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GERMANS, HUNGARIANS, RUSSIANS, ITALIANS ALL WAITED UNTIL IT WAS TOO
LATE: ARE AMERICANS ABOUT TO JOIN THAT TRAGIC CLUB?  
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Thom Hartmann
June 11, 2025
Hartmann Report
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_ Step by Step, MAGA Is normalizing repression and setting America up
for tyranny. Will we wait, like so many before us, until the knock
comes to our own door? _

“The fog crept in on little cat feet.” — Carl Sandburg, Fog
(1916),

 

Eventually, people in countries that are in the process of flipping
from democracy to fascism figure out that they’re now living in a
dictatorship; by then, however, it’s usually too late.

FOR PEOPLE IN HUNGARY, IT WAS MAY, 2020 WHEN ORBÁN STARTED ARRESTING
PEOPLE FOR THEIR FACEBOOK
[[link removed]] POSTS.
FOR FOLKS IN RUSSIA IT WAS WHEN NAVALNY AND HIS SUPPORTERS WERE FIRST
ASSAULTED IN PUBLIC AND THEN ARRESTED AND SENT TO BRUTAL GULAGS IN
SIBERIA. FOR GERMANS, IT WAS JULY 14, 1933 — SIX MONTHS AFTER HE
BECAME CHANCELLOR — WHEN HITLER OUTLAWED ALL POLITICAL PARTIES
EXCEPT HIS OWN.

But at first, the steps from democracy to fascism and tyranny always
seems like “just another thing the government has to do to deal with
a very real problem.” Something that reasonable people would
understand and can’t reasonably object to. Something that, even if
weird, makes a certain amount of sense.

Until suddenly the mask is dropped and the twisted face of hateful
fascism peers out at the country with laser-red eyes and a bloody
mouth filled with threats and lies. Wearing camouflage, face masked,
carrying handcuffs.

WE’RE THERE. TRUMP AND HIS NEOFASCIST ENABLERS STARTED WITH QUIET
CAT’S FEET; NOW THEY’RE HOLDING A RIFLE AND USING A BULLHORN.

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT TRUMP IS DOING SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT FROM
AMERICA’S PAST, SOMETHING THAT INEVITABLY LEADS SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN
DEMOCRACY?

During the first three months of President Obama’s presidency,
he deported
[[link removed]] 63,257
people for being in the country without documentation; Trump’s first
three months of 2025 saw [[link removed]] roughly
61,060 deportations.

WHY IS TRUMP GETTING HEADLINES — AND PROTESTORS — WITH HIS ARRESTS
AND DEPORTATIONS WHILE OBAMA DIDN’T, EVEN THOUGH HE DEPORTED EVEN
MORE PEOPLE THAN TRUMP HAS?

BECAUSE, FOR TRUMP, THIS ISN’T ABOUT DEPORTATION OR PURGING THE
NATION OF “ILLEGALS”; INSTEAD, IT’S ABOUT MAKING AMERICANS
COMFORTABLE WITH AUTHORITARIAN, POLICE-STATE TACTICS. THE IMMIGRANTS
ARE JUST PROPS, ALBEIT ONES THAT APPEAL TO THE RACIST MAGA BASE.

Obama deported people based on so-called Morton Memos
[[link removed]],
also known as “enforcement priority memos,” which required ICE to
focus _entirely_ on those undocumented aliens who posed either
“national security” or “criminal” threats to America.

While those arrested and immediately turned back at the border
didn’t get a day in court, the people Obama targeted within the US
were detained after warrants were issued based on probable cause they
had committed a crime or were a threat to America, as the Bill of
Rights and US law requires, and each had their day in court where they
could claim that they’d been arrested and held without legal
justification.

Obama also started Operation Cross Check
[[link removed]], organizing
coordinated raids across the country targeting aliens with established
criminal records, and each arrest required proper legal documentation
or warrants.

He also operated his immigration enforcement efforts equally well in
Red states as Blue states.

The Biden administration also largely followed the legal structures
— court hearings, due process, and enforcement priorities —
established under Obama.

BUT UNDER TRUMP, IN COMPLETE DEFIANCE OF THE 4TH, 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, AND
8TH AMENDMENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION, ICE OFFICERS ARE ARRESTING PEOPLE
WITHOUT WARRANTS AND IMPRISONING OR DEPORTING THEN WITHOUT AN
OPPORTUNITY TO CONTEST THEIR DETENTION OR REMOVAL FROM THE COUNTRY IN
A COURT OF LAW.

WHY WOULD TRUMP DO THIS, WHEN BOTH OBAMA AND BIDEN WERE ABLE TO DEPORT
AS MANY OR MORE PEOPLE WHILE SIMPLY FOLLOWING THE LAW?

— Why has Trump put the National Guard and Marines in our streets
with their guns turned on American citizens?

— Why is Trump having federal police carry out high-profile raids in
schools, hospitals, workplaces, and courthouses rather than simply
showing up at people’s homes after hours and quietly detaining them
like Obama and Biden did without all the fanfare? Why all this
military theater?

— Why is our Secretary of Homeland Security dressing up like an
immigration agent to cosplay for the cameras, with the resulting
videos being plastered all over social media?

— Why is Trump giving a highly political, banana-republic-style
speech to active duty soldiers, attacking the previous president and
the governor of California with lies and partisan slurs, and none of
the leaders of our military stepped in to point out what a violation
it was of _apolitical_ American military policy and tradition going
back to George Washington?

BECAUSE IT’S REALLY NOT AT ALL ABOUT UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS OR
DEPORTATION: INSTEAD, IT’S ALL FASCISM THEATER DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY
AND INTENTIONALLY TO GET US READY TO ACCEPT WHAT’S NEXT.

First, you see, they turn their guns and their violations of cultural
and legal norms on the weakest and most misunderstood or even hated
people in society. For Hitler that was trans people and immigrants.
For Mussolini it was labor leaders and immigrants. For Putin it was
rebelling Chechens and immigrants. For Orbán it was Roma people and
immigrants.

IN EACH CASE, “REGULAR CITIZENS” QUICKLY GOT USED TO POLICE
KICKING IN _OTHER_ PEOPLE’S DOORS WITHOUT WARRANTS, THROWING
“UNDESIRABLES” IN PRISON WITHOUT ATTORNEYS OR COURT PROCEEDINGS,
AND HAVING MASKED, OUT-OF-UNIFORM “OFFICERS” DRAGGING FOLKS OFF
THE STREETS WITHOUT IDENTIFICATION OR JUSTIFICATION. AFTER ALL, IT WAS
ONLY “THEM” WHO WERE TARGETED.

At the same time, each of these regimes began extensive
intelligence-gathering operations to identify actual or even potential
dissidents and ways they could be broken, whether through exposing
secrets like homosexuality or affairs, by bankrupting them with libel
suits for speaking against the administration, or even outright arrest
on trumped-up sedition charges.

Think DOGE’s pimply-faced incels downloading every single bit of
data the government has ever had on you and aggregating it into a
massive database this administration can use against you when the time
comes.

Next, wannabe dictators always open huge detention/prison facilities
with the rationalization that they were for “those people”: the
immigrants, Jews, Gypsies, protestors, and communists. Like Trump is
doing right now with the multi-billion-dollar private
prison contracts
[[link removed]] he
just signed. And Trump’s reopening
[[link removed]] the
Guantánamo offshore military prison.

AND THEN, OF COURSE, IN EACH CASE THROUGHOUT HISTORY, THE REGIME’S
POLICE, PARAMILITARIES, AND ULTIMATELY THE MILITARY ITSELF TURN THEIR
GUNS AND THEIR NEW PRISONS ON THOSE SAME “REGULAR PEOPLE” WHO
DARED SPEAK UP, WHO CHALLENGED THEM POLITICALLY, OR WHO OUTED THEIR
CRIMES AND CORRUPTION.

The first and most important key is always to get the police and the
military on the wannabe dictator’s side, so there would be no
resistance when the hammer drops.

Thus, yesterday, Trump spoke to troops at Fort Bragg, telling them how
he was going to bring back the names of Confederate generals to
American military facilities, even though those racist,
slavery-defending men had launched a murderous war against the United
States.

“For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the
names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk,
Fort A.P. Hill, and Fort Robert E. Lee," Trump said
[[link removed]] as the soldiers cheered
wildly at the name of the traitor Robert E. Lee, who killed more
Americans than Hitler or any other single foreign enemy in history.

He then turned to the news media and, in front of these men and women
who we have trained to use military arms to kill people, proclaimed to
loud boos from the crowd:

“And for a little news for the fake news back there, the fake news,
ladies and gentlemen, look at them, look at them all, what I have to
put up with. Fake news.”

Author of _The Third Reich of Dreams
[[link removed]]_ Charlotte
Beradt lived through the rise of the Nazis in Germany. She wrote:

“The Nazi official who remarked that people had a private life under
the Third Reich only while they were asleep actually underestimated
the dictatorship’s powers.”

The data genius, the Elon Musk/DOGE of Germany in the 1930s, was IBM
[[link removed]].
They organized and kept the data
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every German who was Jewish, gay, socialist, or otherwise offended the
Nazi regime.

AND NOW COMES THE BEGINNING OF THE FINAL STAGE — MUCH LIKE WHEN
HITLER OPENED DACHAU ON MARCH 22, 1933, A MERE THREE MONTHS AFTER
BECOMING CHANCELLOR — WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN
YESTERDAY’S _WASHINGTON POST
[[link removed]]_:

“The Trump administration is preparing to begin the transfer of
potentially thousands of foreigners who are in the United States
illegally to the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, starting
as early as this week, said U.S. officials familiar with the
matter.”

Yes, this is an old movie the world has seen several times throughout
history. That’s why Europe’s leaders are so freaked out about
Trump right now.

BACK IN THE EARLY 1950S, GERMANS WHO LIVED THROUGH THE NAZI ERA
WARNED CHICAGO JOURNALIST MILTON MAYER
[[link removed]] THAT
THEY HAD “BECOME USED TO BEING GOVERNED BY SURPRISE” AND TOLD HIM
HOW EACH STEP TOWARD HITLER’S EVENTUAL TYRANNY WAS INCREMENTAL. AS A
COLLEGE PROFESSOR TOLD MAYER:

“You see, one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe
me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but
only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

“You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others,
when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You
don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go
out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? Well, you are not in the
habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone,
that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing
as time goes on, it grows. …

“Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a
stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”

WE’RE ALREADY FAR DOWN THE ROAD, STEP BY STEP, TO MAGA TYRANNY
UTTERLY DESTROYING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. WILL WE FINALLY DRAW A LINE AND
STOP THIS VIOLENT, ARMED JUGGERNAUT?

Or will we, like the Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Russians, Turks,
Egyptians, and so many others, wait to act until the repression is so
obvious it’s undeniable…and unstoppable?

The choice, at least so far, is still ours.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* democracy
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* Fascism
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* Trump
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* government repression
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* hyper normalization
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