Donald Trump is being compared to Hitler. Trump has both a son and a daughter married to Jews. Trump expresses admiration for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump declares he is a friend of Israel. Trump built the plush Mar-a-Lago golf club in Palm Beach and opened it to Jews and African Americans, who were barred from other Palm Beach resorts.
Trump as Hitler? Only in the fevered imaginations of Trump haters.
And what about the anti-Trump demonstrators? They claim that they are blocking activities by neo-Nazis who want to impose an authoritarian regime on America. They claim they are democrats (small d as well as large D) trying to block hate speech.
But who really want to impose an authoritarian regime? Those who assert that they have the exclusive right to define “hate speech,” and the exclusive power to shut it down – by force if necessary.
To put things into perspective, recall what real Nazis looked like, and what they did.
In Germany and Austria in the 1930s, the Nazi Party was gaining strength. The universities were especially fertile hothouses for the incubation of authoritarian ideas. And why not? The universities were already authoritarian – faculties that resembled a military hierarchy, and professors who regarded themselves as qualified to pour whatever ideas they wanted into the empty heads of their students.
Here is the University of Vienna in the 1930s, already a hotbed of Nazi activism. Student demonstrations, often violent, became frequent. Eventually the library had to be closed, preventing many students from completing their studies and attaining their degrees. Here is a gang of Nazis preventing the entry of Jewish students and professors – and by the look of things, anyone else as well. Violent demonstrators rarely confine their violence to the alleged object of their anger. Anyone handy will do.
This couldn’t happen in America, you say? It already is happening. Here we have the campus library at elite Dartmouth University. Shouting demonstrators march around the library, preventing students from working and intimidating them with veiled threats. And there they are, blocking the stairway, just like their predecessors in Vienna.
No they’re not in spiffy uniforms, like Austrians. They’re dressed casually, like Americans. They don’t form a perfectly straight line, like Austrians. They form a raggedy line, like Americans. But don’t let their lack of military training fool you. Their determination is just as strong. And their object is just the same – to evoke fear in their political opponents, in order to silence them.
Am I exaggerating? Watch this video clip. Then ask yourself how you would feel if you were a student at Dartmouth. Would you feel that you were getting your money’s worth? Annual costs run over $67,000. This means that your parents have taken out a second mortgage on the family home, you are working whenever you can, and you are racking up an enormous student-loan debt you fear you will never be able to repay – and all for the privilege of being cursed at and threatened in the university library.
The media are filled with reports of demonstrations at the University of Missouri, as well as sympathy demonstrations at universities across America. Typical headlines read:
Dartmouth University demonstrators assault students in library.
University of Missouri president and provost forced to resign and apologize.
Professor threatens student photojournalist for doing his job.
Football coach must apologize in front of students.
Student president apologizes for false rumor about KKK on campus.
Professor resigns for encouraging students to take exam despite threats.
Professor resigns for sending e-mail about “bullies.”
University police encourage students to report “hurtful speech.”
Elsewhere, a student activist declared that the First Amendment creates “a hostile and unsafe learning environment.” No, free expression is essential for learning, but it is hostile to indoctrination. Do parents know they are paying huge sums to have their children indoctrinated in anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-Judeo-Christian dogmas?
Now we some to the recent cancellation of a speech by Donald Trump at the University of Illinois campus in Chicago. Large parts of the arena were filled with anti-Trump demonstrators, whose purpose was to disrupt the meeting and prevent the speech. More demonstrators protested noisily in the streets outside. Trump decided to cancel the event – he said, after consultation with the police, which police spokespersons later denied.
In any case, we can thank Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for providing a safe and peaceful venue for expression of various points of view, as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Oh wait, we can’t, any more than we can thank the former confidant of President Obama for providing a safe and peaceful city in which people can live. Rising crime rates, especially homicide rates? No matter. Rahm is a Democrat, and by definition for the “people.” Exactly which “people” he is for remains to be defined.
Could you speak before a mob like this? Could you be heard? Would you be safe?
Whatever you think of Trump, he is, in fact, the leading Republican candidate for the presidential nomination. He is, in fact, a protectee of the Secret Service, and as such threats against him are federal crimes.
In view of the mob outside, could you even get to the arena and attempt to speak?
I was going to search Google for an image of a Nazi street mob in the 1930s, in order to compare it with this Chicago anti-Trump mob. But I realized that this would be wasted effort. From this distance, the mobs look the same. What is worse, their purpose is the same – to silence dissenting voices, by intimidation if possible, by violence if necessary.
And here is Trump in Ohio, surrounded by Secret Service agents as demonstrators attempt to rush the stage. I wonder how Trump’s wife and children feel about that.
Worst of all, politicians from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio blame Donald Trump for the violent protests. Does Trump bear a share of the blame, because of his immoderate language? Yes, he does. But beyond this, are not the violent demonstrators to blame for blocking free speech?
Violent mobs prevent Trump from speaking? It’s his fault for his provocative ideas. A woman is raped in an alley? It’s her fault for wearing revealing clothing. A man is carjacked? It’s his fault for driving a flashy car. The end result of “blame the victim” is to blame everyone else except those actually responsible. Indeed, after the anti-Semitic violence of Kristallnacht in 1938, the Nazis actually blamed the Jews for the violence. You see, “blame the victim” has a long and undistinguished history.
As John O’Sullivan observed, “In Germany the fascists goose-stepped – in America they jog.” Fascists don’t always wear brown shirts – they may wear casual clothes. Fascists don’t always give the closed-fist salute – although some current leftist activists do exactly that. But you can tell fascists by their threats to use violence if their demands aren’t met, by their disruption of classes, by their intimidation of students and professors, by their ruthless suppression of unwanted ideas, and by their violent suppression of dissenting speech.
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