History is Rhyming Again

 

     The words "fascist" and "nazi" are overused. I think most if not all of us can agree on that. Donald Trump proves that every time he uses them to smear his so-called enemies, interchangeably using them with Marxist, socialist or Communist.

     Liberals are guilty of it, too. We all are. The old Nazi Party of Germany from 1933-1945 is not coming back, not in its original iteration, because it's literally a different world. Geopolitical conditions have changed and certain facets of National Socialism are too intolerable to repeat.

     But the aforementioned Trump makes comparisons to Nazism all too irresistible. So I think historians and political pundits can be forgiven for sounding the alarm bells when it was announced that Trump's presumably last campaign rally will be held in Madison Square Garden on October 27.

     And Trump makes it irresistible because, going back decades, we began learning he'd always had fascistic sympathies and tendencies. In fact, they've been accelerating in the last few months of the election season. As when he first came down that escalator in 2015, he's been Otherizing immigrants and channeling the same Nativist hatred that propelled so much of our politics in the 19th century.

     He's been stepping it up, too. The guy who sleeps with Hitler's speeches next to his bed has apparently been reading Mein Kampf, too, saying immigrants are committing crimes they're not and that they're poisoning the blood of our nation (obviously, his own five kids, four of whom came from immigrant wives, are exempted).

     Months ago, he began talking about huge detention centers, mass forced deportations, etc. "I am your retribution." "If I'm not elected, there will be a bloodbath." He's talked about letting the police have one violent day (Like, I don't know, Kristallnacht?). That he'd be a dictator on day one. Siccing the US military against American citizens. So, let's face it, he makes comparisons to Hitler too irresistible.

     But the rally at Madison Square Garden is a bridge too far. As with his Tulsa rally, this venue was chosen strategically. With politicians, especially Republicans, there is no such thing as coincidence. Even in his deepening dementia, Trump is all too aware, or was made aware, of the Nazi rally that was held at that same Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.

 

     The rally featured a huge full length portrait of George Washington and it perhaps occurred to few if any of how incongruent was the juxtaposition of Washington, American flags and Nazi flags. The reason for Washington's posthumous and unwilling appearance was that the American Bund organizers were utterly convinced that the father of our country would've been fully supportive of National Socialism. In plain point of fact, the first president would've been horrified at Hitler and his ideology. Washington, after all, went to war against a dictatorial tyrant.

     The keynote speaker was one Fritz Kuhn, the corrupt leader of the German-American Bund. The Bund was extremely unpopular in New York City, as is Trump today, and it brought out the largest police presence in NYPD history. The inside of Madison Square Garden attracted 20,000 Nazis but the protesters outside numbered five times that much.

     No doubt Kuhn and his fellow goose steppers thought the large and prestigious venue in the largest city on earth would be just the beginning, that the rally would be start of many as National Socialism took hold in the United States. Thankfully, the opposite happened.

     The Bund began collapsing right after the rally. By the end of the year, Fritz Kuhn would be arrested, charged and convicted of larceny and forgery. His life after that was spent in prison, then internment then being deported back to Germany where he died in another prison in 1951.

     Adding to the collapse of the Bund was Hitler's false flag invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which of course was the catalyst for WWII.

     Here's what makes Trump infinitely more dangerous than Kuhn ever was:

     While the German American Bund and other fascist organizations were cropping up all over the country, they never got a toehold in American politics. Americans as a whole despised them, especially in New York City. Fritz Kuhn never had 74,000,000 followers.

     But that's how many Trump had voted for him in 2020. 74,000,000 neo Nazis, cryptofascists, fascist sympathizers and those who chose to look the other way voted for Trump four years ago. That's 6,000,000 more than who voted for him in 2016.

     As stated, Kuhn fell from grace with admirable speed. Father Coughlin fell from grace the same year when the Roosevelt administration forced the cancellation of his radio program. Charles Lindbergh soon followed.

     Yet here we are, a decade later, and Trump is still around. And, to listen to the MSM and the pollsters, his grubby, stubby fingertips are brushing against the front door of the White House.

     That should give anyone pause.

     We don't know what Trump will say at Madison Square Garden on the 27th but we can offer some educated guesses. We can expect the same rancid Nativist rhetoric that we've been getting on tap for years. There will be the same tired insults of Kamala Harris "Comrade Kam-ALA, who's a Communist, Marxist Fascist", etc.

     The NYPD will be there in full force to protect him, as they were 85 years ago in case, God forbid, anyone threaten Trump's First Amendment rights to free speech. It being a city of 8,000,000, you know New York City's Madison Square Garden will attract more than its fair share of protesters, as in 1939.

     The venue, the city and the state makes utterly no sense. Instead of going to a battleground state like Michigan or Wisconsin, he chose a deep blue city and state he has no chance of winning in two and a half weeks.

     It's not what Trump will say or not say in Madison Square Garden that will be so dangerous. It's what it represents. No matter how deeply Trump slips into his obvious dementia, he's very aware of history, especially Nazi history, just as Reagan was when he chose Philadelphia, Mississippi to kick off his 1980 presidential campaign.