Dictator’s Mojo: Too old and Senile

We cannot simply compare current personalities with the past and pretend context doesn’t matter. It’s often an overwhelming pleasure to establish analogies just to find reasons to say, “I told you, he’s doing exactly as Adolf Hitler!” But, no. No one on this earth is truly comparable to that precise figure, not even Donald Trump.

However, one understands the madness and the urgency to label someone as “Adolf" when bombs are bursting everywhere and the climate of a world war seems much more like that of the late 30s.

Here are several reasons why we believe Donald cannot be compared with Adolf, besides the fact that they were born in different eras, one in 1889 and the other in 1946. Donald hadn't even been born when Adolf created the mess he deliberately wanted to build. Moreover, one was from Austria; the other is from the United States. Thus, the cultures are worlds apart, and due to chronological context, their lives were vastly different. Nonetheless, the love for enemies is very symmetrical; one hated Jews, the other immigrants.

So, what is left?

Adolf built a real sense of belonging for the German people, the “Volk" (The People), of course with the great help of his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Everywhere he went, people flooded the streets, voluntary or forced, to greet the “Heil" (The Salvation). Whereas Trump, besides the rallies he often holds, gets jeers from crowds elsewhere in the country. In fact, voters in the 2024 election who cast their ballots for him are starting to switch sides. A huge regret is in the air, and every time you hear his grandpa-esque eloquence and decisions, one might question oneself: "Why did I vote for this dude?"

The backgrounds of these fellows are quite different. The German fought in the first war, the Great War, which conditioned his behavior heavily: he saw death and bloodshed; he fired guns. On the other hand, Trump has never raised a stone or fired a slingshot (perhaps only in his childhood); however, he knows how to throw lies and felonies every second like a machine gun.

Economically, Germany was suffering one of the biggest hyperinflations in contemporary economic history. In addition, the country had just emerged from a major war that burdened it politically, militarily, and economically via the Treaty of Versailles. This delicate context gave rise to Hitler’s persona, arguably coached by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini.

Every dictator has copied the exact same rhetoric and misleading tactics from them, even our Donald: to divide and conquer through massive propaganda and media hostage targeting imaginary enemies. He’s not inventing anything new; he is playing by the Machiavellian books of the dictator, but the “How to Be a Dictator for Dummies" edition.

Donald has had one administration so far in which we all endured his media paraphernalia. Yet, he vividly encouraged racism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc. He was already running a superpower, like a rich son who just inherited his father’s trust fund so he and his family could be wealthier. Furthermore, we are in the modern era with technology that makes our lives easier. One wonders if the Donald of the 30s could survive without social media, reality TV shows, and the Playboy Mansion.

Now, he is in his second term, and yes, things are going wild within him, matching his increasingly senile and napping behavior.

The path for the German to take over Europe was very straightforward: invading Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, half of France, Norway… he shaped Europe’s geopolitics in a few years until everything exploded. What has Trump done? He has been threatening to colonize even Pluto, and for now, he has sent a couple of little bombs here and there. Nevertheless, tariffs are his major play to look for submission, and in some ways, he has secured bargains for his family business and naught for his forgotten great American people.

The Final Solution was an evil masterpiece of logistics and engineering. Adolf thoroughly built a complex system of mass murder. Up to six million Jews and millions of others from different ethnicities and backgrounds, as well as war prisoners, died in concentration camps, where you could find different kinds of death: crematories, gas, slavery, famine, gunshots, and medical procedures for “research", torture, and so forth.

In contrast to this, Trump is sending millions of immigrants back to their homes on private airplanes, though sometimes a judge won't let him. The vilest deed here is to put children in cages (perhaps a perversity from his pedophilia) and send ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) throughout cities to kidnap people, even those who protest against his bullying and childish behavior.

All this said, the 20th century is full of evil, not only Hitler, but also Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Franco, the Hutu Power extremists in Rwanda, Idi Amin, Che Guevara & Fidel Castro, Pinochet, Perón, the eternal Kim family in North Korea, the Ottomans, Hussein, Gaddafi… Trump is just too avaricious and too old to be as evil as these characters. Needless to say, everything can change, and he may finally show us that he truly has the dictator mojo.

For more satiric news, visit our section Samsara News!