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Current U.S. Politics and the Rise of Hitler, Part 2: Historical Congruencies
Nazis were defiling the home of Mickey Mouse. No, this is not the opening line of a dystopian movie script. On June 14, 2023, various news outlets reported that there were, “Neo-Nazis demonstrating outside of Walt Disney World.” The reason given? Donald Trump, the former president of the United States had just been indicted.
If this were, in fact, the opening of a movie, we’d be talking about the dark humor underlining the message about the end of American democracy. Nazis protesting outside of Disney World should seem surreal — except it was almost six years ago that a gathering of Nazis & White Supremists groups in Charlottesville shocked the nation and the world. Ostensibly there to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, many carried swastika flags right next to the Confederate ones. One group notoriously spent an evening marching around with tiki torches saying, “Jews will not replace us.”
Many of those involved who were interviewed spoke about how the election of Trump had empowered their groups. He did so even more with his “Good people on both sides” statement. It made the Nazis and White supremacists seem no better or worse than those protesting against them. Furthermore, Trump said this knowing that Heather Heyer had been murdered that weekend by a White supremacist…
