Just as opposites can attract, so, too can similarities repel.
Take Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, for example.
Both:
- Admired strength and despised weakness.
- Built their careers by appealing to hatred—Hitler of Jews, Stalin of non-Communists.
- Were colossal egotists—insisting that they be referred to as geniuses and saviors and ordering that their portraits and statues be displayed everywhere.
- Ruled by terror—exterminating millions and imprisoning other millions in a network of concentration camps.
- Signed a non-aggression treaty, partly because each feared the other, and partly to gain half of Poland.
Joseph Stalin
Yet for all their similarities Hitler and Stalin inevitably became deadly enemies.
Hitler hated Communism and coveted “living space” for Germans within the Soviet Union. And Stalin hated Fascism and saw “Hitlerite” Germany as his most dangerous enemy.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union. Only after suffering at least 25 million casualties did Stalin see his armies repel the Nazi invaders and conquer Germany.
Adolf Hitler
Fast forward 73 years since the end of World War II in 1945.
Stalin and Hitler are dead—and so is the death-struggle they shared. In its place stands the conflict between President Donald Trump and his former White House assistant, Omarosa Manigault-Newman.
The relationship between these two dates to 2004, when she became a participant in the first season of The Apprentice, NBC’s “reality” TV series. Her rudeness and ruthlessness toward other contestants quickly made her “the woman America loved to hate,” according to Jet magazine.
She returned in the seventh season of The Apprentice as well.
TV Guide included her in its 2013 list of “The 60 Nastiest TV Villains of All Time.”
Omarosa Manigault-Newman
(By Photography by Glenn Francis of PacificProDigital.com)
In 2008, she appeared on Celebrity Apprentice—where she was again fired after failing to sell more artwork than a rival team.
During the 2016 Presidential race, she served as Trump’s Director of African-American Outreach, although she had absolutely no credible ties to the black community.
In February, 2016, she appeared on a segment on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show. Fox panelist Tamara Holder said that she would like Trump more if he expressed support for Black Lives Matter or put forward a plan to improve inner cities.
Manigault argued that the topic of the discussion should be limited to Trump’s criticism of the Iraq war. In doing so, she mispronounced Holder’s first name.
Holder: “It’s Tamara.”
Manigault: “It’s the same difference, boo. You want to come on with big boobs, then you deal with the pronunciation of your name.”
“Wait a second,” Bartiromo interrupted. “Why are you bringing up Tamara’s boobs?”
Manigault: “Because she started going back talking about, ‘Oh, you were a Democrat and you supported Hillary Clinton.’ If you want to get personal, we can get personal.”
Manigault wasn’t bothered that blacks regarded Trump so poorly in polls: “My reality is that I’m surrounded by people who want to see Donald Trump as the next president of the United States who are African-American.”
Donald Trump
And, in September, 2016, she famously predicted: “Every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
Just as Hitler—for all the similarities he shared with Stalin—inevitably turned on him, so did Manigault turn on Trump.
When Trump moved into the White House on January 20, 2017, Manigault moved in with him as his director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison.
In June, 2017, she invited the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to visit the White House. And she signed the invitation: “The Honorable Omarosa Manigault.”
This is not a title given to political aides. And it’s not used by those referring to themselves.
The arrogance offended some members of the Caucus, which declined the invitation.
In August, Manigault appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in New Orleans. She was a panelist on a discussion about losing loved ones to violence.
When the moderator, Ed Gordon, asked her about Trump’s policies and not her personal history with losing family members through violence, Manigault got into a shouting match with him.
On December 13, she was told that she would be leaving the White House on January 20, 2018—one year from the day she had arrived there. She reportedly asked Ivanka Trump to intervene on her behalf, but the request was denied.
Deciding to go right to the top, she headed for the Trump’s private quarters. There she tripped an alarm—which brought guards and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to the scene.
An enraged Kelly ordered her ejected from the White House. Multiple sources report that she was physically restrained and escorted—cursing and screaming—from the Executive Mansion.
Next day—December 14—Manigault appeared on “Good Morning America.”
The woman who had been Trump’s ambassador to blacks now sang a different tune: “I have seen things that made me uncomfortable, that have upset me, that have affected me deeply and emotionally, that has affected my community and my people. And when I can tell my story, it is a profound story that I know the world will want to hear.”
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THE REPUBLICANS’ HORST WESSEL
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2021 at 12:12 amRepublicans—including those who pursue a Fascistic agenda—are quick to accuse their opponents of being “Nazis.”
Yet similarities abound between the tactics—and often the goals—between yesterday’s Nazis and today’s Republicans.
One of these is the need for martyrs by both parties.
The Nazis found theirs in Horst Wessel.
As a teenager growing up in the Weimar Republic of Germany, he joined the Viking Liga (“Viking League”), a Right-wing paramilitary group. Its goal, wrote Wessel, was “the “establishment of a national dictatorship.”
He soon became a local leader, engaging in street battles with rival Leftist groups such as the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD). In 1926, he joined the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (“Storm Detachment” or SA) of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party).
Horst Wessel
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-043-14 / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
His unit had a reputation as “a band of thugs, a brutal squad.” One of his men described the way they fought against the Communists: “Horst made Adolf Hitler’s principle his own: Terror can be destroyed only by counterterror.”
In September 1929, Wessel met Erna Jänicke, a 23-year-old ex-prostitute, in a tavern. Some sources claim Wessel acted as Jänicke’s pimp. She soon moved into his room.
Wessel’s landlady, Elisabeth Salm, wanted Jänicke to leave. But Jänicke refused to do so.
Salm appealed to Communist friends of her late husband to evict Jänicke, They agreed to beat Wessel up and evict him from Salm’s flat. They recruited Albrecht Höhler, an armed pimp, perjurer and petty criminal, to handle the evicting.
On February 23, 1930, Höhler knocked at the front door of the room where Wessel and Jänicke lived. When Wessel opened the door, Höhler shot him at point-blank range.
He was 22 when he died.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels quickly turned Wessel into a Nazi martyr. Wessel had written the lyrics for a new Nazi fight song: “The Unknown SA-Man.” It later became known as “Raise the Flag” and finally the “Horst Wessel Lied.”
Its opening stanza.
Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed!
The SA marches with calm, steady step.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.
“The Horst Wessel Lied” became the official anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945.
Fast forward to January 6, 2021—when the Republican Party got its own martyr: Ashli Babbitt.
A veteran of the United States Air Force, she served two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq before later deploying with the National Guard to Kuwait and Qatar.
Originally from San Diego, California, by 2020 she had recently remarried and was working at a pool service company.
On social media, she described herself as a libertarian and a patriot. She often expressed ardent support for President Donald Trump.
On November 3, 2020, Trump lost the Presidential election to former Vice President Joseph Biden.
Biden won the popular vote—81,268,924 to 74,216,154 for Trump—and, more importantly, in the Electoral College: 306 to 232.
But Babbitt accepted wholesale Trump’s lie that the election had been stolen from him by massive voter fraud.
On January 6, 2021, members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives would meet in the United States Capitol Building. They would count the Electoral College votes received by Trump and Biden—and pronounce Biden the President-elect.
Babbitt was determined to “Stop the Steal” by assaulting the Capitol Building on January 6.
Ashli Babbitt
On January 5, she posted on social media: “Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours.”
On January 6, she was among hundreds of Right-wing men and women who breached the Capitol. She was also the mob’s only casualty.
As lawmakers were being evacuated by Capitol Police, Babbitt tried to climb through a shattered window in a barricaded door. She was warned to back off several times by a policeman standing on the other side.
Babbitt defied the orders—and was shot in the neck/shoulder. She died of the wound—at age 35,
The shooting was later ruled justified by the Justice Department.
Almost a century ago Nazis extolled Horst Wessel as a virtuous martyr. Today, members of Right-wing groups—and even Congressional Republicans—portray Ashli Babbitt as a fallen Joan of Arc.
During a hearing with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in April, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ.) claimed Babbitt was “executed.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has made the same charge.
And, not to be outdone, so has Donald Trump himself.
“Who was the person who shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman?” Trump asked Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on July 11. “I will tell you, they know who shot Ashley Babbitt. They’re protecting that person. I’ve heard also that it was the head of security for a certain high official—a Democrat.”
The Nazis found in Horst Wessel a hero to inspire their followers. So, too, have Republicans generally and Trump enthusiasts specifically found the same in Ashli Babbitt.
The only question remaining to be answered: Will an “Ashli Babbitt Lied” culminate in a similar tyranny for the United States?
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