I have lost track of how many zillion times I’ve encountered this metaphor since Trump blundered into the world of U.S. politics (with the assistance of the 2016 Clinton campaign and the Bernie-disappearing media it controlled).
And although I think the Trump:Nazi comparison is ultimately simplistic and reductive — forgiving all manner of appalling crimes against humanity committed by Trump’s predecessors — I concede that the analogy is apt enough, considering Herr Drumpf’s demagoguery alone.
But while we’re comparing Trump to Hitler, we might also take into account the way the current resident of the Oval Office has been saber-rattling against Russia (however unfashionable it might be to ponder our nation’s Reich-like aggression, in these neo-McCarthyite times).
Along those lines, Trump has been: arming the West’s neo-Nazi proxies doing most of the killing for our puppet government in Ukraine; expelling scores of Russian diplomats and closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg; continuing Obama’s belligerent sanctions against Russia (and threatening new ones); conducting military exercises on Russia’s border; and proceeding with Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s massive investment in “usable” nuclear weapons.
So let’s at least try to be intellectually honest and morally consistent: When it comes to embracing the very essence of fascism — world-destabilizing, mass-murdering lawlessness and destruction — what U.S. presidents, these days, aren’t metaphorical Nazis?
Consider the history: The Third Reich is notorious for murdering millions of innocents in a mostly Jewish holocaust, arguably the greatest war crime of the last century.
But haven’t you noticed the mostly Muslim holocaust that’s been taking place over the last few decades, the result of Western wars? In case you haven’t, you should consider the fact that several million Arab/Muslim human beings were killed under Trump’s three predecessors alone, and two of those predecessors were “liberal” Democrats.
You should also consider the fact that 75-90% of the dead in modern wars are civilians, women and children, specifically. Because in the Global War On Terror (GWOT) era, all military-age-males are automatically deemed combatants, whether armed or unarmed, guilty or innocent.
Consider the question objectively:
Was Bill Clinton being the opposite of a Nazi when he killed between 550,000-880,000 Iraqi babies, tots four and under, per the World Health Organization?
(Beyond the hundreds of thousands of babies who died under Clinton’s brutal sanctions, it is likely that scores, if not hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis — pregnant women, children five and older, the ailing and elderly, etc. — also died from lack of potable water. Only no one counted them. That’s how “liberal” modern Western institutions are! Our governments butcher the innocent and our politicians and media work overtime to keep the populace ignorant!)
President Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, unflinchingly defended the draconian sanctions responsible for those hundreds of thousands of deaths — even as they were condemned by the international community, even as they only served to strengthen Saddam’s iron grip over Iraq.
Was Sec. Albright demonstrating her profound liberal values and moral convictions when she deemed those deaths “worth it”?
Clearly, she was not. In truth, Sec. Albright, a staunch, neoliberal Democrat, was acting as a dutiful propagandist for a genocidal policy, like a good… (hmm, what’s the word?) Nazi.
End Part I