What it’s like when you’ve been reading Nuremburg Interrogations, Tapping Hitler’s Generals, Shattered Genius, The End, The Wehrmacht Retreats, and Trump Administration officials saying they’re protecting America by standing by Trump

A recent anonymous editorial says, “We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.”

This author, call them Franz, wants the Trump administration to succeed, and believes the administration is significantly damaging to the US. So, Franz wants an administration to succeed that he believes is damaging to the US. Wait, wait, that isn’t what Franz meant at all.

The problem with Trump is that he is basically a fascist. He doesn’t want a government accountable to the people through a critical press; he wants (and, to a large degree, has) a media that will repeat in a fawning way anything he wants said, that will defend him through any sophistries and casuistries and outright falsehoods necessary (how tall is he? how much does he weigh?).  Trump wants to be a one-person government, he wants to be head of a one-party state, in which there is nothing but fawning adoration of him, and a government of charismatic leadership. Franz thinks all of that is bad, and yet Franz does everything he can to keep Trump from being held accountable for how bad Franz thinks Trump is.

The sensible (and honorable) thing  for Franz to do would be to step outside the administration and call for impeachment. But Franz isn’t willing to do that honorable thing. Why not? Notice that Franz never explains that point. Franz wants to be seen as a hero without actually explaining why he hasn’t engaged in the genuinely brave action his beliefs would imply–openly condemning an administration he thinks is (sort of–he likes the political agenda, sometimes) bad, but not really, because not bad enough for him to take a hit to his political career.

Basically, this coward has done an anonymous negative Yelp review on Trump.

He says he likes the Republican, not Trump’s, policy agenda. Even without Trump, the GOP has Congress, a reliable propaganda machine, and an increasingly and openly Republican judiciary, and impeaching Trump would put Pence in power. So, why not do it?

Because, and this is what Franz doesn’t want to say, without rabid Trump supporters, the GOP wouldn’t have Congress. Franz wants the political energy and power gained by fomenting Trump’s fascism, but Franz thinks he doesn’t actually want fascism.

Oh, yes, he does. Franz doesn’t want the end product of fascism, but he wants the support of fascists. Franz supports fascism. Franz needs fascists. Maybe Franz should rethink his political agenda since 1) it depends on fascists, and 2) it depends on his hiding his ethical agenda from the public.

The German generals disliked Hitler from the beginning, recognizing him as pretty much a shallow thinker and an idiot about military affairs, and many of them were not Nazis, but they were reactionaries, and they loathed what they thought of as Bolshevism (which included liberalism and democratic socialism). They stuck with Hitler because they believed that “many of [his] policies have already made [Germany] safer and more prosperous.” They would have said that they supported his “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” Because he did all that. Seriously, Hitler did that. Franz would have liked Hitler. Hitler undid the socialist agenda of the Weimar democracy in regard to regulations about labor, he promised industrialists all sorts of things, and he promised the military what it wanted.

Am I saying that Trump is Hitler? No, because I really don’t think he is, but I do think he’s a fascist (not in the loose way it’s thrown around in the media, but in the way scholars like Paxton describe it). I’m making a more complicated point: Franz is presenting himself as a hero and savior. Is he? And the way to answer that question is to ask whether we would praise the same behavior on the part of other people who made the same arguments Franz is. Franz’s way of defending Trump is how supporters of Hitler defended him. It’s a bad way of defending someone.

That was complicated, so I’ll try to be more clear. Franz says that he has to try to mitigate Trump’s awful behavior because he likes Trump’s policy agenda (and he thinks the two are separate). He can’t leave Trump because then he might not get that agenda. And that is exactly the way that various people justified working with Hitler.

Is Franz’s defense a good defense? No. Not because Trump is like Hitler, but because Franz is like the people who supported Hitler. Had Hitler had to rely only on true believers like Himmler and Goebbels, he would have tanked. He succeeded because of people like Franz.

It isn’t about the policy agenda. It’s about the world you create in the course of getting that agenda. That’s what supporters of Hitler didn’t understand, and it’s what Franz doesn’t understand. You’re supporting a toxic process because it will get you the momentary political gains. The momentary political gains don’t matter. The process does.

So, Franz, your desire to hold on to a GOP majority—that is, your tribalism—means you’re throwing the US under the bus. You’re trying to present yourself as a hero, but you’re an enabler. The kindest thing I could say about you is that you’re Franz. Were I less charitable, I’d point out that you’re Wilhelm.

The image is from here: http://ww2today.com/24th-september-1942-hitler-sacks-his-chief-of-staff-franz-halder

13 thoughts on “What it’s like when you’ve been reading Nuremburg Interrogations, Tapping Hitler’s Generals, Shattered Genius, The End, The Wehrmacht Retreats, and Trump Administration officials saying they’re protecting America by standing by Trump”

  1. Good article. I don’t agree with you about Trump, I think he is definitely not a facist as defined by Paxton, as he has no cohesive agenda to expand outside of America, in fact he’s more focused on an isolationist America than some kind of American Empire in my opinion.

    I also like him because you get what you see with him and the world is a lot more fun than it was before.

    Sometimes it’s nice being angry!

    1. Glad you’re amused. The rest of us actually paying attention are not angry. We’re determined and filicused on getting the incompetent buffoon out.

      1. agreed and worried what he will do next………..he is not focused, experienced and next if you want a businessman, the Secretary of commerce position is open………….Wait till it all hits , we all will be surprised, or will we?

    2. Bully for you that the suffering of others amuses you.

      I would strongly suggest you seek professional help.

    3. So, you like what you see? You’re glad he’s not “fake”? You like a loud-mouth, uncouth, stupid, ill-informed, uneducated, narcissistic, entitled, low-brow bully? You like how he’s brought the racists out of the woodwork? You like how he deflects from real issues by bringing up petty slights or out-and-out lies? You are what is wrong with this country. Thank God you are in the minority!

    4. Fascists aren’t necessarily expansionist; that isn’t one of Paxton’s mobilizing passions (nor does Griffin mention it, iirc). You don’t get what you see with Trump, I think, unless you see him for a pretty crummy con man.

    5. Trump has promoted policies before that pretty much are aggressive expansion. Remember him talking about taking Libya’s oil fields? And how he apparently wanted to exterminate half of Syria?

      Even then, Robert Paxton is not the final authority on fascism, and it’s not wrong to describe much of Trump’s politics as fascistic. At the very least he’s leagues closer to fascist than any other president in recent history.

  2. Excellent. Recalls the ‘banality of evil’ characterization of much of the Facist regime. May I repost (and credit you)?

    1. Wilhelm Keitel, who supported Hitler while claiming he didn’t. He tried to get out of his responsibility in the Nuremburg Trials, and it didn’t end well.

  3. Dear Trish, lots to say- to my knowledge there are moral traditions, among them major religions, who teach you must do everything humanly possible to resist. Still others like
    the Romans I take it had a different mindset to good citizenship, take the example of the Pretorian Guard
    You’d think that well placed people would take action but people are too civil or too awed by the fear of the majority or the weight of the people- or just lack the virtue to do anything effective and virtue is a part of our calculus.
    To finish with a confession, all of us face the choice of whether to resist, assist or exist.
    Many of us are assisting even while existing- some of us, like myself choose resist and exist- but as long as existing is the main choice and we cannot resist without jeopardizing our existence- the prognosis looks cloudy and foul

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