You don't have to be another Hitler to be Hitlerian, by Hal M. Brown

Trump's agenda is Hitler without death camps and starting a war that would kill 75 million.

Today Sabrina Haake wrote Contempt of Court (here).

She references Hitler twice:

Bukele’s ‘States of Exception’ are the legal cover he employs to silence his critics and send people to concentration camps with no legal process. States of Exception were also Hitler’s initial cover for controlling the media, dispatching SS henchmen, and sending millions of innocent people to unthinkable deaths.

Like Bukele, Hitler, and other autocrats throughout history, Trump is also fond of declaring “national emergencies,” which are precursors to states of exceptions. After only three months in office, Trump has already declared six new national emergenciesranging from the “US border emergency” to a “National Energy Emergency,” to a national emergency designating “Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

For my own Substack today I am expanding on what I posted as a comment to her Substack:

For some time people like Sabrina and me have not been reluctant to compare Trump, and people like Bukele, to Hitler when appropriate. Others with a public forum treat mentioning his name like uttering the name of the evil Voldemort. Only Harry Potter dared to do this. When Trump does something Hitlerian and we point this out we do so knowing full well that to say that this does not diminish the worst in history genocide and a war that killed some 75 million people. One doesn't have to be literally a modern day Hitler to be Hitlerian which is defined as "relating to or characteristic of Hitler or the policies of the Nazi party."

Wiki defines blitzkrieg as follows:

Blitzkrieg is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack, using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with artillery, air assault, and close air support. The intent is to break through an opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, confuse the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: a battle of annihilation.

Ironically, considering the failed Russian attempt to defeat Ukraine in their own blitzkrieg, this is the photo Wiki used as their illustration:

The German bliztkrieg began in 1939 and had achieved the Nazi goal of conquering Europe by 1941. It included the invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

Trump, in a matter of months, has been engaged in his own blitzkrieg to achieve the Hitlerian end of turning the country into his dictatorship where the rule of law is what he says it is.

Trump is engaged in a juggernaut to cement his power. A juggernaut, in current English usage, is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive, and unstoppable. (Wiki). (The word may sound German but it is really an English version of Jagannath, an important deity in the Hindu traditions of eastern and north-eastern India. The meaning originates from the Hindu temple cars.)

Trump has decided to flex his 78 year old golf tournament winning muscles by coming up with things to attack that have little if anything to do with achieving his ultimate goal. Chief among them are the entire DOGE agenda and his trying to wipe DEI from the country. Neither of these needed to be done to become ruler of an authoritarian country. But, back to Hitler, I wonder if the Nazis needed to exterminate the Jews to take over Europe.

What that seems to add up to is my concluding, not as an historian, but as a psychotherapist, that ruthless dictators are a strange breed with both quirks and psychopathology that may differ from one to another. For example, I doubt Hitler ever had anything like a Trump Cabinet meeting, with cameras rolling, going around the room having everyone praise him effusively. I haven’t read anything about Hitler being a grandiose narcissist needing to be effusively praised by his subordinates. He was, however, ruthless in using the force of arms to achieve his goals.

Trump’s armed troops don’t enforce his dictates by rumbling down the streets in tanks. Instead they drive up in black SUVs and his ICE version of the SS are just as intimidating as the Waffin SS were.

Imagine ICE officers like the SS troops below standing on your street and wondering which of your neighbors they were coming to take away, or whether it might by you.

Read my previous Substacks.