‘Fascist’ Trump’s Garden party has echoes of America’s Nazi moment

It was clear, as soon as Donald Trump announced his rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, that to Make America Great Again he would have a thunderclap echo from the infamous rally of American Nazis in that arena on February 20, 1939. That night, the Garden was packed with more than 20,000. A portrait of George Washington commanded the stage. American and Nazi flags and swastikas were on display. The crowd gave “sieg heils”.

The American Nazis gathered to keep America pure from alien influences, and to bring America closer to Hitler’s Germany and his vision of the world. James Wheeler-Hill, the Nazi party’s national secretary, was as clear as day: “If George Washington were alive today, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler.”

Next, Madison Square Garden: Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Arizona, on Thursday. Credit: AP/Matt York

Trump wants to come home to Madison Square Garden to continue his fight for America First to purge the country of alien influences and radical left extremism.

The creators on an Academy Award-winning film of that 1939 event, A Night at the Garden, have written: “Every one of the characteristics of Donald Trump’s rallies is present in the film above: the same vicious denunciation of the press, the same appeals to patriotism and white nationalism, the same urging that the audience, the only ‘true’ Americans, need to ‘take their country back’ from a despised minority (just substitute ‘illegals’ or ‘liberals’ for ‘Jewish’ here).”

When Trump has been called out on his flirting with Nazis in America – when he said there were “good people on both sides” in the Nazi march and violence, leaving one dead, in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017; when he had dinner with white supremacists and antisemites; when he instructed the extremist Proud Boys in the middle of a presidential debate with Joe Biden in 2020 to “stand back and stand by” – he denies knowing who they are, their intent, their racism. Trump never accepts that he is complicit.

But Trump has no restraint in being antisemitic. “If I don’t win this election, the Jewish people will have a lot to do with the loss.” He has described Jews as “voting for the enemy”. In his closing arguments in the campaign, Trump has declared war on “the enemy within” that must be put down with military force.

‘Now I realise he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.’

General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Donald Trump.

For the Jews, he makes it personal. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

Trump faces his full house crowd in New York not only as a former president, but as a fascist. In recent days, two military veterans, General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff in the White House, have both gone on the record on their views of Trump’s character, and why he should never be elected to returned to power.

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area,” says Kelly, a former general in the Marines. “He’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators – he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Kelly says he heard it first-hand from Trump. “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government … He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’”

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Milley refused to deploy the armed forces to put down demonstrations in cities across America in the wake of the murder by police of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis. “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” Milley told Bob Woodward in an interview for his new book, WAR. “Now I realise he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.”

Trump loves the icons in New York. He wants to own them and to be the subject of adulation in them. The fascist candidate for president of the United States cannot wait to bring into Madison Square Garden his grievance, retribution and intent to wreak vengeance on his enemies, together with a desire for absolute power to prosecute his agenda and vanquish his opponents.

Another New York icon, legendary baseball great Yogi Berra, conjured this wisdom: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It turns out that the 2020 election wasn’t the most important election since the Civil War – this one is. Trump is the divider-in-chief, incapable of bringing the country together to move forward together. His authoritarian impulses are unchecked.

“He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about,” John Kelly has said, “and what makes America America, in terms of our constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government.”

Trump wants to seize and then exercise control over America’s temple of democracy. It will take an act of democracy by the American people to stop him.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.

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