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By Dele Sobowale

“Power and money do drive people crazy. So why shouldn’t people also gain power and wealth through being crazy.” Saul Bellow. VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTES, p 195.

Americans, since the end of the Second World War, had always wondered how the most advanced people in Europe, the Germans, in the early parts of the last century could produce a monstrous leader like Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945. With the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America, they now know how in a fit of absent-mindedness bordering on lunacy, nations use their votes to appoint a crack-port as their leader. History does not repeat itself; only human beings are so stupid.

Each and every time the world faces a series of problems, along comes a leader in one of the more powerful nations offering alluringly simple solutions to complex problems. It was a global recession in early 1900s, as well as the unanswered question of balance of power and an economic depression in 1933 which resulted in two world wars last century. The second war and the role of Adolf Hitler are of more interest to us. He and Donald Trump share a few things in common which could help us to understand the trajectory of Trump’s presidency and how it will affect the world. Eventually, those who had complacently assumed that the world can no longer fight a global war might be proved wrong. They assume that because of the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, capacities, available in several countries, no leader would dare unleash his own arsenal first. Not stated, but implied in that assumption is another one – that every nation with nuclear weapons will always have a leader who is totally rational and not a single one will lose his marbles. I am not so sure that mankind can perpetually guarantee that sane men and women will always rule all nations of the world.

Donald Trumps’ first few days in office is a pointer to how wrong the optimists might turn out to be about the perpetual sanity of world leaders. Hitler was considered deranged only after he had plunged the world into war and after he had died – but not before taking close to one hundred million souls down with him. Until then, his detractors thought they were dealing with just a difficult person; his supporters regarded him as a god-sent hero. That is the first similarity between Fuhrer Trump and Fuhrer Hitler. Adolf had his hard core followers, the Brown Shirts, who would do anything the Fuhrer ordered with no questions asked. Fuhrer Trump had cultivated his American version of “Brown Shirts” – people who accept anything Trump does or orders to be done as legitimate. Both groups believe only in obeying orders from their leader – to whom they owe total allegiance.

Hitler’s basic principle and Trump’s are also the same. They both believe that MIGHT IS RIGHT. Imagine, if you can, the President of Ukraine telling Russian President Putin that Ukraine is going to construct a wall between the two nations and Russia would pay for it; or Viet Nam saying the same thing to China. The absurdity of those two scenarios is clear to all. Turn the situation around; this time Russia and China planning to build the wall and the smaller nation would be compelled to pay for it. Which nation in the world would be the first to condemn the big nations? You receive no medals for guessing America. Americans would have been the first to condemn the announcement and the attempt at extortion of funds from a weaker nation. They would have told us that it violates international law; that it is banditry raised to the level of statecraft. Yet, before Election Day last year, millions of American “Brown Shirts” clapped at every campaign rally where Trump promised to adopt banditry as government policy in dealing with Mexico.

Fuhrer Trump does not give a damn about the rule of law, the constitution or justice. He favours rule by force or fraud (the man is a proud tax evader). That was why the Acting Attorney General who stated clearly that she would not obey an unconstitutional order was fired. She joins late Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General under President Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than obey an illegal presidential instruction in what in American history was known as Black Friday. Trump had selected people like Hitler’s cabinet who would gladly carry out unconstitutional orders. Most on them are descendants of German and Italian immigrants. They are at home with Fascism – the cult of personality.

So, what stops the same “Brown Shirts” of America from endorsing a war with Mexico to collect the “debt” arising from the construction of the wall? Unless the rest of the world understand that we are dealing with a clone of another German, of un-blessed memory, nothing would stop Fuhrer Trump and his gang from going to war with Mexico. Hitler did the same thing to the Balkan countries and, like Trump, he actually told the entire world he would do it. Nobody believed any sane person would do such things – until he started doing them. Obviously, the safest thing for the whole world to assume is that Fuhrer Trump, like Fuhrer Hitler, will try to fulfill all he promised in the campaigns and he would not allow legality or justice to stand in the way. So, the world has two choices – submit or resist.

In making that choice, we need to take advice from Hitler who warned that “You don’t fight terror with appeasement; you fight terror with terror”. Every bully is a terrorist; irrespective of whether the bully is an individual or a nation. Trump had shown us the bully’s face of America – which had previously been well-concealed – and the rest of us must deal with that reality and not hope there will be a change.

Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump have German blood running through their veins. Trump’s parents migrated to the US and his mother was reportedly an illegal immigrant allowed to stay by charitable people. Her son is not so generous. He cares not a dime for the down-trodden. For all we know, Trump and Hitler might be distant cousins. But, that thought need not delay us here. America has Trump just as Nazi Germany had Hitler. The world should not make the same mistake twice.

One nation and its current leader appear too eager to repeat the errors of 1936. Hitler’s ascendancy and his first conquests brought in a clown waving the olive branch and promising to support the Germans in their global ambitions. The man was Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945 – the Italian Fascist leader – who was too happy to kiss Hitler’s hand and perhaps his rump as well. Bad history repeated itself two days after Fuhrer Trump was sworn in. Mrs “Mussolini” May, Prime Minister of no so great Britain, was in the US to “kiss” Trump’s hand; and perhaps his rump. Before her meeting with Trump, she had a speaking engagement with Republicans in Philadelphia. There she proceeded to polish the American and Trump apple.

Among other things “Mussolini” May recollected that it was in that city that the Founding fathers of America gathered from thirteen states to announce the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. She even recollected that one of the most famous lines in that declaration pronounced that “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all Men are created equal…” As with most white people telling white audiences about American history, Mrs “M” May conveniently forgot that most of the hypocritical Founding fathers were slave owners and women were not allowed to vote. More importantly, she deliberately overlooked the fact that Indians were already there when white men reached America. She did not remind the Republicans that their fore-fathers carried out the worst holocaust known to man by wiping out all the Indians and stealing their land. Mrs “Mussolini” May did not recollect all those facts because they would reveal to the Republicans and the entire world that under the American velvet glove extended to the world is a blood-stained steel claw; that America’s vaunted moral superiority is a sham.

The emergence of Fuhrer Trump was an incident waiting to happen. It has at last revealed to the entire world that America thinks it has bought the world, the way a client has rights to a prostitute. And, the rest of us better behave or there will be hell to pay.

To be continued…

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