Explanation:
One reason many people find the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency scary is that Trump often sounds more like an authoritarian than a president.
Trump supporters argue that Trump's dictatorial rhetoric is a sales pitch and that Trump is more reasonable and less megalomaniacal than he sounds. They also point out that the United States has checks and balances that restrict the power of the president and make it difficult for a would-be dictator to seize absolute control.
But given what might be described as Trump's "dictatorial tendencies," it's worth reviewing how at least one famous dictator rose to power and transformed a democracy into a dictatorship.
Many observers have already drawn parallels between Trump and Adolf Hitler — not late Hitler, but early Hitler, before the horrors of the late 1930s and World War II (in other words, before Hitler became Hitler, back when millions of Germans viewed him as a refreshingly bold and strong leader who could restore a troubled country).
To do so is not to suggest that Trump is or would become another Hitler. No one knows what Trump would do with the power of the presidency, and fanatical psychopathic dictators like Hitler are thankfully rare. But the parallels between the rise of the two men are clear enough that it would be unwise to ignore them. Especially because, as Slate's Will Saletan recently observed, Trump's rhetoric is, in fact, becoming more and more early-Hitler-like.
Hitler himself went from fringe politician to chancellor of Germany in the space of a few years. And he went from Chancellor to dictator in a matter of months.
If Trump is elected president next month, he will instantly have more power than Hitler had when he was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933.
It is true that the United States in 2016 is in far better shape economically than Germany was in the early 1930s. It is also true that US democracy has already survived about 240 years of constitutional challenges, depressions, megalomaniacs, and wars — unlike the fragile Weimar Republic that was Germany after World War I.
But Trump already has more popular support than Hitler had before he eliminated Germany's democracy. Trump's party has more control of the government than the Nazis did. And President Trump would be the commander in chief of a military whose weaponry and power Hitler and the Nazis could only have dreamed of.
So it seems worth briefly reviewing this period of history and thinking about how it might be relevant to today.
From fringe politician to chancellor
:
For most of the 1920s, Hitler was a fringe-party rabble-rouser. In 1923, as the leader of the tiny Nazi party, he incited a violent attempt to overthrow the government and got himself thrown in prison for treason (a short stay that he later used to his advantage).
Hitler was a talented and mesmerizing speaker, and his speeches appealed to primal emotion and resentment rather than logic. His basic message was simple (and familiar):
Thanks to the incompetence and weakness of its leaders, the once-great nation of Germany had been reduced to a humiliating shadow of its former self.
Hitler and the Nazis, Hitler promised, would make Germany great again.
