Trump’s Hitler Fascination Is an Ominous Echo of the 1930s
This isn't the first time elites in the US and UK flirted with fascism.
A 1938 Nazi rally in White Plains, New York.
Photographer: Anthony Potter Collection/Hulton ArchiveDemocracy is ailing. Around the world, strongmen seem all the rage. China’s Xi, Russia’s Putin, Hungary’s Orban, India’s Modi and a clutch of Latin Americans, together with the rise of the right in Western Europe, attest to peoples’ increasing willingness to embrace ruthless, mendacious leaders whom they credulously think can get things done, while eliminating their enemies (real or imagined).
There was once a widely held belief in Europe, which became a cliché, that Italy’s 1922-43 “Duce,” Benito Mussolini, made the trains run on time. It was supposed, falsely, that pre-World War II strongmen offered administrative efficiency and economic success.