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Great comment. Despite my fears/concerns about Trump and seeing the similarities to Hitler, your comment is the first one that hit me with a "crap! it _could_

by DougN7 9y ago

Great comment. Despite my fears/concerns about Trump and seeing the similarities to Hitler, your comment is the first one that hit me with a "crap! it _could_ happen here too!" realization.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago
Only after I posted that comment did I realize that I was pushing the discussion in this unfortunate direction. First off, this dead horse has been beaten until it's just a greasy smear on the asphalt. Secondly, there are similarities and there are differences. Could the same thing happen again the same way? Likely not. Could things go to hell in a handbasket in ways that are somewhat similar, and yet different enough to account for the passage of time, economic and geopolitical differences, etc? Maybe, but there are certain pre-requisites that need to be satisfied first, and it's not clear that that's the case yet, or ever. The use of demagoguery in politics has not started with Hitler and will not end with Trump. Ancient Greeks and Romans did it occasionally. McCarthy and Huey Long did it too. The examples go on and on, and every such figure has different skills and characters and attributes. One thing to keep in mind is that Hitler was really, really freaking good at it; he's set a very high bar, if that's the right word for it. He makes the others in this category look like amateurs in comparison. Also, the socio-economic conditions in Germany in early 20th century were pretty spectacularly bad. I'm not saying that everything is just sunshine-and-bunnies now in the world, but there's nothing going on like the triple whammy of global great depression, hyperinflation, and national humiliation after losing a great war, that helped the ascension of Nazism to political hegemony. Time will tell, as always. --- P.S.: For a history of the rise and fall of Nazism in Germany, along with plenty of details about social, political and economic conditions that accompanied those events, see the Third Reich trilogy by Richard Evans. Link to the first volume: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/ https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0...

by DougN7 9y ago

Great comment. Despite my fears/concerns about Trump and seeing the similarities to Hitler, your comment is the first one that hit me with a "crap! it _could_ happen here too!" realization.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

Only after I posted that comment did I realize that I was pushing the discussion in this unfortunate direction. First off, this dead horse has been beaten until it's just a greasy smear on the asphalt. Secondly, there are similarities and there are differences. Could the same thing happen again the same way? Likely not. Could things go to hell in a handbasket in ways that are somewhat similar, and yet different enough to account for the passage of time, economic and geopolitical differences, etc? Maybe, but there are certain pre-requisites that need to be satisfied first, and it's not clear that that's the case yet, or ever. The use of demagoguery in politics has not started with Hitler and will not end with Trump. Ancient Greeks and Romans did it occasionally. McCarthy and Huey Long did it too. The examples go on and on, and every such figure has different skills and characters and attributes. One thing to keep in mind is that Hitler was really, really freaking good at it; he's set a very high bar, if that's the right word for it. He makes the others in this category look like amateurs in comparison. Also, the socio-economic conditions in Germany in early 20th century were pretty spectacularly bad. I'm not saying that everything is just sunshine-and-bunnies now in the world, but there's nothing going on like the triple whammy of global great depression, hyperinflation, and national humiliation after losing a great war, that helped the ascension of Nazism to political hegemony. Time will tell, as always. --- P.S.: For a history of the rise and fall of Nazism in Germany, along with plenty of details about social, political and economic conditions that accompanied those events, see the Third Reich trilogy by Richard Evans. Link to the first volume: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/ https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0...