The Weimar Republicans

On a recent visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., where I was chaperoning my son’s eighth grade class, I was struck by the exhibits detailing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s political rise. Some of the same phrases and words used then are echoes in today’s campaign for president, particularly from one candidate.

For years, the country has been wrought with financial instability, a government unable to work effectively, and a segment of the population fearful of perceived threats from a religious and ethnic minority. That country was Germany in 1933, the year Hitler and the Nazis came to power, replacing the Weimar Republic, a poorly structured republic with weak leaders. Many voters wanted a leader with a strong hand. The country became fertile ground for Hitler and the Nazis.

To be absolutely clear, Donald Trump is not the next Adolf Hitler and Republican Party leaders are not Nazis, but what is deeply concerning is the language Trump chooses to use, and the inability in the GOP’s high ranks to demonstrate unequivocally the party’s opposition to those words. This is where his fellow GOP candidates have failed. They allowed Trump to bully and intimidate them and now they look weak – could any one of them stand up to North Korea’s boy dictator let alone Vladimir Putin? – and Trump looks invincible.

One of the searing lessons from Hitler and the Nazis is that words of exclusion and hate spoken from a popular leader will telegraph to the ignorant and intolerant that hating certain groups is acceptable in society. Repeat those words often enough – it doesn’t take many times to convey the message – and things get out of control.

Hitler and the Nazis knew this well. After priming the anti-Semitic pump with state-sanctioned proclamations of intolerance, they had to do little to get the intolerant, fearful segments of the population – Hitler’s willing executioners – to attack their Jewish neighbors and anyone who opposed their ideas. The Nazis just stood by to make sure the attacks were ruthless enough.

Trump’s atrocious racial language about Muslims and Latino immigrants has now done the same thing. The willing executioners are loose, whether Trump wants them to be or not. Ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke broadcasts to his racist followers that to not vote for Trump is to oppose the white race. Trump rejected Duke’s endorsement, but his language has endorsed their intolerant thinking and behavior.

Like the citizens in the Weimar Republic, many of Trump’s supporters are disenchanted, rightly or wrongly, with the federal government and the two political parties. They seek a strong leader to make things right, like getting rid of Muslims, Mexicans and anyone else they fear is the cause of their problems.

As Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote in a recent column, it was just a matter of time before a candidate like Trump, inspiring the masses by spewing invective speech, would come along and get in reach of a major party’s nomination.

“It grows from the failure of our political system to adapt to demographic change, economic disruption and a reorganizing world,” Robinson wrote.

The same words could have been written about the Weimar Republic in 1933, which struggled with weak political parties, social transformation and the Great Depression. Robert Reich, former U.S. Labor Secretary and now public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, recently wrote this about the election: “Some Americans are rebelling against all this by supporting an authoritarian demagogue who wants to fortify America against foreigners as well as foreign-made goods. Others are rebelling by joining a so-called “‘political revolution.’”

In any other time, Trump’s calls for banning Muslims and walling out Mexicans from the United States would have qualified him – in the view of Republicans and Democrats – as an intolerant extremist unqualified to lead a nation whose credo is tolerance; a place where we welcome all people as created equal.

Instead, as he wins one GOP primary after another, and makes one hateful statement after another, the Republican Party appears ready to capitulate in the worst way, by warming up to him, but only because he could win the White House.

As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported last week, “Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that it would be a ‘no-brainer’ to support the nominee, even if it’s Trump. ‘Winning is the antidote to a lot of things,’ he reasoned.”

Perhaps, but when the intolerant start burning mosques because they were inspired by Trump’s ascension, what would be the antidote for that? If the Republicans or Trump think that would be something they could control and stop, then I advise them to visit the Holocaust Museum.