“What we have witnessed from Trump over the last few weeks is something new. Trump has clearly crossed into the domain of Nazi ideology openly.”
― Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell
“Telling the truth about a lie is not spewing hate. Calling the truth ‘hate’ is a clever lie.”
―The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis
I am a Christian clergy, and I know my Bible. Lying lips? That is an abomination. Bearing false witness? The Ten Commandments say cut that out. But my mother is the reason I get nauseous if I think about lying. “Do not lie” was her most important rule. Do not lie, she taught, because then you must keep lying and might even forget what the truth sounds like. Raised in the Black Church in Mississippi, there was no room for lies in Mom’s ethical universe — no lie too small to corrupt your soul, no situation so dire that it merited untruth. If you lied, she would not trust you. I could not bear the idea of losing her trust.
Is Trump an Authoritarian, Hitler-esque Leader?
Some people are angry with me right now because I compared Donald J. Trump to Hitler. Yes, I did. So did J.D. Vance.
Vance wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful), or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
So many people and news sources I respect agree. I am not the first and I will not be the last to liken Trump to Hitler, because there is validity and truth to the comparison. Patterns, behaviors, and words out of Donald Trump’s mouth tell the truth about this. Calling immigrants vermin in the same way that Nazi propaganda demonized Jews as rats or parasites. Spewing hate speech about blood being tainted, also like Hitler. Trump said Hitler “Did some good things.”
Lately, he has been lying about pet-eating Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio. He knows it is a lie, and he doubles down. He is strategic about these lies. Because if he can get us all talking about immigration (and we are) he thinks he can win the election. And if he can get us all thinking about Haitians as people who eat pets, we can begin to think of them as less than human. And when he is ready to begin his mass deportation, we will have already “thingified” them, to use a term from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When they are thingified, they will be easier to deport, easier to despise, easier to disparage, and easier to destroy.
This pattern of lying, demonizing minorities, and outsiders, and promoting aggressive and violent behavior is an essential part of fascist and authoritarian regimes. I am not trying to insult, or be unkind, or anger Trump supporters. I am trying to teach, to raise an alarm, to say to people of good will and moral courage that this is a dangerous time, and Trump is behaving in dangerous ways. Good people have been here before, faced with leaders who have wielded a steady stream of vitriol and lies to dehumanize a group of humans — Jews, Muslims, gays, Roma, LGBTQIA folk, Indigenous folk, Black folk, Asian folk, poor people. We are seeing the signs. And in times of turmoil and stress, the human spirit is vulnerable to a strongman leader who suggests that he alone is the way out of difficulty — and that bigoted and horrible acts are courageous.
The Truth Might Save Us
Being truthful is not just about what we say, but about how we move in the world and how we are. While lying trips us up, the truth liberates. The energy that is bound up in hiding, pretending, and lying can be used for love of neighbor and of self. This is another thing Jesus taught. He calls us to be truth tellers and truth seekers.
Sadly, as we seek the truth, lying is deeply embedded in our politics. The tacit norm is: If a lie is repeated often enough, reported often enough, quoted often enough, it becomes the truth. This was the biggest rally ever. This was the largest inaugural crowd ever. The election was stolen. Immigrants are criminals and rapists. Millions of people are coming to eat your dogs, eat your cats. These lies are dangerous.
Lies about a stolen election led to a violent insurrection, where people were killed.
Lies about pets being consumed by Haitian immigrants have led to bomb threats against children in school. Children.
What We Must Know
I am inviting you to be a student with me, dear reader.
- Educate yourself and your community. Read about rising race hatred by members of Congress, as reported by an alliance of eight anti-hate groups. These members adhere to the “great replacement” theory — a belief that shadowy, often Jewish actors are orchestrating mass immigration by people of color to break the dominance of white people in American society. The theory has been connected to racist massacres in El Paso, Buffalo and Pittsburgh in which Hispanic, Black and Jewish people were targeted, respectively.
- Read for yourself articles like this one, on how Trump’s language echoes Adolf Hitler’s, comparing his political opponents to “vermin.”
- If it is important to hear these truths not only from a learned Black woman, but also from a white, learned man, follow the Substack of Robert. P. Jones who recently analyzed an interview Trump had in the far-right website, The National Pulse, where Trump said immigration is “a very sad thing for our country; it’s poisoning the blood of our country.” From Jones: “This language of rooting out vermin — the reason why authoritarian leaders use that is because it does dehumanize their political opponents. The dehumanization of political opponents are the bricks that pave the road to political violence.” Further, PRRI recently found that 23% of voters, including one-third of Republicans, agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That poll also found that 38% of Americans, including nearly half of Republicans, agree that the U.S. needs a leader who “is willing to break some rules if that is what it takes to set things right.” Jones sees this as a clear indication of authoritarian sentiment.
- And if you want the truth from a learned white woman, read the work of American historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat on the growth of authoritarian leadership. She writes about the tactics of such leaders, “You need to get people to feel they have an existential threat facing them. And the more they feel uncertain and fearful, the more the strongmen can appear and say, ‘I alone can fix it.’”
- Follow people with whom you disagree. Watch news on a channel representing views you oppose. Be curious about those self-interests as they relate to your own.
In Conclusion: Some Facts
- Former President Donald Trump praised the genocidal Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler while he was in the White House, his former chief of staff and other top aides told CNN.
- Trump has embraced some of the racist and dehumanizing rhetoric of Hitler on the campaign trail
- Trump said, “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” to retired Marine General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff from 2017 to 2019
- Last week, Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, one of Europe’s most authoritarian leaders, whom he praised on the debate stage.
- Trump has said he will be a dictator for the first day of his presidency to enact draconian immigration policies, expand domestic oil drilling, and free those imprisoned for proven crimes connected to the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attempted coup. Those prisoners, which number in the hundreds and include leaders of white nationalist militias and fascist street gangs, have repeatedly been described by Trump as “hostages.”
If these facts horrify you, and they should, do not stay silent. Be a student. Share the news. Speak the truth,even when it is hard. Protest, organize, and vote.
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis is senior minister and public theologian at Middle Church in New York. Celebrated internationally for her dynamic preaching and commitment to building a just society with fierce love, Dr. Lewis champions racial, economic, and gender/sexuality justice. The author of several books, including “Fierce Love” and the “Just Love Story Bible,” her work has been featured on NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, NPR and in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Ebony and Essence Magazines.