The Scary Rise of Donald Trump and his Cheering Crowds — Haven’t We Seen This Movie Before?

When I heard the recent comments by Donald Trump about putting a religious ban on all muslims from entering the US, including American citizens, I was more than a little upset. Not only because I’m a Muslim American citizen who’s worried about my constitutional rights be taken away by cheering crowds of white Christians who know nothing about Islam or Muslims. But it was also because the whole pattern of Trump’s campaign seemed familiar, as if I had see this movie before.

And I’m not just talking about the scene in Episode III of Star Wars where the senate elects a “strong leader” and gives him unlimited power to put down terrorist threats with force amongst a landslide of support ( “…so this is how liberty dies…to thunderous applause…” ).

It wasn’t just what Trump said (which is bad enough) that seemed familiar. The really scary thing was the cheers that came from his mostly white supporters in the recent rally in South Carolina. And if that wasn’t enough, I am ashamed to say that a good number of people that are my “friends” on social media actually have been supporting Trump’s statements, starting with attacks on Obama not being a real American, let alone a real American President, then towards Hispanic immigrants (or, as they are known in Trump-land “rapists and murderers”) and now towards Muslims (known in Trump-land as “terrorists”). The recent comments were part of a longer arc, and i’ve watched it not just with Trump but with social media posts recently including pictures of “burning” Korans and otherwise spewing hatred about “sending all Muslims back”. While most of the media condemned his plan, Fox news and certain other outlets were much more gentle towards it.

So, I wondered — where have we seen this kind of thing before?? And what did it lead to?

There are of course many parallels in world history both here and abroad: ranging from Christians being discriminated by the Roman Empire, the most powerful empire of the day, for their faith, to the internment of US citizens of Japanese origin during World War II, or the “No Blacks or Jews allowed” signs across the south before desegregation. The Japanese internment was of course a moment of disgrace for the United States of America, which was echoed by George Takei recently, who was as child at the time his parents were unconstitutionally put into “camps”.

But I think the most worrying example was this one:

Let’s see, demagogic leader promises to make the country “great” again, and get back at those foreign and domestic elements that were “holding them down”.

The leader demonizes an ethnic and religious minority as being the ones who are taking over their jobs and who aren’t “real” citizens. This results in large cheers from his primarily white supporters. Although no party wins a majority of the electorate, his party is in the lead, and he gets put into power.

When a “terrorist” attack happens in the country, he suspends the constitutional rights of all of its citizens. Then he starts to seize and transport the demonized middle eastern minority “away” from their homes a move which “white” citizens generally support.

Now you might ask why would the electorate support this? Because they have been indoctrinated, via rallies of cheering crowds, at how superior their own culture is to the dirty, filthy minority that needs to be “taken care of”.

While I am describing the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s in Germany in the 1930’s, this could just as well be a future history of the rise of Donald Trump and his racist in the near future if we’re not careful.

When you speak about Hitler these days, it is so loaded that people will automatically dismiss you as engaging in hyperbole. Trump is nothing like Hitler, they will say. Jews are nothing like Muslims (or Mexican immigrants). And the USA is not a country of racists like Germany was.

Really?

Let’s see, Trumps’ recent anti-muslim remarks came after his announcement that the government should track “muslims” and have a database of them, which of course came after earlier remarks that Mexican immigrants should be deported — even if they are children that were born here and are natural born citizens.

Cue images of a new Gestapo (with an innocuous name like the “USA Patriot Patrol”) knocking on doors of Mexican families and taking children away from their parents because they didn’t have “proper papers”. Need more? Cue images of rounding up families and putting them on boxcars to “ship them back” to where they belong amongst cheering crowds.

Not enough? Let’s cue images of people being forced to wear arm-bands that show their religion, not unlike Jews who had to wear the Star of David identifying them as part of the “minority” that was out to destroy “pure” German society.

When hatred is allowed not just to exist but supported and cheered by enough of the population — it doesn’t have to be a majority it just hast to be large enough to be vocal and supported by elements of the media, as is the case with Trump.

Then you are suddenly on a slippery slope:

1. It starts with demonizing a minority, which makes casual discrimination and death threats OK in the eyes of your angry population (don’t think this is happening now? You haven’t got a clue — this is happening now to American muslims and mosques; a death threat was even registered to US Representative Andre Carson from Indiana, who unlike Obama is actually a muslim!);
2. Then you enact laws to make this minority into second class citizens, catalog them, take away their rights, and limit their ability to do things like practice their religion openly (see proposals from Trump).
3. and finally, leads to ways to “send them back” and “get rid of them” or “keep them out”. Listen to what Trump supporters are saying after his rallies and on social media and you’ll realize calls for this are already happening.

Don’t think it could happen here in the United States of America? Think again — it’s already started.

Discrimination and racial hatred is built into American History, and it was supported by some large segment of the population each time. Let’s go back and look at the killing of millions of Native Americans, or the holding of millions of Africans as slaves — both of which the white christian population thought was OK because the minority group was “less than they are”. All a candidate has to do is to touch that vein and ride it. Trump is a master at that.

George Wallace, another candidate that you could compare Trump to, ran on a racist agenda and in 1968 and got 10 million votes. This was a hundred years after the end of slavery and giving citizenship to African Americans! Lincoln had to send in troops to certain parts of America to get them to relinquish slavery, and 100 years later, Kennedy had to send in troops just to get an African American to be able to attend university with white kids!

How much would you want to bet that in another hundred years, in 2060, there won’t be some ethnic or religious minority here that is being demonized by the crisis or prejudices of the moment?

Remember Hitler wasn’t always a reviled figure. There were crowds of white Germans cheering, just like the white Americans we saw on TV cheering Trump as he talked about ripping up the constitution, denying rights based on a religious test. Hitler called Jews “filthy”. Watch Trump’s speeches and their supporters social media, and you’ll see similar terms bandied about. He promised to build up the military and make Germany great again (at least for the “real” Germans). His country had been treated unfairly in negotiations with other countries, and he would be the one to correct this mistake!

Whenever we say “never again”, somehow, some way, things seem to come around again. They say that if you ignore the lessons of history, you are cursed to repeat them. Something tells me that if you question most Trump supporters at his rallies, you’ll find that they’re not particularly good students of World History.

I’m not saying that Trump is as bad as the Hitler we know of in the history books today. I’m saying he’s just like the Hitler that built support from the white majority in Germany by demonizing the minority to get power and promising to “make the country great again”, which is really a euphemism for “make our country white again”. It wasn’t until Hitler started to take advantage of “terrorist” attacks that he really started to build his support and implement his crazy policies, turning into the “Hitler” we know from the history books.

When many German Jewish scientists like Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, both of whom played critical role in the development of atomic weapons, emigrated to America, they publicly wondered where they would go if the USA succumbed to the Nazis?

It took a while, but it seems like certain parts of America may be on the verge of succumbing to a Nazi-like mentality — leaving first Hispanics and now Muslims wondering, what will happen to us if this guy gets elected?

And for any other group that is not white and Christian — African Americans, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans — don’t worry, once Trump’s cheering throngs are done with Mexicans and Muslims, they’ll turn their eyes somewhere else. After all, Hitler had a long list of “undesirables” that needed to be taken care of.

God help us all if that happens.

This article first appeared on my blog. Follow my blog at http://zenentrepreneur.blogspot.com/