will target you. They do not like you, even if they are friendly. They view you as the enemy. Act accordingly.
Do not reward fascism. Do not give companies that sided with Trump your money. Do not read newspapers that bent the knee to Trump. Do not date right-wing people. Do not attend right-wing churches. Do not employ right-wing people. Every time you pay them, give them attention, or congregate with them, you’re rewarding fascism.
Demand change and consequences from your politicians. And do not stop shouting and protesting until they give in. Protests work. That’s why the government is so afraid of people speaking up against it.
Keep history alive. Make sure people tell the stories of the minorities who helped make America great. And make sure that those stories are not in a place where the White House can extinguish them.
Remember that anything the law allowed fascists to do, you can do too. So, by all means. If you find out a GOP representative got an abortion in Texas, cash in on that bounty prize. If you find out that the 10 Commandments and Trump bibles must be displayed in schools, jockey for Satanic bibles to be placed there too.
Once fascism falls in America, demand de-Nazification for all MAGAs. They should also be stripped of the right to vote, be forced to actually hear testimony from victims, and be forced to watch videos of the suffering they caused. Those who participated in the January 6 should be tried for treason.
At the end of the day, we got here because consequences were not doled out to people when they should have been. All we can do now is work to get a better change in the making.
But what happens to America now?
I mean, history never fully repeats, but it sure does rhyme. Human nature doesn’t change. So, we can often take a look at what happened in the past to see how we’ll behave in the future.
Right now, we’re goosestepping our country down the path of Germany’s Nazi era. And while I’m not going to delve into the horrific murders of millions of people, I will give you a basic arc that happens with fascism almost every single time:
Things tighten up and seem better. In many cases, fascist countries have a brief moment where things seem to get better. People get more patriotic. Companies get more productive, industries turn out more stuff. It seems tolerable, even for opposition party members.
Then, reality starts to hit when it comes to the price. Soon, people notice the price of fascism: the tension in the air, the restriction on free speech, the families that seem to vanish overnight, the growing realization that no one will save you from the dictator’s cronies…It happens little by little. At first, you can have faith that you’ll be a winner. Slowly but surely, the things you took for granted start to go away. Even those who are considered to be “prime members” of the party find themselves paying a cost they didn’t expect.
Next, life soon becomes intolerable. Every day becomes an exercise in fear, an exercise in allegiance to an increasingly batshit dictatorship. Even former fans of the dictator find themselves questioning if this was what they really wanted.
War inevitably breaks out. Fascism is not a sustainable government style. War prolongs fascism by letting the rich gain the spoils of war. This is where we’re at now. Mothers who supported the dictator often get a reality check when they find out their kids died in the war they voted for.
If it hasn’t happened already, this is when the fascist party starts to cannibalize itself. You are never fascist enough for a fascist country. Fascism turns people against one another, and the standards always get stricter and stricter. In Nazi Germany, this led to top Nazi officials being killed for being gay, right after the Jews for Hitler group were all sent to the camps. This is usually when bigwigs in the party realize that they are not safe from fascism either.
Eventually, a revolt happens. It’s either through the help of outside countries (such as when the Allies liberated Germany) or through an inside revolt (such as when Ceaușescu was killed in Romania). Either way, fascism is not a sustainable government. It leads the country into ruin. After a certain point, people say “fuck it” and end up taking out the leadership.
Finally, the country is left to rebuild from the rubble. The people are often far wiser, far more jaded, and far more intolerant of hatred. However, it can take decades to rebuild — if they even can.
Right now, we know where we’re at in this ladder of events. We can extrapolate where we’re going to be in a couple of years or decades. How soon we get through this depends on how long Americans remain compliant with this administration.
Saucy pinups are a simple way to support antifascist writing.
