The Daily Beast Podcast - Hitler’s Rise to Power Holds Lessons for the 2024 Election

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik joins The New Abnormal to talk about his new essay on how Hitler was able to take control of Germany and what’s at stake in the coming U.S. election. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennett, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh, through the tears. We have such an excellent show for you today. The New Yorkers, Adam Gopnik, stops by to talk to us about a little bit of history that's often forgotten about Hitler's rise in Nazi Germany and what we can learn from it today. But first, let's have some fun.

So, Danielle, on Tuesday morning, we saw that horrible accident that happened in Baltimore Harbor when the container ship filed right into the Francis Scott Key Bridge and six people lost their lives and it's going to disrupt shipping, God knows how badly. But, you know, obviously this is a politics podcast, so we're going to talk about the politics, quote, unquote, that quickly devolved out of this incident. And no surprise I'm talking about on the crazy right, which is pretty much just the right these days.

I don't even have to differentiate. We saw a whole bunch of people raging from Maria Bardo, on Fox, I think Fox business, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green, all the way down to the internet types and whatever. Using every right-wing talking point to blame this on Joe Biden, on immigrants, on the possibility of a terrorist attack because Joe Biden is not keeping us safe. Among these things that they glommed onto is DEI, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is the new bugaboo on the right that has, I think we talked about this on the last, I think it was the last episode, how DEI has replaced CRT, critical race theory, has replaced

woke. And Danielle, I know we saw a bunch of assholes referring to Baltimore's mayor, who is black, as DEI mayor. And he had a great response to that. I'm going to turn it over to you here for no particular reason whatsoever. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much for just tagging me in. Because I don't even want, like, obviously, we are a political podcast, and I will call out the fact that Nancy Mace, who wanted to, I don't know, make parallels to the collapse of this bridge with open borders. And somehow those two things

make sense in her head and said that this is, the Biden administration, didn't spend enough money on bridge infrastructure, which is funny because in 2021, she voted against the infrastructure bill that would prevent issues like this, right? Like, you know, what's funny is that the Trump administration made a joke of infrastructure, right? Every week was going to be infrastructure week where they were going to unveil something that was going to better our roads, our streets, our bridges, our trains and what have you, and nothing ever came of it.

Biden comes in and it's one of the first things that he'd, does, right, to put Americans back to work. But somehow Nacey Mace and the right wing, like, logic doesn't live here. But what got me most about this is not even their bullshit conspiracy theories. It's their analysis around analysis, and I don't even know why I use that word, but their bullshit around DEI, right? And I just want to give it up for a moment to black Twitter. I know that it's, the platform is called whatever Elon Musk decides on whatever day he wakes up, but black Twitter, the reason why Elon Musk came in to destroy the global town square for all its worth is because it democratized the way that people share information, gather information,

and report on information. And after the bridge collapses, which is this horrific scene, watching that video was so chilling because I used to take that bridge all the time because I went to school in Arlington, Virginia. I spent so much of my life in Washington, D.C., and coming from New York, you're taking that bridge. Yep. And so to watch that this shipping container, which is massive, could cause it to just collapse like a thing of Legos, was just so startling. And again, shows you why we need investment in this country in infrastructure and Republicans

refuse, right? And six fucking people died. But anyway, let me go back to the DEI piece, which is that one of the things that is being thrown out is that when Brandon Scott, who is the mayor of Baltimore, comes out to, you know, I guess, what is it, to empathize, to show compassion, to talk to his constituents, to talk to the city and the state of Maryland that is going to be in such a hard way. 11 million people cross that bridge, right, each year, right? So this is huge.

And what do the racists in Magu world call him? the DEI mayor. And you know, Chris Hayes pointed it out and said, basically thanks them for using it in the context in which they did. So we can see very clearly what they mean when they say DEI and what they mean when they say woke. And what they want to say is the N word. That's the one line, unless of course you're Joe fucking Rogan that you can't say. So instead of saying, oh, we don't allow any DEI in our state in the way that Idaho and Alabama has said, what they really want to say is we don't want any N-words in this state. So what Black Twitter did was basically use DEI and flip it, put some humor and memes on it, and take away its weaponization, which is what the Republicans have tried to do, and said,

started out with like, how all my DEI is doing today? What's up with my? How are you doing my DEI? You know, like, and it was a riot. I suggest that people, if you did not follow it this week, that if you want to laugh and see the brilliance of black people, please go ahead and look at DEI trending on Twitter. But man, these people, their racism knows no bounds. And like Tony Morrison had said so long ago that racism is a distraction, like, it is a distraction. It's a distraction from their ineptitude. It's a distraction from the fact that they didn't vote for infrastructure. It's a distraction from the fact that they do nothing to better Americans or the lives of America. And that even in the space and place and

time of tragedy, that they're not willing to say, my God, my heart goes out to those who lost their lives. It's just, they're so fucking depraved, Andy, that like the heat that rises in me. But Bravo to Brandon Scott, who went on Joy Reid's show on MSNBC and basically said, I don't care, right? Like, I'm a living, breathing example of what it is that they hate, right? Which is. is a black man that is not apologetic about who he is and very proud of the culture and the brilliance that I bring to this space, right? And I'm not going to be ashamed of it. So basically, what I will say for him, go fuck yourself to the racist. I know we're not to fuck that guy yet, but I just, I was hitching for it. No, definitely. Bravo to Brandon Scott. And I would encourage

people to seek out the clip of him, John Dewey-Reed show, because what he said was absolutely fantastic. And he said, quote, we know what they want to say, but they don't have the courage to say the N word. And he went on from there. And it's incredibly obvious unless you're like on the New York Times editorial board. Oh shit. In which case, you know, you have to give people like Chris Rufo and people who spent their time first attacking CRT, now going after DEI and turning them both into boogeymen. And if you're the New York Times, you have to give them little puff pieces and stuff like that. Because for some reason, you can't. figure out what is incredibly glaringly obvious, which is that it is, of course, nothing but a substitute for the N-word. It's nothing but a substitute for saying that any time a black person is in any bit of authority or power that they are, you know, absolutely incompetent and are only there because of the color of their skin. They couldn't make it any more obvious. Like, there's literally nothing they could do to make this more obvious. And yet they get tried. treated with kid gloves and people who should know better but who want to pretend to be some sort of a quote-unquote thoughtful center, you know, will say, well, let's really look into DEI. Let's look at what the problems are with it, along with maybe some of the good things. There's nothing else to say to these people except, like you said, really, go fuck yourself. If you are too dense to realize what they're doing or you know, but you want to pretend otherwise, go fuck yourself. It is amazing how rapidly it came to the fore.

after this accident for them to start invoking DEI when a ship hits a bridge. And by the way, a ship that is not even American and doesn't have an American crew, I don't think. So I don't know what the hell DEI has to do with anything. But again, they don't care. Like, it's not important that they're right. For them, it's just important that they get this out there. And people like Chris Rufo and others, they have come out and said, our whole strategy is to make these things, critical race theory, DEI, make them associated with bad things

so that when an ordinary person who is not online all day and or who doesn't study this stuff and isn't, you know, doesn't read up on this stuff, when they hear these phrases, they associate it with horrible policies, with failures, with incompetence. No, that's just Republicans. Well, yeah, I suppose, yeah, in large sense. But it's also, again, it is people who are not Republicans, but they're not online all day. They don't play with the terms DEI and CRT the way we do or people that are quote-unquote in the business do. And if they hear these terms and they only hear them when they're being using negative ways, guess what?

They start thinking of them negatively and they start thinking things about them that aren't true. And that is the whole playbook right there. And self-admittedly, they will tell you this. and yet they will still get coverage that pretends that the whole thing isn't a grift. And this is my problem, which is going to look at the media and saying, when you come for DEI, when you come for, you know, diversity, anything that has to do with diversity, equity and inclusion. I just want folks to understand those words. Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

That when you say that we don't want that in this state, why then the response from reporters and the people that are covering this shit, don't they say, that's interesting. Are you advocating for white supremacy? Right. Because what you're saying is that you don't want anything that is not white, that is not male, that is not cis, and straight to be a part of your state. Is that what you're saying? Because diversity, equity, and inclusion means X.

But then we're asking for these people to do a kind of intellectual lift that they just refuse to do because they just want the cliques and then to go ahead and hire people like the Ron McDaniels of the world. and give these people more platform, more leverage, and more money. It's on some bullshit. And when you said, Andy, about people who think that they are just hired because of their skin and are totally and completely incompetent, the only picture that comes to my mind is Donald Trump.

Yeah. No, absolutely. No one has benefited from sort of reverse DEI like Donald Trump has, that's for sure. Before we leave this topic, I do just want to, we mentioned Nancy Mace in brief. I just want to circle back to that for a quick second. Because this is straight out of the Republican playbook now, too, is to vote against things and then take credit for them. We're seeing this more and more, as Donald Trump would say. But again, this is someone who is bashing Joe Biden and his infrastructure bill.

I don't want to get into this, but I honestly don't think that what happened to this bridge have nothing to do with the state of our infrastructure. The state of our infrastructure is terrible. Don't get me wrong. This is what happens when a huge-ass ship rams into a bridge. I don't know what you can do to prevent that. And the engineers and the people like that that I've seen talking about this were like, this is terrible, but you can't build

your way around this. If a ship is going to plower it into a bridge, much like if a plane is going to fly into a building, the shit's going to break. But that aside, like she wants to sit there and go after infrastructure, having voted against the infrastructure bill. And again, I just want to point out, you know, to our listeners,

be aware of how often shit like this is happening, where Republicans are taking credit for programs, They're voting against them in Congress and then going back to their states and touting the amount of money. They're saying, you know, in Congress, I helped deliver $50 million for this project. It's like, no, you voted against it. But they don't care. We've reached a point where they're not even massaging the truth.

We've reached the point where outright lying is just the name of the game. And they sort of made this calculus that enough people will believe them to offset the fact that, you know, they're going to get called out in some newspapers and by people like us on podcasts. or whatever, but they've made the calculus that it's overall, it's a net gain for them to simply lie. And we've got to try to break that pattern. And, you know, I don't know what we can do besides keep pointing it out, but we got to at least point it out. We do need to point it out. And I wish that more people would point it out. And I wish that people that were sitting in the audience would say, you're lying.

Like, you didn't vote for this, actually. And that Democrats would continue to use the fact that everything that they vote on and create policy around to better America, Republicans vote against. And I wish that they would just run those campaigns, run those fucking ads when Biden is going into those states to go cut a ribbon of said thing and you have that fucking senator or that congressperson, Republicans standing there that didn't vote for the legislation but want to show up for the photo op. I want Biden to be like, thank you so much for coming. It's unfortunate we couldn't get you to put a yes vote on this. But I'm so glad that you're here for the photo and then put your arm around them and keep it

fucking moving and let that be a clip. Do you know, like, we're like strategy, folks. Let's pretend we know how to do it. Speaking of lying, Donald Trump, that's really all I have. And we're done. Good night, folks. We got to talk about this Trump Bible because, look, we know there is no depth to which he won't sink for the grift. But this one is just unbelievable. I'm sure our listeners already have seen this, but in case they haven't, Donald Trump is now hawking a God Bless the USA Bible, which by the way, is not even just the phrase, God bless the USA. It's actually a reference to the late Greenwood song, God Bless the USA. It's not even a standard God bless the USA. It's actually a reference to a song. And that's the name of this Bible, the God Bless

the USA Bible. These Bibles are being sold for 60 bucks on a site that touts that it is, the only Bible endorsed by President Trump. Because when you're talking about the word of the Lord and the book of God, what you want is an endorsement from Donald Trump. I don't even know where to start with this. It's absolutely unbelievable. But I don't know if you saw the little commercial that he made for this thing, but it's absolutely unreal. He talks about how many Bibles he owns and that it's his favorite book. And it's just absolutely unbelievable. But this is what we've come to now, folks. of the Republican Party, the presumptive nominee for 2024 is hawking a God-Blessed USA Bible. If you find yourself purchasing this fucking infomercial bullshit, I just want the Bible

to literally burst into flames in your hand. Yeah. This man, let's move past all the lying. Let's move past the grift. Let's move past the grab a woman by the pee. Let's move past all of that. This man, while his wife was pregnant or right after pregnant and then right after she gave birth, was sleeping with a porn star and paid her off. And that same man is selling you a Bible and you're going to buy it? Jesus take the wheel takes on a whole different term. I don't know where to go from here. This is hell. This is what hell looks like when Donald Trump, a man that doesn't read the Bible, doesn't probably can't spell Bible, but will hawk one off. Like, the man is a fucking used car salesman. And these people are lining up to throw their money at him. Whether it's his gaudy fucking sneakers or now the Bible. It's just, it's so disgusting. It's so despicable. I've run out of words. And I want to say that I looked on the website, Google's Bible, which is God bless the USA Bible.com, for those of you who want to go. order your Trump Bible. And I looked at the frequently asked questions section. And the first one is,

is this Bible officially endorsed by President Trump? And it says, yes, this is the only Bible endorsed by President Trump? Second question is, is this Bible officially endorsed by Lee Greenwood? Yes, this is the only Bible endorsed by Lee Greenwood? And then there's a bunch of other questions. And then there's one near the end that says, what if my Bible has sticky pages? And I was like, I don't know, Are you reading, is somebody reading, you know, the Song of Solomon too much or something? I don't know what's going on there. But I don't know. If your Bible has sticky pages, I'm thinking.

I can't. I can't. Maybe get rid of it. I don't know. You know, and meanwhile, in the middle of Hawking Bibles, Trump is also going on his dumbass, truth social, and doing his all-caps posts and talking about how Crooked Joe Boudin, B-U-D-E-N, or as other people have raised, maybe he was referring to the rapper, Joe Biden. But he says, Crooked Joe Putin disinformates and misinformates all the time.

I mean, look, on the scale of things that are fucked up about Trump, like his grammar sucking and his vocabulary sucking or very near the bottom. But still, how are we at the point where a guy, A, was president and B, maybe president again, just can't even use the English language? Is it horrible to say that I miss George W. Bush? Well, kind of. I remember when he used to fumble upwards as well as, you know, Hurricane Katrina and invade the wrong country after 9-11. But my God, what does it say about you?

Like, what does it say about 40% of the country, Andy? I just want to quit. Like, I want to quit America. I really do. It's just like, it's a gaudy fucking hellhole is where it's where we are. And the fact that you look at Donald Trump and you think that this man at all has the mental capacity to be president of the United States at this point, right? Like forget 2016 when you did like, but even then, right? But now everything you know and you're still looking at this and saying this is my guy is fucking wild to me.

But, you know, cults are wild to me. I don't understand how people give up their. lives, their livelihood, their dignity, their morals, their values for Donald Trump. I don't understand how you get people to go to jail for you, you know, but I don't understand the mentality of people who fall for cults and live inside a criminal organization. I don't get it because that's not me. But it is fucking wild. Yeah. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new Abnormal, a wonderful, brilliant writer at the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, whose recent piece, The Forgotten History of Hitler's establishment enablers, the Nazi leader didn't seize power. He was given it. Adam, I want to tell you

that I have read your piece a couple of times because it resonated so much in terms of understanding not only, obviously, when we talk about Hitler in politics and we use his name and we reference what happened in Germany and World War II, it is of the darkest times. But I think that what your piece elevated is that it wasn't just Hitler, right? That Hitler didn't just become Hitler overnight. That's exactly right, Danielle. The thing that's sort of staggering when you read the history of that time and the history of the time just before, which I've written about too, about Hitler's composition of mind comf is

his testament and so on, is exactly that you had this character who was regarded as a chaotic clown by everyone around him. The conservative minister of defense called him a psychopath. He said, what am I going to do with this psychopath? And yet all of those people, the media moguls, the respectable conservatives, ended up aiding and abetting him in every way in his search for power. and they did it in a way that is, yes, disconcertingly familiar to us. That is, none of them were surreptitiously supporters of a deranged demagogue. They were secretly wanting him to win. They all thought they could manage him.

They all thought they could control him. They all thought that they could take advantage of his movement for their own ends. And that on the day when it all blew up because it had to blow up because he was a psychopath and clearly not capable of exercising power, they would be there to inherit. You know, and I want to read this portion for my listeners, if you'll give me the opportunity, which is this piece. Quote, the corporate bosses thought that if you looked past the strutting and the performative anti-Semitism, you had someone who would protect your money. Communist ideologues thought that if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and performative anti-Semitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution. The decent right thought he was too obviously deranged to remain in power.

long and the decent left, tempered by early fights against different enemies, thought that if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader. Yeah. Yeah. All of that. But it's tragic and it's true. And look, Daniel, I don't want to be disingenuous. You know, I mentioned for a moment contemporary politics, nor the name of like Voldemort. He must not be named. And I did that obviously because I wanted to let the reader, if there were patterns to be discerned, discern them for herself, as you did. But again, not to be coy about it. Obviously, I was kind of overwhelmed and staggered by a clear resemblances, not resemblances so much in any profound sense between Trump and Hitler as such,

but resemblances in exactly the way that you rightly discern the way that supposedly respectable types collaborate inadvertently in the ascension of a deranged demagogue. That's the scary part about it, is that in this history, all of them were trying to manage, all of them were trying to outwit him, and they ended up outwit it. And that includes, as I said in the section you just read, Danielle, that includes the left, right? You had a, you know, the far left who were convinced that, well, at least this was a revolt against the elites. At least this was a revolt against the elites. And you could take advantage of the emotions that it had unleashed for your own ends.

And then the decent social democratic center all thought, well, we just have to stick to the law. We just have to believe a constitution. And if we do that, then by magic, the Constitution will assert itself against someone who has overt and obvious contempt for it. Those patterns are frightening to see emerging again and again. Throughout history, you know, it's something that many students of dictatorship have emphasized Ruth Ben Guillaude. I'm sure you've spoken to. Oh, yes, I have. Timothy Snyder and Applebaum.

All of them see exactly the same kinds of patterns that I was offering and discerning. and discerning and you were discerning in this history. That is the way in which people convinced themselves. As I say, the respectable conservatives, the decent military people and the businessmen had no illusions about who Hitler was, but they had worked themselves into a state where they were so terrified of the other side, whom they had fantasized, were the social democrats and the Catholic centrist, were in league with the communists and so on, in a way that is also familiar to us, that tribal allegiance trumped overwhelmed, so to speak, not just their rational calculation, but any internal sense of morality that they had. And it's frightening to see how that happens.

We convince ourselves over and over that however dangerous this guy might be, the other side is going to end everything. So we have no choice. And you have to whip yourself into the state where you convince yourself, we have no choice. We have to back it. And that's what's terrifying about it. You know, and I think that that, and, you know, again, with all the, the folks that you have named who have been guests on, on this show, I think that what becomes so alarming for me, and I think for our listeners, is that the patterns are so clear, right, that you think that you are in control of this monster that you have overfed and overhyped, but, oh, I'm holding the leash. I'm holding the reins.

And so everything will be fine. It is the human hubris and ego that I think also drives people in authoritarian regimes. It's the belief that, oh, no, no, no, we got it. Don't worry. We have the guardrails on. Yeah, that's exactly right. I hate that expression, guardrails. I know.

Because they always fail. But no, that's exactly it. And it's terribly important. And that's why I wanted to write this piece. As I said before, it is. isn't that there's surreptitious collaboration on the part of everyone involved. You know, Bertolt Brecht wrote a famous play called The Irresistible Rise of Arturo Ui, which was about the rise of Hitler.

And in it, he essentially, brilliantly, because he was a brilliant dramatist, he proposed that all of the establishment, so to speak, the right wing, were in league, that fascism was simply capitalism with the gloves off. But when you look at it, that isn't the truth. There isn't some kind of surreptitious collaboration. What there is is people, right-wingers in that case, who are convinced that they can, just as you said, they can control the beast, they can indulge it, that they can manage him, and that therefore they will end up the ultimate victors. And at the same time, and let's not overlook a Daniel, this is another very frightening and recurrent pattern that one sees. You end up with a paralyzed center, you know, the people who should be most committed and most passionately protecting a constitution.

order end up in this strange, paralyzed state where they can't move exactly because they're frightened of doing anything that would violate the constitutional order, not to sound too esoteric. I think we see a pattern with Merrick Garland. You know, it was quite clear that in the time immediately after January 6th, when Abraham Lincoln, if Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated on January 20th, he would have had Trump in irons on January 21st because the whole core of Lincoln's view of America, I wrote a whole book about this once, was that you could tolerate everything except sedition. And then once you were fired on Fort Sumter, it was over. There was no place for you. You were just now a rebel and a traitor in plain English.

And that's what Lincoln's view was. But the view of Merrick Garland, admirable, understandably, was that the job was not to try and carry on some crusade against the Trump's insurrection. It was to go after the low-hanging fruit, indict the people who were obvious insurrectionists, work your way through it, not get into a state where you were doing something that seemed intemperate. And if you did that, you'd be asserting, you'd be accepting the rule of constitutional law. It's a very seductive point of view for those of us on the liberal side, because above all, we respect the rule of law or ought to. We respect procedures and institutions. But the problem is that in any confrontation between institutionalists and fascists, the fascists always win because they have no respect for those things.

And then the institutionalists at the end are left looking around and wondering what happened. I mean, because I honestly believe, Adam, that the laws are only as good as the people that are willing to follow them. And when people then decide to thumb up their nose, right, and believe that they are above the law and move in that way, if you do not make an example of those people, not just the followers, but the architects, then what? you're doing is signaling to the rest of the country, to the rest of the world, that the door is open. You can saunter your way through and have your way with our democracy because at the end of the day, there will be no price to pay. And I think that Lincoln knew that. Do you know, like, That's exactly right. And of course, Lincoln was surrounded by people telling him in the famous phrase of 1861, let the airing sisters go in peace. And Lincoln wouldn't. Or coming back to the,

you know, to the subject of that peace, the Ascent of Hitler in 1932. And, and. And, And again, let me emphasize, Danielle, as I write in the piece in the famous aphorism, history never repeats. It all rhymes. So when we're talking about these things, we're talking about recurrent patterns of demagogic ascension. We're not talking about precise one-to-one parallels between these things. But nonetheless, it is striking that the Social Democrats in Germany in 1932, because you ask yourself, why didn't they make common cause with all the decent people in the center? which, by the way, they had done earlier in the 1920s, the Catholic centrist and the social Democrats often had a coalition to come together in order to defend constitutional values.

And you asked, well, why didn't they do that at this time of absolute crisis? And one of the answers is because they were paralyzed by their own proceduralism. They couldn't recognize the scale of the threat. And they wanted as well as we all do all the time. They wanted to defer confronting the threat as long as they possibly could. And I think to draw the parallel, I think that was probably a very powerful thing with the U.S. Department of Justice. They didn't want to recognize that sooner or later you were going to have to have a confrontation with Trumpism, that there was no way of evading it. Because it wasn't going to go away. And I think I want to read this other piece, this other part of your piece that, again, I think has such parallels to where we are right now.

when we think about the people, 30% of the country, if not 40%, that are supporting Trumpism and this MAGA mindset, you write this about the Germans at that time. The Germans were voting in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere for easy reassurances for stability with classes siding against their historical enemies. They weren't wild-eyed nationalists voting for a millennial authoritarian regime that would rule forever and restore Germany to glory. And certainly they weren't voting for an apocalyptic nightmare that would leave tens of millions of people dead and the cities of Germany destroyed. They were voting for specific programs that they thought would benefit them and for a year's insurance against the people they feared. I think that's terribly important to, Danielle. You know, it's in the book by Timothy Ryback, which was the occasion of my piece, the book I'm reviewing in a view. This isn't discussed as much, but there's a fascinating political science.

literature about that election and what all of the analysts of the election, historians and political scientists alike, emphasized is exactly what you just read. The normality of that election. People weren't suddenly inflamed and desperate to follow this charismatic leader Hitler to wherever he wanted to take them. A few were, but only a very few. The overwhelming majority of the people who voted were voting in normal terms. They were voting according to their familiar allegiances, and they were voting out of fear of their historic enemies and adversaries. And so the notion that we sometimes have in our heads that it can't happen here because what happened there was this kind of brazed maniacal halt that rose out of nowhere

and spread like wildfire is only a very partial truth. As I said, for the majority of great majority of Germans, they saw themselves as being in a normal time and they didn't grasp at all the scale of the risk, nor did they respite all the potential of what they had voted for? It is really startling, right? When you are witnessing the parallels play out, these patterns play out when you see what happened in 1932. You see what unfolded.

You see that Hitler would then turn on the people who supported him, who would, you know, order their deaths, right? That then this kind of conspiracies would abound. within the Nazi camp and just unfold, right, in a way of like Shakespeare and dramatics. It's just wild now to watch a party in a two-party system, one of the major parties, the Republican party, in the shadow of this history, embracing the things that we never thought we would see in America. And I just want to give you the opportunity with just a couple of minutes that we have left.

You write in your peace towards the end. Democracy doesn't die in darkness. It dies in bright mid-afternoon light where politicians fall back on familiarities and make faint offers to authoritarian's and say a firm and final no. I think that, Adam, it's just, would you believe, you say history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes? Is there anything that we can learn from this time in the seven months that we have to November, the history that we have all known and been and been taught and see. about the similarities of this moment? I think there are. And again, Danielle, there are as many differences. Germany had a very powerful Communist Party that was wholly owned by Joseph Stalin, countless differences in history and in, but there are profound patterns, as I said so many times.

One of them is that we have to awaken to the threat. One of the problems with conventional, well-meaning, upright journalism is that the headline on our newspapers every day should be deranged demagogue threatens democracy. Deranged demagogue threatens democracy. But we don't want to put that on as a headline in your show or my magazine or elsewhere because it seems repetitive. We see that in the New York Times every day. And Timothy Ryback in his book makes dark fun of the way the Times covered Hitler in the 1930s because they were always normalizing him. They were always explaining, oh, well, he's not really the key man. It's the conservatives who lie behind him and so on. So focusing on the real headline, deranged demagogue threatens democracy, isn't itself terribly important,

not allowing yourself for a moment to get distracted from that or to normalize that truth. That's a minimal kind of thing we can do, but we can do that. Yeah, Adam, I just want to thank you again, one, for making the time for the new abnormal, but also for writing this piece. And folks, again, it is up at the New Yorker.com, the forgotten history of Hitler's establishment enablers. The Nazi leader didn't seize power, he was given it. Adam really appreciate you, and I hope that you will join us again. It was delightful to talk even on such a dark subject. Thank you, Danielle Lutie. How are you ending off this wonderful hellscape of a week in America with your fuck that guy? Oh, God. Well, I want to talk about something that was tweeted out by a Michigan State representative,

I guess it was Wednesday night. And he tweeted out some pictures. from the bus terminal Detroit Metro. There was a line of buses. He tweeted, happening right now, three buses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they're headed with their police escort? This is a guy, his name is Matt Maddock, by the way. So fairly quickly after this, or I guess the next morning,

a reporter for WXYZ named Maxwell White tweeted, just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. So the Gonzaga team was getting, had gotten on a plane and flew to Detroit because they're playing in the suite 16 of the NCAA tournament this weekend. And they landed right around the time that photo of the buses was posted. And so this guy, Matt Maddock, got out there talking about illegal invading. Look, my first thought was maybe he was making a sports joke, but he wasn't. Like, you know, maybe he was joking about Gonzaga invading Michigan. But he absolutely wasn't. And to his credit, when this was pointed out, he apologized and said, oh, no, wait, he didn't. What he said was.

I was like, wait, where's that tweet? No, he did not. What he said was he posted a follow-up tweet saying, we know this is happening. Hundreds of thousands of illegals are pouring into our country. We know it's happening in Michigan. Our own governors offering money to take them in, since we can't trust the fake news to investigate citizens will. The process of investigating these issues takes time. This is after being told that his dumbass tweet about illegal invaders coming into a state was actually a men's college basketball team. This is where he goes. And again, this is part and parcel with the MAGA mentality of, you know, you sort of apologizing or admitting you were wrong is weak. And what you do is you just double down on the absolutely assonine thing you said. And this is, look, this is the secret to Donald Trump's quote unquote success. why not? Like they, that's who they've learned from. And as long as their party and this country and keeps rewarding Trump, why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they adopt the same strategy?

It's just, it's absolutely unbelievable. These people, every day, they are just, they show themselves to be dumber and dumber. Fuck Matt Maddock and fuck all these guys. Oh, God. They're so dumb. They're so dumb. And the fact that there is just no apology. There's no, like, self-awareness. There's no level of consciousness that is apparent in these people. Like, that should be the bare minimum to be a representative. And you should fail and then have to be and have to resign. I miss those days.

I miss the days when, like, the smallest political mess up would cost you your career. Now it's just elevation. Now everybody just wants a fucking stint on Fox News. And I'm just so over it because it's just so fucking despicable. Yeah. Fuck that guy. Fuck those guys. Fuck all of them. Yep. All right, Danielle, close out the week.

Who you got? I think I started and I'm going to end the week with the same person. I don't think that that has ever happened. If I'm correct, my fuck that person for the entire fucking week is Ronna McDaniel. I got to say that Ronna McDaniel and, you know, the desire to, I guess, go through a Trump rehabilitation program sponsored by NBC News didn't pan out for her because all of the major hosts at NBC News and MSNBC revolted against their bosses who all, all of them, there isn't just one person that was responsible for the hiring of Ronna McDaniel. It was a group of people in the C-suite

that courted her, wanted to court the conservative vote, the conservative viewership, and they went after her, right? And threw money at her. And their own host called them out on air for it. But Ronald McDaniel, like the debasing that these people do for Donald Trump, only for Donald Trump to turn around and drag you like a fucking clown, how do you feel at the end of this week? So this is, you know, Ronna McDaniel, former RNC chair, changes her name at the behest of Donald Trump because he can't possibly call anybody by Romney, right? Mitt Romney, who hates him and who has publicly come out on a number of occasions and a number of interviews to say what a buffoon he is and what an embarrassment he is to the Republican Party and to

politics in general. Has her changed her name? She does because that's what you do in Trump world, right? Not only do you get a makeover like what's her name, Governor Nome, but you also, you know, you change your name, you sell your spine, you hand over whatever it is that you need to do in order to gain Trump's favor. And then this motherfucker took to truth. social, his broke down Twitter, and said this about her. Oh my God. Ronna McDaniel got fired by fake news NBC. She only lasted two days and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place. It's called Never Neverland and it's not a place you want to be. So not only did you bend over backwards to be liked and approved in

Trump world. Then you get fired from your job and replaced with his daughter-in-law so that they can use the RNC as a bank, which you voted for, yes, for. Then you remove your name so as not to offend, you know, mine fewer. And now he drags you on his social media platform, embarrasses you once again. And now, what will be her final act, Andy? I don't know. But all this week, you are front and center on the stage of fuck that guy and forever will be. Bye, Rana. I hope never to hear from you ever again. Yeah, I obviously second that. I sort of feel that same way about all the NBC news execs that were behind this

and that tried to make this happen and tried to push back on all the hosts, et cetera. I would be fine with never hearing from them again either. Fuck all of it. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. See you next time. Want more great listens?

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