We have Nazis and Nazi-lite -> MAGA
We have brown shirts -> ICE.
We are blaming immigrants and believing white people are somehow superior.
Now we just invaded a country, and say we will invade others.
What’s happening here… It feels strange. Is anyone else seeing this?
Come now, let’s not pretend that Hitler and the Nazis invented authoritarianism. Saying they didn’t have the lens or history to learn from is a little dismissive of two thousands years of written history.
Especially when it was publicly affirmed that they took their inspiration, in part, from the genocidal policies the US employed to destroy the indigenous people here. (And, I’d add, if you’re not aware of just how euphemistic the term ‘reservation’ is, you should read up on how the US destroyed the indigenous people.)
Authoritarianism worked fairly well for a lot of states, though; it was democracy that had to prove its worth in the 1930s and it wasn’t really working for Germany at the time (because of extreme political polarization and a constitution that wasn’t equipped to deal with that kind of thing). The trouble with the Nazis (from their own perspective) was that they bit off a lot more than they could chew when they started the war.
Fair observation, but conversely, this particular kind of populism very much started with the 20th century fascists, it’s uncanny how similarly it’s going now.
Especially in terms of what people would be taught and expected to know about; I think you’d struggle to find anyone in the developed world who doesn’t know at least the basics about WW2.