The United States is in the same vulnerable position today as Weimar Germany was in the early 1930s. German democracy died amid acts of violence by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. The United States now finds itself in a similar perilous position. The Republican Party under the Hitler-admiring Donald Trump eschews democracy and embraces fascism. Republican candidates for office this year are as violent, anti-Semitic, and racist as Hitler’s Nazi Brownshirts.
Republican candidate for Florida House District 20, Luis Miguel, tweeted, “Under my plan, all Floridians will be able to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF, and all other federal troops on sight.” Twitter suspended Miguel, likely his desire in order to become yet another poster boy for Florida’s anti-Big Tech social media governor, Ron DeSantis, to point out as a victim of “wokeness.” While Miguel was threatening to shoot on sight federal law enforcement officers, DeSantis was in Pennsylvania campaigning for fellow Italo-fascist gubernatorial candidate, Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano. DeSantis, like Miguel, also tweeted a threat to IRS agents: “Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries?” It is difficult to believe that DeSantis remains a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve Judge Advocate General Corps when he labels the federal government a “Regime” and supports someone like Mastriano, who refuses to hire non-Christians, including Jews, for his campaign. There was a time—and it wasn’t very long ago—when being a member of a hate group received a one-way bad conduct discharge from the military service.
In maintaining financial links to the neo-Nazi Gab social media website and stating that Jews are not welcome on his campaign staff, Mastriano is standard fare for current Republicans running for office. And DeSantis weighing in on Mastriano’s behalf has sent a chill through Florida’s sizable Jewish community, particularly in South Florida’s Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area.
In Maryland, former Constitution Party presidential candidate, Anne Arundel, county council member and neo-Confederate crackpot Michael Peroutka won the GOP primary for attorney general of Maryland. In a fiery Benito Mussolini-like speech he recently gave at an Italian restaurant in Rockville, hardly a bastion of far-right politics, Peroutka warned that the United States was “at war” with an enemy he claimed had “co-opted members and agencies and agents of our government.” They were not welcome words in Rockville, Annapolis, or the greater Washington-Baltimore region, where hundreds of thousands are employed by the agencies to which Peroutka was referring. Another far-right Republican, state Delegate Dan Cox, the GOP candidate for governor, has claimed that “antifa” (anti-fascism) was to blame for “riots” in which police cars were burned. Cox received the endorsement of Trump and a denunciation from Republican Governor Larry Hogan, who elected not to run for re-election.
In Washington state, U.S. House GOP candidate Jo Kent, who defeated incumbent Republican Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler in the primary, mostly due to Trump’s endorsement as a result of Herrera Beutler’s vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment, claims the January 6th attempted coup d’état at the U.S. Capitol was “phony” and “staged.”
Across the country, Republican campaign ads have featured candidates brandishing weapons, including assault weapons, handguns, sniper rifles, and even a flame thrower, the latter courtesy of Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Eric Schmitt, the state’s current attorney general. Republican candidates have also embraced members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Leaders of these groups have been federally indicted for criminal conspiracy in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Some candidates, including Mastriano and Arizona state Representative Mark Finchem, a leader of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement and this year’s candidate for Arizona secretary of state, participated in the siege of the Capitol.
Far-right pro-Trump Republicans have made no secret of who is on the receiving end of their violent threats. They range from President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly (who is married to former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, a shooting victim of a right-wing lunatic), and Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), and Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Republican candidate for the Minnesota Senate, Stephen Lowell, urged his supporters to resort to “voting with the ballot before we have to vote with bullets.”
Trump supporters, including candidates for office, have put targets on the backs of schoolteachers and administrators, school board members, librarians, town and city council members, and public health officials. Texas State Representative Matt Krause has drawn up a list of 850 books he wants school districts to ban. He is supported by Texas House candidate Jim Herblin, the treasurer of the pro-book banning Prosper Citizen Group (PCG), a far-right pressure group. Other book banning organizations include Patriot Mobile Action, a dubious political action committee, No Left Turn in Education, and Parents Choice Tennessee. Herblin came up with a list of 80 he wants banned. In Florida, a far-right Trump- and DeSantis-supporting group called “Moms for Liberty” wants to ban classroom lesson plans and books. During a nine-month period from July 2021 to March of this year, PEN America, an anti-censorship organization, revealed that across the United States 1,145 unique book titles by 874 authors had been banned in 86 school districts in 26 states. Affected by the Nazi-style bans were 2899 schools and 2 million students.
It is a sign of America’s slippage into fascism that self-proclaimed censors, most of whom are lily-white rural and suburban ignoramuses deem it necessary to ban what they have never read. Some charlatan and tax-evading preachers have waddled into Hitler territory by conducting nighttime book burnings in their church parking lots. Banned titles and authors include:
“No Dancin’ in Anson” by Ricardo Ainslie, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, “The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende, “A Coffin for Dimitrios” by Eric Ambler, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, “The Prada Plan” by Ashley Antoinette, “The Peking Incident” by George Atcheson, “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood, “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean M. Auel, “Rehoboth Road” by Anita Ballard-Jones, “Peter Pan” by James Matthew Barrie, “They Called Themselves The K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Bartoletti, “Madeline and the Gypsies” by Ludwig Bemelmans, “A Big Enough Lie: A Novel” by Eric Bennett, “The 19th Element” by John L. Betcher, “Marvelous Cornelius: Hurricane Katrina and the Spirit of New Orleans” by Phil Bildner, “Pele, King of Soccer/Pele, El rey del futbol” by Monica Brown, “Southern Discomfort” by Rita Mae Brown, “Meditations” by Sylvia Browne, “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess, “White Doves at Morning” by James Lee Burke, “A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story” by James Cameron, “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card, “The Mechanic” by Lewis John Carlino, “Secret of Blackoaks” by Ashley Carter, “My Story” by Marilyn Chambers, “The Rape of Nanking” by Iris Chang, “Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World” by Cynthia Chin-Lee, “Challenge to Genocide” by Ramsey Clark, “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Story of Ruby Bridges” by Robert Coles, “Pompeii: The Roman World” by Peter Connolly, “Absinthe: History in a Bottle” by Barnaby Conrad III, “Sandman” by Linda Crockett, “Prince of Tides” by Pat Conroy, “AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism” by Douglas Crimp, “Cobain Unseen” by Charles Cross, “An Appeal to Justice” by Ben M. Crouch, “The Lost Years” by Constance Curry, “On the Way to Woodstock” by Sheri Davenport, “The Franklin Cover-Up” by John W. DeCamp, “Windhaven Plantation” by Marie De Jourlet, “Spencerville” by Nelson DeMille, “120 Days of Sodom” by Marquis De Sade, “Rogue Island” by Bruce DeSilva, “Deliverance” by James Dickey, “The Tai Chi Bible” by Dan Docherty, “Stealing Fire From Heaven” by Nevill Drury, “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich, “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, “Manson in his Own Words” by Nuel Emmons, “American Indian Myths & Legends” by Richard Erdoes, “The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen” by Ralph Ezekiel, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Pillars of the Earth” and “World Without End” by Ken Follett, “The Walls of Jericho” by Jack Ford, “Albrecht Durer” by Sandra Forty, “Poison Ivy” by Travis Fox, “Hollywood Madam” by Lee Francis, “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” by Ari Folman, David Polonsky, and Anne Frank, “Sins of the Father: A Daughter, A Memory, A Murder” by Eileen Franklin and William Wright, “The Sun King” by Nancy Freeman-Mitford, “The Schreber Case” by Sigmund Freud, “Revenge” by Stephen Fry, “African American Cowboys: True Heroes Of The Old West” by Jeffrey Fuerst, “The Year They Burned the Books” by Nancy Garden, “Modernism” by Peter Gay, “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, “Fall of Atlantis” by T. M. Gilmore, “The Jericho Files” by Alan Gold, “Africa Speaks” by Mark Goldblatt, “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden, “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, “A History of Witchcraft” by Susan Greenwood, “Mohawk Saint” by Allan Greer, “A Time to Kill,” “The Last Juror,” and “The Chamber” by John Grisham, “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen, “Oklahoma City” by Andrew Gumble, “The Secret History of Cults” by Peter Haining, “The Jade Unicorn” by Jay Halpern, “We Are the Romani People” by Ian Hancock, “Political Resistance in the Current Age” by Duchess Harris, “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris, “Charmed” by Catherine Hart, “Ramadan Around The World” by Ndaa Hassan, “The Babel Effect” by Daniel Hecht, “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller, “Yanomani: Masters of the Spirit World” by Paul Henley, “Who Is Derek Jeter?” by Gail Herman, “The Vulture & the Nigger Factory” by Gil Heron-Scott, “Hell is Too Crowded” by Jack Higgins, “Secrets of the Knights Templar” by S. J. Hodge, “Steal This Book” by Abbie Hoffman, “What Is the Women’s Rights Movement?” by Gail Hopkinson, “The W.A.S.P.” by Julius Horwitz, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, “Voodoo: Search for the Spirit” by Laennec Hurbon, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “Castaway” by Lucy Irvine, “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving, “Newspaper Diapers” by M. T. Johnson, “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble” by Robert Bowie Johnson, “The Parker Inheritance” by Varian Johnson, “The Big Lebowski” by Jenny M. Jones, “Tupac Shakur Legacy” by Jamal Joseph, “Spirit of Himalaya” by Swami Jyoti, “Miss Anne in Harlem” by Carla Kaplan, “The Best of Pogo” by Walt Kelly, “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, “The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story” by Aya Khalil, “The Walking Dead (series) by Robert Kirkman, “Opium” by Debra Kita, Debra Moraes, and Francis Moraes, “The Funhouse” by Dean Koontz, “Triple Cross” by Peter Lance, “Caligula” by David Lapham, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “Women in Love” by D. H. Lawrence, “Who Was Maya Angelou?” by Ellen Lebrecque, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “The Beast Within” by Edward Levy, “A Fish in the Water” by Mario Vargas Llosa, “Rembrandt: A Journey of the Mind” by Vladimir Loewinson, “The Wonder of Innocence” by Gina Lollobrigida, “Traci Lords: Underneath It All” by Tracy Elizabeth Lords, “Ordeal” by Linda Lovelace, “Howard Stern: A to Z” by Luigi Lucaire, “Whore” by Tanika Lynch, “Marilyn: A Biography” by Norman Mailer, “The Mystic Warriors of the Plains” by Thomas E. Mails, “Still Time” by Sally Mann, “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley, “Monsoon” by Steve McCurry, “Family” by Margaret Mead, “Vampire Academy” by Richelle Mead, “I am Martin Luther King, Jr.” and “I am Rosa Parks” by Brad Melzer, “Mad Max” by George Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller, “Chanukah Fun” by Tali Marcus Minelli, “Baseball Saved Us” by Ken Mochizuki, “V for Vendetta, Providence Act I,” Providence Act 2,” and “Neonomicon” by Alan Moore, “Weird U.S.” by Mark Moran, “Beloved,” “The Bluest Eye,” and “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison, “Blue Light” and “RL’s Dream” by Walter Mosley, “Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers, “Dinosaurs” by Dylan Nash, “Primitive World” and “Vanishing Peoples of the Earth” by National Geographic, “The Redeemer” by Jo Nesbø, “The Holocaust” by Aubrey Newman, “The Song of the Earth” by Hugh Nissenson, “The Underground Girls of Kabul: in Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan” by Jenny Nordberg, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, “The Onion Book of Known Knowledge” by The Onion staff, “Mandingo” by Kyle Onstott, “Silk Road” by Eileen Ormsby, “1984” by George Orwell, “Scottsboro Boy” by Haywood Patterson, “Cool Hand Luke” by Donn Pearce, “Pigs Can’t Swim” by Helen Peppe, “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez, “The Marquis de Sade” by John Phillips, “Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family” by Nicholas Pileggi, “Peru: An Ancient Andean Civilization” by Mario Polia, “The Embassy House” by Nicholas Proffitt, “When the Emperor Was Divine” by Julie Otsuka, “Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra” by Andrea Davis Pinkney, “Oddball Texas: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places” by Jerome Pohlen, “Who Was Lucille Ball?” and “Who Was Susan B. Anthony” by Pam Pollack, “A Slow Burning” by Stanley Pottinger, “Warlord of Cathay” by Franklin M. Proud, “The Buenos Aires Affair” by Manuel Puig, “Six Graves to Munich” by Mario Puzo, “The Tragedy of Lynching” by Arthur Raper, “Who Was Cesar Chavez?” and “Who Was Harriet Beecher Stowe?” by Dana Meachen Rau, “A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder and a Small Town’s Struggle for Redemption” by Dina Temple Raston, “The Enchanted Castle” by Kitty Richards, “The Secret” and “The Shroud” by Harold Robbins, “Betrayal in Death” by Nora Roberts, “The Republic of East L.A.” by Luis Rodriguez, “When Satan Wore A Cross: The Shocking True Story of a Killer Priest” by Fred Rosen, “Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes” by Lord Edward Russell, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger, “The Samurai: The Philosophy of Victory” by Robert T. Samuel, “Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag” by Rob Sanders, “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” by Marjane Satrapi, “Klezmer” by Joann Sfar, “The Berlin Boxing Club” by Robert Sharenow, “The Other Side of Midnight” and “Windmill of the Gods” by Sidney Sheldon, “The Phoenix Cards” by Susan Sheppard, “A Mississippi Family: Seven Generations of Mississippi Women” by Mary Sikora and Barbara Johnson,“American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate” by Peter Simi, “It’s a Book” by Lane Smith, “Peter Lawford: The Man who Kept Secrets” by James Spada, “Satan’s High Priest” by Judith Spencer, “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, “Penguin Book of Love Poetry” by John Stallworthy, “Klanwatch: Bringingthe Ku Klux Klan to Justice” by Bill Stanton, “Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda” by Jean-Philippe Stassen, “A Good Woman” and “Family Album” by Danielle Steel, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The New Americans” by Ulli Steltzer, “Miss America” by Howard Stern, “America” by Jon Stewart, “Who Is Michelle Obama?” “Who Is Sonia Sotomayor?” and “Who Was Marie Curie?” by Megan Stine, “The Last Vampire” by Whitley Streiber, “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and “Sophie’s Choice” by William Styron, “Jones Beach” by Joseph Szabo, “Wunderlust” by Carol Taylor, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, “Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt?” by Gare Thompson, “Lord of the Rings” by J.R. R. Tolkien, “Red Snow” by Edward Topol, “Radio Free Dixie” by Timothy B. Tyson, “Other Realities” by Jerry Uelsmann, “Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in the Lone Star State” by Michael O. Varhola, “Rabbit, Run” and “The Witches of Eastwick” by John Updike, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, “Nomads of Niger” by Marion Van Offelen, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, “The Almighty” by Irving Wallace, “Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code” by Laurie Wallmark, “The Essential Gore Vidal” by Jeff Walters, “The Temple of Solomon” by James Wasserman, “Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills” by Renée Watson, “The Harlem Renaissance” by Steven Watson, “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh, “Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane” by Carole Boston Weatherford, “Trainspotting” by Irvine Welsh, “Prime Evil” by Douglas Winter, “The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq” by Jeanette Winter, “Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx/La juez que creció en el Bronx” by Jonah Winter, “Uncivilized Nation” by Eric Wise, “The Obsidian Mirror: An Adult Healing from Incest” by Louise M. Wisechild, “Malala: My Story of Standing Up for Girls’ Rights” by Malala Yousafzai, and “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn.
The list of banned books—non-fiction and fiction, domestic and foreign authorship, authors alive and dead—has a definite precedent. The template is Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Judging by the ethnicities, political leanings, religion, gender, and sexual orientation of the authors and subjects on the white Christian nationalist banned list, there is little doubt that the inspiration for the “un-American” censors is drawn from the same criteria applied on censored works by Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Benito Mussolini. For the Nazis, the eradication of all things Jewish or leftist in German history was the ultimate goal. For the Italian fascisti, the “dangerous writings” of Casanova, Balzac, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Voltaire, and Poe were consigned to the fire pits. For the American inheritors of Hitler’s agenda, the targets are clear: the history and culture of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Roma (gypsies), and a select group of Jewish, liberal, and gay authors and subjects. If the Republicans get their way, only books by white Christian men on non-controversial subjects, at least in their minds, will be on American library shelves or available as E-books.
It is also noteworthy that not found on any Republican book ban list is “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler’s own blueprint for world conquest and the annihilation of Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other “undesirables.” Nor is Hitler’s “On National Socialism and World Relations” found on any banned list from the Republicans or their Christo-fascist allies. DeSantis, speaking in Pittsburgh on behalf of Mastriano, harped on his favorite bogeyman—“wokeness.” When closely examining DeSantis’s speech in Pittsburgh—the city where a neo-Nazi frequent user of Mastriano’s favorite platform, Gab, gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018—and the not-so-faint echoes of another demagogue in 1930s Germany can be clearly heard. DeSantis declared: “This woke ideology is a really destructive mind virus. We can’t just stand idly by while woke ideology ravages every institution in our society. We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never, ever surrender to woke ideology.” In his vainglorious attempt to sound like Winston Churchill after the allied defeat at Dunkirk, DeSantis sounded more like Hitler during a Nuremberg rally. Substitute the words Jewish or Jew for “woke” and DeSantis’s rhetoric was pure Hitlerian in tone and impact. The American far-right of the 1920s and 30s, particularly those like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, used language similar to DeSantis’s in condemning unions, farm clubs, higher education, banking, racial integration, and the arts as being controlled by “international Jews.” DeSantis chose Pittsburgh for his demagogic speech solely because of Mastriano’s anti-Semitism and the city being the site of the worst massacre of Jews on U.S. soil in American history. Even the campaign slogan chosen by DeSantis and Mastriano for their joint appearance in Pittsburgh—“Unite to Win”—was eerily similar to the 2017 “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi and white supremacist violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Florida and Pennsylvania Jewish leaders called on DeSantis not to appear on stage with Mastriano. However, the two Italo-fascists merely blew off Jewish criticism much in the way that the America First Committee, led by the Hitler-admiring Lindbergh, ignored criticism from a cross-section of America following a February 20, 1939 pro-Nazi German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. One banner displayed in the Garden read: “America, Wake Up!—Smash Jewish Communism!” Wake Up or Woke: choose your far-right dog whistle. Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Trump, Mastriano, or DeSantis: choose your fascist leader. Different century, same fascist bluster. Mastriano, for what it’s worth, will not allow DeSantis to position himself to the right of him. On the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, Mastriano boasted, “I’m going to make Ron DeSantis look like an amateur when I’m in charge.” Mastriano, a retired U.S. Army colonel, is but one of many veterans who are vying for leadership of America’s fascist movement.
Last year in San Antonio, retired Army Lt. General Michael Flynn told a crowd of Christian nationalists, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion.” It is talk like that which has propelled the threat to American democracy as the number one issue on the minds of Americans, according to a recent NBC News poll.
Threaten to kill political opponents, declare all religions other than Christo-fascism banned, support the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, ban books and abortion, prevent vaccinations of children to stop epidemics of polio, rubella, and smallpox, cult worship for a bankrupt real estate and casino owner . . . that is the platform of the Republican Party. Republicans today have much more in common with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini than Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt. Instead of banning books, abortions, the word “gay,” and vaccinations, perhaps it is time to ban the Republican Party as a self-proclaimed violent organization that seeks the overthrow of American democracy. What should be consigned to the ash heap of history are not books or teachers’ lesson plans but disgusting retro-Nazis like the Trumps, DeSantis, Mastriano, Blake Masters, Josh Hawley, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all the others who have putrefied American politics with the stench of fascism.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2022 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and nationally-distributed columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
