During the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Presidential elections, white supremacists comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Donald Trump’s rallies.  

Many of them sported signs that read: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”

They knew that demographics were steadily working against them. Birthrates among nonwhites were rising. By 2045, whites would make up less than 50% of the American population.

The 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first black President, had shocked Fascistic whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.

Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might be followed by a woman: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And the idea of a woman dictating to men was strictly too much for them to bear.

So, on November 8, 2016, Donald Trump—lacking any government experience and best known as the host of a reality TV show—was elected President of the United States. 

Eight years later, in 2024, President Joseph Biden turned 80—six years younger than German President Paul von Hindenburg when he died—and was capable of dying literally any day.   

His Vice President, Kamala Harris—a black woman—was widely perceived as unprepared for the Presidency.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump—defeated in 2020—was, like Adolf Hitler, waging an all-out campaign to make himself dictator.

Hitler had a list of priorities—such as exterminating the Jews and conquering France, England and the Soviet Union—that he intended to carry out.

Similarly, Trump had his own list of priorities. Most of these had been supplied by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation under the title “Project 2025,” or “The Presidential Transition Project.” 

Established in 2022, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.

The Heritage Foundation 

ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Their goal: To fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government toward a Fascistic agenda.

Among these proposals:

• An all-out assault on immigration–both legal and illegal;
• Attacking America’s long-term allies, such as Canada and England;
• Catering to America’s longtime enemies, such as Russia and China;
• Waging an all-out war on the press;
• Replacing tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks who owe their loyalty to Trump;
• Making the director of the FBI personally accountable to the President—just as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin;
• Stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to protect the air, soil and water; 
• Favoring fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—and abolishing regulations to combat climate change;
• Placing traditionally  independent federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission under Presidential control;
• Providing massive tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% at the expense of the poor and middle class;
• Designating contraception as the point where life begins;
• Outlawing abortion;
• Sharply restricting—if not banning—access to birth control; 
• Designating Christianity as the official religion of the United States;
• Reviving and expanding the use of capital punishment, while sharply restricting the right of appeals.  

Once Trump assumed the Presidency again on January 20, 2025, he began to vigorously implement as many of these goals as time and circumstances allowed.

Reading Katja Hoyer’s 2026 book Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, the parallels between Hitler’s Third Reich and Trump’s second term become frighteningly clear. 

For the administration of Adolf Hitler, the Number One enemy was the Jews.

And so, on September 15, 1935, the Reich pushed the “Nuremberg Laws” through its rubber-stamp parliament. These stripped Jews of their citizenship and laid the legal foundation for their systematic persecution. 

“The Reich Citizenship Law” restricted citizenship solely to people of “German or related blood.” It reduced German Jews to second-class subjects. And it defined who was Jewish by having three or four Jewish grandparents, rather than religious practice or belief.

“The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour” banned marriages and sexual relations between Jews and German citizens (“race defilement”). It also forbade Jewish households from employing German female domestic workers under the age of 45.

Enforcement of these laws was entrusted to the local police and Hitler’s paramilitary police forces, the S.A. (“Brownshirts”) and SS (“Schutzstaffel”). 

For the administration of Donald Trump, the Number One enemy is Hispanics. Trump made attacking illegal immigration the centerpiece of  his 2024 campaign.

At the 2024 Republican convention, which nominated him, delegates cheered and waved “Mass Deportation Now” signs, excited at the thought of seeing tens of thousands of brown-skinned men, women and children being forced to leave the country.

And since taking office, Trump has turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into his private army. Its size and budget dwarf those of every other federal law enforcement agency.  

ICE employs more than 22,000 agents. Its annual budget usually stood at about $10 billion. But Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 2025, provided it with $75 billion in extra funding. 

By July 21, 2026, according to ABC News, “The total number of deportations so far this fiscal year is 356,389, according to the numbers posted by ICE. ICE currently has 65,765 individuals in detention facilities, 60% of whom have a criminal record, according to the agency.”

If Nuremberg-style justice comes to the United States, those citizens who have lustily supported Donald Trump’s legacy of hatred, tyranny and corruption will be forced to answer for the horrors their support enabled Trump to commit.       

Among these: 

• Issuing executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing  lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
• Flooding the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Chicago with federalized National Guard troops against state governors’ wishes during immigration crackdowns and civil unrest.
• Flooding Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, with 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who terrorized (and in two cases murdered) both American citizens and illegal aliens. 
• Threatening Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
• Threatening Greenland—an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark—with invasion unless it agreed to acquisition by the United States. Since Denmark is a member of NATO, such an invasion would pit the United States against its own alliance.

Donald Trump

• Launching an unprovoked attack on Iran on February 28, believing that in six weeks he can force its Islamic rulers to abandon their plans to develop nuclear weapons. 
• Iran immediately closes the Strait of Hormuz—through which about 20 million barrels of oil used to pass each day. That flow has been reduced to between two million and six million barrels each day.
• This has created a worldwide spiral in oil prices—and fueled inflation in the United States and other nations. But as prices for housing, energy and food soar in the United States, Trump claims that “affordability” is a “Democratic hoax.”
• Like Adolf Hitler contemplating architectural models while Nazi Germany neared destruction, Trump focuses on vanity projects like a 90,000 square foot White House ballroom and a towering “Victory Arch” overlooking Arlington Cemetery. 
• Seven months later—by September—the war continues and Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s on-again, off-again bombing campaign has dangerously strained and depleted American military stockpiles. 

Reading Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, by Katja Hoyer, catapults the reader into the doomed Weimar Republic, which lasted from November 9, 1919, to March 23,1933.

Its parallels—whether intentional or unintentional, between that era and the one the United States is now living through—are uncanny and frightening.

During its 14-year existence, the Republic granted Germans rights they had never enjoyed—and which would be ruthlessly suppressed during the 12-year Third Reich that replaced it.

Among those rights:

• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of assembly
• Privacy of mail, telegraph, and telephone
• Free and secret elections
• All citizens were eligible for public office

But the Republic had dangerous enemies—Communists on the Left, and Nazis on the Right. And it was plagued by charges of illegitimacy and even treason—for its members’ having signed the Treaty of Versailles ending World War 1.

Another motivating factor: Right-wing antisemitism, shared by millions of Germans. The fact that the Republic held many Jews within its topmost ranks only increased the hatred aimed at it.

Germans refused to admit they had lost World War 1 on the battlefield. They demanded scapegoats—Jews, Communists, traitors—who had “stabbed us in the back.” 

Adolf Hitler joined the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party in 1919—the year after World War 1 ended.

Adolf Hitler

In 1923, he staged a coup attempt in Bavaria—which was quickly and brutally put down by police. He was arrested and sentenced to less than a year in prison. 

After that, Hitler decided that winning power through violence was no longer an option. He must win it through election—or appointment.

He repeatedly ran for the highest office in Germany—President—but never got a clear majority in a free election. 

When the 1929 Depression struck Germany, the fortunes of Hitler’s Nazi party rose as the life savings of ordinary Germans fell. Streets echoed with bloody clashes between members of Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers and those of the German Communist Party.

Germany seemed on the verge of collapsing.

Germans desperately looked for a leader—a Fuhrer—who could somehow deliver them from the threat of financial ruin and Communist takeover.

In early 1933, members of his own cabinet persuaded aging German president, Paul von Hindenburg, that only Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor could do this.

Paul von Hindenburg

Hindenburg considered Hitler a dangerous radical. But he allowed himself to be convinced that, by putting Hitler in the Cabinet, he could be “boxed in” and thus controlled.

So, on January 30, 1933, he reluctantly appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor—the equivalent of  Attorney General.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler immediately assumed the titles—and duties—of the offices of Chancellor and President.

His rise to total power was now complete.

Eighty-four years after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Donald Trump became President of the United States.

The parallels between these two administrations have since become alarmingly clear.