Trump: The Anti-Hitler

Trump Isn't Hitler, In Fact He's Quite The Opposite

Goodwin’s Law: Any conversation or argument, carried on long enough, will eventually beget a reference or comparison of the subject to Hitler. If the conversation manages to survive the first metaphorical verbal grenade launched by one interlocutor, the other will also bring up Hitler to justify his own position. Carried further, there’s also a non-zero chance the two will call each other Hitler.

I prefer to call this rule the reductio ad Hitlerium. Better than the argumentum bachulo (argument by stick), or maybe even the ex-silencio. At least it’s more fun, in a twisted, dark comedic sort of way, even as you find it, however, extremely overused and everywhere. X is Hitler, therefore Bad. Y is Hitler therefore Bad. Y = Hitler, Y = Bad. Get it, amigo?

And in politics, where proper forms of logic and argumentation seem to be just about entirely lacking, it comes up with exceptional frequency.

Nasser is Hitler. Bush is Hitler. Castro is Hitler. Tony Blair is Hitler. Gaddafi is Hitler. Sadaam is Hitler. Obama is Hitler. Slobodan Milošević is Hitler. Benjamin Netanyahu is Hitler. Assad is Hitler. Putin is Hitler. And now, although the comparison is, to be honest, several years old, we’ve recently had the re-revelation revealed to us once again that Donald Trump is, lo and behold, also Hitler…

But with so many other politicians sharing the “distinction” of this comparison, maybe Trump being recently being compared to Hitler is just a natural consequence of Trump having been the center of attention of American politics for, well, at least nine years now. It’s not really an October surprise, it’s just the natural and expected outgrowth of the way every devolving conversation spreads into nothing much above schoolyard insults.

And why is this? As Kulak from anarchonomicon.com argues, Hitler is basically our secularized and multiculturalism approved Gnostic demiurge and devil substitute:

Americans are already Esoteric Hitlerists, mostly they believe in a misotheistic conception of Hitler where he is the evil God of the modern world and of a human nature they are not supposed to engage with, to deny at all cost.¹

In the absence of a God we can all agree on and believe in, and a devil we can all fear/oppose, we’ve settled on a human substitute. There are incredible Girardian takes on this that I’d love to think more and write about before the excellent Darryl Cooper gives the master class on the subject, but Hitler as our Satan helps us resolve inner group tensions and form loyal in-group bonds and the willpower to oppose an external enemy or group. We’re the good guys. They’re Satan, er Hitler, and his Nazi minions.

As a conservative and 82% enthusiastic Trump supporter, my initial reaction to the recent comments by General Mark Kelly used by the Harris campaign amongst others to reboot the Trump = Hitler franchise was laughter.

But then I started discussing the topic with my friend Andrew, and I realized that, perhaps there just might be more to this comparison than the average conservative eye lets himself see. Not that Trump is Hitler. I’m not one of those people. I in fact, with some reluctance on certain issues, just voted for him, and with far greater enthusiasm than I did in 2020. I will conclude later in this piece, that while there is evil potential in every man, Solzhenitsyn’s famous dividing line between good and evil truly running through every man’s heart, Trump is best understood as history’s inversion of Hitler or as an anti-Hitler.

But as prominent history and anthropology YouTuber Rudyard Lynch of the Whatifalthist channel likes to say, “Reality is a twisted mirror.” Events now are somewhat paralleling, but also inverting prior ones, much like Balaji Srinivasan’s “History is running in reverse.” Or, put another way, God has a sense of humor, or at the very least, of poetry. There are a lot of intriguing points on which Trump and Hitler sometimes parallel, but in most cases, actually mirror each other. Let’s go through a few of them:

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Hitler = National Socialist with a real tension between left-leaning ideology and right-leaning ideology within his movement
Trump = National Capitalist with a real tension between left-leaning ideology and right-leaning ideology within his movement

Hitler = born a poor country bumpkin in a declining empire
Trump = born a rich urbanite from the biggest city in a then-rising empire

Hitler = failed artist
Trump = successful TV personality

Hitler = eagerly joined the German army for World War I
Trump = reportedly evaded the draft for the Vietnam War

Hitler = supported by the German deep state
Trump = opposed by the U.S. deep state

Hitler = lived on the support of others
Trump = (mostly) self-made businessman

Hitler = woke up on November 11th, 1918 believing that the war had been unfairly lost, Germany cheated of a rightful victory
Trump = woke up on November 11th, 2020 believing that the election had been unfairly lost and that he was cheated of a rightful victory

Hitler = tried to conquer an empire
Trump = is trying to divest America of its empire

Hitler = economic autarky through conquest of a new empire
Trump = economic autarky through divestment of reliance on foreign countries (de facto divesting America of its empire)

Hitler = started wars and lost them
Trump = (so far) started no new wars and ended those that were being fought

Hitler = rose to power with the financial help of big business
Trump = his rise to power was initially feared by and against the desires of big business (c.f. stock market plummeting after the 2016 election) but later accepted

Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch which he personally took part in was an attempt to gain power from having none. He was punished, but only very lightly for it.
Trump: The January 6th Capitol Protest, which Trump was not present at, was an attempt by Trump’s supporters to help him maintain power. While attempts have been made to prosecute Trump for it, they have so far not yet succeeded, although Trump’s supporters who took part in it have been heavily punished.

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Now, these were just the ideas that I’ve thought up so far. Surely there are probably more. I probably made a biased selection, as someone who strongly opposes Trump could have thought up a few more direct comparisons between Trump and Hitler where they are a bit more alike.

But why do I point these out?

Well, as I discussed with Andrew, one cannot be sure of what another person will or will not become. Those who accuse Trump of being Hitler, are surely, not saying that he is literally Hitler, but that Trump is a man capable of similar levels of evil as Hitler. In this fact, and without knowing Trump’s heart, they are right. But they are actually too right. Just about any person who is skilled enough, or capable of becoming skilled enough to lead a nation is capable of launching a Hitlerian (or larger) amount of atrocities. Even a baby, is, potentially, always capable of performing the same in the future. Remember, even Hitler and Stalin were babies.

So Trump *could* become Hitler in the sense that his biggest critics fear. Trump could, if pushed to by circumstances, conceivably order some real atrocities.

Suppose the Sinaloa Cartel of Mexico launches a raid, like an actual, guns blazing, tires screeching raid on Texas. Suppose it leads to hundreds of Americans dying or being captured. Suppose the Cartel allies themselves with illegal immigrant supporters who are already within America. Suppose Trump militarily responds to defend Texas against this extremely obvious, undeniably out in the open, invasion. Suppose things escalate further, and Trump, rather than just aiming to deport illegal immigrants decides to say, open uh, we’ll call it an uh … concentration camp because they are all very real threats to the lives of Americans. Suppose an armed rebellion breaks out within one of these camps. And then Trump orders the military to respond. And millions die. All of these steps plausibly follow upon each other, and, unfortunately, seem quite possible. Such a chain of events does bring about a possible future potential Trump who seems very similar to Hitler.

However, any American president would do something similar under this contrived set of circumstances. Trump could become something like Hitler because we all have the potential for evil within us.

But Trump, as he stands today, even as he is a nationalist figure rebelling against the current political establishment, should I think, be best understood as the leader of a movement attempting to run the early 20th century in reverse. Whereas the trend of both Hitler and his Allied foes was toward bigger government, Trump promises a government efficiency commission to shrink government. Where the trend up until World War II was for countries to want an empire and for Germany in particular to fight most of the world by itself to gain one, Trump wants to divest and shrink the U.S. hegemony (empire). Whereas the German “deep state” (the state bureaucracy, big business, etc.) supported Hitler, the U.S. deep state and associated institutions opposed Trump.

The one major point of comparison on which there is similarity is that Nazism was not a clearly defined ideological movement and Trump’s movement isn’t either. That is, they each somehow unite elements pulled from the “left” and “right” of the prior political divide within their movement, with tension within as to whether the movement itself is left or right leaning, conservative or revolutionary, etc. But there are other examples of this throughout recent history as with Peronism in Argentina in the mid-20th century, so of itself this isn’t a Trumpism = Nazism proof either. It’s just a sign that both movements were at least attempts at political realignment.

Herein, though, is where I think there is the deepest relationship, although one of opposition between Hitler and Trump. Hitler was the beginning, the Girardian scapegoat upon which the political order of the last 80 years rests. He and Nazi Germany are the foundation stone of the current international order, because no matter the differences between countries, everyone can at least agree to oppose his ideas and the current institutions that undergird the shaky stasis of international relations were literally built upon his defeat. Trump, however, is feared by the current political order, not because he is another Hitler, but because he is the anti-Hitler, the first person and movement to come who truly threatens the current status quo of international relations that were built upon Hitler’s defeat. Trump is an agent of realignment, the first major one to occur since World War II produced the current international order and current ideological camps within it.

Eric Weinstein explained this astoundingly well on Chris Williamson’s podcast several months ago:

As Simplicius the Thinker on his great second Substack Dark Futura concludes based on Eric Weinstein’s argument:

There is no better proof of Weinstein’s opening thesis than the fact that they now tried to take Trump out again for a second time in as many months. It’s clear that Trump terrifies them for the very reason that he threatens to potentially undo decades of established secret agreements, the filaments of that diaphanous Order feigning essentiality, yet whose delicate fibers are a pluck away from being unseamed before the world's eyes.

Such a development would open up an unprecedented Pandora’s box. The elites rely on the omnipresence of their Great Illusion—a show that must be maintained at all times, all costs, and across the entire spectrum. To allow a single crack to form in the facade would entail a spidering outward, a runaway fracture leading to the collapse of their whole foundation. That is because if people in a single country under their control can be allowed to witness the lie for what it is, there would be no turning back—the populations of every other nation would immediately begin to question the rationale of their own systems, since they are all part and parcel to the matrix of the whole.

Imagine if Trump really did abolish the IRS as he’s threatened to do, long shot that it is. Once Europe sees the US continuing not only to function, but perhaps even thrive like never before—without a single income tax collected—it would spark the end for the regime. Multiply this outward to every other of our modern controlling paradigms. The Central Banks, for instance: abolish one bank in The System, and the rest fall like dominos. The elites’ greatest fear is for humanity to be given glimpse of even a single working example of life outside their prison-like construct—that same Byzantine codex of esoteric multinational agreements.²

Trump again could cause great evils. He has a greater chance of causing them than the average man, because he, unlike most of us, has a high chance of again holding the reins of power. But, by far, he is not likely to be another Hitler, but an anti-Hitler, the end of the current international political order and the beginning of the ushering in of something new.

To be in such a moment is to have great risk, but also great opportunity. I don’t believe Trump will be the paragon of the new age, the, as others have argued, Caesar of a new political order to come. It could be someone like Elon Musk as I recently discussed:

More likely the political figures of whatever is to come will be people we don’t know yet. Chaos boots elites from authority and raises others from obscurity. And Trump is, I admit, such an agent of chaos. But not of the Hitler variety, or at least, not any more likely than any other politician with a similar shot at the U.S. presidency. More likely he is the mirror image of Hitler, one ending the age of world politics that quite literally Hitler started and the one capable of at least ushering in something/someone new:

Let’s move beyond arguing about whether to occupy Iraq or to occupy Wall Street all holdovers from the Hitler-influenced post-World War II mimetically gerrymandered mind space paradigm, and move on to, say occupying Mars. That’s, at best, the Trump- Musk offer.

1. We're All Hitlerists now

2. Measures of Control