Trump is Trump

What if the woman is the woman, not the whore or virgin. What if the minority is the minority not the criminal or source of wisdom through trauma. What if the worker is the worker and not the false consciousness to be liberated or the true consciousness to liberate the PMC. What if the dream is a dream, not the hidden meaning. What if the commodity is just extraction, not the basis for communism? What if Trump is Trump, not the one who eliminates the Other unilaterally as his base desires or the figure who can galvanize a new progressive world order, as his opposition imagines? What if this is all the same, only worse? What if instead of progress through regression, a regression we are resigned to no matter our radical posture, but rather progress, itself through progress, in short supply, but at our fingertips if we engage with other people where we are at, in our dystopia, where human desire is criminalized, and the only enjoyment legal is the enjoyment of the fascist.

The first temptation of Trump as Hitler is that Hitler is evil. Of course, every time we imagine good and evil, and being somehow better than anyone, even Hitler, we fail. For all evil sees itself as good and all good accepts its inevitable evil in navigating human desire in anti-human systems. Rather we must embrace a universal lack and center our lives around what we love, letting this guide us.

How do we imagine Adolf Hitler? As a singular evil who the United States defeated. Is it any wonder we want to see Trump as Hitler? Left out of the equation is American business having a close relationship with Hitler, just as it does with Trump. And left out of the equation is that Hitler was given license to do the job of the powers that be, and only after he had gone so far as to create a contradiction within the system, was he ousted, absorbing the blame for what was endemic to the system.

Was Hitler, therefore, inevitable? Of course not. Was he just more of the same? Even more loudly we must say of course not. So opposing Hitler at every turn, even retroactively, is worthwhile. However the specter of Hitler returns as a comfort to Americans who have used a false narrative of opposition to Hitler as justification for every atrocity we have engineered across the world ever since.

While overstepping one’s own power may indeed be punished (except for Mr. Trump), what we have seen is that technological development has enabled a more totalitarian order over time. Even if the good guys win they set up the weapons, surveillance, extraction technology and financial accumulation necessary for permanent totalitarianism. Even if Trump never reaches the concentration of atrocity for Hitler, it is far less clear how the absolute power inequality he has cemented will be defeated.
Is Trump Hitler? Sadly this question is all too optimistic. While one wishing to avoid disappearance would be wise to refrain from the G word, the P word, or even the W fruit, the use of the H word is a compliment for Mr. Trump, as evidenced by his promotion of J.D. Vance, who called Trump Hitler back when he was busy peddling hate about working class whites. Vance found that this hatred of working-class whites bought him some liberal purchase, but the path to true power was the white supremacy central to the American past, present, and future.

Likewise, the liberal class found that blaming working class whites for Trump’s rise, against all evidence, was less tantalizing than blaming working class minorities, a premise which has even less evidence, and therefore more staying power in the imagination of political commentators. Left out of the debate is Greg Palast’s reporting, which documents not an increase in working class support for Trump but rather a greater voter suppression of the working class, mostly Black votes, in key states. An effort that is being expanded in 2026.

Funny enough, the Democrats run around calling Trump a dictator, a great compliment to Mr. Trump and his fanatics. But they sideline Greg Palast’s detailed reporting and make no effort to get their own votes. Noticeably even on the left we tend to echo this idea that the working class is conservative, hiding behind them, ignoring the democracy they are denied.

But what about Trump as Hitler? Or Trump as a fascist? This is a long-standing debate, and it has morphed over the years. During the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as “anti-establishment” figures, the warnings about Mr. Trump’s fascism were dismissed. In 2020, as we witnessed Trump in real time, Mr. Biden, literally the key architect of mass incarceration in the United States, was able to run an anti-racist campaign against Mr. Trump.

A mere four years later, with memories fried from over-stimulation and disinformation from phones and meat head podcasters, Project 2025 was dismissed, and Mr. Trump, with the help of targeted voter suppression, returned. Left out of the narrative is the Palestinian question, one which polls showed was central to the defeat of Kamala Harris, who, much like Biden, built her career on incarcerating poor minorities.

In an interview with Chapo Trap House, Greg Grandin points to how Palestine was bigger than we could have imagined. This was such a thorny issue for the Democrats that Biden’s center-left campaign, as disingenuous as it was, could not be duplicated by Kamala Harris, who was tied to the Gaza policy, and as a result took on a center-right campaign, tied to the daughter of Dick Cheney.

We even see how refusal to consider Palestine undermined progressive rapper Kendrick Lamar in his rap beef with apolitical Drake. Lamar plainly stated that he identifies as an Israelite.Drake, who is Jewish, signed a ceasefire letter, and has collaborated with Palestinians. His longtime producer is of Lebanese descent and was part of a campaign to flood Lamar’s social media with Palestinian flags. Lamar’s account deleted this effort, and the mainstream media happily took off with Lamar’s side of the beef. But Lamar’s political expediency only undermined his campaign in the long run and his baseless claims about Drake’s pedophilia only make Drake’s pro-sex rap more appealing in comparison to a more traditional progressive in Lamar.

We see the Harris consultant campaign having a similar confusion. On the one hand, it is obvious that I am not Trump. On the other hand I cannot tell the truth about anything because doing so loses campaign money, which makes me lose to Trump. Trump, on the other hand, can be perfectly honest about the fascism he implements. And the old line of “I was surprised Trump was this bad” presents itself as a satire. Here we have the paradox of Trump as the only honest politician. He openly says: “working class, I will screw you.” And thus we can claim surprise because most politicians say: “working class, I will help you” before putting in the screws.

But what we should be nostalgic for this American hypocrisy, not any sort of illusion that America was ever actually progressive. The fantasy of Trump as Hitler rests on a combination of signifiers that the establishment Trump resistance, who only empower Trump, want us to believe in. On the one hand, American militarism fights against, rather than fights for, the far-right abroad. This one we on the left see right through, but by imagining Trump as Hitler we too believe in this American progressive militarism. The picture here is far worse for us. We did business with Hitler. We waited until it was too late from a military perspective, in fact it was the communists who held him off. We cruelly denied Jews a place in our society, and of course, it is right that our cruelty to the Palestinians and our persistent scapegoating of the Jews led directly to Mr. Trump’s triumph.

And of course, we link FDR to this progressive domestic policy, and we too often do not consider him also as someone who helped the United States benefit from Hitler and build a world order around a false progressive image. But here we must be even more skeptical. As much as we should have supported Bernie Sanders every step of the way when he intervened into American politics, we should admit that American progressivism is even more dishonest than the corporate neoliberal, who by saying nothing but apolitical platitudes, reveals a deeper truth than the American progressive who can confront American militarism, not in its everyday utility, but only in its excess.

The American progressive sin here is not funneling politics back into the Democratic Party, for which there is no alternative. Rather the real trouble with the progressive is they funnel energy away from bottom-up Naderism that activates local communities to take control of their health, safety, neighborhood and environment. Instead of this social local politics we get broad idealism which overstates its power. Who on earth could believe we are in the position to tax the rich or defund the military in order to pay for socialism?

By refusing to use Modern Monetary Theory as a means to give the working class power, the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party waves a white flag not in spite of its radicalism but rather through its radicalism. If we accepted the misery of our current situation and took a more practical Nader approach of activating local communities to mobilize around advocating for our neighborhoods, we would be empowered to build a base that perhaps, one day, could make Sanders-like demands.

Likewise, by imagining Trump as Hitler, we imagine that he can be defeated, rather than seeing him as we should. In all ways the same. In all ways worse. Here we do not need more so-called purity politics, but rather less. By choosing the most radical position before building the movement of ordinary people to secure basic rights we are comfortably in opposition to fascism forever, taking a historical ideological position, building vertically up to an imaginary FDR progressive dictatorship rather than horizontally building the community of engaged Nader citizens who could actually stop extraction and exploitation at the local level.

The point here is that this FDR politics was always contradictory, and much like ignoring the Palestinians, ignoring the American Empire in relation to our anti-MMT, anti-Marxist social democracy will remain less inspiring than the typical consultant class line of neoliberal Democrats, who like Trump, have the proper cynicism about the American project.

The fantasy of Trump as an idiot sinking the American Empire is another fantasy. The trade war screws the Global South.

And America can absorb losses more easily than these debt-trapped nations. Now of course the American working class will die as a result of Trumpism too. But this was always the point and his base is not working class, and to the extent they are, they have agreed to the gambit far in advance. Those underestimating Mr. Trump simply didn’t listen to his own warnings.

Mr. Trump’s excesses in relation to the American Empire, expanding the scope of bullying, is not something that will bring down the United States. It will limit China, and it will decimate the Global South. And this was always the open white supremacy of Trump and the excess is the logic that is good for the entire establishment. Through this excess, the Democrats can claim crypto, AI, Cheney, as moderate and the progressive Democrats can claim the problem is American oligarchy, who happily submit to the demands of a pro-corporate Trump government, rather than address the way the activist left has been crushed by the corporate fascist state.

Throughout capitalism, not just the U.S. Empire, overreach and excess are key to continuing everyday operations. This is because of capitalism’s own contradictory logic where it expands into new markets, exploiting natural resources and people alike, and through this exploitation creates new technologies to sell to the workers and investors, improving living standards for some through this decimation, repeating this process until the entire planet has no natural resources left.

Every time we go too far we create new markets and Trump’s seemingly illogical moves are cementing American resource supremacy and convincing the last places with social democracy to militarize. The working class in the United States will not see the gains but as Greg Palest has demonstrated and the mainstream has ignored, the working class don’t have a political vote, and if anything they tend not to vote, except more often for Democrats, who don’t fight for their vote anyways. So the winners of Trump will be a shrinking American middle class, who was left out of the Biden recovery, which lifted up lower wage workers and oligarchs alike.

In the new privatized landscape, RFK Jr.’s style of conspiracy is central to the assault on the American poor’s health through the abolishment of the federal government. MAHA is crucial to MAGA because it reorients us away from the great thing about Bernie. Bernie stands for health as a human right. While RFK Jr. makes it a choice. Choose to work for the right people and you can afford to live in a community without pollution and buy organic. And rather than give everyone the right to medicine and vaccines we can choose to opt out (another word for saying the government does not want to pay for your medicine). And rather than receive the satisfaction of a healthy life, we can get the short-term gratification of owning the libs, running on this small enjoyment for our short lives, giving meaning to struggle, in a brutal appropriation of leftist politics.

Mr. Trump will eventually be the fall guy. But the establishment surely wants Trump for as long as they can. It’s not only that he makes the media money or he makes funding for do-nothing Democrats easier. It’s also that he has the political capital, through a base that only wants fascism and is willing to suffer themselves because of it, to consolidate wealth and expand the surveillance state in ways other politicians couldn’t.

Here the fantasy of Trump as Hitler comes in. If the answer is no, Trump is not Hitler, then we can take comfort that he isn’t so bad. Of course, this is too optimistic. If the answer is yes, Trump is Hitler, then the horrors will end. Of course, this too, is too optimistic.

To clarify this debate two recent pieces are useful. One a satirical piece by Larry David. Another is an examination of American history by Daniel Bessner.

Larry David responded to Bill Maher predictably loving his dinner with Donald Trump with a satire about a dinner with Hitler in which the guest, flattered by his access, proclaimed that Hitler had a human side that his critics, too naive to play the game, would not understand.

Maher and Trump buddying up is natural, as both men have the same button they will push until the end of time, which seems to be speeding up by the day. Barack Obama rightly left Maher out to dry after Maher desperately cozied up to Obama, giving his campaign a million dollars. Some people blame Obama for Trump. He can more accurately be blamed for empowering other billionaires through Wall St, bailouts, TPP, etc. But Obama turning up his nose at Trump and Maher is awesome and guys like this will always be resentful and we shouldn’t baby them just because they have unlimited platforms for their grievances.

Maher responded to David by scolding David’s move to make jokes about Hitler. For Maher, the supposed advocate of free speech and politically incorrect humor, a Jew making a joke about Hitler was out of bounds. This brings to mind an episode of Seinfeld, where Bryan Cranston, playing a dentist, converts to Judaism for the jokes. Immediately upon conversion, Cranston makes Jewish joke after Jewish joke, offending Jerry, not as a Jew, but rather as a comedian. Jerry, in turn, makes a dentist joke, and is punished for it by a painful, prolonged procedure. Kramer coins Jerry an anti-dentite.

David’s intervention, an emphatic yes to the question of Trump as Hitler, is crucial and necessary. We find that 99.9% of the time those who run around saying Trump is not Hitler is simply another way to justify Trump. However it was refreshing to see for the first time in a tired debate a good faith argument by Daniel Bessner, maintaining that overcoming Trumpism relies on understanding him as an acceleration and continuation of American history.

Here, Bessner is also correct. Trump is not Hitler and the path to defeating him certainly would not mirror the path to defeating Hitler. In many ways we can see how Trump as Hitler underestimates the situation. Hitler, in the liberal American imagination, was not defeated by problematic actually existing communism, but rather by the capitalist liberal world order of the United States.

But the fantasy here is not just in who defeated Hitler, but also in his defeat at all. Trump is a triumph for all his establishment enemies, and for this reason he must be defeated sooner rather than later. The longer he lasts, the more the totalitarian order beyond Trump is cemented. In all things Trump is both the same and worse. His collapse of society cements power in the hands of big tech, the police state, the Republican Party and even the United States.

Broadly speaking we need to re-center what our descent into extinction will look like. The question isn’t who is Trump? But rather, who are we? Here we may contrast Sanders radicalism from above with Ralph Nader’s empowerment from below.

Bernie refused to run as an Independent for President because in his words, he didn’t want to be a Ralph Nader spoiler. But Bernie spoiled more for the Democrats than Ralph ever could. By running as a Democrat, Bernie was crushed not by the bipartisan consensus but rather solely by Democrats. Trump easily could point to their corruption while rising up as a symbolic contrarian in the Republican Party in a way Sanders never could with the Democrats.

Similarly, by fighting Trump now while the Democrats capitulate, Sanders helps expose the corruption of the Democrats every time he criticizes Trump. But where is the follow-through? Big ideas. Rich bad. Politicians are bad. The working class already knows. What the working class needs is not education about their own oppression, but rather the direction to fight it, as provided by Mr. Nader.

Let’s draw out another timely contrast. The late great Pope Francis shocked us all by proving that Popes can be great men, but if the Pope heads the left, and the right by a man who is peed on by porn stars, we deserve to lose. The Pope, a man of decency in indecent times, is not a model for the working class, but rather an embodiment of the work the working class is already doing.

This work is not the work for capital, which exhausts, endangers and yes to some extent alienates the human. It is rather the care work we are doing to keep each other afloat. We are not in a revolutionary time. For this we should be grateful. Revolutions are bloody and just as capitalism saves itself at the cost of the poor, revolutions inevitably are paid for in the poor’s blood. What we are allowed to do, as long as we keep at it, is Naderism.

Naderism activates the citizen and the consumer, sending them not into fever pitch or charity, but rather into groups by and for their fellow people. As much as we may appreciate Bernie or Francis, both are compelling us to do the right thing, something we are already doing and we have to admit it, forced to do. Ralph takes this natural tendency and channels it into communities which we have lost, groups that uplift and enrich us and improve, or hold off the attack on, our living standards.

There is no way out. The oligarchy is cemented with a monopoly in unprecedented technological capability. There are so many weapons and toxic environmental plants that any genuine revolutionary moment would result in mass contamination and chaos. Climate catastrophe knocks, ever closer, making every year, every day, one to be grateful for. However our decline can be one that is more human than our rise.

We can take action to protect our local water, food, and wildlife. We can be involved in a community so vibrant that the ruling class decides that extraction can be delayed. This localism doesn’t have to and cannot be separate from decent worldwide politics, even if the organization must be hyper localized. Knotting ourselves into pretzels trying to justify this or that atrocity, even if such atrocities are inevitable under capitalism, is working hard to go nowhere.

The tragic left wing example of this is some of the left’s stance against identity politics, where we work overtime to marginalize the marginalized in a cynical political calculation to appeal to more powerful interests that will supposedly trickle down.

This class reductionism where we claim unity in the working class that has no identity politics is a willing surrender to the far right. To the contrary division amongst the working class is inevitable, both by design and necessity. Each worker will have not only a different role, but different needs, skills and desires. Setting unity as a goal therefore is the first step to sabotage any collective goal. Rather we must embrace, following Todd McGowan, a universal non-belonging.

In this sense Pope Francis was certainly much closer to the truth than Popes of the past. Care for the vulnerable. Francis even did this in a political way. However what if the audience is the working class? Then our message must shift from a humanitarian one to one that activates, excites, invigorates.

As great as this Pope may have been, we should steer just as clear from the church’s historical Chastity as we should steer clear from the other side of the same treacherous coin, Abundance Politics, in the mode of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. What ends up happening is the working class is forced to repress their human desires while the ruling class is given abundance. For example the German man who got 217 COVID vaccines, just like the person who has 217 sexual partners, should be who we are thanking. While unadvisable for most of us, figures like these combat assaults on freedom through their audacity and are necessary to pair with the more resigned decency of Francis, Bernie and Ralph.

Sex work and drugs being illegal have made some of life’s greatest joys far more dangerous and alienating. Joining them now are other joys to be made illegal. Art, intellectualism, and National Parks. Of course, if one would call it a joy rather than a curse, political discourse. Through defunding and criminalization, we find that human joy is made more dangerous and is commodified largely under an illegal trafficking structure where people sell enjoyment to survive, facing no protection, and alienating ourselves from the joy we find most natural.

We can tell ourselves whatever we need to to sleep at night. Trump is Hitler. Trump is not Hitler. Maybe Trump is Hitler. All are comforts in comparison to the truth. Trump is Trump. And without displacing this fact we are left eyes wide open waiting for the knock on our door to disappear us to El Salvador, never to be seen again, or even worse, invited to a dinner with our benevolent overlord in which we laugh at his jokes.