the phenomenon of German citizens (and citizens of other countries under German occupation) benefitting financially by looting the belongings and even taking over the homes of Jews when they were taken away by German soldiers is well known and extensively chronicled. Check out the Holocaust Museum site for more info.https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/some-were-neighbors/neighbors/inviting-brutality
FWIW, I don’t believe that we are powerless to act. Just numbed by the relentless assault. And the media’s complicity in “sanewashing” the abhorrent behavior of the MAGAs and their enablers.
Will, we saw said snapping turtle yesterday on the Feeder Canal or at least its relative. Good sized guy!! It did not move so we warned dog walkers what to expect up ahead. You don't want to tangle with a snapping turtle!!
Sadly Trump has shown signs of wanting to be a dictator from the beginning of his first term. To me, it's obvious, but sadly, to a great swath of the American public, they have little or no understanding of Trump's long term past, they just saw the Billionaire businessman with the magical powers that could solve huge business problems in less than an hour on a TV reality show. He's genius! Except if you actually dig in to his history as a businessman in NYC, and you will discover a wreckage of financials and endless lies and cheating.
Great column, Will. Timothy Snyder made the same point about the fairness of invoking Hitler recently. I’m sure Ruth Ben Ghiat and Hannah Arendt would as well.
Thank you for sharing the substance article. It's brilliant and frightening. The comparison is obvious and has been from day 1. "Those who don't know their history are bound to repeat it."" Getting out the vote is crucial. But, win or lose, Trump is a dangerous man and his minions are as well.
It is not true that Germans didn’t see the evil of Hitler and the Nazis early on as evidenced by the satire published in the magazine Simplicissimus that excoriated the Nazis along with everything else a good satire publication exposes. The warnings were there, just as they are now, and you can count on artists, and satirists being on the front lines.
WAMC did a story, long but worth reading or listening, about fascism creeping into Stamford, VT that sounds very much like some of what was going on at the recent Queensbury town board meeting where extremists attacked Prop 1, the Equal Rights Amendment, and echoes some of what went on at the Rockwell Falls Library not long ago.
I couldnt hit like on that article! That is downright frightening - watching neighbors - people you might have known for years - to become that taken over by the crap being fed to them. Well, obviously, we see it in the news etc every day.
I suspect that many, if not most, Trump supporters who read this commentary will be deeply offended. Some may post comments here, claiming to be victims of liberal hysteria. But how can they believe otherwise, when their support of Trump is based largely on the perception of their own victimhood? That their grievances are of greater value than the grievances of others. And as such, it's legitimate to use threats of force, and force itself, to fix what they believe is broken. To make us great again. This proposition, that one's grievances over perceived injustice permits an unjust solution, forms the basis of Trump's corrupt populism.
Of all the offensive signs and flags and memes all around the North Country, the one that upsets me the most is F**k Your Feelings.
Really? Has the mother I see driving her SUV with two kids in her backseat and that sticker on her back window really had it so bad she doesn’t care at all about how other people feel?
Thank you Will....I have faith that we are fighting back and winning. It doesn't seem so in the North Country with Stefanik leading the charge, yet we must remember this is only one district with NOT a huge population. Those of us who understand this can write post cards, send money, make calls around the Country to make a difference where truth falls on deaf ears around here...
I join you and many others in the concern for the future of our democracy, especially as there continues to be evidence that the race is tightening and maybe even favoring Trump. Even for those of us who are alarmed by what Trump promises, I sense we can't possibly believe it will actually happen because our country has always been able to prevail. We can't imagine it happening it here, so we will shake our heads once again, go about our business watch our favorite football team this afternoon not really sure how we can stop it beyond casting our vote.
Ken, you have described exactly how I feel. Powerless and heartbroken to think my neighbors (seemingly all of them) support this man and what he stands for.
And perhaps that's a failure seeing the current state of things. I don't support people glossing over hatred and marching to the tune of White Supremacy . This is where we end up. We turn into the the frog boiled for dinner. Slowly but surely.
So, what do you object to? That the US has had one of the strongest recoveries from recession of all the developed nations? That the infrastructure bill is helping repair bridges and highways across the country? Maybe you don't like it that the CHIPS Act is bringing manufacturing back to the United States? Maybe you object to seniors paying less for medication? Maybe you object to crime being down, illegal border crossings being down, and seizures of fentanyl doubling in the last 2 years?
I'm sick to death of people excusing their desire to vote for a racist felon and adjudicated sexual abuser by pointing to "problems" with the Biden administration, when they won't say what it is they actually object to. And don't say the "border problem. Anyone who reads knows that Trump told kill the Border Security Bill so that he'd have a campaign issue.
The man is an insurrectionist who admires strongmen and has promised to be a dictator on day one. He has proposed rounding up millions of people into detention camps to send a message to others to think again. He has suggested a short violent purge would be a good thing. If he is not already owned by Elon Musk he will soon be.
It’s hard to imagine a Democratic policy so distasteful you would prefer Trump. Who, by the way is a mere front for the far right authors of Project 2025. Of course, if that document appeals to you…..
My mother grew up in Nazi Germany. She was born in 1930, a child of my grandfather’s second marriage. She had much older brothers from his first marriage, who were already adults when she was born. My grandfather was a doctor who had both Jews and Christians as patients. As Hitler began his rise, one of those brothers became an ardent follower, who swallowed the lies and saw Hitler as the savior of the German people. Certainly the path to a successful career and power ran through joining the Nazi Party and showing absolute loyalty to Hitler. One way of showing that loyalty was to ostracize and demonize people who were not sufficiently on board with the Nazi program. Sound familiar? The comparison to Trumpism is a fair one.
Anyway, this brother turned his own father in to the Nazi authorities for continuing to treat his Jewish patients after it was outlawed. My mother watched her father be hauled off, and lived through the fear of not knowing what would happen to him. Very traumatic for a young child. My grandfather was held, questioned, and was eventually released because he played the part of a man who was in the beginning stages of dementia who couldn’t understand what was going on. (Remember, he was older and on his second marriage). He had to stop practicing medicine to continue the ruse. If you say “Oh that could never happen under Trump,” please realize that Trump has already publicly said he wants to fire all civil servants he deems insufficiently loyal to him and replace them with supporters. The parallels are there, and refusing to acknowledge them doesn’t make them go away.
Thanks for sharing, Tanya. My senior year of high school (1953-54) we had a German exchange student. Herbert and I became close friends. We kept the friendship alive through letters and eventually international phone calls. He and his wife Gisela visited us for two weeks, and Meg and I spent two weeks with them in Germany. Herbert died two years ago.
We shared so much. A few of Herbert’s thoughts:
“ I don’t understand how my father could be a Nazi “ (his father died in an Allied prison camp and as a child Herbert was put in the Nazi Youth Movement.)
He said that his year in America helped him see what democracy was really like.
He said that many Germans believed, as he did, that the Allies did not defeat the Germans, the Allies liberated them.
My mother, uncle ( her younger brother )and grandmother were sent to live in the Bavarian Alps on a farm to escape the bombing raids in Munich. One time, an Allied bomber dropped a bomb on the farm, she never knew if it was an accident, or maybe the plane was having mechanical issues and had to drop the weight…but even so, she said they were glad to see the bombers because it meant a sooner end to the Nazi’s and the war.
She also was supposed to go to some kind of Hitler youth program, but being up on the mountain between two villages, her mother told the authorities in each village that her daughter was attending in the other one. It was risky, but I guess the Nazi’s were so certain no one would dare thwart them that she got away with it!
Look in the mirror. We have met the enemy and the enemy is us. You can't just turn your back and walk away. But, here we are, DILLIGAF promoting Trumpism in our front yard, and we turn our back. Elise Stefanik promoting Trumpism throughout our northcountry, and we turn our back. Our state maintaining a Donald J. Trump New York State park in Westchester and Putnam counties, and we turn our back. Harbingers of hate. You have to break the mirror.
Thanks, Will. You’ve pushed my buttons again. Many moons ago, I entered college anticipating a dual major in political science and economics. In Poli Sci 101, in addition to the basic textbook, we were given a list of books from which to choose one, read, and write a report on. I chose Mein Kamph. As an 18 year old, I was appalled by what I read—the Arian supremacy, the anti-Semitism, the twisting and misuse of the Christian faith, etc. It was beyond belief. But this was post World War II, and much of what Hitler advocated had been implemented. Before World War II, too many read Mein Kamph and said the ideas were so crazy they would never happen. But they did. There is a lesson for our present time in all of this. When somebody advocates for something, no matter how crazy, believe them.
Thanks for writing about something that the main stream media seems unwilling to write about. Trump also has many characteristics found in sociopathic persons.
Our so-called rep in Congress, Elise Stefanik, is well aware of Trump's fascism and says nothing. Both her silence in response to Trump's appalling speeches and her espousal of the antisemitic replacement theory says she agrees wholeheartedly with it. I hadn't considered that a desire to snap up cheap property might be a motivating factor in her move to the far right, but she's certainly mercenary enough.
Thanks for pointing out the similarities between the experiences in Germany leading up to Hitler's rise to power and then the subsequent tragedies that ensued. I have found in sometimes not so civil discourse with those speaking in favor of Trump's candidacy that their sentiments do, indeed reflect a complete rejection of what they perceive as government's failures, their strongly partisan dysfunction and mistrust of anything governing bodies are trying to do "to rather than for them!" Many seem to like the image of the apparent tough guy standing up there loudly giving voice to their own feelings of resentment, anger, fear, prejudice and discontent. Lots of the points documented in Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. There also seems to be a feeling that Trump will strike fear into the hearts/minds of those who stand to threatening us on the global stage without stopping to think that it is the citizens of this nation who stand in fear not respect! Unfortunately, much of the thinking is influenced by certain of the national media sources, social media and the lies and falsehoods presented by those running for office and their constant stream of attack ads condemning opponents. Yeah, guess there any number of parallels aren't there?! Interesting, too, for one who has been voting now for six decades that it's only the most recent decade which has afforded all of the above to manifest itself to the extent it has and pose a very real danger to our democracy! What has happened to civil discourse, common sense, compromise, critical thinking and efforts to truly address and resolve problems in a bi-partisan public interest fashion? Let's hope and work for the election of those with good and decent character!
Will.. I think your assessment here is spot on. The signs are everywhere and daily, but his minions don't see it, or, when it's pointed out, don't believe that they could be part of something like a "Nazi" movement. Your comment about "looking away" really struck a chord with me. If you get a chance, check out our son's song which he performed on AHA... WMHT's weekly tv show, it's actually titled "Don't Look Away". You can Google "Slam Reed... Don't Look Away" (he used to go by "Slam" because there are a ton of "Sam Reeds" in the music world.)
the phenomenon of German citizens (and citizens of other countries under German occupation) benefitting financially by looting the belongings and even taking over the homes of Jews when they were taken away by German soldiers is well known and extensively chronicled. Check out the Holocaust Museum site for more info.https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/some-were-neighbors/neighbors/inviting-brutality
With the notion, pushed by Trump and Vance, that deporting millions of migrants will lower housing costs for other Americans
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” – Elie Wiesel
FWIW, I don’t believe that we are powerless to act. Just numbed by the relentless assault. And the media’s complicity in “sanewashing” the abhorrent behavior of the MAGAs and their enablers.
https://open.substack.com/pub/margaretsullivan/p/about-those-new-york-times-headlines?r=7wk5d&utm_medium=ios
Will, we saw said snapping turtle yesterday on the Feeder Canal or at least its relative. Good sized guy!! It did not move so we warned dog walkers what to expect up ahead. You don't want to tangle with a snapping turtle!!
Sadly Trump has shown signs of wanting to be a dictator from the beginning of his first term. To me, it's obvious, but sadly, to a great swath of the American public, they have little or no understanding of Trump's long term past, they just saw the Billionaire businessman with the magical powers that could solve huge business problems in less than an hour on a TV reality show. He's genius! Except if you actually dig in to his history as a businessman in NYC, and you will discover a wreckage of financials and endless lies and cheating.
Great column, Will. Timothy Snyder made the same point about the fairness of invoking Hitler recently. I’m sure Ruth Ben Ghiat and Hannah Arendt would as well.
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/trumps-hitlerian-month?r=9qpud&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for sharing the substance article. It's brilliant and frightening. The comparison is obvious and has been from day 1. "Those who don't know their history are bound to repeat it."" Getting out the vote is crucial. But, win or lose, Trump is a dangerous man and his minions are as well.
It is not true that Germans didn’t see the evil of Hitler and the Nazis early on as evidenced by the satire published in the magazine Simplicissimus that excoriated the Nazis along with everything else a good satire publication exposes. The warnings were there, just as they are now, and you can count on artists, and satirists being on the front lines.
I had a few things to say about it recently: https://mikeparwana.substack.com/p/you-cant-trust-a-nazi
WAMC did a story, long but worth reading or listening, about fascism creeping into Stamford, VT that sounds very much like some of what was going on at the recent Queensbury town board meeting where extremists attacked Prop 1, the Equal Rights Amendment, and echoes some of what went on at the Rockwell Falls Library not long ago.
https://www.wamc.org/news/2024-10-11/bringing-the-war-home-how-one-vermont-school-has-become-a-cultural-battlefield
I couldnt hit like on that article! That is downright frightening - watching neighbors - people you might have known for years - to become that taken over by the crap being fed to them. Well, obviously, we see it in the news etc every day.
Just listened to the NPR broadcast on Stamford… Yes- hit very close to home…
I suspect that many, if not most, Trump supporters who read this commentary will be deeply offended. Some may post comments here, claiming to be victims of liberal hysteria. But how can they believe otherwise, when their support of Trump is based largely on the perception of their own victimhood? That their grievances are of greater value than the grievances of others. And as such, it's legitimate to use threats of force, and force itself, to fix what they believe is broken. To make us great again. This proposition, that one's grievances over perceived injustice permits an unjust solution, forms the basis of Trump's corrupt populism.
Of all the offensive signs and flags and memes all around the North Country, the one that upsets me the most is F**k Your Feelings.
Really? Has the mother I see driving her SUV with two kids in her backseat and that sticker on her back window really had it so bad she doesn’t care at all about how other people feel?
Is that who these Trumpers really are?
Yes. It's who they are. Believe it when they show you.
What a thing to teach their children
Dominate the other guy!
Don't compromise. Compromise is for cucks.
And, never admit that you were wrong.
Thank you Will....I have faith that we are fighting back and winning. It doesn't seem so in the North Country with Stefanik leading the charge, yet we must remember this is only one district with NOT a huge population. Those of us who understand this can write post cards, send money, make calls around the Country to make a difference where truth falls on deaf ears around here...
I join you and many others in the concern for the future of our democracy, especially as there continues to be evidence that the race is tightening and maybe even favoring Trump. Even for those of us who are alarmed by what Trump promises, I sense we can't possibly believe it will actually happen because our country has always been able to prevail. We can't imagine it happening it here, so we will shake our heads once again, go about our business watch our favorite football team this afternoon not really sure how we can stop it beyond casting our vote.
Ken, you have described exactly how I feel. Powerless and heartbroken to think my neighbors (seemingly all of them) support this man and what he stands for.
I have tried to be civil and reasonable.
And perhaps that's a failure seeing the current state of things. I don't support people glossing over hatred and marching to the tune of White Supremacy . This is where we end up. We turn into the the frog boiled for dinner. Slowly but surely.
Civility does not seem to be working.
So, what do you object to? That the US has had one of the strongest recoveries from recession of all the developed nations? That the infrastructure bill is helping repair bridges and highways across the country? Maybe you don't like it that the CHIPS Act is bringing manufacturing back to the United States? Maybe you object to seniors paying less for medication? Maybe you object to crime being down, illegal border crossings being down, and seizures of fentanyl doubling in the last 2 years?
I'm sick to death of people excusing their desire to vote for a racist felon and adjudicated sexual abuser by pointing to "problems" with the Biden administration, when they won't say what it is they actually object to. And don't say the "border problem. Anyone who reads knows that Trump told kill the Border Security Bill so that he'd have a campaign issue.
Well said!
Isn’t character and honesty of leadership at least as important as policy ?
The man is an insurrectionist who admires strongmen and has promised to be a dictator on day one. He has proposed rounding up millions of people into detention camps to send a message to others to think again. He has suggested a short violent purge would be a good thing. If he is not already owned by Elon Musk he will soon be.
It’s hard to imagine a Democratic policy so distasteful you would prefer Trump. Who, by the way is a mere front for the far right authors of Project 2025. Of course, if that document appeals to you…..
"It's fair to compare Trumpism to Nazism" / -ergo: It's fair to compare Trump supporters to Nazis. [?]
If the shoe fits..
My mother grew up in Nazi Germany. She was born in 1930, a child of my grandfather’s second marriage. She had much older brothers from his first marriage, who were already adults when she was born. My grandfather was a doctor who had both Jews and Christians as patients. As Hitler began his rise, one of those brothers became an ardent follower, who swallowed the lies and saw Hitler as the savior of the German people. Certainly the path to a successful career and power ran through joining the Nazi Party and showing absolute loyalty to Hitler. One way of showing that loyalty was to ostracize and demonize people who were not sufficiently on board with the Nazi program. Sound familiar? The comparison to Trumpism is a fair one.
Anyway, this brother turned his own father in to the Nazi authorities for continuing to treat his Jewish patients after it was outlawed. My mother watched her father be hauled off, and lived through the fear of not knowing what would happen to him. Very traumatic for a young child. My grandfather was held, questioned, and was eventually released because he played the part of a man who was in the beginning stages of dementia who couldn’t understand what was going on. (Remember, he was older and on his second marriage). He had to stop practicing medicine to continue the ruse. If you say “Oh that could never happen under Trump,” please realize that Trump has already publicly said he wants to fire all civil servants he deems insufficiently loyal to him and replace them with supporters. The parallels are there, and refusing to acknowledge them doesn’t make them go away.
The president is the commander in chief of the military
Thanks for sharing, Tanya. My senior year of high school (1953-54) we had a German exchange student. Herbert and I became close friends. We kept the friendship alive through letters and eventually international phone calls. He and his wife Gisela visited us for two weeks, and Meg and I spent two weeks with them in Germany. Herbert died two years ago.
We shared so much. A few of Herbert’s thoughts:
“ I don’t understand how my father could be a Nazi “ (his father died in an Allied prison camp and as a child Herbert was put in the Nazi Youth Movement.)
He said that his year in America helped him see what democracy was really like.
He said that many Germans believed, as he did, that the Allies did not defeat the Germans, the Allies liberated them.
My mother, uncle ( her younger brother )and grandmother were sent to live in the Bavarian Alps on a farm to escape the bombing raids in Munich. One time, an Allied bomber dropped a bomb on the farm, she never knew if it was an accident, or maybe the plane was having mechanical issues and had to drop the weight…but even so, she said they were glad to see the bombers because it meant a sooner end to the Nazi’s and the war.
She also was supposed to go to some kind of Hitler youth program, but being up on the mountain between two villages, her mother told the authorities in each village that her daughter was attending in the other one. It was risky, but I guess the Nazi’s were so certain no one would dare thwart them that she got away with it!
Look in the mirror. We have met the enemy and the enemy is us. You can't just turn your back and walk away. But, here we are, DILLIGAF promoting Trumpism in our front yard, and we turn our back. Elise Stefanik promoting Trumpism throughout our northcountry, and we turn our back. Our state maintaining a Donald J. Trump New York State park in Westchester and Putnam counties, and we turn our back. Harbingers of hate. You have to break the mirror.
Thanks, Will. You’ve pushed my buttons again. Many moons ago, I entered college anticipating a dual major in political science and economics. In Poli Sci 101, in addition to the basic textbook, we were given a list of books from which to choose one, read, and write a report on. I chose Mein Kamph. As an 18 year old, I was appalled by what I read—the Arian supremacy, the anti-Semitism, the twisting and misuse of the Christian faith, etc. It was beyond belief. But this was post World War II, and much of what Hitler advocated had been implemented. Before World War II, too many read Mein Kamph and said the ideas were so crazy they would never happen. But they did. There is a lesson for our present time in all of this. When somebody advocates for something, no matter how crazy, believe them.
Thanks for writing about something that the main stream media seems unwilling to write about. Trump also has many characteristics found in sociopathic persons.
Our so-called rep in Congress, Elise Stefanik, is well aware of Trump's fascism and says nothing. Both her silence in response to Trump's appalling speeches and her espousal of the antisemitic replacement theory says she agrees wholeheartedly with it. I hadn't considered that a desire to snap up cheap property might be a motivating factor in her move to the far right, but she's certainly mercenary enough.
Thanks for pointing out the similarities between the experiences in Germany leading up to Hitler's rise to power and then the subsequent tragedies that ensued. I have found in sometimes not so civil discourse with those speaking in favor of Trump's candidacy that their sentiments do, indeed reflect a complete rejection of what they perceive as government's failures, their strongly partisan dysfunction and mistrust of anything governing bodies are trying to do "to rather than for them!" Many seem to like the image of the apparent tough guy standing up there loudly giving voice to their own feelings of resentment, anger, fear, prejudice and discontent. Lots of the points documented in Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. There also seems to be a feeling that Trump will strike fear into the hearts/minds of those who stand to threatening us on the global stage without stopping to think that it is the citizens of this nation who stand in fear not respect! Unfortunately, much of the thinking is influenced by certain of the national media sources, social media and the lies and falsehoods presented by those running for office and their constant stream of attack ads condemning opponents. Yeah, guess there any number of parallels aren't there?! Interesting, too, for one who has been voting now for six decades that it's only the most recent decade which has afforded all of the above to manifest itself to the extent it has and pose a very real danger to our democracy! What has happened to civil discourse, common sense, compromise, critical thinking and efforts to truly address and resolve problems in a bi-partisan public interest fashion? Let's hope and work for the election of those with good and decent character!
Will.. I think your assessment here is spot on. The signs are everywhere and daily, but his minions don't see it, or, when it's pointed out, don't believe that they could be part of something like a "Nazi" movement. Your comment about "looking away" really struck a chord with me. If you get a chance, check out our son's song which he performed on AHA... WMHT's weekly tv show, it's actually titled "Don't Look Away". You can Google "Slam Reed... Don't Look Away" (he used to go by "Slam" because there are a ton of "Sam Reeds" in the music world.)