Spend The Holidays With Nazis? No Thank you

The holidays are about love and family. Trump-supporters understand neither.

Image: Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe Staff 

by Justin Rosario

“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”

- Donald Trump speaking in New Hampshire, November 11th 2023

For most of the last several years, I’ve written an article around Thanksgiving or Christmas asking whether or not it was possible to forgive your Trump-supporting friends or family. I wasn’t going to write one this year because by now the answer should be self-evident.

But last week, Trump dropped all the pretense and came out of the Nazi closet. So let’s be perfectly clear: any friend or family member of yours that still supports Trump is supporting a Nazi.

“Vermin”

The important thing to note about Trump’s rambling speech on Veteran’s Day was that the vermin reference was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was something he read off the teleprompter. This was his closing argument to his audience and they ate it up like cocaine-laced chocolate. Here is the full quote:

“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 toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

Trump went on further to state: “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

This isn’t “similar” to Nazi rhetoric. It is Nazi rhetoric. The Nazis railed against their enemies as “vermin” and “threats from within.” Fascist always have to have an internal enemy to persecute. It is a key element to fascists seizing and maintaining power. 

Just to make it absolutely crystal clear that he’s selling Nazism to Republican voters, Trump also bragged that he’s going to open literal concentration camps. Reported the New York Times:

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

During his first term, the former president shoved thousands of adults into cages with not enough food or water, little to no medicine, a lack of sanitary products like soap or toothbrushes or tampons or pads, and no climate control. They sweltered during the day and froze at night.

He did this to children, too. Babies and toddlers were thrown into cages with other children and left there. Not children they were related to, just random children who had to care for them. These children were deprived of sanitary products, like diapers, as well. The Trump regime argued in court that they did not have to provide soap or toothpaste or blankets. To children.

This is what Republicans did to appease their base of blood-thirsty monsters when they felt they were moderately constrained by the rule of law. The base roared its approval, demanding more — and worse.

With a lawless regime acting out its worst impulses, the Trump administration won’t care about deportation. They’ll just throw as many people in as possible and forget about them. Who is going to stop it? The courts? The police? You? As Trump told his audience in New Hampshire, dissidents (“radical left thugs”) will be arrested and put in the camps as well. Trump has not being shy about announcing his plans to turn the government into a weapon for personal revenge.

This is exactly how the Gestapo crushed resistance in Germany. The Nazis ran a campaign of fear and used secret state police forces to make political enemies disappear. Remember the anonymous “officers” in unmarked cars that started to snatch people off the streets in Portland in 2020? Expect more of that in a second Trump term.

On her show last week, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed that Trump’s labeling of his enemies as “vermin” was a test to see whether the Republican Party and his base would follow him into fascism.

Not a single elected Republican spoke out.

This is not a drill 

Consider this: even the Nazis in the 1940s had to hide their death camps to avoid a public outcry.

But not Republicans. We had pictures and videos of children imprisoned and dying in squalor and the only reaction of your Trump-loving friends and family was to roar their approval, demanding more and worse. They are proud of it and will tell you so at every opportunity.

This cannot be repeated often enough: the German people of the 1930s did not understand what was happening to them. The Nazis had to lead them to atrocity, step by step. The Republican base understands exactly what is happening. They are not being led to atrocity, they are sprinting towards it.

Don’t spend your holidays with a soulless monster who, in all sincerity, will one day want you shipped off to a concentration camp for not being “patriotic” enough. The holidays are about love and family. Trump-supporters understand neither.

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