Rise and fall of MAGA USA
By Tiko Okoye
The rise of former US President Donald Trump in politics and to the White House in 2016 eerily mirrors the rise of Adolf Hitler in German politics. With the establishment of his dictatorship, the ‘Fuhrer principle’ (Fuhrerprinzip) came to guide all facets of life in Germany. The principle held that authority – in government, the Nazi Party, economy, family, etc. – flowed downward and was to be obeyed unquestioningly.
Hitler rode to power by pledging to make Germany great again. And German citizens chaffing from being forced to live with the humiliating terms and conditions of the Treaty of Versailles their rulers were forced to sign by the victorious Allied Powers after the end of WWI queued up behind his Nazi Party.
Trump, in a similar vein, continues to announce that he will “make America great again” (MAGA). In the absence of any explanation by him regarding when America was less great, one can only take the word of White evangelicals who constitute the majority of his hardcore MAGA base. When a random sample of cross-wearing evangelicals who attended a Trump campaign rally were asked what MAGA meant to them, they cheekily responded that “America was certainly great when the citizenry placed a high premium on the nuclear family and family values.
Asked whether they think Trump espouses these family values and constitutes a credible mouthpiece for all the things they care about, considering that he’s at least married three times and is being sued for paying hush money to a porn star, besides being heard on the radio bragging about how he could grab any woman’s privates and go scot-free, the respondents tersely replied: “Well, compared to Democrats, Trump is still the best”!
Trump refused to accept the safe landing a Fox TV host was extending to him and blurted out that he will definitely be a dictator – prior to adding, as an afterthought: “But only on the first day in office”! If that response was meant as a joke, it was crystal-clear that only the folks at Fox TV and MAGA GOP were laughing all the way to the floor! Shortly after the airing of the TV show, another group of evangelicals were asked at a campaign rally in South Carolina to choose between “Four years of dictator Trump and four years of democratically-elected Biden. “Dictator Trump!” they all screamed without any hesitation.
READ ALSO: Tinubu orders immediate opening of borders with Niger Republic, lifting of all sanctions
Whoa! Wow! Imagine preferring a Barabbas to a democrat in America, the much-touted bastion of global democracy and “Land of the Free”! Just like Hitler, there are millions of MAGA Republicans who perceive any word or even gesture by Trump as being above the law. Like zombies, they are ever ready and willing to obey the will of one man to follow him into war and to madness, just like Nazi Germans. The Republican Party aka Grand Old Party (GOP) Trump now controls lock, stock and barrel is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and John McCain. It has been completely remade in the image of Trump.
The overarching ambition of Hitler – just like latter-day Putin – was to be an empire builder. While Trump also harbours an expansionist ambition, it certainly isn’t to militarily procure more territories for America. His sole ambition is to be the richest and most powerful President in all of history.
Retribution and vengeance are stoking up Trump’s quest for a return to the White House. Trump has unequivocally stated that he’s to mercilessly deal with individuals and institutions he believes betrayed him by making short work of his claims of a stolen election. These would include the judiciary, media, Democrats, Congressmen, FBI and even the military! Think again if you’re of the opinion that he’s just using a figure of speech and won’t carry out his threat. It was his Nazi Fuhrer role model who poignantly declared: “The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason is terror and force.” Did he or didn’t he walk his talk?
Through his bold and very elaborate continuing efforts to undermine and subvert America’s storied electoral process, Trump is already serving notice that he means serious business. The horrors and mayhem a vengeful Trump would unleash would be of a scale only comparable to what Hitler did to Jews. Like all fascists, Trump is a grandmaster of the oratorical art of communicating with symbolisms. He has used Hitler’s Third Reich imagery – as pertaining to Jews – to describe his intended victims as vermin!
Trump’s choice of Waco, Texas to kick-start his 2024 campaign was a devilish conspiracy. Waco is the hotbed of anti-Establishment fringe private militias. Waco produced Timothy McVeigh who blew up a federal high-rise building in Oklahoma City where 120 innocent Americans were killed. His choice of Waco is a clear signal to his MAGA militant base to scale up from a ‘standby’ to ‘begin to engage’ mode.
Under President Joe Biden, the US economy has never been more buoyant, with the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years. The NATO Alliance that was on the brink of rupturing when Trump was POTUS has been re-energised under Biden, even registering a quantum leap in the number of new members.
If performance was the sole yardstick for winning the election, Biden would hardly need to break sweat to coast past the finishing line. But in the rather queer case of the USA, the popular one-man-one-vote doesn’t determine who wins a presidential election. It’s left entirely to the five battleground aka swing aka purple states to decide who wins under America’s Electoral College System!
Since Trump speaks and acts as if granting “too many rights” to Americans would hamper effective and efficient governance and eventually cause the downfall of the government, his second coming – if he wins – would witness a reign of terror in America that would make human rights infringements committed by the Gestapo and the SSS under Hitler pale in comparison. Prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and judges in lawsuits brought against Trump are already receiving death threats as if he’s above the law.
While lone voices in the wilderness like that of Winston Churchill were calling on European leaders to decipher the handwriting on the wall and stop appeasing Hitler, majority felt Hitler was just sounding off and wasn’t really the ogre he’s being made out to be. History is set to repeat itself with same calamitous consequences as many Americans seem to be treating with levity the many statements by Trump’s former Republican associates that he’s a real danger to American democracy.
Then there was Vidkun Quisling. He was Norway’s minister of defence who nominally co-headed the puppet government of Norway during the Nazi occupation. His collaborationist government participated in Germany’s war efforts, and heralded Jews out of Norway to concentration camps in occupied Poland. He was eventually executed by firing squad after being sentenced to death for high treason less than six months after the war ended. The word quisling has become a synonym for “traitor” in several languages around the world, reflecting the contempt and loathing with which Quisling’s conduct is regarded.
If Trump becomes POTUS, the USA will eventually occupy the No.3 position on the global power grid, ceding No.1 position to Russia with China coming a close second. The NATO Alliance will collapse and Putin would invade and occupy neighbouring NATO member-countries, particularly those that used to be part and parcel of the defunct Soviet Union, without any pushback from Trump.
It was Quisling who, at a meeting with Hitler in Berlin in December 1939, strongly urged a German occupation of his country – and the Fuhrer obliged him by invading Norway in April the following year. Would Trump similarly urge Putin to launch a ‘special military operation’ against the USA for the suppression of workers’ unions and the Liberal-Dem vermin? It’s highly unlikely, because Trump’s aim is for every global strong man to maintain his lane.
But even if he urges Putin to come to America, the former Soviet spy-master is smart enough – based on whatever dirt he has on Trump that makes him act like a quisling – to say “No, but thanks!” He doesn’t need to invade the USA when Trump can be arm-twisted to offer the entire country to him on a platter.
The one consolation – if it can be termed such – is that Americans have acquired and/or inherited the genes of their founding fathers’ love for freedom. Major revolts would ultimately spring up in most states. These would be heavily repressed by non-state military actors recruited from the roughest elements of American society in the mode of Hitler’s ‘Brownshirts’ and Benito Mussolini’s ‘Blackshirts,’ with considerable assistance from Putin.
At the end of the day, Trump, who had set so many despicable records inside and outside the White House, would be toppled and tried for high treason just like Norway’s Quisling. All things considered, Trump would become the first former US President to die by lethal injection or in an electric chair in a maximum security prison.
Perhaps, just as quisling became a byword for ‘traitor,’ trumping may also become a synonym for ultra-gaslighting and ‘Art of the Steal.’ Who knows? You still think the foregoing is hyperbolic and the product of a runaway imagination? Then just pray that the cup of mayhem and turbulence would pass by the USA come November when the election would hold.
