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WILL DONALD TRUMP GO FULL FASCIST AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN?  
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David Rothkopf
October 25, 2024
The Daily Beast
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_ In February 1939, the German-American Bund held an infamous,
Hitler-supporting rally in Madison Square Garden. On Sunday, Trump
will be holding a rally at Madison Square Garden. The parallel is
unmistakable. _

Donald Trump - Caricature, by DonkeyHotey (CC BY 2.0)

 

Donald Trump
[[link removed]] admires Adolf
Hitler [[link removed]].

As appalling as that statement is, even more repugnant is the fact
that it is hardly news and yet Trump has thrived in American politics
nonetheless. We know thanks to Trump’s wife that he kept a book of
Hitler’s speeches, _My New Order_, by his bedside. He has dined
with Nazis and defended them publicly. He has used the language of
Nazis as ABC
[[link removed]]’s
Jonathan Karl has written “referring to his political opponents as
‘vermin’ and saying illegal immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood
of country.’”

This week, in an article
[[link removed]] in
the _Atlantic_ by its editor Jeffrey Goldberg, entitled “I Need
the Kind of Generals Hitler Had,” Trump’s longest serving chief of
staff, retired four star Marine general John Kelly, repeated
accusations that Trump would say admiring
[[link removed]] things
about Hitler.

Others Goldberg spoke to confirmed Kelly’s assertions. General Mark
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s
presidency, said Trump was fascist to the core
[[link removed]].

Of course, the attention span of the American media being what it is,
there is every reason to think that this story might again fade from
view as it has in the past. But now, Trump’s entire campaign is
planning a high-profile event that will ensure references to Trump and
MAGA and Hitler and Nazis remain front-of-mind as campaign 2024 enters
its final full week.

On Sunday, Trump will be holding a rally at Madison Square Garden.
Doing so has political pundits scratching their heads to begin with
because Trump has zero chance of winning anything of note in New York
City, the place that knows him best and therefore hates him most. (In
prior elections his performance in the city and especially in
Manhattan was anemic.) Even filling the hall is likely to be a
challenge unless Trump pays off attendees as he has in the past.

But this rally resonates for a different reason. In February 1939, the
German-American Bund also held an infamous rally in Madison Square
Garden (which at the time was in a different location in mid-Apple).
Already politicians and commentators have brought up the uncomfortable
similarities between the highly antisemitic, pro-Hitler event months
before the war in Europe started
[[link removed]].
But given the developments of the past few days, the comparisons with
the 1939 event are likely to grow more common.

Certainly, Trump’s well-known admiration for autocrats and the
deep-seated racism and antisemitism that has suffused his comments and
behavior throughout his life supports the thesis. But the reality is
that Trump doesn’t run away from it. He bragged he owned a copy
of _Mein Kampf_ (although he did not, it was actually _My New
Order_). He would grow puffed-up sharing a story, very likely made up,
that the crowds at his rallies rivaled those of Hitler. When
challenged for using Hitlerian vocabulary like the references to
poisoning the blood of the country, he doubled down and did it more.

These facts and many more like them are the reason that when on a CNN
Town Hall on Wednesday night host Anderson Cooper asked Trump’s
opponent in the upcoming presidential election on Nov. 5, Vice
President Kamala Harris, whether she thought Trump was a fascist, her
answer was unequivocal. “I do,” she said. She said it because he
is one. (Remarkably, Cooper later asked her whether Trump would be
better on issues important to Jews. She responded well but missed the
opportunity to say, “You mean the Donald Trump who likes, praises,
and mimics Adolf Hitler?”)

Nonetheless, much like the spineless politicians and industrialists
who praised or normalized Hitler’s rhetoric, character and
objectives prior to his seizing power as Germany’s Führer,
virtually the entire leadership of Trump’s Republican Party have
either defended Trump or sought to minimize his remarks. Admittedly,
they have failed because Hitler was, after all, one of the worst human
beings in the history of the planet, a mass-murdering, dictatorial
monster and, despite that…or perhaps because of it…Trump has
repeatedly associated himself with him.

Journalists, meanwhile, join wittingly or otherwise into the efforts
to blunt the effect of the hideous reality that a man who has said he
would be a dictator from day one, that he would turn his military
against his enemies and that he would set up concentration camps to
house millions of those he says are poisoning our blood, not only
admires Hitler but actually intends to emulate him.

They pretend that Trump’s economic policy positions should be
evaluated much as if he were a normal candidate and in so doing they
distract from and thereby normalize a guy who is telling us repeatedly
that he will end America as we know it by following in the footsteps
of the author of the greatest crimes against humanity the world has
ever seen.

There are, of course, full-on Trump apologists like the couch full of
fawning lightweights over at _Fox and Friends_
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On Thursday, they tried to counter Kelly’s statement that Trump
meets the definition of being a fascist by saying, unpersuasively,
something roughly like “He’s not far-right, why would you call a
fan of Hitler, Putin, and White Supremacy far-right? He’s no
dictator. Everybody wants to turn the army against their enemies.”

Perhaps it is the nonchalance with which Trump embraces the horrific,
perhaps it is the solidarity of his party in shrugging off the fact
that their leader is so dangerous, perhaps it is the fault of the
media for their coverage. But, whatever the reason, until this week
Trump has been able to become the first mainstream American politician
to celebrate the worst human being of all time. (Perhaps that’s why
so many among us also shrug it off his bromance with contemporary war
criminals and brutal autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.)

But there are signs that this week may mark a turning point and
perversely, Trump himself may be responsible for the coup de grâce
that ensures that in the final days of this campaign his fascism and
the high regard in which he apparently holds men like Hitler may
finally be given at least some of the attention from voters they
warrant. (Let’s be honest. If people were to give it the attention
it deserved, Trump could not be elected dog-catcher.)

First, came the Kelly revelations and others like it in Goldberg’s
excellent _Atlantic_ article. Then, came an interview with Kelly in
the _New York Times_
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included audio recordings of the general describing Trump’s profound
flaws in his own voice.

In addition, Harris has done what few other political leaders have
dared to do and regularly called out Trump both for his fascist words,
tendencies, and agenda and also on issues like his apparent admiration
for Hitler or his decision to send COVID testing equipment to Vladimir
Putin while millions of Americans suffered without access to such
urgently needed tools. She called the revelations that Trump coveted
generals like Hitler’s “deeply troubling” and “dangerous.”
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As reporters compare the two MSG events of 1939 and 2024, they will be
struck by the similarities. A giant picture of George Washington
towered over the crowd in 1939 as the Bund sought to make
themselves—just as MAGA does—seem like the most American of
Americans.

The rhetoric embraced by speakers 85 years ago is echoed today at all
Trump rallies with similar references to participants as patriots and
promises to return America to real Americans
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Naturally, the nativism and racism that were core to Hitler supporters
in 1939 are also core to MAGA rank and file today. And the right in
1939 and today both use the same slogan to describe their credo:
“America First.”

The 1939 rally included an incident in which a Jewish protester ran on
stage and was beaten and the entire event was cordoned off from the
city itself by a never-before-seen display of police. But it won’t
take such displays to make Sunday’s event resonate. The past
week’s headlines should do the trick.

And, I might add, not a moment too soon. It is time that the real
issue at the center of the choice voters face is decisive in this
campaign. Being a fascist and admiring Hitler should have disqualified
Trump long ago. But whatever the reasons that he has progressed this
far may be, it is high time voters acknowledge them and eject him from
American public life a week from this coming Tuesday.

When the Bund took place, one of America’s foremost political
commentators at the time condemned it on the radio. He said, “In
every corner of the land, America was nauseated. The American press
unanimously condemned
[[link removed]] it as the vilest
sacrilege ever perpetrated in the name of American freedom.”

Unfortunately, we cannot expect the same from either the American
people nor from some in our media this week, when an even more
dangerous man headlines an even more dangerous event at the Garden.
There will be defenders and equivocators, that we must expect.

But, taken in conjunction with Harris’ clear-eyed and strong
denunciations of this central element of Trump’s unfitness for
office, the stories that made headlines this week, and what we know of
Trump, this week’s event should, in a sane world, be enough to move
Trump closer to the final political defeat he so richly deserves.

_David Rothkopf (Twitter [[link removed]]) is CEO of The
Rothkopf Group [[link removed]], a media company that
produces podcasts including Deep State Radio, hosted by Rothkopf.
TRG also produces custom podcasts for clients including the United
Arab Emirates. He is also the author of many books including Running
the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the
Architects of American Power
[[link removed]], Superclass, Power,
Inc., National Insecurity, Great Questions of Tomorrow,
and Traitor: A History of Betraying America from Benedict Arnold to
Donald Trump. His daily newsletter "Need to Know" is available
at davidrothkopf.substack.com
[[link removed]]._

_THE DAILY BEAST [[link removed]] is an American news
website [[link removed]] focused on politics,
media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC
Inc [[link removed](company)]._

_It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid
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editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 2015 interview, former
editor-in-chief [[link removed]] John
Avlon [[link removed]] described the Beast's
editorial approach: "We seek out scoops, scandals, and stories about
secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots, and
hypocrites."[4]
[[link removed]] In 2018,
Avlon described the Beast's "strike zone" as "politics, pop culture,
and power". (Wikipedia
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* Donald Trump
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* Fascism
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* nazism
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* History
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