History is Speaking
How a Lifetime of Study Led Me To Recognize The Patterns We Are Seeing Today
I begin this essay with a disclaimer: I am a college dropout. I’ve gone twice, and because of various reasons, I never finished. I’m not speaking as someone who has a Ph.D. from Harvard in history, theology, sociology, economics, or anything else. I’m speaking as a layperson who read The Diary of Anne Frank at the age of twelve and has had many questions ever since about how things got that bad.
For 34 years, I have read everything I could find on WWII, the Holocaust, fascism, and the resistance movements — books, articles, documentaries, lectures — not as a student assigned material, but as someone trying to understand. This has been my hobby instead of reality TV, expensive interests, or a big social life. And based on that lifelong self-guided study, I can say with confidence: Trump is very much like Hitler, and MAGA is very much like the Nazis. I don’t say that as a Democrat “who just calls everyone they disagree with a Nazi.” I say it as someone who needed to know how ordinary people were convinced to support evil.
Here in America, we have museums, movies, exhibits, and entire cultural spaces dedicated to remembering the Holocaust. But we treated them as “educational experiences,” something tragic that happened far away and long ago, rather than the warning they actually are. We rarely asked the most important question: “How would I respond if this started happening here?”
To understand the parallels, we need to look briefly at the conditions in Germany before the rise of Hitler.
In Fiddler on the Roof, the Jewish characters are in Russia, where they face increasing violence and forced expulsion. Many Jewish families fleeing persecution across Eastern Europe did, in fact, settle in Germany — which was, at the time, considered a cultural and intellectual center. Jewish communities integrated into German life: they opened businesses, participated in the arts, went to school alongside their neighbors, befriended them, served in the German military (Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, served as a German officer in WWI), and paid taxes. They were part of the fabric of society.
After Germany lost WWI and faced massive economic collapse, they needed someone to blame. The government and many ordinary citizens blamed Jewish people — not because of religion alone, but because Jews had become an easy scapegoat for the country’s suffering. Hitler did not create antisemitism — he weaponized the country’s pain and gave people someone to take that pain out on.
This pattern should sound familiar.
In America, immigrants have been part of the country since its origin. Every non-Native American person here is here because of immigration. Cultures blended and enriched the nation — including food, music, industry, and labor. But as economic inequality worsened — especially after Reaganomics — immigrants (particularly from Mexico and Central/South America) were blamed. Rather than acknowledging systemic economic policies that benefit billionaires, a narrative was created that the problem was simply “the people at the bottom.”
Trump, like Hitler, encouraged and amplified that scapegoating.
Another widely misunderstood parallel is the role of religion. Many Americans believe the Nazis were atheists. In reality, most Germans were Christians — primarily Catholic and Lutheran. Hitler carefully courted churches early on, presenting himself as a defender of Christian values. Only later did the Nazi Party take on more explicitly atheistic or pagan ideological traits — while still using Christian language and symbolism to justify themselves.
Trump has done the same. He strategically aligned himself with megachurch pastors and Christian Nationalist leaders. He claims to defend “Christian values” while mocking the weak, encouraging violence, dehumanizing immigrants, and displaying none of the compassion or humility taught by Christ.
This is not Christianity. This is political religion — the same thing Germany lived through.
One of the most enduring movie musicals in history is The Sound of Music. Historically, it holds the record for the longest theatrical release in movie history. We all know the songs, we love the characters, and we feel a thrill as they’re climbing the (imaginary) mountaintop from Austria to Switzerland. In the movie, the family flees Austria because Capt. Von Trapp is asked to enlist in the German navy. This is true, but it was actually one of four reasons the von Trapp family made the decision to flee the Third Reich. Rupert, the family’s oldest son, was a doctor, and would not abide by the government protocols and laws surrounding his ability to provide the care that was needed. The family also refused to perform for Hitler’s birthday, marking themselves as being against his regime. And the family’s manager, friend, and priest refused to bow the knee (figuratively speaking) to the Nazi regime.
Today, in America, doctors and nurses lament the fact that they must go through so many government-sanctioned protocols to administer care. Entertainers who speak out or refuse to perform for events meant to honor Trump or his regime are labeled “un-American.” Pastors and priests have been arrested while praying for peace and justice in the rotunda of the Capitol Building, or are pepper-sprayed and attacked with non-lethals for praying next to an ICE building.
Another similarity between Hitler and Trump revolves around the arts. Hitler considered himself a champion of the arts, and an artist himself. By all accounts, his “artwork” was crude and never considered worthy of the great halls of art museums in Germany or anywhere else. He promoted certain German artists and musicians, while destroying and burning the many contributions made by any other race or nationality.
Similarly, Trump has engaged in arts. He doodles, signs and sells sketches of the NYC skyline as though it’s artwork. He creates AI “art” and posts it, always showing himself as the conquering hero. He blasts any artwork, music, film, and television that goes against his ideology. The Kennedy Center, America’s “official” cultural and entertainment center, is now under Trump’s control, with him even “joking” online that the “TRUMP KENNEDY – OOPS I MEAN KENNEDY CENTER” is better because of him. He hashes out his beefs with comedians, musicians, movie stars, and authors online, claiming they are “NO TALENT!” Within the MAGA movement, one of the few remaining unifying moments of the year — the Super Bowl halftime show — is being “substituted” with an “all-American halftime show” that promotes their own agenda.
In the same way that Hitler took over the arts in Germany, Trump has placed himself as artist and champion of the arts, all while destroying art itself.
And just like in Nazi Germany, the propaganda has followed.
In Nazi Germany, propaganda was everywhere — on posters, in classrooms, in newspapers, on the radio, in children’s books. It pushed the image of the so-called “Master Race”: blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Christian, fit men with dutiful wives and obedient children. The messaging wasn’t subtle. It told the public who was valuable and who was disposable. It told people what a “good German” looked like and how a “good German family” behaved.
And whether we want to admit it or not, we’re seeing the exact same style of propaganda here, right now.
Over the past few weeks, Trump’s Department of Labor has released posters and promotional materials that are almost indistinguishable from those Nazi-era images — strong, serious, white soldiers and workers standing in front of flags and factories, with slogans like “America First!”
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is putting out “recruitment” propaganda that looks like fan-made movie posters — including an image of Mel Gibson from The Patriot with the caption “America, do your duty,” directing people to join ICE.
This is not random imagery.
It’s not nostalgia.
It’s messaging.
It tells the public who is “real” America and who is not.
It defines who deserves protection, and who is seen as a threat to be controlled, monitored, or removed.
This is how fascism becomes normalized — not through sudden violence, but through familiar images that make that violence look righteous.
Another of Trump’s favorite scapegoats is the LGBTQ+ community, and it’s worth noting that Hitler had the same feelings and went about destroying them in the same ways Trump is doing.
Many people seem to believe that LGBTQ+ is mostly a modern thing, but that’s actually because in Nazi Germany, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) was destroyed as soon as Hitler came to power. Most historical records and scientific research up to 1933 were held in those rooms. Once evidence was erased that transgender and homosexual people existed, he set about ridding Germany of homosexual and transgender people. Just as the Jews were in danger of being sent to concentration camps, so were people who identified as LGBTQ+. In Nazi Germany, the pink triangle was used to identify LGBTQ people as the yellow star was used to identify Jewish people.
In modern-day America, one of Trump’s first executive orders defined gender identity for all: there is only man and woman, and what you’re born with is what you get. He has never studied a gene, participated in a study of trans people, or consulted with an expert on the subject. This was intended to harm, not clarify: to tell someone that they are not who they believe themselves to be leads to depression, and it’s worth noting that the trans community (especially trans kids) has a disproportionate number of suicides compared to any other group.
Other groups who became victims of the Nazi regime were political opponents, the highly educated, and resistance members. Communists, socialists, scholarly elites, and ordinary individuals who spoke against the Nazis were also on the chopping block. Similarly, Trump has ranted against Democrats/Democratic Socialists, universities, and any “liberal” as being anti-American.
How far will he go? We really don’t know. A few years ago, I would never have imagined masked ICE agents entering churches and school pick-up lines to arrest people for the “crime” of being brown. I would not have imagined that the Christian community would turn a blind eye when priests and pastors were arrested or attacked in broad daylight, simply for praying to a God of mercy and justice. Trump may not take the final step of having people shot in the street, hanged in the public square, or sent to gas chambers, but that does not mean it is “safe” to be against Trump right now.
Now, you may be reading this as a Trump voter who has never liked Trump, but voted for him because he made promises to you, claimed Christianity, offered bold answers that lacked real knowledge, or because he ran on the Republican ticket, and you identify as a Republican.
As someone who has studied every side of the equation in Nazi Germany (Hitler, the people who supported him, the people who resisted against him, and the people he harmed), I say this to you: unless you speak up about what you know now and completely denounce him, history and even your own family and friends will remember you as a Trump supporter. Those of us who actually know you can accept your explanation that you’re “Republican, but not MAGA,” but history has a way of flattening those nuances.
In Nazi Germany, there are, in fact, Nazi heroes. Oskar Schindler was a Nazi Party member who eventually had a change of heart, kept his Nazi identity, and used it to protect over 1,000 Jews from death. Georg Duckwitz was a Nazi official who informed the rabbis in Denmark of a mass roundup set to take place on or just after Rosh Hashanah, and because of his warning, the entire country worked together to hide and smuggle out nearly the entire Jewish population. (Of the roughly 7,800 Jews in Denmark, only 500–600 were sent to concentration camps, while nearly 7,200 were safely smuggled into neutral Sweden.)
Just as Nazi supporters’ enthusiasm for Hitler waned, so, too, has Trump’s support among his own voters. And, truth be told, without stepping out and fighting alongside the resistance, as Schindler and Duckwitz did, those supporters who turn from him now will be remembered for their vote on November 5, 2024, not for silently disliking what’s going on now.
I urge you to act. Ask questions. Begin to question why it was that you so wanted to believe in Trump. Be willing to use your position of power that you protected for yourself to protect others who are doing the heavy lifting in resistance, or those who are being harmed.
History does not remember nuances. Children 50 years from now are going to be taught that Americans hated Latinos and fought the reality of LGBTQ+ people. Our great nation will carry the same weight as Germany did throughout the 20th century: a land of hate, insanity, and chaos. Maybe, somewhere, some child will begin to ask questions to try to understand the question how did this happen? But for the majority, it will be a short section in history class, doomed to be repeated in countries and settings where questions and curiosity are not valued.
I ask you to ask yourself: What is your legacy in all of this?
What do you want it to be?
And what can you do to change that, starting now?