The difference between Weimar Germany and today's USA is one of degree, not kind...

[struggle4progress]

6. It is worth examining particular analogies to Weimar and its collapse,

in order to study particular political methods, but the analogy should not be stretched too thin

The US is not Weimar, although our current crisis might ultimately be as dangerous as the crisis of Weimar proved to be

The German empire lasted less than fifty years, from unification in 1871 to the end of the Great War in 1918; Weimar, born in revolution, and held together by unavoidably awkward compromises, lasted about fourteen; and the succeeding Reich only twelve. The empire was really nothing like a democracy, with its elected parliament having only an advisory role, and with various locales admitting only weighted voting systems which provided impossible-to-defeat advantages to the powers-that-be. The Republic that followed was torn by international pressures from the War and by the internal political results of events such as the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium, as well as constant rightwing violence and the irreparable split between the SPD and KPD