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Jewish media outlet describes how Trump uses Nazi-style propaganda to seduce his base [1]
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Date: 2025-04-22
In 1990, Mike Godwin formulated Godwin's Law . In it, the author and lawyer posited that: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." During Trump's first administration, MAGA apologists and their mainstream media enablers often cited it to denigrate claims that the US in the late 2010s resembled Germany in the 1930s. Their message was: 'No matter how authoritarian Trump's rants and policies appeared to be, Americans who say he is a modern day Hitler wannabe are guilty of Trump Derangement Syndrome.'
The criticism may have had some merit in Trump 1.0. The GOP still had some independent thinkers (Obamacare was preserved, and the border wall was never significantly funded), and Trump had a few independent-minded grown-ups in his cabinet. Had he lost in 2024, he would have remained as obnoxious as a fart in an elevator, but with his ambition tattered.
But he didn't lose. Now, the similarity between MAGA and the Nazis is undeniable.
On Monday, The Forward , for 128 years a preeminent news source for American Jews, highlighted how Trump has used a propaganda technique perfected by the Nazis. The site published a piece headlined:
The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump's ruthless grab for power Trump has created an American version of Adolf Hitler's 'Dolchstosslegende,' also known as the 'stabbed-in-the-back' lie
The piece starts with a refresher on Nazi history.
From his failed Beer Hall putsch in Munich in 1923 to the Third Reich's downfall 22 years later, Adolf Hitler spewed venom against what he called the "November Criminals" — Marxists and Jews who he claimed were responsible for Imperial Germany's defeat in November 1918. Hitler's assertion, based on a conspiracy theory concocted by Germany's losing generals and conservative politicians, was ultimately embraced by much of the German populace. In German, this myth is called the Dolchstosslegende, or stabbed-in-the-back legend.
The reader will know where this is going. The names have changed. The objects of Trump's stabbed-in-the-back mantra are not the Marxists and Jews of 1918. They are the Socialists and the wrong sort of Jews in 2025. And they are not alone as targets in the neo-Nazi Dolchstosslegende. The Forward adds:
Donald Trump has created an American version of the Dolchstosslegende, propagating a myth that the nation is being led to ruination by Joe Biden and the Democrats, prosecutors who go after Trump, judges who rule against him, non-MAGA news media, practitioners of "wokeism," and elite universities, among others. Trump sometimes lumps together those who oppose him as Communists. Red baiting was good enough for Joe McCarthy, so why not for Donald Trump? All of this is utter nonsense, of course, but this American stabbed-in-the-back lie is at the core of Trump's assaults on democracy.
The article goes on to outline how the Nazis used the stabbed-in-the-back lie to gain attention, popularity, and, finally, power. It concludes the Nazi end of the discussion by saying:
As extreme-right passions intensified, the Dolchstosslegende lived on. Hitler repeatedly employed it during his rallies. Once he was in power, he went beyond using the Dolchstosslegende as a rhetorical weapon. He literally tried to erase evidence of Germany's World War I humiliation. According to historian Despina Stratigakos, in 1940 Hitler ordered the military to destroy World War I memorials in occupied Belgium and France. "The monuments, in Hitler's eyes, served to defame the army and perpetuate hatred against the nation. Their eradication was thus necessary to restore Germany's reputation and protect it for posterity," Stratigakos wrote in a 2019 article for Architect magazine.
This rewrite of history is mirrored in the bastardized curricula of public schools in conservative US states. And in the right-wing fight to return statues of Civil War racists to places of prominence on public land.
The article then highlights how Trump's rhetoric is an echo of Hitler's "we are the victim of shadowy forces" whinging.
The transcript of Trump's second inaugural address on Jan. 20 reads like a stabbed-in-the-back manifesto. "For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair," he said.
It adds that in an executive order, "Restoring Truth and Sanity To American History," Trump set his sights on one of the country's most cherished repositories of history. Trump fumed that The Smithsonian Institution has
"promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive."
The paper adds:
Trump put Vice President JD Vance in charge of "seeking to remove improper ideology" from the Smithsonian and its affiliated facilities, working with Congress to block funding for programs that "degrade shared American values," and taking other steps to bring the museum into line with Trumpian ideology. Monuments, statues and memorials under the Interior Department's jurisdiction, Trump decreed, shall not "disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in Colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people."
The article then asks the reader to draw a comparison between that message and Hitler's in his first speech as Chancellor:
"We desire to bestow once more upon the Volk a genuinely German culture with German art, German architecture, and German music," and to "evoke deep reverence for the accomplishments of the past, a humble admiration for the great men of German history."
The paper then enumerates Trump's expanding attempts to exercise thought control over Americans.
Nearly 400 books on the Holocaust, civil rights, racism and feminism were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy library. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou's bestselling memoir, is out. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, stays. Book purges are also in the works at the US Air Force Academy and West Point.
The Forward's report ends on a positive note, although it is spiced with pessimism — which some will say is an imperative in a culture that has borne more bigotry for longer than most any other.
There are some signs of hope. Some law firms and universities are fighting back against Trump's efforts to coerce them into bending to his will. Citizens are mobilizing, legions of them taking to the streets in protest of Trump's power grabs. Courts have been ruling against his attempts to subvert the law. But none of this seems to faze him. And as appeals play out in rulings against him, he keeps using his authoritarian jackhammer against the foundations of American democracy.
Trump may not be fazed. But do not discount the hurt of his tariff and immigration policies. Once an electorate starts to turn against the architect of their suffering, politicians pay attention.
There is, in addition, one significant difference between MAGA and the Nazis. Hitler embraced deficit spending to improve the economic lives of Germans. It was the Jews alone whose finances were destroyed.
In Trump's America, the supremacists and their victims are partners in the pain produced by Trump's policies. Germans saw Naziism as a paycheck enhancer. Americans are reeling as the MAGA economy threatens many people’s economic dreams.
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