Who Goes Trump? What determines his support isn’t race, class, or political ideology. It’s character

[Bucky]

This is one of those articles that I totally disagreed with until I actually read it.

I mean, yes, there's all sorts of race, class, and ideological correlations with Trump support. But there's something else there too. This article makes me want to watch out for it.

On a personal note, this article also makes me want to go play the "Who Goes Nazi" parlor game.

read it here ==> http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/216700/who-goes-trump

More than any book I’ve read or lecture I’ve attended, the Trump phenomenon has explained the 1930s for me. Witnessing so many otherwise rational people fall for the lies of a demagogic con man who promises that he “alone” can “fix” all of our country’s problems and bleats about throwing his opponent in jail (when he’s not urging his raucous crowds to kill her), one begins to fathom how a modern, educated, advanced country like Germany went Nazi. You already see the stirrings of a nascent fascist movement in America. The parallels between the GOP’s amoral cowards willing to do anything to achieve power and the German leaders who thought Hitler could be “controlled” are as pathetic as they are frightening.

But what is that character thing? The thing that makes one friend visit you in the hospital and the other avoid you socially until after you've beaten the cancer.

[Turbineguy]

1. Indeed.

And this is a question that has been puzzling for decades. How Germany, the land of Goethe, Kant and Beethoven could fall for that.

[spike jones]

4. Have you seen this?

The Closer by Keith Olbermann

https://www.reddit.com/r/hillaryclinton/comments/5autgo/donald_trump_and_his_uncanny_resemblance_to_nazi/

[Foggyhill]

2. Actually, if the economy had been as bad as Germany, Trump would had won....

That's how fucked up the situation is right now in the US.

People like to talk about Nazi this, Nazi that.... But the US isn't that far from the abyss.

It's red alert time to save democracy.

Major reform in voting rights, redistricting, media (they're no longer guardians now that corporate interest control all levers and state and corporate actors can create armies of paid trolls), etc, campaign finance, lobying, etc.

There is so many ways democracy is on the brink right now... That if HRC was able to set this straight, it would be a herculean legacy to everyone.

[struggle4progress]

3. Actually, the German hyperinflation was ten years before the Nazi seizure of power --- and

the Nazis never won a majority of the Reichstag in any election. The hyperinflation was largely under control by the time of the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923: it did have lasting political effects because it wiped out middle class savings. The mechanical politics behind Nazi seizure of power are complicated, but the economy is unlikely to provide the major explanation

[Buckeye_Democrat]

5. Militarism?

My oldest brother worked as an engineer at Wright-Patt AFB back in the 70's.

He had an old PhD physicist co-worker from Germany who witnessed the rise of the Nazis in his youth. That man insisted that Nazism arose because of Germany's strong military history, and he hated what he saw in the USA at the time. He told my brother that the USA would have someone like Hitler in power eventually unless more Americans stopped "worshiping" our military. (The irony is that they both worked on new weapon technology.) That was even before Reagan was elected and military spending was increased!

My brother admired that physicist and considered him a "genius," but he thought that man was very wrong about that particular prediction.

Maybe that physicist was right to be worried after all? Is it a coincidence that the GOP, historically more militaristic, is the party that nominated Trump?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. Thanks! Excellent article!