QUOTE OF THE DAY
Is The Trump-Hitler Link Fair?
Well-known authors think so, but not everyone agrees
Books that compare Trump and Hitler are a literary growth industry.
Well-known writers keep finding new similarities between the two, often throwing in authoritarians like Putin and Mussolini for good measure. It’s easy to see why.
Trump and Hitler gained or retained power by exploiting three factors, the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat argues in her Strongmen (Norton, 2020): violence, propaganda, and corruption.
Other authors take a different path to making related points. The journalist Géraldine Schwarz views Trump in light of far-right victories in Europe in Those Who Forget, and the law professor Eric Posner compares him to American tyrants in The Demagogue’s Playbook.
All three of those books offer thoughtful, intelligent analyses praised by critics. And yet, the comparisons can make you queasy for an obvious reason: Trump didn’t murder six million Jews.
Andrew Sullivan may have come closer to the truth. Back in February, before Joe Biden quit the race for the White House, he faulted what he saw as Joe Biden’s core message: “I’m not Donald Trump who, if re-elected, will be Hitler 2.0.”
