People focus on Hitler and Nazi leaders and the atrocious lethal lies they told to justify the mass murder of Jews.
But they should focus also on the willingness of very many people to believe those lies, to cheer and assist as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and sent to their deaths.
The problem is never just the Hitlers, the Nazis. The problem is us, many of us — our propensity to stigmatize and hate.
#Trump #Republicans #Hitler #Nazis #immigrants #BloodLibel #PoliticsofHate
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In a powerful essay written with his usual lucidity, Timothy Snyder comments on Trump's "Hitlerian month" and the continued refusal of many American commentators to acknowledge the clear parallels between what Trump and Vance are doing and saying what Hitler did and said.
As Snyder notes, the myth of American exceptionalism forces us to pretend it can't happen to us, the good guys.
#Trump #Republicans #Hitler #Nazis #immigrants #BloodLibel #PoliticsofHate
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But:
"The reason why we keep alive the memory of Nazi crimes is not because it could never happen here, but because something similar can always happen anywhere. That memory has to include the details of history, or else we will not recognize the dangers.
'Never again' is something that you work for, not something that you inherit."
#Trump #Republicans #Hitler #Nazis #immigrants #BloodLibel #PoliticsofHate
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"It is fascist to start a political campaign from the choice of an enemy (this is the definition of politics by the most talented Nazi thinker, Carl Schmitt). It is fascist to replace reason with emotion, to tell big lies ('create stories,' as Vance says) that appeal to a sense of vulnerability and exploit a feeling of difference."
#Trump #Republicans #Hitler #Nazis #immigrants #BloodLibel #PoliticsofHate
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"The fantasy of barbarians in our cities violating basic social norms serves to gird the Trump-Vance story that legal, constitutional government is helpless and that only an angry mob backed by a new regime could get things done.
It is worth knowing, in this connection, that the first major action of Hitler's SS was the forced deportation of migrants."
Snyder also dissects Trump's out-in-the-open antisemitism.
#Trump #Republicans #Hitler #Nazis #immigrants #BloodLibel #PoliticsofHate
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William Lindsey 
