Trump Supporter: "Go To Fucking Auschwitz"

As one who loves history and who has read a fair amount about the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany in the early 1930's, I candidly find Donald Trump and his supporters to be increasingly frightening.   Like Hitler, Trump is playing to economic and social unrest and perhaps is unleashing a nightmare.  Here's a brief summary of what happened in 1930's Germany:

At the beginning of the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party exploited widespread and deep-seated discontent in Germany to attract popular and political support. There was resentment at the crippling territorial, military and economic terms of the Versailles Treaty, which Hitler blamed on treacherous politicians and promised to overturn. . . . . the Nazi party offered strong leadership and national rebirth. From 1929 onwards, the worldwide economic depression provoked hyperinflation, social unrest and mass unemployment, to which Hitler offered scapegoats such as the Jews. . . . . the regime was against cultural modernism and supported the development of an extensive military at the expense of intellectualism.

Sound familiar?  Trump's entire platform boils down to a coordinated use of hatred towards others, and opposition to modernity and social changes, and discontent to rally extremely ugly elements in the GOP base.  This hatred and discontent has been cynically nurtured for many years by the so-called GOP establishment for electoral purposes.  Now, it seems that a raging conflagration has been ignited that will be difficult to control.  In 1930, few Germans foresaw what the Nazi's would ultimately unleash on that nation or the world.  Closing one's eyes and telling one's self that the ugliness will pass is not an answer.  Trump, and to a similar extent Ted Cruz, and what he represents MUST be opposed and stopped.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing threat and societal cancer posed by Trump and his supporters.  Here are excerpts:

An already ugly presidential campaign has descended to a new level — one where the question is no longer whether Donald Trump can be stopped on his march to the Republican presidential nomination, but whether it is possible to contain what he has unleashed across the country.

Violence at Trump’s rallies has escalated sharply, and the reality-show quality of his campaign has taken a more ominous turn in the past few days.

On Saturday, a man charged the stage in Dayton, Ohio, and a swarm of Secret Service agents surrounded the GOP front-runner.

Later Saturday at a Trump rally in Kansas City, the candidate was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, who were then removed from the venue. Outside the rally, police said they used pepper spray to control crowds. Kansas City police said that two protesters were arrested.

The racially tinged anger that has both fueled Trump’s political rise and stoked the opposition to it has turned into a force unto itself. It has also brought a reckoning from his three remaining rivals for the Republican nomination, who are shedding their fear of provoking Trump and of alienating the raging slice of their party’s base that has claimed him as its leader.

But Trump should not be viewed in isolation or as the product of a single election, President Obama said Saturday at a fundraiser in Dallas.  Obama said those who “feed suspicion about immigrants and Muslims and poor people, and people who aren’t like ‘us,’ and say that the reason that America is in decline is because of ‘those’ people. That didn’t just happen last week. That narrative has been promoted now for years.”

A low point came Friday night. Where Trump has delighted in mocking hecklers — and condoning attacks on them by his supporters — he was forced to cancel a rally at the last minute after protesters turned up by the thousands. That set off a chaotic scene in the arena at the University of Illinois at Chicago that left a handful injured and thousands agitated.

[Trump's] candidacy and the sentiment it provokes have also stirred disturbing historical comparisons.

GOP political consultant Stuart Stevens, who was a top strategist for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, said Trump’s rhetoric is “almost verbatim” what segregationist George Wallace was saying in his third-party 1968 presidential campaign.   “What did the Democratic Party do with Wallace? They rejected him.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said Saturday. “This is a man who at rallies has told his supporters to basically beat up the people who are in the crowd and he’ll pay their legal fees. Someone who’s basically encouraged the people in the audience to rough up anyone who stands up and says something he doesn’t like.  “I still at this moment continue to intend to support the Republican nominee, but it’s getting harder every day.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich condemned Trump for creating a “toxic environment” that has led supporters and protesters to “come together in violence,” but he, too, stopped short of saying he would not support his Republican rival if Trump secures the party’s presidential nomination.

[T]he outbreak of violence in Chicago had again drawn focus to Trump’s temperament and character, as well as whether he has played a role in inciting his supporters.

Asked about the criticism from other Republican candidates following the Chicago cancellation, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski mocked them: “Do they have protesters at their events? Do they have any people at their events?”

Lewandowski — who has been accused of and denies manhandling a female reporter at a Trump event — also said his candidate does not plan to do anything to calm his supporters.

“The American people are angry,” Lewandowski said. “They’re upset at the way this country has been run. They’re upset that this country is being taken advantage of by every other country in the world. And they’re tired of not being proud to be Americans.”

“My people are nice,” Trump said at his rally in Dayton. “Thousands and thousands of people, they caused no problem. They were taunted, they were harassed by these other people. These other people, by the way, some represent Bernie, our communist. . . . He should really get up and say to his people: ‘Stop. Stop.’ ”

Sanders retorted in a statement issued by his campaign:  . . . . “What caused the protests at Trump’s rally is a candidate that has promoted hatred and division against Latinos, Muslims, women, and people with disabilities, and his birther attacks against the legitimacy of President Obama,” Sanders added, referring to Trump’s false assertions that Obama was born in Africa and was therefore disqualified to be president.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton also jumped into the fray.  “The ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous,” she said at an appearance in St. Louis. “If you play with matches, you’re going to start a fire you can’t control.”

Clinton is right, Trump and his supporters are dangerous.  As for his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, he apparently views himself as a modern day  Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda.  Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo summed up what Trump is doing well:

What we have seen over the last two weeks isn't just an escalation of chaos and low level violence but a progressive normalization of unacceptable behavior - more racist verbal attacks, more violence. . . . The climate Trump is creating at his events is one that not only disinhibits people who normally act within acceptable societal norms. He is drawing in, like moths to a flame, those who most want to act out on their animosities, drives and beliefs. It is the kind of climate where someone will eventually get killed.