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Why Do We Compare Trump to Hitler?
I was asked by a fellow student of mine why I compared Trump to Hitler and not Hillary in my online Western Civilization II class. My initial post was as follows:
For me, this comes down to the (very) old arguments of the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who both argued that governments rose and fell based on the balance of both security and freedom. Hitler had argued that it was the Jews and foreign forces that had crippled their economy. Amid political turmoil, there was opportunity. Their economy was in shambles, their people poor, starving, and dying. Hitler rode on the back of German nationalism, telling the German people that Germany should come first.
Like our own elections, it was a campaign based on fear, insecurity, and instability. He skillfully played on the emotions of the audience bringing the level of excitement higher and higher until the people wound up a wide-eyed, screaming, frenzied mass that surrendered to his will and looked upon him with pseudo-religious adoration. Hitler offered something to everyone: work to the unemployed; prosperity to failed business people; profits to industry; expansion to the Army; social harmony and an end of class distinctions to idealistic young students; and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He promised to bring order amid chaos; a feeling of unity to all and the chance to belong. He would make Germany strong again; end payment of war reparations to the Allies; tear up the treaty of Versailles; stamp out corruption; keep down Marxism; and deal harshly with the Jews.
He was a populist leader, orating with the same demagoguery that elected Donald Trump just a few days ago. He promised strength, leadership, profits, an overthrow of foreign powers, to bring law and order to the land. He would make his country great and strong again. Those statements should seem indistinguishable between either Adolf Hitler or Donald Trump. Ultimately, both men offered security and stability. They offered a way of life in which they had sovereignty over their lives.
Freedom is difficult. You have to decide how to live your own life. You have to think about how your decisions will affect you and others. You have to think about how you’ll work, how you’ll eat, how you’ll survive. It then becomes easy to choose someone who promises you that you no longer have to work for that; that he (or in the case of Brexit, she) will do it for you, that he or she will give you the means to survive. All you need to be is a good Deutsche soldat.
My fellow student had responded to my post:
You bring up some very interesting and viable points. I do think that it is interesting how you compare Donald Trump to Hitler and not Hilary. I do not discuss politics with others because of the hives it can start, but what would your comparison be with either presidents knowing they claimed to offer the same things… security and freedom? I would personally have said that Hilary also shared similar campaign aspects to Hitler because she was the one who tried to offer employment, unity and most of the other characteristics you listed. Trump of course did mention a few of these as well, I am just curious of how you would see the comparison of both presidential candidates this year.
Good post! It was very interesting to read.
I wanted to share my response with the rest of you, in case someone asks you something similar.
Full disclosure, I’m a liberal in the mould of Bernie Sanders. After your post, I did some brief background research with the hypothesis of making the comparison of Clinton to Hitler, and they were on websites with biases opposite of my own; obviously I disagree, and I’ll explain why here (and hopefully I do their arguments justice).
First off, I want to talk about definitions. I called Trump a fascist because he is an authoritarian leader. He is strongly in favor with a demand for strong obedience to authority (as is evidenced by his opposition to civil disobedience and non-violent against police and police brutality). He has penned up journalists like animals, particularly the ones that have reported what he said in a bad light. Moreover, he has threatened to “open up the libel laws” so that he can open litigation against press that have reported negatively about him, including those that have no bias such as NPR, BBC, or Al-Jazeera.
But others have different definitions of fascism. Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge.com defines fascism in two ways: there is the Benito Mussolini brand and the Adolf Hitler brand. In the way of Mussolini, fascism is more about corporatism (that is, corporations suggest or write legislation) as well as having a strongman to implement these laws. If we go by that definition, then we are already halfway to fascism. However, Hillary Clinton has argued for the reinstating of Glass-Steagall (a repealed bill that originally prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investments) as well as strengthening Dodd-Frank (a bill that came forward after the stock market crash of 2008 that stopped banks from engaging from risky investments).
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has said that in his first 100 days in office, he wants to dismantle Dodd-Frank and allow banks to invest. He wants to tear apart the treaties, trade deals, and peace deals that have been made (NATO, NAFTA, TPP, the Iran Peace Deal, et al.) that he feels is harmful to the US.
Durden defines the Hitler brand of fascism by “the violence, the large-scale murder”, and lay “the hundreds of thousands of lives lost” in the recent wars at the feet of Clinton and Obama. However, one can argue that the recent wars were made in defense or retaliation rather than an attack based on aggression. (Keep in mind, this doesn’t negate how wrong it was that we continued these wars.) However, he seemingly also dismisses history, or at the very least forgets that as an upstart politician (which Donald Trump is as well), Hitler did not have any kills under his belt either.
More importantly, even if he did, it is his followers who committed the atrocities. Granted, Trump’s followers have not committed crimes on the scale of the Nazis, but suicides have been committed. Hate crimes have been committed in his name: students in elementary schools have already been told to “go back to Mexico”; students have been told by their teachers that they’ll “get Trump to send you back to Africa”; black churches have been firebombed and tagged “Vote Trump”; buildings have been vandalized with the slogan “Make America White Again”; women have reported being assaulted; black women have been threatened; and all of this while giving the reason that Trump is now president-elect.
He offered security by antagonizing “the other”, whether it was North Carolina’s HB 2 (or the so-called Bathroom Bill) and the LGBT; minority racial groups such as Asian-Americans (including those from the Middle East) and Hispanics; or religious minority groups (such as Muslims).
And to address your point about Hillary making the same claims as Trump, it would be political suicide to say, “I want to tear this country apart. I want to take away your jobs and give them to someone else.” It doesn’t make sense to do that when you want to get elected, and now more than ever, people want to feel that they’re being protected; if they don’t have that perception, they won’t warm up to you, and they will not elect you.
In Defense of Black Lives Matter, and Addressing Certain Arguments Against It
Recently, a close personal friend of mine and I engaged in a debate about racism and Black Lives Matter (BLM). Some of the things that were quoted were a result from that debate, and I felt that it was worth reblogging and sharing.
An Epiphany on Wage Increase Opposition
This is going to be a short(er) one.
I was listening to Kyle Kulinski’s Secular Talk on YouTube in which he was discussing Chris Christie’s recent veto to a proposed bill in New Jersey that would have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. According to Christie, he believes that doing so is living off of someone else’s money as well as raising the cost of goods.
Kyle points out some key facts such as, you’re not spending other people’s money, it’s money that you’ve earned. Secondly, the Economic Policy Institute alleges that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would make the cost of goods rise by $0.02 to $0.08 in order to meet the new demand for the rise in wages. However, those who are against the minimum wage by reasoning of “it will raise the cost of goods” is not arguing for the sake of the people, they’re arguing that in order to keep the same profit margins, they have to raise the cost of goods.
In other words, they’re advocating corporate greed rather than for human decency. It’s not an argument about paying people more than what they’re worth (because the level of productivity is worth three times more than what the federal minimum wage is currently), or about the rising cost of goods. It’s about “We want to make more money, so you legislators need to artificially keep wages low, or else you no longer have our support nor our money in your next election.”
In other words, it’s money in politics, it’s corruption on Capitol Hill.
Take a look at this chart of living wages by state. The top 5 states that require the highest living wages all require a living wage of at least $59,000. A minimum wage of $15/h only nets you about $31,200 per year. This precludes every single state, if you look at that map. All 50 states have a living wage well over that of our minimum wage. It won’t work. $22/h? Closer, but unlikely, given the climate of the political system.
One of the benefits often touted by leftists is that it would lessen SNAP enrollments and other government assistance benefits, because citizens of the United States would require less aid in order to live comfortably. However, one of the criticisms of this position is that it’s not exactly based in the real world, and fails to account for lost hours and laid-off workers. This criticism is (rightly) backed by the assumption that employers–CEOs, Presidents, etc.–all want to maintain their profit margins. In order to make the same money they do now, they need to lay off workers or cut hours in order to balance the sudden rise in cost of paying their workers.
Obviously, living in a capitalist society, this is going to hurt us in the long run (as we’ve already seen from corporate greed). The market becomes stagnant, and less money flows through the market (because people are trying to save what little money they are earning), which causes wages to stagnate. This causes the market to drive down costs in order to get people to spend money, which is known as displacement. Once displacement occurs, it causes a boom because people are spending money again, which causes prices to go up to meet the demand.
If anyone is familiar with recent history, the last two steps I just described are the same steps that caused the housing bubble and the Great Recession (or the Credit Crunch as it’s known in the UK). My point is that this would occur because wages are stagnant. If they became dynamic (that is, adjusting with inflation as well as level of productivity), the market eventually comes to balance itself. However, corporate greed is driving us off a cliff.
I could be wrong (and I probably am, since I did the most preliminary of researches on basic definitions), so please look into this on your own, and comment if and where I got things wrong.
A Response to “Why I’m Not ‘Feeling the Bern'”
Very obviously, I disagree, and the following is my response.
Before I begin, I just have thing to say to the author directly: If your article contains any of the following phrases, maybe you should re-examine your definition of “compassion” and “caring”: “I’m often told that I have no compassion and that I don’t care about helping the less fortunate. This is where they would be wrong. I believe that in a society built on free markets everyone would be able to succeed.
1) “College shouldn’t be free. College is a privilege, not an entitlement. Making college free for everyone will cheapen its value.”
This is a surefire way to piss me off. You can’t place value on an intangible item. Is a child’s laughter to be divided up and allotted? Does it cheapen the value of laughter? You essentially decide in a so-called free market society who can go to school, who can obtain proper healthcare, and basically, who is allowed to survive in your specific utopia.
In many cases, the free market system is worse than the caste system. In a caste system, you’re stuck in the same file and rank, but at least you have financial mobility. In a laissez faire system, if you are born into a poor situation, in a society which requires you to be educated regardless of what job or position you hold, you have little to no chance of moving anywhere but further down. Laissez Faire only allows the already financially stable some financial flexibility.
It’s not about free college. It’s about having the education being available to those who want it. There are plenty who are done with school the moment they finish high school or sooner. There are those who want to go to vocational or trade schools. Making higher education free does not make it any easier. It does not place requirements on any one institution to make it easier to be accepted. If you were a poor student in high school, then they simply will not accept you. Even if the institution doesn’t make money, there is a standard to which it sets itself. Having free college is simply an incentive to keep going. It is a social safety net for those who want to continue their education in a field and with a degree of their choice.
2) “Please, don’t raise taxes. […]However, that is not the rich’s fault. We should be congratulating those who have more success than us and be taking notes to better ourselves, not wanting them to pay for our stuff through increased taxes. […] Again, I’m not heartless. I just believe that it is not the government’s place to steal from one person and give to another.”
Except that it’s not paying “for our stuff through increased taxes.” It levels out the playing field for everyone, regardless of who you are. Without taxes, we wouldn’t have the roads on which you drive to and from universities. Without taxes, we wouldn’t have the schools which gave you the education to write this drivel. Without taxes, we wouldn’t have state hospitals, prisons to keep violent criminals, or a military for defense.
Republicans are so adamant about expanding military but the fact of the matter is, America spent 54% of its $1.1 trillion dollar budget on military spending in 2015 ($598 billion). Veterans Affairs receive only just over 10% as much ($65 billion). Without taxes being levied, where does the federal government get the money to raise an army? Without taxes, where does the STATE government get the money to raise the National Guard?
Taxation isn’t theft. It’s a tribute for protection and is required for ANY kind of government to function, even a fascist free-market one like the one you have in mind.
3) “I don’t like Big Government.”
And I don’t like big business. Again, the fact of the matter is, Big Business is out to ruin people like you. There is a government agency called National Consumer Protection that is designed to protect you, the consumer from false advertising, from fraud, from scams, from predatory loans, from predatory payday loans. If you want to talk about being rewarded and earning your keep, then you should be supporting your government in this at the very LEAST.
Free-market capitalism requires the greater fool to take the biggest hit. With uneducated consumers like the majority of Americans without an Introduction to Macroeconomics/Microeconomics course, those CEOs will absolutely make you take the hit in order for them to turn a profit on your misguided judgment.
4) “Social Social Security shouldn’t even exist in the first place, let’s not expand it. People should be in charge of their own savings and retirement. If they are not mature enough to save, that’s not anyone else’s fault.”
But what if they make X amount of dollars an hour working full-time, and live in an area in which that eats up 60, 70% of their paycheck, and they had no such safety net? They have no means to move–they already can’t afford to! Some people must live paycheck to paycheck, living hand to mouth, and therefore cannot save on their own. So the government taxes them, takes a little out of their paycheck, and that is their safety net for their retirement.
“I hate that I have to pay into a system that I personally don’t believe will be around to pay me back by the time I’m old enough.”
Then tell your government to stop taking money that we already don’t have from the people who have so little of it already, and spending it in things we don’t need, like a $40 billion dollar fighter jet.
5) “I don’t believe in wage regulation. I personally believe that if wages weren’t regulated by a minimum wage law, they would be higher.”
The last time there were no minimum wages, we had slavery and child labor. Capitalists want the cheapest labor they can find without sacrificing too much quality. It then becomes an economy about who is willing to do it the cheapest in order to survive while the capitalists sit on your back and sip cognac, giggling to themselves about the ingeniousness of their plan, and the stupidity of the people as well as the government.
As for raising the minimum wage, CEOs of major companies don’t need to make as much money as they do. Bill Gates’ annual salary does not need to be $11.5 dollars. Tim Cook did not need $9.2 million last year, including a salary of $1.8 million, or a $6.7 million bonus. As long as people are willing to sacrifice the price of a product and raise employee wages, the base rises up, but the market remains stable.
People who gain excess revenue are more likely to spend said revenue, whether it be on frivolous or needed things. When people spend that money, it also keeps small businesses afloat too, because that money goes into their businesses. It keeps the economy running to have money constantly circulating instead of people struggling to save. Without private spending, the market economy becomes stagnant and everyone struggles.
A Philosophical Response to Indiana’s Public Policy
It has been an insanely long time since I’ve written anything, so to my dear readers, I apologize once again. But this time, I’ve come back, not with arguments on the existence of God, but rather taking what I learned from my philosophy class and applying it to modern situations. Following is a response to a Facebook debate that I’ve been having on Indiana’s new policy on discrimination against gays. If you haven’t figured out my politics now, I lean politically left and consider myself a liberal. This was the comment:
Each society has their own standard of ethics. One persons stance on immorality is another ones strict adherence to it. Take sharia law. They believe they are obligated to treat women as they do and put to death those that don’t. Under anarchy one must turn away from the law and rebel. Ones persons basic human decency depends on experiences and exposure. Good discussion but I stand with my moral standards come from a deep understanding. am I wrong or immoral if I think homosexuality is wrong? Who’s standard do we use. Am I wrong if I think being in a monogamous relationship is not as strong as a polygamist relationship? Not saying one over the other. But a standard is how you determine what decency is. Who is to say ones is more than right than another’s. If you say you then you trample on my right to believe as I chose. If you say live as you want than you say it is ok to trample on the rights of others to treat people the way you say is wrong. Bottom line may be it all depends on your culture and who are we to impose our will on others. If we do say enslaving people is wrong based on a cultural belief then you must have the courage to stand and fight for that belief or stop having theoretical discussions and take a stand in the real world for what you believe in. Even if it causes you harm. Not as easy as just making a blind statement just to invoke a response when you have to defend a position with your own life.
And the following is my response.
I don’t understand where you’re getting the idea that you’re defending your life from, and I don’t understand why you’re suddenly bringing in enslavement.
From my standpoint, you are allowed to make your opinion be heard, and I am well within my rights to think you’re wrong. Where my rights end is, of course, to impose upon you what I believe to be right and force you to follow my stance. I am not doing any of that. What I’m trying to do is show you what is wrong or what is potentially wrong with your position. I am not making any kind of “blind statement” and I am in fact standing up for what *I* believe.
Where I’m coming from with my argument is from Immanuel Kant who believed that because we are all born with the capacity for rational thought, it is through rational thought that we can come to understand what morality it. From there, I’m moving to John Rawls’s position in which he argues (and as I have mentioned before) that society should afford everyone the same rights, or create a society in which even the worse off among us are better off than in our current society. Meaning that even if the 1% still had over 50% of the US wealth, the poorest among us would still have better benefits than they do now.
The standard, therefore, is how can I make society a society that I would consent to live in?
Where it comes in under the gay marriage argument and under the Indiana discrimination law is that, gay people are just the same as you and I. I think few people would dispute the fact. Should they be penalized for something that they couldn’t help? What if the tables were turned and you were suddenly denied a public service (defined under federal law as including providing food and shelter), is it within their rights to deny you, or would you consider it an infringement of your rights? You who need food and drink, you who are willing to pay for said food and drink.
Would you consent to live under such a society where you were discriminated against your skin colour, sexual orientation, gender, or religion? I should think not. So why would you impose the same kind disservice to men and women who have done no harm to you, and who simply want to live their lives? Is it not in our Constitution that all free people of the United States are granted the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness? Where can they have life if they can’t feed themselves? Where can they find happiness if they can’t marry and be with the one they love because some ancient books declare it so? Where is their autonomy when the society in which they live dictates where they can go, what they can do, what they can wear, etc.?
As for my personal religious belief, or lack thereof, my life IS in danger because of the ideas I espouse and the things I write. There are a great many people who have died who share my beliefs. Take Charlie Hebdo. Take Salman Rushdie. Malala Yousafzai. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They are in danger for doing the exact same things I do: criticizing religion. I have my freedom of speech limited because people fear suicide bombings. Because people are afraid of offending others.
So yes, I am certainly committing my life to the words I write and to the things I speak. I am defending my position of atheism, of secularism, and of social contract ethics. Call it socialism if you want. I will defend it. Just as you have every right to defend yours.
Personal Thoughts: the Idealism of the Current Generation
This thought plagues my mind every now and then, and it is this: am I being intelligent, or am I being naive? Are the ideals I want attainable and socially beneficial, or are they childish and selfish wants and needs? I think my generation, the fresh or nearly-fresh out of high school kids, have high ideals and high expectations, but perhaps not all of them are realistic. We currently live in a revolutionary age, and we can see the change all around us. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good.
I think we as human beings have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong. Each person’s sense may vary, but we can agree on most of the basic things. We recognize that there’s a heavy imbalance, a strong inequality. To pull an easy example, let’s talk economics. Citizens of the US are well aware of the imbalance of wealth. We all know that the top 1% hold the most wealth in the country. Approximately 46% of the national wealth, in fact. When asked for the ideal, it’s a little more balanced out, with the rich being just slightly above the rest.
So we recognize this as a society. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. College students are in massive debt. We are in almost $18 trillion in external debt to China, among other countries (doubling from about 2007 at $9 trillion, if I remember correctly). We are about $55 trillion in debt total. The remaining $37 trillion is internally owned debt, meaning we as a society of the US owe it. That’s why there is such a push for economic change.
But even with our recognizing a need for change, people have different ideals. Are they logical? Are they feasible? Beneficial? Or are they just naive fancy? As much as I’d love socialized healthcare, I recognize that there will always be abuses of the system. We can see it right now with the UK, where Muslims are pouring over to escape the conflict in the Middle East and abusing not only the free healthcare over there, but the free education system as well, demanding specialized food even in non-sectarian (public) schools.
Certainly our idealism has seen the rise of acceptance of the LGBTQ community, even so far as having pastors presiding over same-sex marriages. We’ve seen the abuses of the religious (and I’m not talking about just the Catholic Church), and there are increasing numbers of those identifying as non-religious, atheistic, or simply “spiritual but not religious.” There are rising communities led by powerful women in defense of feminism: Emma Watson, Emma Thompson, Anita Sarkeesian, Felicia Day, Laci Green, and untold numbers of feminists in the world behind whom I’m proud to stand. Because of such a powerful environmental movement, we’ve built aquatic farms, created more “smart” technology, and are moving even further to clean up our act (pun intended).
But sometimes I just sit back and wonder, “Are we just fooling ourselves?” We’re incredibly selfish as a species, driving out entire species to create ever expanding, extravagant, decadent living spaces. Large swaths of the Amazon rainforest have been chopped down to be replaced as cattle land to produce mind-blowing amounts of beef and poultry. In the US alone, according to the USDA, in 2011, America imported 2.1 billion pounds of beef. For my European and Canadian readers, that is 954, 545, 454 kilograms. In the US specifically, we consume and waste far more than we should, far more than we could ever need. The population is booming worldwide and scientists are now saying that even population control methods will not be enough to stop it; if lucky, we are likely to plateau at 9 to 11 billion people for the next 90 years.
And no matter what we do, there will always be opposition to the transition of what I view as a better culture, a better society. Birth control is still heavily opposed by the conservative religious right, where as in Australia, birth control by injection is already available for men. Condoms and “the pill” are no longer the only options–welcome to the 21st century, people. Embryonic stem cell research is still heavily opposed even though we now have means to extract stem cells while at the same time keeping the embryo intact. And while we’re on that, abortion is still opposed, meaning that we’re not as progressive as we’d like to think. It has to do with the existing person, the female autonomy, and when that is denied, I prefer to call that oppression.
And then there are problems with the liberal left as well. You can very well see that I’m very leftward leaning on most issues, and as much as I hate to agree with Bill Maher, the left spends too much time with its head up its ass, worrying about “political correctness.” There is too much wishy-washy bullshit floating around, worrying that each minority or special interests group be respected, no matter how bullshit, asinine, harmful, or irrelevant their ideas may be. For example, the term “Islamaphobia” has been coined for people like myself, Sam Harris, and Bill Maher when we criticize Islam as a religion. Bad ideas deserve to be mocked, ridiculed, and condemned, and Islam, like any unfalsifiable belief and ones that have been proven false, is more than deserving. Crystal healing, dolphin therapy that supposedly cures cancer, conspiracy theories, religions, cults, all of it.
But because this is the liberal left, we have to show deference and respect to a bullshit religion, to bullshit beliefs, just so we don’t offend people’s sensibilities. Well, guess what? The problem with political correctness is that no matter what you do, someone will be offended. Hell, Christians, Muslims, and Jews are all offended that me and my ilk even exist. So what should we do, wipe ourselves off the face of the planet? Fuck off with that.
Being Asian, it is hilarious to me that people will try to be “politically correct,” saying African American instead of “black,” Caucasian instead of “white,” and even the occasional Oriental instead of “Asian.” I couldn’t less of a shit about my own race, let alone what you think of it. I will laugh at racist jokes. They are meant to offend, and if you’re too sensitive, don’t listen. It’s as simple as that. Racism is a joke within itself. There is no such thing. It is an arbitrary cultural construct at best with no definitive lines between who is what “race.”
The problem with the left, in short (I think), is that we focus on the micro instead of the macro. We focus on the individuals or minority groups instead of working what would benefit us all as a whole. We can certainly start on the micro (and we probably must), but eventually we have to apply what we learn to the larger picture.
So what changes do I propose? I can’t. There are too many problems, only a few of which have I mentioned here. It would take an entire societal communication to figure out the problems we have an address it. I’m trying to do my part in aiding that communication, and I encourage you to do the same.
Answers in Philosophy 