You Should be Scared
What is happening in America in 2025 has strong parallels to what happened in Europe in the 1930’s. There is much to be learned from history.
President Donald Trump made a name for himself as a charismatic personality. He amassed a large following while working as a real estate tycoon and talk-show host. Over many years, he has frequently changed political parties in an overt attempt to access power and gain recognition as a member of societies elite class.
Mr. Trump changed parties 5 times between 1987 and 2016. In 2001, he became a Democrat — and remained one for eight years.
In a 2004 interview with CNN, he said that "in many cases" he identified more as a Democrat than Republican. "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans," he said. "It shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats … certainly, we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."
Despite his praise for the Democrats, Trump returned to the Republican Party in 2012 and has remained a member since. Yet, both Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka donated money to Kamala Harris between 2011 and 2013. At the time, Harris was involved in the prosecution legal case involving a class action about whether Trump University had defrauded its students.
While his actions and words at times seem nonsensical, disorganized, and even disoriented, the common thread and, hence the strong indication of an emerging pattern, has always been his desire to access power and join the elite circle of American society — he will do nearly anything to achieve those goals.
And now, in his second presidency, we are seeing president Trump as the true authoritarian that many thought he was. The demolition of many government agencies has been swift, his demand for retribution from his presidential bully pulpit has become increasingly bellicose, and his concentration of power in the Executive Branch of government has been bone-chilling. His strident followers have seemingly no interest in paying attention to how he does things, what laws he breaks, which parts of the Constitution he chooses to ignore, or what judges, lawyers and law firms he declares to be enemies of the state, choosing instead to blindly immerse themselves in his partisan rhetoric.
The Executive Branch of our government blatantly defied a federal judge’s order to temporarily halt the deportation of migrants to El Salvador. The president himself then called for the impeachment of the judge who issued the order, along with other judges. In one of the hundreds of legal cases filed against the Trump administration, a federal judge described the president’s executive order to overturn birthright citizenship as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
In mid-March 2025, president Trump spoke to the US Department of Justice. His speech was highly concentrated on retribution and he spewed a seemingly endless stream of lies and disinformation during that speech.
On multiple occasions, he has attacked private law firms , which represented his perceived enemies.
He has supported the actions of his DOGE (see private police squads below), which have led to a broad-swipe disablement of many critical government activities and the illegal firing of many federal employees, purportedly on “performance” grounds, a claim that court records now indicate was completely without justification.
His Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the closing of the Office of Net Assessment, which is a small and secretive, and sometimes opaque office that for more than 50 years has helped the Pentagon’s most senior leaders study and plan for the future of war. Eliminating a forward-looking government agency like this could only have one outcome — to detract from our nation's ability to prepare for and wage inevitable future wars.
President Trump has been frequently at odds with the independent Federal Court system, which has the responsibility to rule on the legality and constitutionality of actions taken or proposed by the Executive Branch and the Congress. He has also usurped the power of Congress to approve or reduce/eliminate funding from congressionally approved initiatives and government bodies. In the process of doing so, he has weakened the balance of powers imbued in the Constitution. If this seems like a power grab it’s because that is precisely what it is.
Donald Trump came into office claiming that he would lower inflation and reduce the national debt. Yet, on his second watch, inflation has increased, economists are predicting a possible recession, and his policies will dramatically increase the national debt to historically high levels, as they did during his first presidency. He has also alienated our closest allies by creating a needless trade war, and thereby, empowered our enemies. And the cost of these tariffs will be borne exclusively by the American people, particularly affecting the poor and the middle classes.
President Trump has signed an Executive Order that will attempt to concentrate much of the election control process within the Executive Branch, which means that he is overtly attempting to weaken the power of the States, the Judicial Branch and the Justice Department. With his Executive Order, the president is demonstrating yet another clear attempt to govern through dictates rather than legislation. President Trump has long claimed that the election system is rife with fraud without any substantial proof of his allegations. The legal grounds for his order are questionable. However, similar to many of his other executive orders, it relies on the idea of producing chaos and change before it can be fully litigated. While it is likely that his order will be struck down eventually on legal and constitutional grounds, Trump doesn't care, since he believes he can make changes in the interim that will be difficult to reverse. This tactic is one that some of the worlds most iconic authoritarians have used throughout history to circumvent the democratic process.
In fairness, his clarion calls to secure our borders, improve the efficiency of government, change our elections process, and reduce the flow of illicit drugs into the US were popular with the American electorate. The ideal of increasing the efficiency of the Federal Government has been a very populist topic. But, as is often true in both government and business, it's less about what you do than it is about how you do it.
Trump’s theatrical “chainsaw approach” seems not only unnecessary, but it’s easy to make an argument that it is causing great harm to both the electorate and the government. It seems that president Trump may have an ulterior motive here: he is intent on further dividing and already divided nation. On balance, his actions seem oriented towards pleasing his chest-thumping conservative adherents and alienating anyone with a centrist or left-leaning viewpoint.
Trump's agenda is focused on his rage against his political opponents whom he calls "the enemy from within." But this time around, there is no one in the administration to slow down or stop such an abhorrent scheme.
Let's presume a hypothetical outcome here. Suppose that president Trump is intentionally attempting to take actions that he knows will lead to increased dissent between the left and the right. In such a scenario, infighting between the factions will increase dramatically. Without the steady, guiding hand of a president who sees all Americans as nothing more than “We the People”, society begins to disintegrate, skirmishes begin to flourish and private in-fighting becomes a pronounced, public demonstration of hatred. And the country edges in the direction of a second civil war. When this process nears a crescendo, president Trump declares martial law to end the uprising and becomes a de facto dictator.
Let’s take a closer look at what happened in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Sometimes, historical parallels are enlightening.
In the 1920's, after removing opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, Mussolini and his followers similarly consolidated power through laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. He came to see nationalism and militarism as the keys to revolutionary upheaval. Mussolini's Fascists viewed the Socialists as cowardly traitors, internal enemies, who needed to be eradicated. Mussolini was able to mix 'legal' state repression with 'illegal' violence. His "police squads" found cause to arrest and harass left-wing political opponents.
In response to what he called “scandalous” press attacks against Fascism, Mussolini said, “The whole nation is asking what the government is doing, the whole nation is asking whether it is governed by men or by puppets.”
His government expelled the opposition, including Socialist members and arrested all Communist members of Parliament. He abolished local elections and reinstated the death penalty for political crimes.
With all parliamentary and judicial guardrails gone, Mussolini was able to expel his opponents from Parliament, have the more vocal of them arrested, and quash any political dissent going forward.
With that, the fascists took firm control and aligned themselves with Hitler’s Third Reich. Mussolini and Hitler forged a connection that was grounded in shared ideologies, expansionist ambitions, and a mutual desire to challenge the existing European order. Eventually, in 1936, they formed the "Rome-Berlin Axis," a political and military alliance, which was followed by the Pact of Steel in 1939, which solidified their alliance and led to WWII. Hitler and Mussolini both supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, with Mussolini providing troops and supplies. In 1937, Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany. Soon thereafter, Hitler invaded Austria with Mussolini's support.
If this sounds eerily familiar, it’s because what is happening in America today, in 2025, has strong parallels to what happened in Europe in the 1930’s. As philosopher George Santayana wrote in his book "The Life of Reason" in 1905, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana was attempting convey that, by understanding past mistakes and successes, we can avoid repeating them and make better decisions in the present and future. Similarly, president Harry S. Truman once said "The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”
As Americans, we need to look more closely at the world’s history. And if we do, what is happening around us today will take on a new level of clarity and urgency. Learning from the mistakes of history allows us to gain some insight into how things might go in our immediate future. And it gives us the ability to identify and correct what is otherwise objectionable before it becomes a monster, as Mussolini and Hitler’s alliance did in the 1930’s.
But there is a large faction of the American electorate that never acquired the process of critical thinking, nor are they appropriate students of history. It’s somehow appeasing to share common political rhetoric and slap each other on the back because you share the same narrative. But, in reality, that is simply another form of the “ostrich mode”. Putting your head into the sand, won’t make the problem go away. So here we are…. The Village of Hamelin is in disarray, the Pied Piper is running amok, and nobody seems to know how to stop it.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/donald-trump-was-once-a-registered-democrat-and-party-donor-why-did-he-jump-ship/wj85mj5yq
https://www.britannica.com/question/How-did-Benito-Mussolini-rise-to-power#:~:text=In%201922%20Mussolini%20and%20other,prime%20minister%20that%20same%20year.
https://www.history.com/news/mussolini-italy-fascism
Fact-Checking Trump’s Speech at the Justice Department https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/fact-check-trump-justice-immigration-crime-eggs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.404.gDQO.4fLqR6SwAYTN&smid=nytcore-android-share
All of the Trump Administration’s Major Moves in the First 100 Days https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/us/trump-agenda-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=1.404.RsfE.q7Gkc6TAkapf&smid=nytcore-android-share
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-not-adolph-hitler-opinion-1973600
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/visualize-federal-role-elections/