“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Donald Trump, Sioux Center, Iowa.
Who’s laughing now? The joke of Donald Trump as the official Republican nominee has been taken too far. His litany of hate and segregation continues, enthralling his followers. Without preamble, he goes straight for the jugular with vivid, hatred-inducing words: Mexicans. Rapists. Muslims. Terrorists. War. On an on he weaves an image of an America in decline, hanging by a thread, flooded by immigrants, and like bees to honey, people rally around this bombastic Republican nominee. On the other side of the coin, Sanders urges his supporters to cast their vote on Clinton as a desperate ploy for the Democratic Party to unite. President Obama doesn’t hold back the punches, calling the Republican nominee “unfit to serve as President,” stating, “the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge about critical issues in Europe, Middle East, and Asia means that he’s woefully unprepared to do this job.”
News of Trump cross every threshold in the world and his face is stamped in every conceivable media outlet, from memes and videos to songs and tweets. Hundreds of blogs denounce his actions and they make the fatal mistake of comparing him to Hitler. Why? It may be that his hate speech and rise to power remind us of the Evil Führer, but it simplifies matters way too much.No matter how many counterarguments are made against his proposals, and the impossibility of completing his outrageous projects- like the famous wall between the US-Mexico border- it feels as if the only way to stop The Trump is by describing him as the next Adolf Hitler. Why?
“I think I’m too honest, and perhaps too controversial, to be a politician … I would probably not be a very successful politician.” The Art of the Comeback, Donald Trump.
Appealing to the evil man responsible for the Holocaust and the destruction of Europe is an easy way out to voice the dangers this multimillionaire possesses if he comes to power. It is a very simple equation: find a negative example, carry out comparisons, and finally let the collective consciousness of the public fill in the gaps. If Hitler is evil and Trump is like him, then naturally he must be evil as well.
Comparing Trump to Hitler takes us back to Godwin’s Law, proposed in 1990 during Unsenet newsgroup discussions. It asserts that the more heated an online discussion becomes; it is more likely that a comparison with Nazism and Hitler is made. If this occurs, the person guilty of breaking Godwin’s Law forfeits the argument. This is not limited to online discussions or to the context of WWII. Mike Godwin explains why this resemblance is drawn time and time again, “[Nazism] is the worst thing anybody can think of, so if you have some kind of rhetorical escalation with someone you disagree with, it’s sort of easy to go there if you’re not very reflective about what you’re saying.”
“American history has its own flirtations with fascism and racism and militarism, and people have believed in any and all of these things, so with certain individuals it has to come up from time to time…when you make the comparison, think what you’re saying, because there’s a lot of baggage there, and if you’re going to invoke a historical period with that much baggage you better be ready to carry it.” Mike Godwin
If we follow Godwin’s Law, we see that the real world has ran out of arguments to criticize Trump and taken the easy way out. Hate speech…like Hitler, threatening international communities…like Hitler, migration Diaspora…like Hitler. Even if the argument is lost the moment we blurt out, “Trump is the new Hitler,” we recall what the journalist Javier Cercas, from El País, stated, “The point is not about Hitler and the dangers of making the same mistakes. The discussion doesn’t come to an end when you mention Nazism, the real discussion begins there.” Let us find the right tools that will ultimately hack down this candidate suffering from delusions of grandeur. Let us reveal what the real consequences would be if Trump actually won.
“I would bomb the shit out of [ISIS]. I would just bomb those suckers, and that’s right, I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up ever single inch, there would be nothing left.”
Let us forget the memes, the parodies of why Hitler hates to be compared to Trump, and the endless tests to guess who said what. Let us decipher this millionaire that went from a joke to the official nominee for his party. With inarticulate and simple speeches he rouses hatred and incites segregation. He simply fills the American Dream balloon with hot air and empty promises. We understand the hatred and desperation that is winning him votes to lead a nation that in its ignorance looks more like a time bomb. The mass shootings and the racial discrimination are but small fissures in a country whose social fabric is beginning to crack. Trump holds duct tape in hand, but we all know what happens when you fix things with tape: they ultimately fall apart.
