Trump and His New Trumpian Nazi Reich

The inauguration Donald Trump and the first two days of his rule have been nothing short of Hitlerian. Beginning with his vengeance and conquest filled inaugural address, Elon Musk’s great rendition of a Heil Hitler salute which the American Nazi, White Supremacist and Militia movement fascists all loved. Meanwhile, most of the corporate media made either denied it happened, claimed it was a so called “Roman salute”, something mind you that there is no actual historical evidence, but in fact was copied from Hitler’s idol Mussolini’s Fascist salute, most surprisingly the Anti-Defamation League’s decision to excuse Musk’s Sieg Heil and other past excited utterances about Hitler and praise for the new Nazi Party of Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland of AfD which denies the Holocaust, doesn’t think that Hitler’s SS was a criminal organization, and promotes legislation and violence against immigrants, great company there.

Then there were the executive orders, some flagrantly unconstitutional, others for mere propaganda purposes of appeasing MAGA or frightening opponents. But there were others designed to do harm to Americans, including their elderly and disabled veteran voters (not military retirees) by raising the prices on drugs, including insulin covered under Medicare Part D which Joe Biden brought down. Nor can we forget the massive number of orders designed punish immigrants, illegal, those attempting to follow the rules, and even Afghan refugees who had risked their lives for our troops already approved for entry. Then there were his orders to the Department of Justice to begin investigating members of state and local governments opposed to his use of Federal law enforcement on immigrants in their states or cities.

But beyond the executive orders there were the acts of revenge ranging from firing the Commandant of the Coast Guard for being “too woke”, and the removal and reassignment of completely apolitical officers of the Justice Department, State Department, and other Federal agencies.

Then he placed on leave any employees working in DEI departments of Federal agencies until they can be fired, as well as the completely unnecessary and mendacious removal of for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Miley’s portrait from the wall of former CJCS officers from the Pentagon. Nor, can we forget the removal of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s Secret Service detail which was assigned to him for following Trump’s orders to assassinate an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander, for which Bolton is now a target of Iranian retribution.

Finally there were the pardons of over 1500 January 6th criminal insurgents including the most violent who attacked, and killed or wounded 140 law enforcement officers and who tried to murder former Vice President Pence and members of Congress. Among them were the leaders of the violent terrorist Proud Boy’s and Oath Keepers. Members of their organizations will certainly be part of an auxiliary force like Hitler’s SA Brownshirts to be used against Americans under supposed emergency measures.

We should expect far more in the coming weeks and months as members of government, the corporate mediate and the corporate oligarchs, and supposedly “Christian” leaders fall into line to appease Trump.

That is why evert bit of resistance, noncompliance, and obstruction matters in order to maintain our freedom and the survival of our republic.

Timothy Snyder wrote:

“If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.“

Right now many professionals are rushing to obey Trump. We who do not must do all that we can to resist. We must not abandon our professional norms or obligations. Trump’s oligarchs, political allies, and supporters are certainly not following them. That will certainly bring disaster. Auschwitz could never have happened without the help of lawyers who determined that Jews were subhuman and not entitled to the protection of law. Nor the industrialists who profited off the slave labor provided by the inmates who were not immediately executed but worked to death who had a table telling them the profit they would make based on how much they produced and how long they could live. Nor the Reichsbank which accepted the deposit of valuables including their gold teeth pulled from their dead bodies. Nor the construction companies and businesses that built the barracks, gas chambers and crematoriums, nor the railroad which shipped the victims to the camp and shipped the goods manufactured by slave labor to the Reich, nor the camp guards and officers who abused and murdered the prisoners. Finally, there were the doctors who committed unspeakable experiments on the inmates, including children.

None of this can happen in a vacuum, and none would be possible without the cooperation, collaboration, and outright commitment of people.

I have been to Dachau numerous times, Bergen Belsen where Anne Frank died, Flossenburg where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed at the end of the war, Buchenwald, and the Euthanasia Center at Hadamar where 10s of thousands of sick, crippled or handicapped children and later adults were euthanized, and thousands of adults with physical, emotional, psychological impairments were sterilized. I’ve also been to the Wannsee house where it was all coordinated. I have been privileged to meet Auschwitz survivors and studied the Shoah/Holocaust for decades, my primary professor in my undergraduate years at California State University Northridge, Dr. Helmut Haeussler began my journey, into understanding. He was the child of German immigrants who volunteered to serve with the 82nd Airborne Division in WWII and stayed on as an interrogator and translator during the trial of the major Nazi War criminals and remained for the subsequent 12 American trials including the Einsatzgrüppen, Malmedy, Doctors, Judges, Industrialists, the High Command and others. I took more classes from him including independent study research. The evils of the Nazis are beyond comprehension to most people.

I think that Spencer Tracy’s monologue as Judge Dan Haygood in Judgement at Nuremberg, the fictional adaptation of the Judge’s trial, speaks to this in a manner seldom seen in film.

“The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Herr Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws — illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.

Herr Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary — even able and extraordinary — men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

I do not want our country to end up like Germany in 1945. We can resist, even if it doesn’t seem like it is much. If we do not I can only restate the words of German General Henning von Tresckow who died following the attempt to kill Hitler in Operation Valkyrie:

“We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

If we don’t, before the worst happens, the United States will always be Trump’s America unless we are destroyed by Trump and his henchmen’s hubris.

The choice my friends is ours.