Fascism! (Again)

Replicating another racist, toxic, unnerving hate fest 75 years ago, Trump held a vitriolic finale in New York Sunday vowing to end "the migrant invasion of our country." His best people echoed him to call Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage," Harris "the devil," and Dems "degenerates (we) need to slaughter" to create what his Goebbels calls an America "for Americans, and Americans only." In 1945, the War Department sent pamphlets to World War ll soldiers to explain what "fascism" is. Now, we know.

To no one's surprise except a sorry clutch of MAGA goons, the October surprise has been the obvious mental and moral unraveling of an old, sick “fascist to the core” already running the most racist, incoherent election campaign this country has ever seen. The vicious, nativist rhetoric labeling as murderous vermin, savages and terrorists every dark-skinned migrant seeking safety here - along with vilifying any opponent as "the enemy from within" - has now queasily merged with crude rancor - Harris is "a shit vice-president...Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here" - and daft phantasmagoria. In Trump world, every goose in Springfield, Ohio has "gone missing" like the cats and dogs, he's "got no cognitive," his "response" to a parent's question about improving New York schools is, "We're moving them back from Washington. I never saw....Give a little English. No transgender, no operations... There are some places - your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl, OK?" Dumb and dumber, ugly and uglier.

Inexplicably obsessed with Harris' college stint working at McDonald's, the guy who was a millionaire at 8 and stiffed every low-wage worker since then pretended to make fries at a closed McDonald's for pretend customers and thought it looked cool. Then he went to hurricane-ravaged North Carolina, where he pretended not to know Black Nazi Mark Robinson, proudly accepted a French Fry Certification pin, and lied again about FEMA running out of money that went to Dem-voting "illegals." After 440 mental health providers, citing his "irrationality," wrote Trump "is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office," the psychiatrist who helped craft 1973's "Goldwater rule" that kept providers from opining on his sanity said it shouldn't have, and he'd order dementia tests now. As to the boast by an almost 80-year-old who won't release medical records that he "aced" a cognitive test seven years ago: The test is a screening tool "given to potential nursing home patients to decide which wing to assign them to."

All the venom and madness and apocalyptic fear-mongering reached a fever pitch Sunday night at Trump's rally in New York City's iconic Madison Square Garden, "the epicenter of everything." He explained the choice of location in typically twisted terms, claiming he wants to "make New York great again, create an incentive for New Yorkers to stay...Rich people are leaving - the riches of the people are leaving." But beyond that, the site fed his malignant megalomania, representing a dark dream come true, "one more grand provocation." It offered the chance to achieve a long-sought campaign triumph; to avenge himself in the city that refused to love him and took him down; and, in a sinister echo of the past befitting a tinpot tyrant who's argued "Hitler did some good things," to reenact an infamous 1939 rally at the Garden held by the German American Bund, one of several U.S. groups who supported Hitler with a lethal "cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology and American patriotism."

Over 20,000 people attended the Nazi "Night at the Garden on February 20, 1939. Outside, up to 80,000 anti-Nazi demonstrators gathered, and some 4,700 policemen tried to keep the peace. Inside, the stage featured a towering image of George Washington - the event was disingenuously billed as a "pro-American" celebration of his birthday - flanked by huge swastikas and American flags. Nazi armbands and salutes were everywhere, and the mood was both jubilant and brazenly anti-Semitic. Posters urged, "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America"; speeches denounced "job-taking Jewish refugees" and F.D.R. as a "Rosenfeld" in the pocket of rich Jews. Others argued, distressingly convincingly, that white supremacy is at the core of America's founding. "The spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man," said the Bund's P.R. chief, citing Jim Crow laws and immigration quotas. "It has always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation."

"Isadore Greenbaum was a 26-year-old plumber from Brooklyn," notes one account, "and on this night, he was a Jew surrounded by 20,000 Nazis." Greenbaum sat through the three-hour rally, the hateful speeches, the Heil salutes. Eventually, slowly, he started making his way to the front. He arrived at the foot of the stage as Bundesführer Fritz Kuhn began to speak. "You all have heard of me through the Jewish-controlled press," he said to cheers. "Wake up! You, Aryan, Nordic and Christians, to demand our government be returned to the people who founded it!" Greenbaum jumped on stage, pulled down Kuhn's mike and yelled "Down with Hitler!" before he was tackled and brutally beaten by Bund thugs. "He had a black eye and a broken nose, but he said he would have done it again," said his grandson years later. Greenbaum was arrested for disorderly conduct and fined $25. When the U.S. entered the war, he enlisted in the Navy and fought the Nazis. In 1945, Kuhn was indicted on embezzlement charges and deported.

Trump's rally, some said, was less classy than the Nazis' in 1939, though the visuals were comparable: Huge screens showing images of armed gangs with, "Your apartment building under Harris," and news clips about crimes allegedly committed by immigrants, to which Trump sometimes offered grisly narration. On a murder of two young girls in Brentwood, NY: "They knifed them, and they cut them into little pieces...Perfect, perfect, young, beautiful girls were cut up into little pieces by MS-13...And you know who took care of it for us? ICE. We’re not defunding ICE, right?" Cult members reportedly began lining as much as eight hours before the rally's start; engulfed in Stars and Stripes and Trump merch, they said they were there to witness "an iconic American event" and "in solidarity," presumably with fascism. And they got what they came for: Despite all that's come before, the warm-up speakers, evidently told to let it all hang out, managed to be shocking - dark, crass, bestial, venomous.

Radio host Sid Rosenberg: Hillary Clinton is "a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party. A bunch of degenerates, lowlives, Jew-haters. Every one of ‘em. And the fucking illegals, they get whatever they want." Real-estate guy Grant Cardone: "(Harris) and her pimp handlers will destroy our country." Giuliani: "Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old - and Harris wants to bring 'em to you." Kamala is "a fascist" and "the anti-Christ." On non-Trumper Americans: "We need to slaughter these people." Tucker Carlson, celebrating he's "a free man and not a slave," screeched, "As the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ to be elected president, she's not impressive.” Stephen Miller, howling immigrant Trump fan-boy: They tried to sue him, jail him, bankrupt him, imprison him, "and they even tried to kill him, twice." When he wins, "the cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone. America is for Americans, and Americans only." Coincidentally, Hitler: "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”

The Inadvertently Helping Dems In Swing States award went to bigot and "comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe, who "joked" he and a Black buddy had had fun at a Halloween party: "We carved watermelons together.” Mostly, he trashed Latinos. "They love making babies," he said. "There’s no pulling out. They come inside, just like they do to our country." Then he announced, "There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico." As he spoke, Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant talking about her economic plan to help the islands. There are over a million Puerto Ricans in Florida, a half-million in Pennsylvania, many thousands in Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan. AOC posted the comments and Harris' plans; so did Puerto Rican pop superstar Bad Bunny, whose most-streamed album in 2023 got 4.5 billion plays, to his 45 million Instagram followers; so did Jennifer Lopez (250 million), Ariana Grande (376 million) and Ricky Martin (16 million). Waytago Tony.

Trump showed up two hours later, having unsubtly traded his usual blue suit and red tie for the black and gold of the Proud Boys. "Kamala, you’re fired!” he yelled. “Get out!” Recycling his tired them-vs.us trope, he charged she brought in migrants "to prey upon innocent American citizens" and vowed, "The day I take the oath of office, the migrant invasion (ends) and the restoration of our country begins! I will launch the largest deportation program in American history... I will rescue every city that's (been) conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, kick them the hell out of our country...The United States (will) soon be an occupied country no longer." Yawn. As he babbled, people streamed out. Been there, done that. Sunday, even the both-sides New York Times had had enough. In giant caps: “TRUMP (WILL) PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.”

The truth, notes Heather Cox Richardson, like many other historians: We have seen his hateful shtick before, and it's stunningly similar to that spewed by the most famous monster of our era. Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. soldiers fighting in Europe in World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help (Army personnel) become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.” March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!” "You are away from home...,separated from your families, many of you are risking your very lives because of a thing called fascism,” it began. "What is fascism?" Calling it "government by the few and for the few," it describes "seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state...The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people...It is important as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

The likenesses are telling, and terrifying. "Fascists make their own rules and change them when they choose...They maintain power by use of force (and) propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security...They play political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seize power while these groups struggle...Under the guise of ‘super-patriotism,' they pit groups against one another in a hate campaign against (minorities), deny any need for international cooperation (which disputes) their supporters are the only people (who) count, insist the world has but two choices - fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them (in) the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy." Finally, Americans should not be fooled into thinking fascism could not come to America; after all, “(We) once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache."