Hitler Was Defeated, Nazis Remain

75 years ago the war in Europe was ended. On May 8, 1945 Hitler’s Nazi regime was finally annihilated. Hitler was dead, but not before inflicting immeasurable destruction, loss of lives, and human suffering. 

His racism, fascism, police state, war of aggression and murderous holocaust should have taught humanity a lesson. And it did for many people through the following few decades.

That was then.

Now the hated swastika flag and emblem of racist white supremacy has found a  new home. It flies along with Confederate flags and Trump banners all over the United States of America. One Trump supporter even displayed the flag at a Bernie rally in Phoenix before having it torn from his hands. 

We have a president who built his base on claims the Black president was not born an American, suggesting he was illegitimate. This president accuses law enforcement officers of treason for investigating his crimes and those of his cronies. His political adversaries are similarly accused of treason and hating America. He calls journalists enemies of the people for reporting facts that reveal his dishonesty and never-ending diatribes that fuel far Right resentment, anger and hate.

The president said there were “very fine people” marching in the Confederate and Nazi flagged “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.

The praise was welcomed by Klan leader David Duke: “Thank you President Trump for honesty and courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”

Duke echoed every racist white nationalist and neo-Nazi when he made these statements:

“Voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.”

“We are determined to take our country back, we're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump, and that's what we believed in, that's why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he's going to take our country back and that's what we gotta do." 

Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband read a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he kept in a cabinet by his bed. 

This is the man who lavishes praise on every dictator. 

"Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

From Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 parable play on the rise of Hitler, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

Hitler died. Nazis survived. The war against Nazis and fascism has never ended. 

There were Nazi rallies in the US before WWII. Fascists are still here in the United States. Along with every bigot, racist, and white nationalist they have their president in power. They have their vast propaganda network in talk radio, FOX, OANN, Sinclair Broadcasting, and far Right internet hate sites.

The far Right believes only their leaders and propaganda network. Like a cult they are told to distrust anyone outside their influence. They share heavily indoctrinated resentment, anger and hate for those not in their cult. 

American fascists hate the same people Hitler did. Minorities, liberals, educators, journalists, labor unions, and scientists that didn't support him were demonized, scapegoated and terrorized. 

It's no secret. American fascists and Hitler's Nazis hate the same people. 

Trump's "Fake news" was Hitler's “Lügenpresse”, or lying press, Both targeted the press as enemies of the people for questioning their lies and claims of "total authority". 

Revealing his true Nazi inclinations, Trump incited his armed Brownshirts to “liberate” Michigan.

American fascism is here.

When authoritarians, tyrants and dictators hold power they will do anything to keep it. Anything. 

The Fourth Reich has risen on the Potomac, and a fair election to remove it this November is in doubt.

America's greatest anti-fascist was FDR. We'd better start listening to him again.