When Trump defends armed rightwing gangs, his rhetoric has echoes of Hitler/fascism

[kpete]

When Trump defends armed rightwing gangs, his rhetoric has echoes of fascism
David Renton
Signalling to his base, as he did referring to the Proud Boys on Tuesday, the president is following a playbook from 1930s Germany


.............the summer of 1931 saw Hitler being summonsed to court and accused of being complicit in the work of gangs who had beaten – and killed – their anti-fascist enemies.

Hitler’s response was to play a double game.First of all, he was worried about looking weak in front of his supporters, who had called him a coward and a conformist. So he needed to signal that the gangs still had his support. Second, he tried to pretend that any harm caused by his supporters was necessary since the country faced a much more threatening enemy: the far left.

“The SA men are the first men in the party,” he told his opponent, the private prosecutor Hans Litten. Then, in answer to Kurt Ohnesorge, the judge who moderated the hearing, Hitler said that the “red murderers” of the left were the real problem: “If an SA man really oversteps the boundary of self-defence, you can’t hold a man responsible for that.”

Compare this to Donald Trump signalling to his base. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, he was asked: “Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacist and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence?”

He answered, “I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.” He continued: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” Then came the justification: “But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left. Because this is not a rightwing problem, this is a leftwing problem.”

the rest (WOW):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/01/trump-defends-armed-rightwing-gangs-proud-boys-fascism

[muntrv]

1. Col. Von Stauffenberg, where are you?

[marybourg]

2. The BBC refers to proudboys as neo-fascists.

I think we should too!