Scary shades of the 1930s

Via lies, exaggerations and outright deceit, Donald Trump has become a master at exploiting the darker nature of his political audience — becoming adept at igniting what Robert Paxton has called “mobilizing passions.” Paxton, a historian of fascism, says those passions are the “emotional lava” of a political movement. As an example, one need look no further than Trump’s increasingly heated rhetoric on immigration as the election gets closer.

Trump got exactly the issue he wanted to campaign on after he had the GOP House of Representatives kill the bipartisan immigration bill (H.R. 1511) early this year. Both Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have made scapegoating immigrants a prime thrust of their attack against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz — blaming immigrants for a broad array of our nation’s ills.

It’s certainly a proven strategy exemplified by Germany’s Adolf Hitler‘s scapegoating of the Jews and other undesirables in the 1930s. Hitler’s “final solution” was the Holocaust, the genocide of 6 million of these “undesirables” after his Madagascar mass-deportation plan proved infeasible.

Here in the U.S., Trump plans to deport 10 million of those he considers to be undesirable. Scary shades of the 1930s indeed.

Frank G Splitt

Mount Prospect