The Spire

Todd Rado ‘26

Opinions Editor

In a previous article, I have said that America has always been a fascist country. I must woefully admit, I was completely wrong, and I apologize for the misinformation. Such a claim is far too optimistic. America today is and has been – as the overwhelming historical evidence tells us – Hitlerian. As a Jewish person, I don’t say this lightly. But the parallels are undeniable. We are there. The chilling part is that many of these aspects are new developments, but the other part of it? Carry-overs. 

First, a preface, to explain why I make this comparison, seeing as the Nazi comparison is universally dismissed as hyperbole. My sense of this is because, in the American mind, the Holocaust is considered a specially “unique” event, that can be cordoned off in history as such, thus also can the Nazi party. If only that were true. This is not to diminish the Holocaust. It is to say that there is nothing the NSDAP did that they were not inspired by, and thus the Nazi genocide is not a unique, untraceable process. Quoting Hitler himself when questioned about the feasibility of Lebensraum, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler was inspired by many different countries and pogroms. His obsession with Lebensraum, as a matter of fact, was inspired by the American project of Manifest Destiny. Neither were the concentration camps unique; those were inspired by many of the colonial powers doing much the same during the rise of imperialism, including Spain, Britain, and America. Obviously, the Nazi project elaborated on these experiments tenfold. But the point stands: the Nazis adapted very textbook strategies and steps for their genocide. These very same strategies have been analyzed and adapted in America today, in a way that is perhaps slightly more palatable, but in a way that will continuously evolve in cruelty until the deed is done. Trump is in what I would call the “testing phase”, just as Hitler was when he recounted the genocide of the Armenians. He wants to see just how much of the Hitlerian project he can carry out and get away with before opposition becomes too solidified. I hope to recount the steps he has taken, and that of his predecessors, to prove this point.

The Hitlerian project has a few core objectives: the capital scapegoat, the consolidation of power in the state and business, the silencing of opposition, the unitary party, and the project of Lebensraum. First, the capital scapegoat. When any flavor of fascism grows in popularity, it is in times of popular dismay and tension. This is undeniable. Italy, Germany, Japan, even Britain with the rise of Oswald Mosley, all share this common feature. Popular politics in general are at their strongest when Neoliberal capitalism has failed people (as it naturally does), and they want something new. This is where we were in 2024. So, if one wishes to retain capital but channel the popular rage of the people, instead of blaming capital, one must shift the lens to another group. In Hitler’s case, it was the Jews. They owned the banks, sold out their country for coin, and must be defeated for Germany to thrive. In Trump’s, it’s immigrants, and whatever group he classifies under the woke banner. They’re pouring into our country, committing rapes, doling out drugs, going so far as to call it an occupation, and to quote Trump, “I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion…” This is, on its face, Nazi rhetoric. Similarly to Hitler’s Germany, this also has involved fantastical lies. Hitler’s claims of “international Jewry” were rooted in the same fear-mongering as are Trump’s claims of immigrants “eating the cats”. This parallel becomes perhaps the most clear through Trump’s endorsement of Mark Robinson, who before he declared himself a “black nazi” online, called gay people “filth”, and said transgender people should “find a corner outside” to use the bathroom. All this to say, Trump checks every box: He sees his country failing, and seeks to, as quickly as possible, push to the margin as many groups of people as possible to secure him and his capitalist friends’ power. 

On this note of power, collusion with finance capital is crucial in the early stages of fascism, since definitionally, fascism is predicated on maintaining capitalism in decay (otherwise, they wouldn’t have detained so many actual socialists). In Nazi Germany, Hitler vyed for oligarch and finance capitalist support through heavy incentivization and investments, cautioning them against the dirty reds, and capitalists played along for profit. Mussolini followed step, in the labor charter of 1927, stating, “The Corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most effective and useful instrument in the interests of the Nation,” in the interest of pandering to finance capital. The result of this, along with other elitist policies? Drastic reductions in quality of life for the lower class, and major gains for the upper and corporate elite. This explains the multiple heads of industry (besides the obvious case of the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk) trying to make themselves appear as Trump-compliant as possible – in spite of pushing rainbow capitalism for years prior. This compliance comes with hasty rewards for those who fall in line, at the cost of the lower-class.

Perhaps more foundationally, the process of Lebensraum. The physical expansion of state borders is integral to the Hitlerian project. This was the basis for Hitler’s war and of Mussolini’s irredentist Roman-empire rhetoric and aesthetics. Nowhere is this connection more evident than in the posturing Trump is using. From “Trump Gaza” and his wholesale encouragement of Netanyahu to continue breaking the ceasefire, to his strange insistence that “Canada only works as a state”, to him saying we “will go as far as we have to” to occupy Greenland, Trump seems set in his position that America must expand, no matter how much dispossession and death it takes. This is beyond step one of genocide. Step one is words. This is a promise. 

Lastly, the unitary party and the silencing of opposition. The most critical feature of fascism is that all power is consolidated into one party, and dissent is forbidden. Trump didn’t have to do much in this respect: America is already a uniparty dictatorship, and has not been a representative democracy for years. Disagreements between Democrats and Republicans are entirely aesthetic: in reality, they are already in perfect alliance. They do not disagree significantly on foreign policy, economic policy, mass deportations, policing, and certainly not criminalizing homelessness. Perhaps social issues, then. Race, gender, and the like. But do they really disagree when the party’s strongest proponents push the same prejudiced rhetoric as republicans, and substantively, do not act in favor of those groups? Are they any different if they do not actually oppose the other party? But obviously, Americans at least have the right to speak up and push for the policies we like. That’s how voting works. Not quite. Research on this topic has been relatively extensive, and the answer seems to point to the conclusion that your vote and opinion – unless you are a part of the one percent – is objectively useless. The most conclusive proof of this comes from two studies – Gilens and Page (2014), and Bowman (2020). Via multivariate analysis, they found that, quote, “When the preferences of economic elites … are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Although Branham, Soroka, & Wlezien (2017) attempted to counter these results by instead taking into account “win rates” to show that the average American does seemingly “win” enough against the upper-class to call America a non-biased democracy, Bowman demonstrates that win rates are an unreliable measure and instead compares policy change rates, which precisely reflects the results of Gilens and Page. Taking these results on their face, America’s democracy isn’t under attack – it never was one. The road has been paved for the Nazi project since America’s conception of democracy. One may counter, as I have been previously criticized in other issues, America can’t possibly be Hitlerian if I am penning these words. After all, I would surely be detained or worse. Unfortunately, time has proven such detractors wrong: now, I can be. This is best presented through the case of Mahmoud Khalil. Due to his activism for Palestine, he was disappeared by ICE  – without a warrant – despite being a lawful resident, and his status in this country is now pending over no charges, for the crime of speaking out against the plague of Zionism. This is not even mentioning the detention of Ozturk, who was taken in plainclothes for writing an Op-Ed – much like the one I am penning now. America has always had a Palestine exception to free speech. Now it’s explicit, and set only to expand into other topics and to other populations under the one-party, star-and stripe Nazi banner.  If, in the face of all this, you are able to still laugh off everything I’ve said as ridiculous far-left posturing, now is the time to consider that it’s very likely you would have said the same in 1939, as your Jewish or Marxist neighbor was being dragged off, and to seriously consider how much you would not just permit, but cheer on – and, if so, to reconsider your own political label as just capitalist. Hitler started with deportations and ghettos. If it will end the same in America, is a question we will live to see answered – likely in the affirmative – unless we consider as an option not just protest, but wholesale rejection of the occupying system, just as the Partisans before us. To quote the late, great Aaron Bushnell, “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

Featured Photo from PBS