-by Helen KleinYesterday I was perusing the headlines of the Washington Post. It is about all I can take these days, as reading the details in each piece is too nauseating. I also find watching the news on television way too difficult, as looking at Trump’s face and listening to him speak about his plans and appointments make me ill. (And I thought looking at Johnson, Nixon and Bush’s countenances was bad!) What struck me in the Post was the Op Ed piece entitled, Donald Trump Is Actually A Fascist. Hey, let’s call a spade a spade. Howie is already on it. While more and more has been coming out in this vein, the mainstream media had better do a full court press on this, and soon. Who knew how bad Trump would actually be? Worse than our worst nightmares.The Op Ed notes that over the past year, people have been trying to figure out what Trump really thinks and stands for. He was so inconsistent, so far removed from reality and such a big liar that while it all looked very bad, the big picture was-- likely purposefully so-- unclear. Well, it is all becoming quite clear, and quickly. He is not even in office yet and just look at the people he is inserting into his government. A horror show. A Bizarro Superman world, where every person he is considering for an appointment has a personal agenda in direct conflict with the department he/she will head. The head of the EPA who denies science and climate change? The Secretary of Education whose children only went to private schools, knows nothing about public education and wants to privatize it? A billionaire from the coal industry who was fined many times and was responsible for poor safety standards and many miners’ deaths for the Secretary of the Commerce? A CEO of Exxon-Mobil and a friend of Russia for Secretary of State? The list goes on and on.Trump is a fascist, and this simple term clarifies everything.From the Op Ed:
Now that we’ve seen a bit of him in action, it seems that Trump actually does have a recognizable agenda that explains how he simultaneously can pander to big business while “strong-arming”….an air conditioning manufacturer to save a few hundred jobs for a while. Or how he can make nice with the authoritarian Vladimir Putin while making bellicose foreign policy noises in general. Or how he can blithely upset with a phone call the absurdly delicate balance of our relations with China and Taiwan. All of this seemingly erratic behavior can be explained – if not justified – by thinking of Trump as a fascist...in the sense that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world.
Another piece that struck me in a similar vein was an article a couple of weeks ago in the Huffington Post entitled, History Teacher Removed From Classroom After Comparing Trump to Hitler. Frank Navarro had been teaching history at Mountain View High School for forty years.
A California high school teacher has been placed on paid leave after drawing comparisons between Adolf Hitler and President-elect Donald Trump in his classroom. History teacher Frank Navarro was asked to leave after a parent wrote an email to the school complaining about his lecture.Navarro, who is a Holocaust scholar, said his lesson was based on facts. “Both Trump and Hitler, during their rise to power, vowed to deport foreigners and make the country ‘great again’,” he noted.“This feels like we’re trying to squash free speech...Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go check it out. It’s not propaganda or bias if it’s based on hard facts.”Many public figures have made comparisons between Trump and Hitler…Social media users have also compared the two.
Here is a list from the article comparing Trump to Hitler:The good news is: more than 6,500 parents wrote letters to the district demanding that Navarro be reinstated. And he was! One small battle won.I'm not a puppet; I'm a real boyBaby Boomers: Where are You Now?Many of the older people who voted for Trump are baby boomers, after all. I do not understand how they seem to have forgotten that their parents fought against Hitler and fascism in World War II.The importance of knowing history and the dangers we now face will be critical for this country. What fascism is and why it must be fought need to be spotlighted and emphasized to the American public.During World War II, my father was part of an educational unit in the army. He was in the Orientation Branch, Special Services Division. His group was tasked with educating soldiers about fascism so they would understand what they were fighting for and why winning this war was so important. They provided lectures and led discussions for soldiers on the front lines, which helped to motivate them and honor their fight against fascism. It is striking and shocking to me that my father’s war efforts have become what is now needed for Americans. Educate and motivate to fight the good fight! His papers, which have been in boxes for over seventy years, now have current meaning. He would be very saddened by this, as he loved this country, but he would be unsurprised. He always had his eyes wide open about the efforts within to destroy what is good about this country and I often heard about it at the dinner table. Whenever my teenage friends came over, he would expound on the Vietnam War-- while this was much to my embarrassment, they were all enlightened by it and respected him. The government was not always right and did not always do the right thing. Although my father has been gone for sixteen years, I still can hear his voice in my head, explaining what is really going on and backing it up with facts.In his later years, my father continued to speak out against oppression and was a champion of civil rights and women’s rights. He occasionally spoke to history classes at his local high school about World War II, fascism and the Holocaust. Among his papers are thank you notes from the students, telling him how much they learned from his presentations. Our country now needs more people like him to stand up and speak out.The key to this fight is education and knowledge. The media (while we still have a free press) must take it on and report to Americans the facts and dangers before us. Fascism has a tremendous propaganda machine attached to it, which we have all been seeing more than ever in this election and this must be combated.There is far more to come on fascism, unfortunately. It is not going away. Just wait until Trump actually takes office. We have a tremendous battle ahead of us.
