Napoleon, Hitler or Trump Complex, Does it Really Matter?

Even Those that Allegedly “Save the State” Can and do Break the Law

Donald Trump’s entire life has been has a series of transactions, built around fraud and buttressed with lies. Trump has used the same language used by Hitler against his opponents by calling them the lying press, enemies of the state, vermin and subhuman. However, his transactional dealings, lies and fraud predated anything that he said or did before his first presidential campaign, term, second campaign or today. While always bad these characteristics are now more dangerous than every at home and on the world stage.

The really dangerous thing is that Trump believes that he is a genuinely charismatic and ingenious leader like Napoleon and Hitler, and despite those men’s severe malevolence, true evil, willingness to sacrifice the lives of their soldiers and wanton crimes against humanity.

While using Hitlerian language for decades, Trump who has spent the last three weeks dismantling the firewalls of American democracy, shredded the Constitution and law, treated long term allies and partners as enemies, has now words attributed to Napoleon to justify his lawlessness. However, the quote is disputed in their origin since they were first published 17 years after his death by French author Honore de Balzac. Trump “truthed” or tweeted the quote “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” This is much like the Nazi Führerprizip, which as understood that the word of Hitler was above every written law, something leading Nazis used to justify the Holocaust and their myriad of other crimes.

In today’s context they are deeply troubling as Trump attacks the justice system and infers that he is above the law. Trump truly believes that he I’d above the law and that all who uphold the laws and oaths to the Constitution are the enemies of the state, or as Louis XIV said “L'État, c'est moi,” or I am the State. Since many of Trump’s supporters show a cult like devotion to him and earnestly believe the there is only Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer (one kingdom, one people, one leader), there is no doubt that they believe his words and will do everything they can to support him.

When it comes to Trump’s latest tweet comparing himself to Napoleon, one has to factor in history. His reign was one of the costliest in European history. The military death count is estimated to be between 2.5 and 3.5 million dead, and the civilian death count is estimated at 750,000 to 3 million. The total of dead being anywhere from 3.25 million to 6.5 million dead. The economic costs were massive and affected every country involved as well as neutral nations like the United States.

So when Trump quotes Napoleon one has to remember the words of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington whose Army defeated Napoleon in Spain, and along with the Prussian Army commander by General Blücher at Waterloo inflicted the defeat that ended Napoleon’s reign. In 1835, some 20 years after Waterloo, the Duke wrote to John Wilson Croaker “Buonaparte's whole life, civil, political, and military, was a fraud. There was not a transaction, great or small, in which lying and fraud were not introduced.”

Wellington was as correct about Napoleon as he would have been with Hitler or Trump. Napoleon and Hitler, like Trump today believed that they were above the law. Neither was, and both died, Hitler in the ruins of Berlin and Napoleon exiled to the barren island of Elba after having brought Europe and many other lands to ruin.

There is no doubt that Trump will do the same. How many of us will die because of his gross ignorance, incompetence, and malfeasance?

Resistance now is imperative, later will be too late.

Until next time.