It has been reported by Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly that Trump has stated that Hitler did some good things and that he (Trump) needed generals like Hitler had. People have shrugged off these statements and Mr. Trump has denied saying that Hitler did some good things. However, Mr. Trump has called his political opponents “vermin” and stated that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” “coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” He has also praised dictators.
It now appears that Mr. Trump may be following Hitler’s playbook, not against Jews, but against people of color and women. Let’s compare the situation in the world to 1933 when Hitler rose to power and the steps he took in Germany with the steps that Mr. Trump is taking in his second term in the United States. The Nazi movement was only one of several anti-democratic movements rising and active in Europe at that time. In 2025, we are seeing the rise and the strengthening of anti-democratic movements in Europe and South America. Trump’s right hand man, Elon Musk, has even involved himself in European politics on the side of the ultra-right. After Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Germany evolved from a parliamentary democracy into a totalitarian state. Nazis ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation.
After Trump began his second term in our constitutional democracy in January 2025, he began to use organized terror against opponents and ideological enemies (politicians, media, law firms, judges, universities, people on visas, etc.).
Let’s look at Hitler’s next steps. First, the Nazis took control of the media using media outlets to disseminate Nazi ideology through a special government ministry for propaganda. Trump is suing media outlets he doesn’t like and not allowing them access to cover the White House as well as defunding public broadcasting. He is using his friend Musk’s social media platform “X” to convey and reinforce his messages.
Secondly, the Nazis turned the German educational system into a tool to teach Nazi ideological methods. Mr. Trump is dismantling the Department of Education and attacking universities if they are not teaching his ideology. Schools and youth groups were used to convey Nazism to the younger generation. Members of MAGA are taking over school boards, banning books, and changing curricula to present their ideology. Trump is even hawking his own Bible with copies of the United States foundational documents included. The sale of the Bible is ironic since it is evident that Trump is uncomfortable with the Bible, holding it upside down when he used it as a prop after using law enforcement to clear Lafayette Square and referring to Second Corinthians as two Corinthians.
Third, the Nazis recruited the cultural and art centers in Germany using them to portray only Nazi imagery and symbolism. Trump has attacked and dismantled Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in the government and has threatened businesses and universities with the loss of business and funding if they do not do the same. He is working to defund parts of the Smithsonian Museum that show the history of diversity in our country like the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the American Art Museum, and the Women’s History Museum, currently in development. Fourth, Hitler created an atmosphere of fear in Germany. Trump has created an atmosphere of fear in the United States of America. Over and over again, we hear that people are afraid to speak because of “fear of retaliation” by the administration.
Hitler’s final stage was horrific, imprisoning political enemies and Jews in concentration camps and killing them. Mr. Trump is deporting as many Blacks and browns as possible and suspending refugee resettlement, a program that offers safety to political dissidents, religious minorities and some of the most vulnerable victims of war and disaster, and revoking the temporary legal status of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but is prioritizing the resettlement of White South Africans (Afrikaners) in the United States by executive order. Perhaps, Mr. Trump wants to attract people whom he believes have the same feelings about people of color that he does.
Currently, Mr. Trump argues that people in the United States on visas and green cards do not enjoy free speech rights (although the First Amendment uses the word people, not citizens), do not have a right to due process, can be snatched off the street by hooded officials, and even mistakenly deported to a jail in El Salvador due to an administrative error and cannot be rescued because the person is now in “the custody of another country.”
It is a short step from those scenarios to imprisoning naturalized citizens or even citizens for ideas with which Mr. Trump and his allies do not agree. However, we don’t yet know Mr. Trump’s final stage. We do not want history to repeat.