Timothy Snyder: Trump's Hitlerian Month

[Nevilledog]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/trumps-hitlerian-month

Trump just had quite a Hitlerian month.

But before broaching the subject of Trump and Hitler I have to say a with a word about the American taboo on "comparisons."

Anyone who refers to Trump's Hitlerian moments will be condemned for "comparison." Somehow that "comparison" rather than Trump's deeds becomes the problem. The outrage one feels about the crimes of the 1930s and 1940s is transferred from the person who resembles the criminal to the person who points out the resemblance.

This cynical position opposing "comparisons" exploits the emotional logic of exceptionalism. Americans are innocent and good (we would like to believe). We are not (we take for granted) like the Germans between the world wars. We would never (we imagine) tolerate the stereotypes German Nazis invoked. We have learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

Since we are so innocent and good, since we know everything, it just cannot be true -- so runs the emotional logic -- that a leading American politician does Hitlerian things. And since we are so pure and wise, we never have to specify what it was that we have learned from the past. Indeed, our our goodness is so profound that we must express it by attacking the people who recall history.

*snip*

[flying_wahini]

1. I love Tim Snyder. Great historian who is so sharp minded.

[lees1975]

2. Americans in 2024 are far more gullible and naive than Germans in the 1930's.

I'll just leave that statement at that. Snyder is 100% on target with this.

[young_at_heart]

3. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the common/ordinary/normal man....

"could" and "would" read all of this and then make his/her brain connect the dots? I'm shedding more than a few tears knowing that this will never happen!

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

The outrage one feels about the crimes of the 1930s and 1940s is transferred from the person who resembles the criminal to the person who points out the resemblance.

Got a lot of that going around in several forms.

This cynical position opposing "comparisons" exploits the emotional logic of exceptionalism. Americans are innocent and good (we would like to believe). We are not (we take for granted) like the Germans between the world wars. We would never (we imagine) tolerate the stereotypes German Nazis invoked. We have learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

That, too.

Indeed, our our goodness is so profound that we must express it by attacking the people who recall history.

Same

Democracy, of course, depends on the ability to reflect, and that reflection is impossible without a sense of the past. The past is our only mirror, which is why fascists want to shatter it.