Last year I posted a quick response to the hysteria surrounding the election of Donald Trump. I headlined that post, ‘Why Trump is Not Hitler, & Why American Evangelicals Are Not German Christians’. My aim was to counter a lot of what I was seeing posted on social media by people who were usually level-headed and intellectually responsible.
It was disappointing to see normally sane individuals suddenly join the ranks of anti-Trump – which really were I’m angry because the Leftist power structures and its monopoly on power were diminished – riots. (It’s safe to say that after twelve months, they’ve started to lose their shine as well.)
Worse still, were some Christian conservative academics who took to social media to virtue signal to the all-powerful Left in what I can only describe as a sycophantic attempt to validate themselves in the eyes of those on the Left. Even I felt pressure to censor my view of Trump and the current political scene, so as to not fall foul of the power brokers in my field of academic work and study.
Generally balanced academics picked up Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, forged both into anti-Trump weapons, and started swinging them around in unison with the “Trump is Hitler” chorus. Despite the intimidation, I decided to work a way back towards unity; shared ground.
Informing my post at the time is the fact that both Barth and Bonhoeffer, who were anti-Nazi theologians, would be unlikely to leap before they looked when it came to the political scaremongering surrounding Trump. They weren’t fans of labels, generalised slogans, and false doctrines. Nor were they supporters of the imposition of new cultural laws, restrictions on freedom of speech, inciting the mob, Nazi flags in churches and collective conformity to party-lines. That’s part of what made them anti-Nazi theologians.
Did some Christians commit the blasphemy of looking to Trump as though God Himself had been elected to the White House? Sure, but no differently to how people deify celebrity, or in the relevant political arena how people fell apart when President Obama was moved on and Clinton lost.
I also agree that there are similarities between the power structures in the 1930’s and today. However, where I disagree is where we draw those parallels. The similarities, as I’ve pointed out many times in my writing, fall parallel with socialism, repression and control of the universities by the Left, among other points of constancy such as dehumanising anyone who disagrees them. For more on my thinking about this, take for example this quote from an article I published in October:
“The danger should be clear enough. From a psychological point of view this rampant ad hominem is recognised as emotional manipulation. Recklessly calling someone a Nazi is a shaming technique designed to control the opponent in an attempt to discredit and silence them. The same goes for those who would paint all white people as racist.
“Link both the reckless labelling of people as Nazis and the slogan “all white people are racist” together and the cocktail of hate is complete. All that’s needed are chambers filled with the pesticide Zyklon B, cyclone fencing, and all those determined by the Left as having “life unworthy of life”.
“Any well-informed reader who knows the history behind the genocidal rampaging in Rwanda, of the Tutsis against the Hutus, will see that there is good reason for concern […]
“Since the Left give us permission to do so, if a group of people calling other people Nazis are doing exactly what Nazis did, shouldn’t those being called Nazis have the right to punch a Nazi?
“The answer is a tentative “no”. Those who stand opposed must do better than employ the same tactics used against them. Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Thatcher didn’t bring about an end to the Cold War by feeding the status quo.
Another similarity is the indoctrination of those on the Left by their ideological masters. Some may say that this is ridiculous. That those on the Left aren’t indoctrinated. That there is no, as I call it, leftist cult of modern liberalism. If that is true, then why has the past twelve months show the Western world that something is amiss and, although the man has his moments, it’s not Donald Trump or the “Christian right”.
Examples of how the culture of repudiation and its dehumanising has taken hold in the psyche of the average individual are magnified by social media, and those examples are incriminating, such as the comment to this YouTube video:
This person is a victim of the times. So rather than argue with them online, I decided to write a general response outlining five reasons why their statement was flat-out wrong:
- Unlike, North Korea, People aren’t risking their lives to escape America into Mexico, Cuba or Canada.
- Unlike Zimbabwe, North Korea or Turkey, soldiers aren’t defecting from the United States, nor are America’s defences forces attempting a coup.
- Unlike Syria, the United Nations is not monitoring the Government because of previous gas attacks on the Syrian people.
- Unlike Turkey, the media and academics, despite their vicious and continued harassment of the Trump administration have not been rounded up and arrested.
- It’s a logical fallacy, involves a poor reading of theology and it’s reckless labelling. One just doesn’t name-drop the anti-Christ or Hitler without qualifying the accusation in order to say why.
The real tragedy in all of this is that by crying wolf about Nazism, the Left desensitises people to the heinous crimes of Nazism. It reduces Nazism to the absurd and reduces the ability for anyone to call out the real thing, when and if it or an equivalent, God forbid, rises once more.
False accusations turn the blood brother of Communism into a joke, potentially doing great damage to the legacy of the millions who fell and suffered at the hands of both their Nazi and Communist oppressors. The meaning and reverence in the words “never again” and “Solidarity” are not the battle cries of cultural Marxists, Antifa, Leftists or Trump haters.
Those words are prayers, and their meanings are forged in the fires of hell on earth, something far removed from the Nike Air, Apple iphone, iMac, ivory tower professors, millennials, and anyone else sucked in by those on the Left who feed them lines about oppression, privilege, the need for safe spaces and all manner of pejorative phobias used to conveniently dismiss opposing opinions.
Like its Marxist brother, Nazism is pure evil. We cannot allow these attacks on the legacy of its victims. We must not let their memory fade at the hands of those who would rather use the fallacy of moral equivalence for cheap applause, or to maintain the power structures of the Left, than think through what it really means when they accuse Trump of being Hitler and most Trump supporters of being fascists.
Perhaps the best statement about Trump I’ve read so far comes from Mark Landsbaum:
“Yeah, his style is rude, crude and clumsy, to say nothing about childish. But we’ve tried polite, considerate and grownup and guess what – that’s what got the country where it was a year ago. I don’t much care how crude and clumsy he is as long as he continues on the trajectory he’s charted: millions of babies saved and 150 victories in 10 months. He’s not my pastor. He’s my mechanic.”
I am, when it comes to President Donald Trump, as I have been from the beginning, a cautious optimist. I see him as a diamond in the rough. I’m not yet a fan, but the person and thousands like them on the internet who are quick to call Trump another Hitler, should be called out for what they are mindlessly repeating: Word for word, Leftist dogma and its party-line propaganda.
This article was originally published at http://www.rodlampard.com/