The Democrat congressman who thought too many Marines stationed on Guam would capsize the Pacific isle thinks that Donald Trump is another Hitler.
Representative Hank Johnson, who represents the Georgia’s 4th district, delivered the theory in a half-baked history harangue during the Atlanta NAACP’s 2019 Jubilee on January 1.
Yet Johnson’s off-the-wall oration wasn’t as newsworthy as the frequency with which the Trump-is-Hitler comparison is made, or the silence of those who know better but say nothing as the narrative enervates the thinking and speeches of elected officials and surfaces in the media.
The Speech
Johnson did not offer the usual grab-bag of nutty Democratic nostrums such as “Medicare for All” and “free” college. It was a pointed attack directly comparing the rise of Trump to the rise of the Austrian corporal.
“Heavy storm clouds are on the horizon,”Johnson intoned, and “our democracy teeters on the brink of failure.” “A vigorous resurgence of bigotry, hate, cruelty, and ignorance” threaten American freedom. “A powerful domestic enemy of democracy has emerged from the dark shadows of America.”
Sweeping the world, he said, are far-right, racist nationalists, and the “same trend towards authoritarian rule … is playing out right here at home.” In Trump, “Americans elected an authoritarian, anti-immigrant, racist strongman to the nation’s highest office”
Trump and his supporters, he said, “want to return America back to a time when white men and white privilege were unchallenged, and where minorities and women were in their place.”
Then came Hitler: Just as Hitler “rode a wave of nationalism and antisemitism to power,” Trump replaces the Jews with Latinos. “All Latinos” who cross our frontier with Mexico, Johnson claimed Trump said, are “rapists, drug dealers, and murderers.”
And just as Hitler used violence to achieve his goals, so Trump urges “violence against protesters at his rallies.” Even worse, “his messaging about Charlottesville that there were bad people on both sides sent a powerful message of approval to the far-right racists in America.”
“Hitler did not start the Nazi Party,” Johnson explained, “but he took over the party with charisma and leadership. The Nazis and Hitler became synonymous. Much like Hitler took over the Nazi Party, Trump has taken over the Republican Party. It’s now known as the Trump Republican Party.”
“Hitler’s followers physically attacked his political enemies while others maintained silence,” Johnson said, and Trump “calls his critics in the media enemies of the state, enemies of the people, and he riles up the crowds in his rallies into a frenzy against the media in attendance, causing some in the media to feel unsafe.”
Johnson explained that Germans, particularly German Jews, mistakenly thought Germany’s laws would check Hitler’s ambitions, and that “Americans, particularly black Americans, can’t afford to make that same mistake about the harm that could be done by a man named Hitler, or a man named Trump.”
Because “Trump is a threat to the freedom and liberty of every American.” And blacks must be particularly wary, he said, because when “when white folks catch a cold in America, black folks catch pneumonia.”
In other words, Trump is black America’s Hitler.
Familiar Narrative
Although Johnson once called Jews “termites,” he is most notable for publicly expressing his fear that if too many Marines were stationed on Guam, the Pacific isle would “tip over and capsize.”
But neither his speech, nor Jew-baiting, nor failure to grasp third-grade earth science should cause as much concern as the attempt to mainstream the narrative that Trump is a Nazi or fascist.
Two months ago, “a leading Holocaust scholar,” as Vox called him, “seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany,” and said Seante Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump’s malevolent helper, would become known as the “gravedigger of American democracy.”
Last year, London’s Independent explained, the “Anne Frank Centre warn[ed] of ‘alarming parallels’ between Trump’s America and Hitler’s Germany.” The center pointed to the “escalating steps of oppression” of the Trump presidency.
In 2016, the Washington Post publshed a serious attempt to gauge Trump’s fascist inclination with an article that awarded him “Benitos” on a number of key “fascist” markers.
New York magazine published a piece that purported to show “How Hitler’s Rise to Power Explains Why Republicans Accept Donald Trump,” and helpfully featured a photo of Trump waving in what appeared to be a Nazi salute.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video of Rep. Johnson’s speech
