I already miss the old days, when “Hitler” just meant “Trump.”
Before that, “Hitler” had just meant the Republican candidate, whoever it was. It had been so ever since 1964, when Barry Goldwater, an NAACP member who had desegregated his family business, declined to vote for the civil rights bill of l964 because of a fine point — a small clause in the public accommodation part of the original version, which President John F. Kennedy had initially omitted as too problematic.
After that, President Richard Nixon was Hitler, because — well, because he was Nixon. President George H.W. Bush was Hitler because he ran ads against Michael Dukakis for releasing a killer from prison (he happened to be black) who promptly committed another violent crime. President George W. Bush was Hitler because people in Paris did not like his accent, and because he responded with force when terrorists killed 3,000 people in New York and Washington on a cloudless day in September.
The Democrats kept this claim up from the end of World War II until a week ago Tuesday. That’s when Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., accused the nation of Israel and its American backers of numerous crimes against its indigenous peoples, making them rather like Hitler themselves.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., responded with what eventually became a resolution against “hatred” so vague it meant nothing. Omar received a note of support and affection from David Duke, the Holocaust denier and former Ku Klux Klan leader. In spite of Omar’s African race and her country of origin, the anti-Semitism that they share in common has made them allies for life.
Even before the emergence of Omar, Trump had begun to insulate himself from the charge of Hitlerism — by a weird sort of genius, as if he had sensed a shift in the wind. He already had the Jewish grandchildren and the observant daughter to offer. Now, in the State of the Union, he made the second half a tribute to the Allied victory in World War II, told almost entirely in the stories of brave Jewish captives imprisoned in death camps, and the brave young Americans who had set them free.
Several former prisoners were there in the audience, and Trump introduced them. He mentioned that one was celebrating his 81st birthday, and then led the audience — the United States Congress and other top government officials — in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday to You.”
Is this the voice of a fascist that you find convincing?
Politics needs its villains to keep all things humming, even if the worst it comes up with is Mitt Romney or either George Bush. To make us happy, perhaps, we need someone who’s Hitler.
And if Trump isn’t Hitler, then who is?
