5 Important Reasons Why Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler

Comparisons are daily being made between US President Donald Trump and Nazi dictator and fascist Adolf Hitler. While humanity is right to worry about fascism rising again in any form given the tremendous sacrifices and the horrific toll of World War Two, there are very important reasons that Donald J Trump is not Adolf Hitler. The most important reason is the United States of 2017 is not 1930s Germany.

This statement seems obvious enough but there are fundamental differences that require investigation. Let’s have a look at what they are:

1. Perceived Illegitimate State pre-Hitler

The Nazi Party was able to gain prominence and popularity by constant reference to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. This treaty laid the “war guilt” of the First World War entirely at the feet of the Germans and imposed a new government on Germany that was considered by many to be entirely illegitimate. This government was called the Weimar Republic.

In sharp contrast the US population in 2017 has no comparable grievance with the government in power before Trump. Baring a vocal minority, many are critical of Obama but his high approval rating upon leaving office shows that Obama’s popularly elected government was not considered “illegitimate” or imposed by a foreign power in the way Germans viewed Weimar.

2. Perceived Humiliation on a World Scale

The weakness of Weimar’s legitimacy coupled with the stipulations in the Treaty of Versailles that put severe limitations on German production produced an extreme resentment to the existing order after the First World War. It was seen as a humiliating imposition by foreign powers onto the sovereignty of a once great nation.

While Trump’s “Make America Great Again” may echo the idea of an internationally humiliated nation, this hasn’t actually happened and America sovereignty has never been in question in the way German sovereignty actually was in the 1930s.

3. Severe Economic Depression & Antisemitism

Economic collapse was a primary mover in Germany’s embrace of Nazism and fascism. Hitler’s promises to make the country prosperous and successful by getting rid of those he considered the main agents of capital (the Jews) were extremely popular and gelled with already existing Antisemitism.

Despite pockets of the country continuing to feel disproportionate effects of the 2008 recession and globalization more generally these are nowhere near the levels of economic deprivation that existed in 1930s Germany or the 1930s US for that matter.

While some have attempted to tie Trump’s comments about Muslims and immigrants to Hitler’s campaign against the Jews these are not comparable in an economic sense, however much any modern xenophobia contains echoes of Nazi Antisemitism. Trump is not blaming Muslims or Mexicans for the economic crisis and therefore demanding their elimination. Where his criticism gains adherence is on the level of “security” as he claims to be able to “protect” the country from terror and crime. Whether one agrees with his views or not, they are not based on the idea of an ethnic or national group being responsible for economic depression.

4. Revolutionary Expansion vs Conservative Isolation

From his early writings in Mein Kampf, Hitler expressed a need for Germany to expand its borders to encompass so-called “Greater Germany” and provide “lebensraum” or “living space” for a race he considered superior to all others. The Nazi Party advocated this expansion as well as a revolutionary transformation of the existing order. They were not interested solely in a so-called “stronger Germany” but in world domination. The Nazis were revolutionary and expansionists.

In one of the most telling differences, Trump is conservative and isolationist. Far from advocating increased US participation overseas and in foreign territories, the central theme of Trump’s presidential campaign was isolationism, even going so far as to copy the slogan of the US isolationists before Pearl Harbor – “America First”. While the saber rattling over nuclear weapons is unsettling, there is no evidence that Trump wants to expand the US borders or conquer foreign territories. Instead he advocates a strengthening of American power through “better deals”. In fact his incoming administration is filled with people who have an interest in keeping the system in place to better make money, not to fundamentally alter it.

5. Trump Simply Isn’t Popular

Although the Nazi Party started out small, by the time of Hitler’s election victory the Nazi Party enjoyed extreme popularity of the kind that has seldom been seen since. The country united behind Hitler and agreed to give him unprecedented powers with little opposition and did next to nothing to resist his upending of the old order. He banned opposition parties and when he experienced opposition within the Nazi Party ranks or threats to his power, he had his opponents executed.

Trump won the electoral college but lost the popular vote. His approval rating is one of the lowest ever of an incoming president. Despite the populism that drove his campaign, Trump as a man is very unpopular. Not only this, but there is ample evidence of his unpopularity within his own party and an ongoing struggle for the leadership of that party. It is not illegal to be a member of an opposition party and Paul Ryan doesn’t live in fear for his life.

Not Yet?

I hear my readers looking over this list and saying “True but – not yet”. However the idea that Trump will turn into Hitler and the Republican Party into the Nazis is unfounded hyperbole. Hitler and the Nazis were a unique phenomenon that occurred due to a perfect storm of historical events and beliefs coupled with the opportunity to advance them. They took over a weak and discredited state at a time of severe economic crisis and transformed it into a brutal expansionist regime.

While it is undoubtedly important to remain vigilant against the beginnings of a similar movement in a similar historical period, sober analysis and evidence points to too many differences for these two time periods, countries and leaders to be compared equally.