Good News! Joe Biden is No Hitler

Adolf Hitler was a skilled orator and a man of "demonic charisma" (Niall Ferguson). Joe Biden is many things (demonic, demented, and corrupt, for starters), but he's no Hitler, as anyone who's suffered through one of his speeches lately could tell you. Other than that, it would seem the US is ripe for takeover by a Hitlerian fascist dictatorship.

I'm taking my cue from The German Problem conversation between Jordan B. Peterson and Niall Ferguson. It's worth 15 minutes of your time.

While Peterson is naturally focused on the psychology of the Reich, Ferguson has the historical insights that help explain how the most advanced civilization at the time could degenerate into the ghastly barbarism of the Holocaust. See if these factors are ringing any American bells:

A technocratic elite detached from Christian ethics,

Opportunity presented by the collapse of the political order (things like lawfare and jailing political opponents),

A natural propensity for people to be led into unfreedom (security over ordered liberty -- see COVID response).

Ferguson identifies the factors helping the fascists along in their efforts, including prosperity, propaganda, and coercion. Check, check, and check.

Ferguson and Peterson aren't the only ones noticing the trends. Netflix and the New York Times see it, too (h/t Instapundit). Although, as per usual, the Democrat Media Complex is projecting onto MAGA Republicans.

SPRINGTIME FOR NETFLIX: Netflix’s new WWII series is New York Times* approved: Hitler and the Nazis Review: Building a Case for Alarm. Joe Berlinger’s six-part documentary for Netflix asks whether we should see our future in Germany’s past.

Hitler’s project: “Making Germany great again.” The Nazis’ characterization of criticism from the media: “Fake news.” Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden: “It’s sort of like Hitler’s Mar-a-Lago, if you will.”

Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface, and occasionally, as in the examples above, the production’s cadre of scholars, popular historians and biographers can barely stop themselves from giving the game away.

As the conclusion of this series of quotes on the Weimar Republic from early in the series’ second of six episodes demonstrates:

BENJAMIN CARTER HETT, Author, The Death of Democracy:

Hitler comes out of prison into a Germany which is really politically much less favorable terrain for him than it had been in the crisis year of 1923. Hitler was really a crisis politician; he needed a crisis to be able to get oxygen. By late 1924, when he comes out, things have stabilized: The economy is doing better. The political system is sort of settling down.

ANNE BERG, Professor, University of Pennsylvania:

Between 1924 and 1929, this period is kind of often described as the golden age of the Weimar Republic. The good life slips into view, even if it isn’t quite reachable for the majority of people.

CHRISTIAN GOESCHEL, Author, Mussolini and Hitler:

The Weimar Republic was a progressive liberal democracy.

BERG:

We have relative political stability. We also have a thriving cultural sphere; filmmakers, [and] cabaret.

LISA PINE, Author, Hitler’s ‘National Community:’

We think about abstract and expressionist artists, the Bauhaus architectural movement. Germany was becoming more accepted in the international arena, so she wasn’t a pariah anymore. And so there’s this kind of quite liberating and modernizing aspect to the 1920s. Women were able to vote for the first time.

TIFFANY N. FLORVIL, Professor, University of New Mexico:

There were sex reform movements with individuals like Magnus Hirschfeld, who did studies about homosexuality and was conducting some of the first transgender surgeries in the Weimar Republic. And so you see all of this dynamism emerging. But on the other hand, the Nazi Party, Hitler in particular, recognizes that there are so many German citizens that are distrustful of this fledgling democracy that is supposed to be this new beacon of hope, but it rather is a beacon of disillusionment for many.

HETT:

Outside of Berlin, large numbers of Germans are living in small communities, rural communities where the artistic experimentation, the innovation, the sexual experimentation of Weimar Berlin is utterly foreign to them. And indeed, they are somewhat hostile to it.

BERG:

It’s a group of people who feel shunned. So, if we want to make a contemporary analogy, we can see the sort of forgotten people in America, there is a sense that the system has dealt them a bad hand, and Hitler kind of taps into a fundamental disillusionment with the Weimar Republic. And this is the concept that he will return to repeatedly, even after he is in power.

Because, you know, Republicans are so incredibly competent and powerful in all our institutions and are inclined to coercion and violence. I mean, we must be only one election away from that long-promised Christian theocracy! /end snark

See also these recent headlines (also via Instapundit):

• Dem Congressional Candidate Wants Nazi-esque ‘Reeducation Camps’ for MAGA Supporters.
• Look On Biden’s Face After Journo Asks About Trump Being A ‘Political Prisoner’ Is Chilling (Watch).
• Biden Spreads Misinformation About Trump Calling for a ‘Unified Reich.’
• Did Biden’s Love for Hamas Just Lose Him the Jewish Vote?
• Former Biden DOJ Official Prosecuting Trump Was on DNC Payroll.
• Biden’s favorite historian says images of Trump on trial are ‘reassuring.’
• USC Jewish center vandalized, glass door smashed: video.
• Maniac screams ‘I’m gonna kill all the Jews’ as he tries to run down students outside NYC Jewish school in antisemitic hate attack.
• N.J. mayor opposed hiring Jews, warned of ‘guys in big hats and curls’ in secretly recorded meeting, suit claims.
• Rewarding Fascism: “So now we know what it takes to become a state: the murder of Jews. Rape, kill and kidnap Jews and seven months later, the leaders of Ireland, Spain and Norway will recognise your statehood. That’s the lesson of today’s coordinated spectacle of virtue-signalling in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo: pogroms work. The butchery of civilians gets results. Fascism has its rewards. This is ‘diplomacy’ at its most dangerous.”