Christopher R. Browning is an esteemed historian of World War II. He recently wrote an article for The New York Review of Books entitled “The Suffocation of Democracy.” In this article Brown compares both the
similarities and the differences between the current state of American politics and the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1920s to 1930s.
In certain ways, the United States in 2018 is not very different from the German Weimar Republic that eventually gave way to Adolf Hitler. In other ways, we are very different.
I have posted Browning’s concluding paragraphs below. The entire article is well worth reading. Just click the link above:
“No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.
“Finally, within several decades after Trump’s presidency has ended, the looming effects of ecological disaster due to human-caused climate change—which Trump not only denies but is doing so much to accelerate—will be inescapable. Desertification of continental interiors, flooding of populous coastal areas, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with concomitant shortages of fresh water and food, will set in motion both population flight and conflicts over scarce resources that dwarf the current fate of Central Africa and Syria. No wall will be high enough to shelter the US from these events. Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism, but regardless of how the Trump presidency concludes, this is a story unlikely to have a happy ending.”
