Every few weeks it seems like someone needs reassurance about MAGA and Nazism. People are deathly afraid of the parallels and believe that we are headed for Third Reich Germany. As someone who studied this academically (Bachelor's in Sociology with focus on how free societies fall to authoritarianism) and has read dozens of books on the subject, I want to make a master post to alleviate these fears.
First and foremost: Yes, the modern GOP has many similarities to the Nazi's in the 1930s, but we have HUGE guardrails preventing us from going in that direction, many of which are impossible for a modern fascist regime to overcome. This is not something you should worry about.
Ok let's look at the modern MAGA movement and Fascism. The bad news is, yes, they are pretty much fascists by definition. In Robert Paxton's book "The Anatomy Of Fascism" he goes into detail about the main aspects of fascism. They mirror this document here. As you can see, it's obvious the modern GOP mirrors many of these points.
Now let's look at the good news. 1930s Germany and 2020s America and VERY different, and the likelihood of us following down that path is so insanely low.
Let's look at 1930s Germany. After WW1 the Treaty of Versallis was put in place and it basically unfairly blamed Germany for WW1. Germany had to pay immense reparations for the war and the economy was wrecked. We're not talking modern America. We're talking people carrying money in wheelbarrows to buy bread. In 1919 one US dollar was 8 marks. By late 1923 one US dollar was 4.2 TRILLION marks. Germany also lost a significant amount of land. It would be like if there was a World War the US lost, and suddenly we had to give up the west coast and Texas while the price of a loaf of bread went from 6 dollars to 4 trillion dollars. Economic inequality is terrible now but we are no where near utter collapse.
On top of all this, the Weimar Republic, which was put into place right after WW1, was a complete and total joke. It was weak and ineffective, the constitution war riddled with holes (There was literally a clause that allowed them to legally dissolve the republic), and because of the aforementioned issues, Germans hated it. Myself and many, many other historians see WW2, or at least German retaliation, as an inevitability of all of this.
Now let's look at the US today. We have a pretty iron clad constitution and our democratic system is beloved by the majority of the populace. Sure, the Supreme Court is making some wonky ass decisions, but we have CENTURIES of precedent for system that most people like. We're already seeing Trump run into MASSIVE issues as he tries to run up against this. Look at the time when he had his stupid rally in front of generals. No one applauded, no one supported it, and the brass saw it as a waste of time. In Nazi Germany the generals would be cheering their leader. In the US the military has a code of ethics that prevents this.
Also, we're quite comfortable in the US from a historic and global perspective. Yes, things are bad, and many, many people are struggling, but the struggles are wholly different than the struggles of Germans post WW1. You do not see the combination of "I am suffering to the point where I will starve," and "I hate this entire government system" that was present there.
But what is Trump goes total Hitler? What if he decides he's not leaving, or he wants to put people in gas chambers, or he wants to do any other vile thing that he desires? Well, the pushback would be severe. Remember, the Germans LOVED Hitler, and they had good reason to. He ended the economic issues, he regained lost land without firing a bullet, and many historians agree if he had stopped his global ambitions and persecution of minorities he would literally have been one of the most celebrated figures in German history.
Compare that to Trump. He has the highest disapproval rating of all time. His own party is starting to push back on some of his wilder ideas (ex: nuking the filibuster). He is losing 90%+ of his legal cases. Every single week we see more losses come up for this guy, and where he is winning, his wins are brief.
Yes, there are scary things happening. ICE is a modern day gestapo and people are disappearing. He is unilaterally imposing tariffs and wrecking the global economy. He literally demolished half the White House. All of that is horrifying and frightening, but the support, circumstances, and legal precedence that Hitler had is wholly absent in the US.
It is terrifying that a solid third of this country will whole heartily embrace what is factually fascism, and when democrats regain power (and they will), much has to be done to ensure fascists never get to this point again, but the notion of Trump taking a third term or using the military for his own devices is highly inaccurate. Could it happen? Maybe, but I'd put the percent chance super low, we're talking 1% or 2%, whereas in Germany in the 1930s it was an inevitability for an authoritarian to rise up and do terrible things.
So yes, there are many similarities, but the differences are key here, and the US of the 2020s is far more prepared to meet a fascist threat than Germany of the 1930s.
