Last Chance, America

It's October 1932 Germany in the United States. Which path will they choose for January 1933?

If we were to boil down the choice Americans face in just six days to a simple question, it is this: which side would today's United States have chosen in the Second World War?

The choice is as simple as it is stark.

On one side, you have easily the most qualified candidate ever for the presidency, who believes in democracy and the rule of law, the strength and value of western alliances, and in the intrinsic ability of the American people.

On the other, you have an aspiring totalitarian dictator who admires Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jung Un and who blackmailed Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who wishes his generals were as loyal as those of Adolf Hitler, who believes that “the enemy within” — his political adversaries — need to be killed or jailed.

Let us not forget that Germany was still a democracy when the Nazi party won a plurality of seats in the November, 1932 election. It only took a matter of weeks for Hitler, after taking power in January of 1933, to carry out the plans he had spent the previous decade spelling out in great detail to disassemble the protections of the constitution and the democratic infrastructure of the country. He spelled it out in a book he wrote while jailed for treason after his first attempted coup, known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

His book, Mein Kampf, not only laid out the agenda and strategy for dictatorship in breathtaking detail, it was so popular that sales of the book catapulted the aspiring Führer to great personal wealth, for which, incidentally, he refused to pay his income taxes until he passed a law that waived his debt after taking power, seeing himself as the State.

By 1939, Nazi Germany had invaded several neighbouring countries. Democracy in the country had died with the Reichstag fire and the subsequent March 1933 election, where the Nazi party was completely funded by the wealthiest business leaders in the country. They had formed a military alliance called the Axis with totalitarian partners Italy and Japan. Japan had started its military expansion in 1931, Italy attacked Ethiopia in 1936, and Germany absorbed Austria in 1938. By 1939 World War Two was fully developed with countries from nearly every continent engaged in combat.

It took until 1941 for the United States to join the war officially taking the side of the Allies, who they’d been sympathetic to and supporting with aid but not yet troops.

It would seem there are a few similarities with today’s events, but who is in each role has changed.

Russia is trying to build its own Axis alliance over their invasion of Ukraine, with the backing of Iran and North Korea, the former whose weapons and the latter whose troops are now on the ground in the war. The Allied powers today include Germany and Japan, charter members of the Axis.

The war in Ukraine, invaded by Russia, and the threat of war in Taiwan, whose security is more threatened by China every day that the West does not take the gloves off for Ukraine, puts us in the serial invasion period of the 1930s before the Axis had congealed and the West had fully absorbed what was coming and gotten their collective act together.

Today’s American business leaders have systematically taken over the information space, with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News taking care of propaganda, Elon Musk taking control of Twitter — and renaming it ‘X’ — to control the conversation, and Jeff Bezos running the Washington Post, in a clear attempt to force professional journalism into the billionaire agenda.

Back, then, to the future. Donald Trump is clearly a senile lunatic whose fake brand has been built up by the media for decades. It is hard to see him as a fascist because he is such a colossal moron. But a fascist he is, and he has the backing of the billionaire class and nearly half the American population who believe — or don’t take seriously — the propaganda, and support him.

Jeff Bezos vetoed the Washington Post’s editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris. To their credit, 250,000 readers have so far cancelled their subscriptions in response.

Elon Musk alone has personally contributed $132 million to elect Trump, including a direct vote-buying effort giving daily $1 million gifts in a quasi lottery to those who sign a petition supporting hard right Republican policies.

Trump’s moves in his first mandate gave him effective control of the judiciary, with the Supreme Court members he appointed creating immunity for him. He has clearly stated his intentions to purge the country of his opponents. And the business elite support him. All the elements required to implement a totalitarian fascist state are in place.

His running mate, JD Vance, closely associated with Project 2025, will be the actual power broker in a senile Trump presidency. It will be Vance, not Trump, who will be the dictator of the United States after the election, if not in name.

Trump and Vance have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want Ukraine to win the war. Trump has expressed his desire to exit NATO, effectively ending the western Alliance, and bringing them on the side of the new Axis.

Without NATO, and with a US-backed Russian victory in Ukraine, where will the new Axis be looking next? Who will be in a position to stop them? At what point will the western allies, no longer backstopped by the now pro-Axis United States, fully absorb what is going on?

Harris and the Democrats recognise that the Ukraine war is an existential fight for western democracy. Trump and the Republicans clearly believe Russia’s expansionism is not only not a threat, but that no effort should be made to stop them from entering NATO territory across eastern Europe. China taking Taiwan would barely even be noticed in the crossfire.

The American people have a decision in just five days.

Do they come in on the side of the freedom and democracy they have claimed to espouse and defend for the past century, or, this time, do they choose the fascists?