-by Harvey Wasserman
The first Germans Hitler sent to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich were labor organizers and social activists. If you think you are immune from a similar fate at a concentration camp established by Donald Trump, you are deluding yourself.
Dachau’s ovens mass-burned the corpses of countless political prisoners. Many were Jews, but many were not… including gays, non-Christians, cultural “sub-humans,” feminists, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Social Democrats, Communists, democracy activists and “others” very possibly similar in some ways to you yourself. Likewise, Bergen-Belsen, where over 35,000+ dissident bodies lay lifeless (including that of Anne Frank).
In case you were wondering these are the camps where Hitler exterminated people:
Major Extermination Camps (Primarily for Systematic Killing)
Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland)
Estimated Death Toll: 1.1 million (mainly Jews, as well as Poles, Romani, Soviet POWs, and others)
Treblinka (Poland)
Estimated Death Toll: 800,000 (primarily Jews and a smaller number of Romani)
Bełżec (Poland)
Estimated Death Toll: 450,000 (mainly Jews)
Sobibor (Poland)
Estimated Death Toll: 250,000 (primarily Jews, with some Romani)
Chelmno (Poland)
Estimated Death Toll: 152,000 (primarily Jews and some Romani)
Majdanek (Poland)
Estimated Death Toll: 78,000–80,000 (mainly Jews, Poles, and Soviet POWs)
Major Concentration Camps (Combined Forced Labor and Killing)
Mauthausen (Austria)
Estimated Death Toll: 90,000–100,000 (primarily Poles, Soviet POWs, and Jews)
Buchenwald (Germany)
Estimated Death Toll: 56,000 (including Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, and Romani)
Sachsenhausen (Germany)
Estimated Death Toll: 30,000–50,000 (mainly Soviet POWs, Jews, and political prisoners)
Dachau (Germany)
Estimated Death Toll: 41,500 (various groups including Jews, political prisoners, and clergy)
Ravensbrück (Germany, women’s camp)
Estimated Death Toll: 30,000–40,000 (primarily women, including Jews, Poles, Romani, and resistance members)
Flossenbürg (Germany)
Estimated Death Toll: 30,000 (including Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, and resistance members)
Smaller Camps
Neuengamme (Germany)
Estimated Death Toll: 42,900 (various groups, primarily political prisoners and Jews)
Bergen-Belsen (Germany)
Estimated Death Toll: 35,000–37,000 (primarily Jews and POWs)
The Nazi rhetoric that fired those camps reflected that of recent Trump dinner guest Nick Fuentes: “When we take power, [dissenters] must be given the death penalty. These people that are suppressing the name Christ and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated.”
Trump has loudly made it clear that the “vermin” of the “enemy within” are “polluting the blood” of America, all phrases used by Hitler. According to his first wife (an immigrant) Trump kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand so he could mimic der Fuhrer’s speeches in front of a mirror.
Trump’s Sunday MAGA rally in Madison Square Garden mirrored the infamous “America First” hate fest staged by native Nazis in 1939. Their gut-punching rhetoric easily matched Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies that fired up countless murderous storm trooper minions who meant to “Make Germany Great Again.”
Herr Trump’s pretense for concentration camps is his promised round-up of immigrants, many of them legitimate US citizens. Once open, those rebuilt Dachau gates will entrap those (like you in some way or other) who may once have criticized Trump, or questioned a corporate boondoggle, or are a suspected liberal, or supported the windmills he hates, or are not entirely white or Christian, or ran for office as a Green or Democrat, or signed a petition against gerrymandering or the “born again” abortion ban.
Or maybe there’s a MAGA brownshirt who doesn’t like you. Or a Trumpite neighbor who covets your house or your spouse. Or maybe, in the words of a Trump “comedian,” you’re from that “island of garbage floating in the ocean” known as Puerto Rico. Or maybe you’re a Muslim or a Jew or a Buddhist or a Jehovah Witness or an atheist or agnostic, all of whom Hitler exterminated, all of whom Trump hates.
Whatever the case, the flow of violent contempt pours through the veins of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Green, JD Vance, Elon Musk, Kari Lake… straight to a glock to the head or a machine gun to the gut or an absurd prosecution and a baseless arrest leading straight to the mass torture chamber that is the American prison system and the anti-immigrant child-separation camps bearing Trump’s logo.
No matter that Donald’s mother and two of his wives were also immigrants. And that at least one ancestor of virtually every current American citizen crossed a border somewhere some time to get here. That of course includes every single immigrant-hating MAGA Nazi hot to expel or exterminate the most recent arrivals…and YOU.
What matters most today is the raging hatred and vile contempt spewed by the Trump Klan and its fascist cohorts… spilling over to book burnings and random bloodshed, straight to the god-awful detention center that awaits you.
Kamala Harris, says Carlson, is a “Samoan-Malaysian, low-I.Q., former California prosecutor.” She is “lazy,” says Trump, and run by “pimps.” Slicksters like JD Vance absurdly deny it all, as did a multitude of Hitler’s early apologists (many of whom themselves later perished in the camps).
But a tsunami of digital hate has inundated Elon Musk’s aptly named X, and all the hidden corners of a corporate-corrupted internet, flooding the American psyche with more Big Lies and homicidal hate than even Josef Goebbels ever dreamed possible.
At any MAGA gathering now, the rhetoric is routinely defined by endless racist, feminist-fearing, homophobic slurs, rants, violent threats and targeted bullying spewed perfectly in synch with the timeless warning: “Those who begin by burning books end by burning people.”
Trump is promising to revoke the licenses of any electronic network that dares to show him in a light he doesn’t like. Likewise Florida’s Fascist Governor Ron DeSantis is already issuing state-sponsored attacks against media outlets that support a woman’s right to choose or an end to gerrymandering. State police are knocking gestapo-style on the doors of citizens who sign petitions to protect our basic liberties. School teachers who dare mention the word “slavery” in conjunction with the Civil War are being mercilessly terminated.
As choreographed by MAGA megalomaniac Steve Bannon, local election boards have been infiltrated and captured by Trump flunkies. Violent fascists have begun physically assaulting election workers… as they did during the “Brooks Brothers” coup of Florida 2000 that put George W. Bush into the White House. Massive voter purges are stripping the registration rolls, as they did in Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 and more (see Greg Palast’s Vigilantes Inc.).
Armed assaults are 100% certain to permeate this year’s polling process. Citizens standing in line to vote— especially those of color— will be attacked by armed thugs. If Trump legitimately loses the vote count, he and his MAGA/Nazi hordes will take January 6 to a whole new level. If you think you are immune to any of this, see what happened to the smug, comfortable Germans who in the 1930s viewed Hitler’s rise as a “passing phase.”
Today, the time for your sage, brilliant advance to non-fascist candidates is long gone. If live in a swing state and you’re committed to voting for a third party, go to SwapYourVote.org and arrange a swing/safe state enhancement.
If your gripes about a certain party or candidate prevent you from anticipating your fate after a Trump victory, GET OVER IT.
If you hope to avoid your own private Dachau, start calling potential voters and/or send support to those doing door-to-door campaigning. Go to usgrassroots.org to choose among 50+ pro-democracy groups now working overtime to save your future.
Many good Germans spent their tortured final days wondering how they could have ignored Hitler’s obvious threats… how they could have thought the coming dictatorship would eradicate only those disposable “others” while leaving themselves safe and sound.
Donald Trump has already made as clear as Hitler did that he intends to make himself dictator. That he means to establish detention camps where you might end your days. That he wants “retribution” against those who dare question his Divine right to rule. That opponents of the Christian Nationalist state deserve Hell on Earth… and then to burn at the hands of a hateful fascist God.
Trump’s rhetoric and that of his MAGA/Nazi followers could not be more clear. Nor could your own personal fate if he is allowed to seize power.
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Join Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman Mondays, 2-4pm PT / 5-7pm ET at the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zooms (electionprotection2024.org) and via www.usgrassroots.org.
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