Donald Trump is Actually More Like Georg von Schönerer

Finally, the gloves came off. Multiple public figures including the current President of Mexico and comedian Louis C. K. compared US presidential candidate Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler. The leaders of the conservative Republican Party have been shocked that voters are choosing Trump in the state-by-state primaries that help determine their Presidential candidate for the fall election. After his campaign declaration back in June 2015 included a platform position based on race — specifically about immigrants from Mexico — Trump’s popularity surged and he quickly took the lead in the polls. Since that time, many have spoken out and criticized Trump, chief among the reasons is the racial tone of his candidacy. Meanwhile, he’s added more controversial positions to his campaign, including a bar on people from entering the US based on their religion. Despite the criticisms, he’s attracting voters and winning delegates and seems the inevitable candidate of a political party that doesn’t want him. The showdown between these sides of the Republican Party is just weeks away at the July convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Nothing brings public attention like success, something Trump knew long before he entered politics. With high poll numbers translating into delegates, Trump is close to converting his rhetoric into political power. His unexpected and unconventional approach has many people puzzled and trying to find some framework for comparison. Genocidal leader Adolph Hitler is considered by most people today (including me) to be the most evil person to have ever lived. If a similar figure was elected President of the US, it would be a worldwide disaster. So far, Trump has shrugged off these comparisons, even in the face of escalating violence at his rallies and use of murky and awkward symbols by his followers. Do Trump’s bellicose statements put him in the same league as the man who conquered Europe and orchestrated the Holocaust?

Conventional Thinking

The 41st Republican National Convention will be held July 18–21st in Cleveland, just a few miles from where I live. Eighty years have passed since the GOP last came to this city in Northeastern Ohio. Here, the convention is more than just a news event. For Cleveland, it’s an ever looming presence quickly spreading over all aspects of daily life. From the water’s edge along Lake Erie, you can see the tall buildings of downtown such as the Key Tower and the Tower City Center (once the second tallest building in the world). Behind them is the glitter and flash of the Cavaliers home court, Quicken Loans Arena (the Q). After last buzzer of the NBA Playoffs rings through the arena and the leftover flames are burned off from the overhead “Humungotron”, a crew will disassemble much of the Q to ready it for a new spotlight. It will be convention time.

Over 50,000 guests will be in Cleveland for the event, including an estimated 15,000 media members. The leaders of the Republican Party and their delegates will be here, along with interested groups, foreign governments, and companies like Facebook and Twitter. The restaurants and clubs of the hip downtown area are quickly being booked for events. The brand new 250,000 square foot Cleveland Convention Center will be the site of media operations. The Republican Party chose Cleveland largely due to the city’s investment in these facilities and also as part of a larger strategy to do well in Ohio. No Republican has been elected President without winning Ohio.

The neighborhoods beyond the bright lights of Playhouse Square and the Warehouse District are where the majority of Clevelanders live. The city is relatively small compared to the county which surrounds it. It’s an area that gets a disproportionate share of national attention every four years, versus those that live in red or blue states. Ohio has been the deciding factor in presidential elections, and Cuyahoga County’s vote is usually closely watched on election night in the US. As a swing state, campaigning here can be make-or-break for a future President. The Republican National Committee selected Ohio for this reason, specifically so that campaigning would start sooner in the state. The strategy was developed long before Trump was leading in primaries, so the eventual benefit or cost to his candidacy is unknown. However, the party didn’t just select Ohio, but Cleveland over in-state capital and rival Columbus, which also bid for the convention. The Party needed to capture more of the vote of Northeast Ohio. How will this happen?

Northeast Ohio: The People

Since the economic downturn in 2008, things have been hard everywhere in the US, and the recession took its toll on Cleveland’s economy. Manufacturing is still number one in the city, but when jobs are lost, it’s a struggle to replace them. Workers lack the skills for new jobs in start-up, tech, or healthcare, leaving many out of the workforce (it’s worth considering that 500,000 new healthcare jobs were added in the US in just the past year). The housing crash left neighborhoods with vacant homes. Cleveland’s focus on downtown development did little to help the residential streets of the city.

Per the 2010 Census, the city of Cleveland had less than 400,000 residents and only 167,000 households, making it one of America’s smallest big cities. Demographically, more than half the residents are African-American and a full two-thirds are minorities. High profile national stories have brought focus on policing issues in Cleveland. County prosecutors failed to get a conviction when charges were brought against an officer for his part in a car chase shooting that left two unarmed African-Americans dead. County prosecutors failed to even bring charges in the shooting of twelve year old Tamir Rice, also African-American, despite video evidence discrediting the original police report. All of this brings attention to the complex issues facing the city’s urban population. The Cleveland elected its third consecutive mayor from the Democratic Party, one who has his plate full with both the needs of his residents and also those of businesses making investments in Cleveland.

What about the rest of the area? That means talking about Greater Cleveland. Northeast Ohio has somewhere between three and four million residents, depending on which counties are included (and if they will admit to getting Browns games on their local stations). Greater Cleveland has just a population of a little more than two million. That means 80% of area residents live outside the city, 1.6 million people. Can the Republican Party win the vote of these folks? If so, I have a suggestion for them.

Start by running ads in Russian, of course.

That would net them an audience of at least ten thousand. A simple fact about life on the ground in the Cleveland area, on any given day, there are some communities where you can walk into a business where at least a couple people are speaking Russian to one another. If not Russian, then Ukrainian. Cleveland has 120,000 foreign born immigrants and nearly 50% are from Europe, mostly from Eastern Europe. Why did so many move here from that part of Europe? Family connections.

Getting Personal: Not From Here? Neither am I.

I moved to Cleveland when I was a teenager from out-of-state, and over time noticed the large number of people whose parents or grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. It can be hard to miss, as entire cities seem as though they were settled by one ethnic group, like the city of Parma which derives its identity from a common Polish heritage. I had a series of experiences that illuminated this for me. In college a friend invited me to a concert where he was performing Ukrainian music. His parents’ country had just re-emerged after years of communist rule. Later at my first post college job, I worked in an office which had hired a group of young men and women my age. We went to lunch together and hung out after work. One day, I asked where one of our friends had gone, knowing he’d quickly left the company. “He went back to Croatia, because of the war.” War had indeed broken out in the former Yugoslavia, but I hadn’t thought about how that could affect us here. A few years later, my sister’s friend had a son, and they named him Attila. It was a family name which seemed unusual to me, but is apparently common when Hungarian. Eventually I myself met and married a beautiful girl. Soon I found myself at family functions where one person spoke English with a Slovene accent and another older couple spoke with a Polish one. My wife’s family were neither of these backgrounds, but they were close enough to their European heritage that they still sang songs when they got together.

I had no idea what to make of any of this.

Eventually, my wife and I moved away, as many Clevelanders do. We knew there was a whole lot of country out there to see, and travelled all over the US. I forgot about the odd Balkanization of Cleveland.

Time passed and my wife was expecting our first child. I started thinking about our merged family backgrounds. She had a genealogy book from a long passed great aunt. I tried to understand the woman’s strange notes and eventually just took to the internet. At home we had a brand new “DSL” connection and a Compaq computer which I used to search websites, looking for signs of my own family. I didn’t find much. It seemed that my own family was from southern Germany, or maybe Switzerland. This wasn’t surprising. When I was growing up in Western Pennsylvania they still pronounced our last name with the soft “ch” sound. Wherever my own family came from, they’d left a long time ago. When my son was born and I lost interest in any of this. Raising a child is exciting, and I didn’t see much point in sitting on the computer.

We had more children and eventually moved back to Ohio. My wife joined the new Facebook thing online. Not long after that, she received a strange message from Europe. It said, you’re one of us! From her (married) last name, they’d found her. They claimed their little area was the origin for my family and its unusual name. It seemed convincing enough, and fit the few facts I knew. I puzzled over this, suspecting now I finally knew the departure country for my ancestors.

Austria.

What kind of place was it? I wasn’t sure. It’s a mountainous country, whose most famous living son is Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s where the musical The Sound of Music was set. The winter Olympics were held there, although I didn’t remember them. Heck, I’d even studied German in high school and knew nothing about the alpine nation. High school German class in the 1980s was mostly about East and West, the Berlin Wall, and the growing potential that Russian forces might march across the border at any moment. A few years later the cold war ended, and Europe reorganized. I knew that Austria was Germany’s southern neighbor. I wanted to learn more.

I decided to go to the library.

An Empire Dissolved: Where Did They Go?

As it turns out, Austria is a tiny remnant of the once vast Habsburg Empire. This royal family ruled for 600 years, and at times it controlled states as far south as Italy, as far west as Spain, north to the Baltics, and east to Russia. The core of the Empire was places comprised of nations today like Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Add in Austria and there were many people, languages, and groups under one banner. The Habsburg Empire’s center was the Imperial capital, Vienna. Immigrants from these places helped Cleveland grow into a giant industrial city. Hundreds of thousands of Greater Clevelanders are descended from them.

It’s nearly 100 years since the monarchy failed and the Habsburg Empire vanished. Its last moments led Europe into the First World War, which started when a terrorist shot and killed Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. The century since has often ensnared the people of Eastern Europe beneath brutal rule by outside powers. What’s less known is this was preceded by decades of conflict within the Empire itself. As the Habsburgs entered the 19th century, their Empire was shrinking due to the growing nationalism spreading through Europe. At the same time, the Empire was dealing with the rapid challenge of industrialization. This mix of elements created a cauldron from which many influential 20th century people emerged, including psychology’s founder Sigmund Freud, modern artist Gustav Klimt, and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to name a few. Just a bit north in Germany, a man named Albert Einstein was working in solitude on new theories of physics that would change history.

It’s believed that this creativity was driven by modernization and the problems facing the massive multicultural Empire. Citizens wondered what the purpose of the Empire was, other than that it simply continued to exist. Should it be a broad pluralistic nation, or break up into small homogenous states like its neighbors were doing. Just over the Alps, smaller German speaking states had reorganized themselves into the German Empire. This was looked on with jealousy by some in the newly named Austro-Hungarian Empire, which adopted a constitutional system that still left most people without any political power. The merchant class built factories and railroads, which put pressure on the traditional artisans who manufactured goods. Experts with new university educations replaced workers and their centuries of traditional apprenticeship. New modern buildings were put in place of the capital Vienna’s defensive walls, rivaling the transformation of Paris. Meanwhile internally, many non-German peoples and groups were ignored, oppressed, or exploited by their leaders. The aristocratic system was broken, but despite a rush of new ideas, no one had the power to change it.

To summarize: A massive diverse nation faced tremendous pressure from changes occurring the outside world, while internal disagreement prevented any action to solve any of its problems. Does this sound familiar?

It’s easy to see draw a parallel to what’s happening in the US. Things didn’t go well for the Habsburg Empire. Disagreements on the best path forward continued for decades as the (long-lived) Emperor aged. The country was drawn into war in 1914 and the ancient Emperor died just two years later in 1916. With him, it seems the last reason for unity died as well. In 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was washed away forever. The vacuum left behind helped lead to the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and Adolph Hitler.

This name ends many a discussion. Racial hatred leading to genocide, war, and destruction are Hitler’s legacy.

Donald Trump’s supporters are making themselves heard. On TV (and in our neighborhoods) they say he represents the common man. His father was a successful businessman, an immigrant himself. Trump has placed his name on many companies and has multiplied his wealth over time. He’s a dealmaker who says he will run the nation like a business. Moreover, his supporters are frustrated with “Party Elites.” Trump claims the people who run the Republican Party don’t care about the needs of ordinary Americans. Once he’s in charge, he says that will change. Lastly, his supporters also say that when he uses sensational rhetoric on the campaign trail, he doesn’t mean it. They claim he will act differently when he takes office. It’s an interesting reconciliation of Donald Trump the man vs. his words.

Few of his supporters seem to openly say they support him because of the racial or anti-religious tone of his campaign. Many want to give him a pass on this, and laugh off the Hitler comparison. This is where context is vital. Perhaps Donald Trump is simply being compared to the wrong Austrian racist.

The final decades before the end of Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 included several well known figures. There are other important people — architects, writers, business leaders, publishers, and politicians — who don’t usually merit a mention, despite their influence at the time. Of those now faded into history, one of these people deserves a closer look. He was a man who brought the politics of race in the Empire to the forefront.

Austrian politician Georg von Schönerer (1842–1921) was the son of a successful railway entrepreneur. His father built several railroads in the early to mid 1800’s and accumulated vast wealth from his enterprises. This allowed the family to move to a country estate and gain an aristocratic rank, a rare jumping of social classes at the time. Georg von Schönerer was expected to spend his career managing and growing his father’s wealth and vast landholdings. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy the younger Schönerer. From his country estate, Georg entered politics. He made himself popular with rural voters, embracing local issues and by opposing others of his social class. He developed a populist reputation as an advocate for the common man. However, he included only the Empire’s German population. Georg and his allies fought strongly against extending rights to the Empire’s Slavic and other subjects. While some questioned his divisive language, he portrayed himself as a dealmaker. He politically brought together an unusual base of disenfranchised rural peasant farmers, traditional artisan laborers, anti-establishment student groups, and other political outsiders.

The Sharper Key

Schönerer bitterly fought against the political and business elites, the class of which he was a member. He obsessed over what was said about him and often sued for libel. His defining characteristic was his anti-Semitism. He publicly advocated for a pan-German nation and the exclusion of other races. His greatest legacy was the introduction into discourse what was called “the sharper key” in politics. This musical allusion was a reference to using race as a part of political debate. As other more reasonable leaders questioned such a tone in politics, his allies doubled down with ever more audacious policies.

Ultimately, Schönerer found little success. His legacy is simply the intensity with which he brought racially driven policies into the mainstream. He helped disrupt an already weakened political system at time when unity was needed. Schönerer was more committed to his racial agenda than to the Empire, and despite his failure at politics, he and his allies got what they wanted. The Empire disintegrated and only a small German nation remained. The younger generation saw the rise of better organized successors who furthered the racial agenda. This is the environment that literally gave the world Adolph Hitler.

An argument can be made that just because Donald Trump has several parallels to a vile historical figure doesn’t predict his future actions. This is largely true. There’s no way to know how Trump will behave should he attain office. Trump says that party leaders are out of touch and he holds them responsible for the loss of jobs in the US. This may be right. He draws support from a group of people who feel they have been left without a future. This frustration is real. It makes sense for them to want change.

Why this would be a reason to re-introduce race into politics is something I just can’t understand. Racial politics drove the world into multiple wars in the 20th century. Those wars left whole regions and sometimes entire continents devastated. We must keep in mind that only 150 years ago, the US fought its bloodiest war on its own soil over this very issue. As I’ve already said, nothing brings attention like success. Trump’s use of race in his campaign has led to success. It’s foolish to think that racial politics have suddenly reappeared from nowhere. They simple have waited on the sidelines because they were deemed unacceptable by voters.

Unfortunately, whether he becomes the Party’s candidate or not, the damage is likely already done. Without a penalty for his campaign’s racial tone, there will be others that follow. Groups wait in the shadows for times like this. What happens to the US if they move into the light?

Only a severe setback from voters can push race back off the national agenda. It’s not about Trump. It’s about who we are and want to be. No candidate that divides the world along race or faith can effectively govern, because peace in such a system is impossible. No one. Never. Want America to be great? Hold to the values that were true when it was its greatest. That means finding a way to include everyone.

It’s only a few weeks until the Party Convention in Cleveland. It’s a city used to including people from all over, whether they came from Europe, the segregated south, or places like Latin American and India (which have recently added new groups to the community). The people of Greater Cleveland won’t select the candidate for the party; that will be done by those inside the Q. Will the Republican Party tolerate a candidate who divides the world along racial lines? They should remember that outside there’s an entire city watching. One in five of them are descended from immigrants from Eastern Europe. These are people whose parents or grandparents fled this kind of nonsense before.

It didn’t work then.

It isn’t the answer now.