Painting a picture of President Donald Trump with Hitler brush strokes has become a favorite pastime for those on the Left and, at least in one case, a literal painting of Trump with a Hitler mustache displayed on the July 7, 2024, cover of the New Republic.
“We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 campaign poster” of Adolf Hitler, the once reasonable liberal, now strident progressive magazine crowed. One of its lead journalists, Michael Tomasky, asked, “Why waste time debating the extent of Trump’s fascism when we ought to be fighting it instead?”
The comparisons between Trump and Adolf Hitler began in legacy media and progressive circles early in 2016 when Trump was on his first ride on the presidential campaign trail shortly after an Islamic terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. Fourteen people were killed and 22 others seriously injured by two “homegrown violent extremists,” according to the FBI’s investigation. The perpetrators were a Muslim couple of Pakistani descent. Trump responded by calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
From that day on, the fascist, Nazi, and end-of-democracy trope burned its way into the American mind.
Ten years later, while still going strong, the most recent Trump-rhymes-with-Hitler announcement stands out only because it is even more absurd than earlier comparisons. Last month on Truth Social, the president shared a rendering of a proposed new Space Force uniform he said was inspired by the 1997 film Starship Troopers. Critics quickly pointed out that the characters wearing dress blacks with sharply fitted tunics and peaked caps recall the uniform worn by Hitler’s SS troops. No matter that throughout history, many parade dress uniforms sported tunics and peaked caps, or plumed caps like the famous Swiss Guards. Trump established the Space Force in 2019 as the sixth branch of the military. This likely accounts for his keen interest in the Space Force fashion-forward statement.
What really got the Nazi copycat machine up and running stemmed from Trump referencing Starship Troopers as an inspiration for the new uniform. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, the film draws heavily on the militaristic aesthetic of the Nazi motion picture industry. Verhoeven said he “decided to make a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism.” The Dutch director added that Starship Troopers specifically centered on American politics. That the film was released almost 20 years before Trump ran for president illustrates for progressives Verhoeven’s ability to forecast how politics in this country could easily slide into fascism. For anybody else, this only illustrates the logic of inmates housed in the cuckoo’s nest.
Stories in the press and on social media also reminded us that Verhoeven’s long-forgotten film also drew inspiration from Hitler’s favorite Aryan hottie, who spurned his overtures: Leni Riefenstahl. Verhoeven acknowledged he borrowed his film’s visual elements from the infamous film director’s two notorious propaganda films, Triumph of the Will on the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi Party rally and Olympia on the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin. Both dazzled moviegoers worldwide.
“I was using Riefenstahl to point out, or so I thought, that these heroes and heroines were straight out of the Nazi campaign,” Verhoeven told the Guardian.
The demented pageantry and demonical precision of troops marching across the parade ground in Nazi attire in her cinematic stream of agitprop does have an oceanic effect that sweeps the viewer into the heart of the Third Reich. Why not sweep in Trump with Riefenstahl? Is not his wild claim that he won the 2020 election the equivalent of the Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933, which abolished the civil rights granted by the Weimar Constitution and consolidated Nazi power? Is there not a striking similarity to the Jan. 6, 2021, “insurrection” and Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1933?
For sure, in this Jan. 16, 2021, Los Angeles Times headline: “The Trump insurrection was America’s Beer Hall Putsch.”
Then a touch of speculation from the leading newspaper in Southern California: “Above all, imagine if the president had been a bit more competent, a bit more strategic, a bit more daring. Hitler, after all, was at least willing to be present at the violence his words inspired. He was also more persuasive in his dealings with important officials.”
The Nation magazine was more generous on Trump’s competence in a back-handed way: “Trump has raced ahead of Hitler’s time table for recovering from an attempted coup, bringing the United States much closer to a fascist takeover than most Americans likely realize.”
The Atlantic magazine’s Ali Breland informs us that social media accounts out of the Trump Cabinet “have become unrelenting streams of xenophobic and Nazi-coded messages and imagery.” A post from the Labor Department on Jan. 10 hits this triple: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage.” This, says the Atlantic, is “eerily similar” to the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.” Try this analogy another way: Hitler was a fanatic nonsmoker. Is zero tolerance for tobacco from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “eerily similar” to the fuhrer’s decree? Hitler was a vegetarian. The vegan special of asparagus, peas, stuffed peppers, and potato puree is eerily similar to Hitler’s diet. You eat that vegan special, you’re dining out with Adolf.
READ HITLER’S 1920 PLATFORM AND TELL ME HE WAS A CONSERVATIVE
Until recently, I was unaware that a venue for a MAGA rally could be Nazi-coded. On CNN News Central, with only a few weeks to go before the 2024 presidential election, Democratic strategist James Carville drew a fascist connotation on Trump’s choice of Madison Square Garden in New York for a campaign appearance. Before an adoring audience, Trump suggested deploying the National Guard to contain “radical-left lunatics” from disrupting polling places. Carville said Trump’s language was reminiscent of the rhetoric out of the Third Reich: “I didn’t know he was going to schedule a rally at Madison Square Garden to mimic the Nazi rally” in 1939. True, the “Silver Shirts” in the German American Bund held a rally at Madison Square Garden, thus guilt by association becomes guilt by location.
The remarkable degree to which the Left will go to Nazify Trump, however grotesque, might best be seen as a reminder of its own fascination and cult-like worship of mass-grave specialists on its side of the political fence since the Cold War days, namely Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh.
Bob Armstrong is a contributing writer to the online magazine Thursday Review and the author of the memoir No Exit from Vietnam.