"Novelty or Inertia? What gave rise to the ostensible renaissance of Nazi culture in the Trump administration"

By Kate O Hanlon

Though Donald Trump has only been in office for a few months, his administration has drawn some striking parallels with the rise of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany. From Elon Musk's alleged Nazi salute in January, to Trump’s desire to seize what is autonomous Danish territory, some experts are getting nervous about the increasing amount of similarities between our current era and the period leading up to World War II. For historians, it has always been difficult to establish legitimate and instructory parallels between the past and present. However, according to Dr. Peter Hayes, a historian and professor at Northwestern University Illinois, certain comparisons can seem “exaggerated” on the surface but in retrospect they have been “increasingly relevant" warnings. With Western societies facing rising nationalism, extreme right-wing rhetoric and inward-looking attitudes, this article will look at Trump’s ostensibly fascist regime. This article does not intend to call Trump himself a Nazi or defame his character but rather explore the facts of his administration so far and the likeness between that and 1930’s Germany.

In a joint session of Congress on March 4th, Trump made it clear that he would like to “welcome [-] Greenland into the United States”. The main motivation behind this desire for acquisition of what has been sovereign Danish territory for years, according to Trump himself, is for ‘international security”. However Hayes fears this move is reminiscent of Hitlers Lebensraum policy and that Trump’s logic behind this is similar to Hitler’s reasoning behind his tactics in the Caucasus, stating that “for Trump, it’s minerals; for Hitler, it was grain and oil. Control of these things appears to both men as vital to victory in the dog-eat-dog struggle of world politics”. Dr. Chris Browning, who is a Holocaust specialist at the University of North Carolina has also spoken on the matter, stating that Trump’s move to “grab[bing] Greenland and Panama and subjugating Canada to fit into a late 19th century imperial mentality is akin to Hitler's Lebensraum”. Browning also notes an “uncanny resemblance” between the January 2021 insurrection in Washington and Munich Putsch in November 1923, writing that both failed coups, came to power again and went on to launch “legal revolutions” from within the system that are fettered to their own ideologies. 

We can also see a quelling of free speech under the Trump administration that is shockingly similar to the artistic and ideological censorship that was seen in Nazi Germany before the outbreak of WWII. Columbia Student activist, Mahmoud Khalil, has been detained in a federal detention center after becoming a vocal activist at rallies and sit-ins protesting US foreign policy in relation to their handling of the war in Gaza. Nearly all of the students at these protests wore masks but Khalil chose not to, stating “What am I doing wrong that I need to be covering my face for?” Even though the protests were entirely peaceful and there were no legal repercussions as severe as this for student protestors under Biden’s presidency, seven weeks after the inauguration of Trump, federal officials arrived at Khalil's door and he now faces the risk of deportation for exercising his right to freedom of speech. The timing of his arrest is not coincidental as Trump has been quite outspoken on both his views about the war in Gaza and his contempt for student protestors. The right to free speech is also being revoked from communities like the trans community, as President Trump recently signed an executive order requiring all US government identity documents to reflect a person’s assigned sex at birth. This includes passports which have stranded a lot of legal US citizens, having taken the right from these citizens to move in and out of the US freely under their own identity. This act of denationalisation is starkly similar to the treatment of Jews, Roma and Communists in Nazi Germany according to Browning. While Trump hasn’t outright ostracised or started attacking one specific ethnic group like Hilter did with the Jewish population of Europe, Trump has showed an unrelenting aggression for ‘the enemy within’, which seems to be directed at people like Khalil who don’t align themselves with the values of his directorate. 

This is not to say that Trump is a Nazi (although that is an allegation he has faced before, seeing as Trump maintains that Hitler “did some good things” and Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly has gone on record saying that Trump “certainly” meets the definition of a fascist) but rather point out the dangers of the absolute power that figureheads like Hitler and Trump try to attain for themselves. Democracy has come such a long way since the horrors of WWII and the subsequent Geneva convention; it is totally disheartening to see the rise of right wing politics that imitate fascist pasts. Modern democracy is often manipulated by men like Trump for their own benefit and collective public awareness of this manipulation, as well as awareness of the revoking of rights of fellow citizens, is key to the betterment of democratic systems following the presidency of Mr. Trump.