Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:21 pm
If Donald Trump isn’t echoing his spiritual guru Vladimir Putin, he is reading out of the book he keeps at his bedside table and invoking the specter of Adolf Hitler’s ethnic nationalism, and century-old fears of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.
In a speech in Palm Beach, Florida, that Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald called “straight out of Nazi propaganda,” Donald Trump unleashed a very National Socialist attack on what he termed “a corrupt global establishment,” to which he tied Hillary Clinton.
Or course, Trump is the candidate with all the questionable business ties with the “global establishment,” but it’s called the “big lie” for a reason.
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In both Mein Kampf and in his early speeches, Hitler warned of the “powers of international supra-State finance,” and Trump is more than willing to do the same:
“Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors.â€
As if to make his point clearer, according to Trump, Clinton “doesn’t care for you unless you’re Wall Street or Hollywood,†which are two places anti-Semites have long said are dominated by Jews.
Hypocritically, the man who is receiving help from Russia to subvert the U.S. elections, went on to accuse Clinton of being in league with these shadowy forces to rig the system:
“This election will determine whether we’re a free nation, or whether we have only an illusion democracy but in are in fact controlled by a small handful of special global interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged.”
These are old anti-Semitic tropes, dating back to Czarist Russia’s fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which heavily influenced Adolf Hitler’s own propaganda.
Adolf Hitler gave his first ever live radio speech at the Siemens Dynamo Works in Berlin on November 10, 1933, and like Trump, took the opportunity to denounce the “international clique” seeking to destroy Germany:
“The struggle between the people and the hatred amongst them is being nurtured by very specific interested parties. It is a small, rootless, international clique that is turning the people against each other, that does not want them to have peace…They are the only ones who can be addressed as international, because they conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them.”
Trump’s language was so blatantly echoing Hitler’s own that the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt called on Trump to put a stop to it:
.@TeamTrump should avoid rhetoric&tropes that historically have been used ag. Jews & still spur #antisemitism. Lets keep hate out of cmpgn https://t.co/9LMnurQ3Xg
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) October 13, 2016
CNN’s Brian Stelter also issued a warning against language like this, saying, “That speech was paranoid and that speech was dangerous…. it sounded a lot like a dog whistle.”
Must-see. CNN's @brianstelter: "That speech was paranoid and that speech was dangerous…. it sounded a lot like a dog whistle." #Trump pic.twitter.com/oTvPD31ywb
— John Aravosis (@aravosis) October 13, 2016
People ought to be disturbed. Very disturbed at hearing things like this.
According to Trump, again echoing Hitler,
“This is not simply another four-year election. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we, the people, reclaim control over our government. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry.â€
Donald Trump has consciously or unconsciously followed Adolf Hitler throughout his campaign: from the stiff-armed Hitlergruß, or Hitler Salute given by Trump and returned by his followers; to the personal oaths of loyalty he has extracted from his followers; to inciting violence at his rallies against those who oppose him.
There have been other Nazi tropes as well, from his hostility to a free press to his disturbing embrace of the GOP’s ethnic nationalism and its signature anti-Semitism, as seen here. Hitler warned in 1923, and it is clear Trump is warning the same of the US, that “Germany has been turned into a colony of the outside world.”
Trump has been revealed as a misogynist and a racist. If any doubts have remained about his embrace of anti-Semitism, however heartfelt, they should now be banished by these deplorable words, which so closely echo those long used to foster prejudice and violence against Jews.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
