WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Trump/Hitler Comparisons

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

This week, we explore a comparison that has gained renewed attention in recent months: Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. Tune in to hear the key differences between the two figures, some Madison Square Garden history, and whether there’s any validity to the comparisons being made.

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM where we examine the truth disparity between what is on social media and what is actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gulesby. And today we are kind of continuing on in the spirit of our most recent episode. We took a break last week for many reasons, but finals being the number one and papers and life and all the things that we need to be doing. But amid our lives swirling about, the internet has continued to. swirl, so we have much to say. It swirls very fast.

Too fast. I'm told that there are, what is it, like three days worth of content uploaded to, I think it's YouTube every, I don't know if it's every hour, every minute or something. I'm sure. I'm sure. Content is, I don't know what I want to say about it. Nothing particularly intelligent that Neil Postman hasn't already said. So this week we are talking about, well, President-elect now Donald Trump and

the comparisons that have been made between him. Not so elected. Yeah, big difference there. Also ruler. Adolf Hitler. The Third Reich. I will say, for a second, when I was researching, sometimes people will censor the word Nazi. Really?

I believe it's because algorithms try to suppress Nazi content. Okay, well, that's not a bad thing to do. No. But I was thinking, I was like, are we allowed to say Nazi? Yes. I think so. I think if we're allowed to say it in history classes and we're using it in an educational sense. It's not, we're not promoting it. It's the name of a political party. It's evil and we can condemn it very easily. Yes. But that's not what we're doing in this episode.

In this episode, we're going to talk about some of the comparisons that have been made. I'm going to start us out with some of the things social media has brought up as concerns and then you can come in and let me know if they're valid. Tell us about why Donald Trump and Hitler are compared to each other or said that they are similar. Explain to me what the people are saying. I want to say that I did see a post. that expressly compared them, but I believe it was a joke because, for two reasons. Number one, one of the reasons they were different

was that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and Donald Trump eats McDonald's. That is true. So I don't know. Do it what you will with that. And then the final one that it had on the list cited its source as chat GPT. So I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a joke,

but people in the comments were responding like it was serious. So do what you will with that. The first reason people think Trump and Hitler are similar, if not sometimes people claim they're one and the same, is rhetorically. There have been a couple instances where Trump has said things that are similar to things that Hitler once said. He referred to illegal immigrants as people that were poisoning the blood of America, which is something Hitler also said about Jewish people, apparently. He said that

illegal migrants are quote and I watched him say it I saw this in a video not just in a post they are quote animals not human which is a very evil thing to say about people that are very clearly humans and not animals and that's something that Trump nope that Hitler also said so those were two of the ones that I saw that I was like man that's a little too close for comfort but there are also a lot of stretches and reaches I think the first one is there was a video that circulated that a staffer of Trump's reposted. And the video kind of just looked like a bunch of newspaper articles that were like headline, law and order, headline, peace through strength.

And those sorts of things. And they were like zooming in. And there were these small areas at the bottom of the text that would have these like subheads that I believe were like mock subheads. And one of them said that he would bring about a unified Reich. And obviously Reich is very tied to Hitler. but the remove from Trump is pretty significant because it's a video that was posted by someone that was reposted by a staffer and that used very small little text to make that connection.

So that's a little bit of a silly one in my opinion, but if you think that's concerning, that is up to you. There's also just the idea of peace through strength, which is apparently a Hitler thing. I didn't learn about that in school, but maybe it is. And there was also this part of... of the video that said that Trump would reject globalists. And apparently Nazis used the word globalists to refer to Jewish people, which I thought was probably not true because globalists is a regular word that has a meaning

different than that. And he probably just meant more of an America first sort of ordeal. In the video that I watched that explained this video, the person really buried the lead because the video was about it's about a two minute video and a minute 30 into it they were like oh and by the way this wasn't a campaign video this was a random account online

like it was something that came very late late in the game which I thought was pretty deceptive and then the Biden Harris campaign had their response to it where he said that they said that he is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power rule as a dictator over a unified rike

this was all back in May I should say so Biden Harris was still thing. That's the reason I said that. There was also a complaint that he had dinner with Nick Fuentes. I have no idea who that is. Literally no idea who that is. But apparently he's a white supremacist and he is the reason for the phrase that is going on on social media that he said, where he said, your body, my choice, which is literally an insane thing to say. And apparently Trump had dinner with him. So that also makes him Hitler. I don't really know. I don't really understand the connection there. Yeah, Nick Fuentes is just a... Is he a Nazi? He's a, he's a

political pundit, he's a white supremacist, he's misogynist, yeah, far right political guy, as a streamer. Ought not have had dinner with him, probably. Anti-Semitic chap. Also, he's very young, he's only 26 years old. So he's like a child compared to Donald Trump. Maybe they ought not have had dinner. Yeah, probably not.

But they did. So another part of like the rhetoric and the language is that Trump once said that he wanted generals like Hitler's generals. Yes, he did say that. He shouldn't have said that. But I kind of understand where he's where he was probably aiming at, which is probably more of a loyalty thing, but you can get into that. We'll talk about that.

Still kind of cringe. You probably shouldn't have said that. Another key thing people point to is the fact that J.D. Vance and R.F.K. Both have had a kind of a long history of saying that they hated Trump and thought he was a bad guy. RFK had a whole radio show where he talked about, well, he was a guest on a radio show where he was like, Trump could be America's Hitler, or at least compared it to him. And then J.D. Vance said the same thing. And then now, of course, they're turning around and they're all gung-ho, Trump,

which people think is sign of a dictator and fear and that sort of thing. January 6th, as you may have been able to guess, renders a lot of tweets about people saying he's like Hitler because he was able to mobilize people to storm the capital, which is anti-democracy. And then the final thing, this one's a little bit insane in my opinion, the idea that Nazis like him, therefore he must be Hitler. there are people who probably still ascribe to the Nazi ideology.

Those people are evil. And some of those people do like Trump. And that's a problem. But it doesn't make Trump Hitler. I don't feel like I should have to explain that, but I might have to. Trump held a rally in Madison Square Garden. I'm sure you saw this, which there was also once a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. However, there's many concerts at Madison Square Garden.

there's things that happen that are not Nazi rallies. I'm pretty sure many politicians have probably had rallies there. And there wasn't any evidence of why that would be a Nazi rally specifically, which I found really silly, except for one video of a guy who's like, I'm here at Madison Square Garden during the Nazi rally. And he said there was an air of menace and that this was not a joyful crowd. An air of menace. So that's his proof.

And he said that there were a huge sea, he said, of pardon Trump science, which just shows. That Nazism? Yep. Okay. I also, I think it's important to note that Madison Square Garden has since changed locations.

Yes. So it's not even the same place. No, it is not. It's just the same name of a place that he held a rally. Yes. Social media didn't tell me that, though, so I can't really ascribe that to them.

But it is, that one is a real stretch. Some of these places, they're really stretching and they're really reaching for these comparisons. And sometimes you just read it and you go, oh, man, why did he do that?

That's really not great. But yeah, that's what I have in terms of that. Do you have more to add? I have many thoughts. Okay, great. So Garrett's going to hop into his thoughts. For those of you who are just tuning in, this is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale,

1-1.1.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Gary Koolsby. And we are currently talking about the substantive or substance-less claim that Trump and Hitler are similar. I just want to share this starting off that I discovered something that I did not know existed called, and it was cited in an article that I read.

I believe it's called Godwin's Law. Have you heard of this? Never. It is a, I don't know how real or fake this is, but essentially it's... Isn't that your job? Yes, well, I couldn't figure out if this guy was just making this up, but it's apparently some guy whose last name was Godwin said once, do we love how factual this is getting. It's really good.

He said once that every conversation on social media that was between people that didn't like each other was bound to end up in a Hitler comparison if it went on long enough. Wow. Really? Which is actually historically pretty true. When people start fighting about people that they don't like on social media, Hitler almost always gets brought up because if you can compare the person that you don't like to Adolf Hitler and there's any grounds for sticking that point, you're like, boom, I just won. He's like Hitler. Well, because Hitler is universally just an evil guy.

No one is like, yeah, Hitler was good. We like that. I mean, okay, there's a few, there's like dozens maybe of people in the world. And they're freaks. Yeah. And I'll go on record saying that. For the most part, people are in unanimous agreement on the right and the left that Hitler was not a good idea. If we could rerun it back and not do Hitler, we would do that. So let's talk about why people are saying that he is like Hitler and social media hit a lot of those high points.

The rhetoric is the big thing. Yeah, I figured. They use some strikingly similar terms, but they also kind of speak a similar bombastic, like big personality kind of style. And that's largely what makes them popular. Both Hitler and Trump are known for their, like, okay, here's the thing, though, I'm not in any way endorsing Hitler, right? But as a public speaker, he was a more polished public speaker than Trump. But he would, like, whip himself up into this crazy frenzy. you've never had a chance, you can go online and listen to recordings of him. Like, it's in

German, so, you know, if you don't speak German, tough for you. But you can tell, like, he's fired up. But he's also very measured. He was an actor, right? No way. Yes, for a time he was an actor, right? So, did Hitler and Reagan ever get compared? Was that ever a thing? Oh, I'm sure. Because Reagan was an actor. Well, you know, Reagan actually is one of the first presidents to use the terms, uh, piece through strength. Oh. So yes. I'm sure this comparison got made. I didn't find any, uh, I didn't, I didn't look for it. but I'm sure we could find it if we dug. So, yeah, that's their style.

Like, the reasons they're popular are kind of similar in that they are not really politicians to begin. Hitler actually was more of a career politician than Trump has been. But they get all this fame and political power largely through their personality. So people are making that comparison. And, well, let's see, both have political careers that are marked by attacks on the legislature. This is another point where people are saying, Okay, under Hitler in, I believe it was 1934, the Reichstag, which is the German parliament,

so kind of our equivalent of the House of Representatives or the Senate, it got burned down. Oh. And this was shortly after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and people are saying, oh, like January 6, Reichstag fire. Man, German words are hard. Did Hitler instruct people to burn it? No. He used it as a political lever, essentially. he blamed the communists for burning down the building.

And it turns out, for all intents and purposes, most scholars agree it was one guy acting alone. Yeah, it seems about right. Yeah. But Hitler used it as a piece of propaganda in order to castigate his communist enemies as evil. And by that, President Hindenberg, who was the president of Germany at the time, a really old war veteran, war general, he signed what's called the Reichstad fire decree. which is essentially it ceded all civil authority over to Hitler temporarily. It's kind of like when you hear about how Rome could suspend their law to place all power in the dictator and the time of war. Similar idea, not quite as extreme in its powers that it gives, but the chancellor already is the commander-in-chief in German politics, right?

So when this decree is issued, Hitler all of a sudden gains control of the German army, completely and has like unilateral authority to punish political enemies and kind of restore order. So anyway, he, the downstream of all of this is that he goes and just uses it as an excuse to kill a lot of his political opponents. Get rid a lot of them. So, yeah, and there's also this report about Hitler praise or Trump praising the way that Hitler ran his military. First of all, let's like let's situate this in the broader context. It's one sentence where, uh, where Trump kind of says, Yeah, like I sort of admire some of the things that Hitler did as a general.

And to be fair, you can do that without liking Hitler. It's the same way people will look at Napoleon as a great military leader because he was. Was he a good guy? No. Did the things that he did, you know, having millions of people die on behalf of his campaigns. Were those good things? No, probably not. But we can still look at him as a great military mind.

And, you know, to be fair, Hitler, a lot of the advances that his army made like brought modern warfare into its own. So yeah, you can give credit where credit is due. Does that mean he was right? No. Does that mean what he did with the military was good? No. Yeah. I think you have to look at like, in order to make that claim, you have to be looking at the military as some sort of like amoral thing. Exactly. Like did you do military right? If we're talking about in the scheme of military, all the rules you have to do, did you do military right? Did you do it good? Hiller did for a while. And if it has and if it's aimed at the wrong thing, well, that's evil. That's very evil. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

He wasn't a perfect military leader. That's a discussion for another time, but he made some huge advances in military strategy, not really himself, more so his generals. He actually turned out to be kind of a bad military strategist. Awesome. Makes you feel better. Like when bad people are bad at things.

Let's look at the first 10 years of both of these guys' political careers. I think it may be helpful to see, like, okay, do they map onto each other? Are they similar? In the first 10 years, so Trump declares his candidacy in 2015. He's not really political before that. He's just famous. And then he was elected president twice at this point. And he oversaw, I think, what most people would consider relatively relative economic prosperity for a time.

Also at the beginning of COVID, which, you know, make your own judgment on how that went. Poorly. Yeah. And he also divided the country tremendously because he's very abrasive. But he made some gains in foreign policy. So there's some good, there's some bad. Let's talk about Hitler's first 10 years. Okay.

So he starts out as a member. of the German Workers Party in 1920. All right, he's, he's kind of not a low-level guy, but he's just a member of a political party at this point. But he starts making propaganda. Uh-oh. And he garners all this support by being really good at his job and, like, convincing people that they need to vote for the German Workers Party.

So this party, which becomes the Nazi party, starts gaining all this support behind Hitler, and then he is elected Fuhr or leader of the Nazis. Same thing, Fuhrer is leader. It's not someone special time. Yeah. So then he writes, mind comf in 1925 which is his like oh like my life is so hard here's why you should believe what i believe and where he really starts spitting his anti-semitic hate um okay why was he in prison because

he wrote it he wrote it in prison um he literally like okay we think january 6 is bad hitler walked into basically a bar it's called the uh this event is referred to as the munich beer hall putsch which is a german word for like uprising basically he just walked into this like bavarian bar and like fired a gun in the air and was like insurrection, bah! And he just kind of expected all the people. That is very bad. It is bad. But he expected all the people to like rise up and take over the Weimar government. I don't know how to say it. Anyway, the government of Germany at the time. And he just expected that the people were going to, no, not exactly. He had

his essay people. So his kind of his thugs, his militia, which were literally just like a rag tag group of young men who had been given military training and weapons. Great idea. And they wound up in a shoot-off between the army, like the German army and the police, and these what later become SS and SA stormtroopers. Yeah, then he went to jail, which actually was a pretty cushy gig for him. That's another, that's a story for another time. It's a nice story for another time. He had a crazy life.

What can we say? So, and then let's say, let's fast forward a little bit to the 1930s. He keeps gaining political momentum by all these propaganda stunts. Then the Reichstag fire happens in 1933. Okay. And by this point, he's been appointed chancellor of Germany because he has all this political momentum. And he uses it as an excuse to kill off a lot of his enemies. So so far, as far as I know, Trump has not executed any of his political enemies.

He has not, yeah, had their homes ransacked or anything like that. Hitler had done that quite a bit. He'd made quite a habit of doing this by this time in his political career. and yeah so another this is where there's so many things to talk about in this comparison but we'll just really quickly center on the anti-Semitic slash

anti-immigrant talk yes they both do this the big difference is that Hitler in his rhetoric is saying Jews you should not live and Trump is saying in his rhetoric you should not live here

he hasn't expressed any sentiment in in relation to like, okay, they are literally morally the thing that is evil. And when he talks about the blood of our land, he's not talking about racial purity. He's literally just talking about people that live in America living in America. And I'm not going to make a statement about his immigration policy. There's, you know, there's good things and there's bad things.

But to say that they are similar in this way, is he using similar words? Yes. Is that a product of the fact that he's not that great at the whole speech thing and kind of an unfortunate public figure? Yeah, that's kind of, I mean, he's using, in my opinion, was maybe the worst possible, like, phrasing of things he's trying to say. And that just kind of sets him up as a really easy, like, well, that sounds so special to clear like what Hitler would say. Because it is, because Donald Trump's not good at the talking thing.

Yeah, I think that makes sense to me. Yeah. I still wish you wouldn't say terrible things. It would be so nice if he wouldn't. Wouldn't it make our job a little bit easier? We wouldn't be talking about him so much on the show. Yeah, exactly. But he says crazy stuff.

All the time. But I do think you're right to say that he's not, he has not expressly advocated for killing people. He's not going to kill anybody. Which is a pretty key difference. It is a very key difference. The whole racial cleansing thing is not. It's pretty much the thing that would make Hitler evil. Yeah.

And it doesn't seem to be incredibly high or existent on the docket of Donald Trump. So there we go. Are we ready to give social media a grade? I think we are. Okay. Three, two, one. C, D. One of those.

H-I-J-K. L-M-B. Yeah. Yeah. It did okay. I think it was. wasn't super bad, but it wasn't super great. It just made some comparisons.

I mean, some of the stuff, I'm like, ah, this is terrible, but that's kind of the nature of things. Let's not jump from, okay, like he said something about Hitler once to, he's actually Hitler reincarnated. It's a pretty big jump and that's a pretty big claimant. And on social media specifically treats it like it's just, we're throwing it around. It's kind of like we use the word narcissist. Everyone's a narcissist. Everyone's Hitler. But when you meet an actual narcissist, you know, oh, this is different.

When you meet actual Hitler, you're like, oh, he's very unlike Donald Trump. When? I hope I never do. Hopefully never. I guess fingers crossed. Let's not think about that. Okay, perfect. Thanks so much to everybody who tuned into our comparative analysis today.

We hope you enjoyed this fun little non-news, semi-pop culture, mostly academic discussion. A little different than what we're used to. Yeah, a little history lesson. Yeah, social mediators are getting creative on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.1.7 FM.

I'm Gillian. And I'm Garrett. And we will talk to you next week.