Historians have noticed a disturbing trend in Donald Trump's political rhetoric as he tries to battle his way back into the White House he lost in an election he tried to overturn four years ago.
Fascism expert Richard Frankel and Holocaust scholar John Roth both told Salon Monday morning that Trump and his MAGA Republican Party increasingly resemble Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party as conspiracy theories about Jewish people and immigrants spread.
"As with Hitler, these ideas are not in any way new. But what we’re seeing with Trump is that he is repeating them more and more frequently and the expressions are becoming more and more radical with each passing day," Frankel told Salon.
"Considering the fact that his natural tendency is always and only in the direction of more extreme, more radical expressions — his resemblance to Hitler is only going to grow the closer we get [to the election]."
Salon writer Chauncey DeVega contextualizes this analysis by detailing Trump's parallels to the notorious Nazi dictator who orchestrated the mass murder of approximately 6 million Jewish people.
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"Trump has almost literally quoted Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf with his threats and promises to purify the blood of the country by removing the 'human vermin' from within its borders," DeVega writes. "Retired United States Marine Corps general Mike Kelley, who served as Trump’s second White House chief of staff, has explained in interviews how the corrupt ex-president praised Adolf Hitler, saying that 'he did good things.'"
More recently, Trump's nephew Fred alleged that his uncle, when president, said he believed disabled people “should just die.”
Roth pointed readers' attention to the recent and controversial “God Made Trump” campaign video and its similarities to the Führer principle that brought Hitler to power.
"Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist, would have loved the video and wished he could have made the prequel “God Made Hitler," Roth said.
"The MAGA video does not say that 'God Made Trump' so that he can “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." Nor does the video say that 'God Made Trump' to stop immigrants from 'poisoning the blood of our country.' It didn’t have to."
Frankel, author of “States of Exclusion: A New Wave of Fascism,” predicts Trump will only continue to radicalize this election year for a disturbing reason: he likes the publicity.
"That process is being helped along because of the way he reacts when the press brings up his most radical statements," Frankel writes. "He doesn’t simply repeat his statements. He doubles (and even triples) down on them."
