Dispatches of alarm and hope, on politics and society, democracy and justice. Because silence is not an option. We may read and write alone, but we drive change together.

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The Danger of Normalizing Trump

Trump's post about a "unified Reich" was another warning that his vile rhetoric and attraction to the Nazis must not be ignored

STEVEN BESCHLOSS MAY 24

Vision of the future ? “Jews will not replace us,” the neo-Nazis chanted in Charlottesville, Va, in 2017. Donald Trump then praised some of them as “very fine people.” (Photo by Zach Roberts/Nur Photo via Getty Images)

This week Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a 30-second video with fake newspaper headlines noting “Trump Wins!” and asking “What’s next for America?” Included in the related imagery was a reference to “German industrial strength” and “the creation of a unified Reich.”

As the criticism mounted about this thinly veiled connection to Nazi Germany—even among some Republicans—the Trump campaign came up with a not believable excuse. This video was created by some “random” account and some unknowing Trump “staffer” did it while Trump was in court, even though Trump boasts that he controls his own social media.

But the damage—the likely purpose—was already achieved. This “Reich” reference was another reminder of Trump’s attraction to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. The “Third Reich” was Hitler’s aspiration to build and control a global empire. The “unified reich” text in the posted video was another shoutout to the white nationalist crowd that fervently backs the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee.

“A unified Reich? That’s not the language of an American president, that’s not the language of any American. It’s the language of Hitler’s Germany,” President Joe Biden said.

In fact, this was the just latest expression of Hitlerian language, which should not be dismissed as just another effort to trigger the libs and excite his cult. It should be seen as part of a methodical effort to familiarize the public with the depraved rhetoric and thinking of the Nazis and a glimpse into the future that Trump yearns to achieve.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said during a Veterans’ Day speech last November. He added that “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.”

That Nazi talk about “vermin” followed attacks by Trump a month earlier that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country, “ echoing Hitler’s Mein Kampf and his discussion of subhuman Jews causing the “contamination of the blood.”

This too was not news: Back in 2018, Trump condemned illegal immigrants who “infest” America—dehumanizing language that shook anyone who recognized its similarity to Nazi references to Jews as rats who infested Germany. A year earlier, we all recall he was praising “very fine people” among neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville who were carrying torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

The repetitive frequency of Trump’s repellant rhetoric should not be dismissed as not serious, no reason to worry or merely vile but insignificant insults by a shameful bigot. Rather, this should be understood as part of his continuing effort to degrade and dehumanize people, to normalize this sick verbiage and message, and prepare the public for the changes he hungers to make.

Keep in mind the Project 2025 intention to round up millions of immigrants with the aid of the military, put them in camps and deport them without due process. You can be sure there will be plenty more cruel and dehumanizing language to strengthen the public’s acquiescence to his campaign of vengeance and retribution.

And, if Trump retakes the White House, don’t dismiss the possibility that this rounding up—this desire to “root out” undesirables—will eventually include a wide range of political rivals and other perceived enemies who will fall under Trump’s broad banner of hate: “communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs.” It’s one pledge we can expect that this carnage-loving, minority-hating man will deliver on.

All of this hateful name-calling likely sounds kooky to reasonable ears, a sad echo of a tragic past that no sane person would want to recreate. But America continues to suffer from its reluctance to take Trump and his power-hungry enablers seriously, especially when the fascistic language and ideas seem so far over the bend.

With all that we have seen and learned in the last nine years, it’s not hyperbolic to note that there were plenty of Germans who did not take Hitler seriously and thought his influence and Nazi Party would be a passing thing. It was just a matter of time before sanity and decency would reassert itself, right? It’s exactly the self-satisfied and often indifferent attitude that laid the groundwork for murdering six million Jews and sending millions of others to their graves.

But getting there took preparation, not the least of which was the deadly plotting and the gradual changes in laws and regulations that prepared the population to tolerate and increasingly applaud the growing violence and persecution. You can see it in the more than 400 decrees and directives, rules and regulations that restricted the lives of Jews in Germany.

In 1933, German law limited the number of Jewish students in universities, as well as restricted “Jewish activity” in law and medicine. Jewish doctors lost reimbursements from public insurance funds. Jewish doctors in Munich could no longer treat non-Jewish patients. Jewish lawyers in Berlin were barred from their legal work.

In 1934, Jewish actors could no longer legally perform on stage or screen. By 1935, Jewish authors could not be cited in legal opinions, Jewish military officers were thrown out of the Army, Jewish university students could not complete their doctoral work. In 1936, Jewish veterinarians and teachers were expelled from their work.

The antisemitic laws and efforts to segregate the Jewish population intensified. By October 1938, Jewish passports were invalidated and Jews were required to carry identity cards stamped with a red “J.”

The following month, on November 8, 1938, these step-by-step restrictions created the hostile environment for Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, when Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were vandalized, set on fire, destroyed. In the coming days, Jews were banned from public schools, theaters and sports facilities and forbidden from entering other “Aryan” spaces. The conditions were in place to desensitize decent Germans from the escalating inhumanity, as if the mounting horrors were not their problem.

All through the Trump years, I hesitated making direct connections between his language, behavior and practices to Hitler and the Nazis. The still-incomprehensible scale of that tragedy demands precious care; evoking Hitler and the Holocaust to trigger a reaction is to dilute the meaning of that ultimate failure of human civilization.

But that history never strayed far from my mind as we all witnessed the continuing degradations and desecrations of the Trump presidency—and the rise in hate crimes, bigotry and hostility toward immigrants. I heard Trump’s comments in March that Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and “hate their religion” as yet another warning. Several weeks ago, he intensified his attack: “If you're Jewish and you vote for [Biden], I say shame on you.”

In those early days after Trump was elected, I worried about the future. “The normal instinct is to adapt to reality,” I wrote on Twitter on Nov. 17, 2016. “It will take constant vigilance to avoid normalizing Trump.”

Nearly eight years later, that remains true—maybe even more so as his enablers are more determined to do his bidding and free him from the constraints of democratic governance.

I see the coming months leading up to this November as a critical time to envision what the future could be if a “day one dictator” grabs the levers of power. This time he would be thoroughly surrounded by red-tie, red-hatted enablers desperate to gain proximity to power and do his bidding. This time they would no longer experience shame and would be more determined to kowtow to their leader’s vengeful whims and his hostility to democracy, justice and the rule of law.

The appalling parade by dozens of them to attack justice and the rule of law inside and outside the Manhattan courtroom in recent weeks is a chilling warning to pay attention. The groundwork for an accelerated campaign of retribution has been years in the making. But that trajectory is not inevitable if we recognize and respond to the danger.