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Since we last wrote about the many ties between the Trump administration (particularly Elon Musk’s DOGE budget-cutting team) and online white supremacists, more such connections have emerged, as have reports of Nazi-type ideas being applied, in practice, in the executive branch. Let’s review:
Podcast host Joe Rogan, whose endorsement probably helped Donald Trump win the younger male demographic in 2024, interviewed a “historian” of Nazism named Darryl Cooper who vice president J.D. Vance follows on X. Cooper’s central belief about the Nazis is that it’s not fair to blame them for launching World War II and perpetrating the Holocaust; he complains often, for instance, that leaders like Winston Churchill prevented Adolf Hitler from finding the peaceful resolution to “the Jewish problem” that he purportedly would have preferred. (The fact that Cooper himself uses the phrase the Jewish problem to describe the presence of Jews in Germany in the 1930s maybe gives us some idea about the kind of person we’re dealing with.)
On Rogan’s show, Cooper gave a sympathetic account of Hitler’s attitude toward Jews, explaining (?) that “his antisemitism is what allowed him to love the German people.” (Jews in Germany were German people, for the record.) He also told Rogan that Hitler didn’t raise the prospect of Jewish genocide in public speeches, an assertion which is easily disproven by an arcane historical technique called looking up transcripts of Hitler’s speeches. In 1939, for example, Hitler told the Reichstag that he would retaliate against the “international Jewry of finance,” if it became necessary, by bringing about “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” A fairly direct threat, there.
Elon Musk retweeted a post on X which said that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust. A real theme developing with these guys! Speaking of which:
Online influencer Andrew Tate flew to Florida after the Trump administration reportedly pressured the government of Romania, where he is awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, to allow him to travel. Tate, in addition to the alleged sex crimes “piece,” has an extensive record of making antisemitic comments, i.e., having written on X that Hitler was correct to believe that Jews want white Christians to commit “mass genetic suicide” by intermarrying with lesser racial groups.
Finally, a Department of Justice lawyer named Leo Terrell, who is leading a “Task Force to Combat Antisemitism,” retweeted a disparaging post about Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, written by the former leader of a neo-Nazi group called Identity Evropa. Leo Terrell, as of press time, had not yet indicted himself for antisemitism.
On another front, the General Services Administration—the federal agency that manages government logistics—eliminated a clause in its standard contract that prohibits its contractors from segregating facilities, including water fountains, by race. (Other applicable laws still prohibit such segregation—but hey, give it time.)
The Department of Defense, meanwhile, eliminated multiple websites that celebrated the contributions of the Navajo Code Talkers to the United States’ victory in World War II. Also taken down were pages about Jackie Robinson’s military service and a Native American Marine who was one of the six service members pictured in the famous photograph of the American flag being raised on Iwo Jima. (All these initiatives are ostensibly part of the elimination of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs from U.S. government.)
Trump and the people around him may be overstepping here; the existence of the History Channel, for one, suggests that even the oldest and whitest Americans still consider Jackie Robinson to be a more admirable figure than Adolf Hitler. How far can you push Costco Grandpas before they snap?
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