By JOSEPH P. BATORY June 29, 2025

Trump’s recent birthday parade was reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday parade on 20 April 1939 in Berlin.  The Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels orchestrated that lavish spectacle focusing on glorifying Hitler. Some 40,000 to 50,000 German troops marched in tribute to the Fuhrer with Luftwaffe airplanes flying overhead.

This propagandistic strategy was simple. In the Nazi  view, people were gullible targets and easily influenced by “glitz and glamour.”. In Mein Kamp, Hitler cynically summarized this strategy:  The majority of people are little more than a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. Their conduct is ruled by “sentiment and feelings” rather than by sober reasoning.

And so, we had history repeating itself a few Saturday’s ago, this time in Washington, DC, with an exorbitantly taxpayer-funded military spectacle parade on Trump’s birthday!!!!!.

The parallels continue. Another key operating principle for fascist leaders is to focus followers on a supposed enemy. Hitler targeted and condemned  all Jewish people. And Trump has demonized all migrants as “thugs” and “animals.” 

Similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts wreaking havoc on innocent German citizens prior to WW II, Trump’s ICE agents have been conducting “raids of fear,” arresting and deporting thousands of migrants without due process.

The dreams of people desperately seeking a new life here in the USA is hardly something new. People have always come here in hope of a better future. Illegal immigrants are certainly part of that American reality. BUT dealing with this matter requires some complex strategy based on American ingenuity without tossing away our values. Simplistic solutions are not the answer. And there are certainly better ways to deal with migrants rather than breaking up families, putting people in cages or behind fences, and sending individuals back to violent war zones or into the political turmoil or the extreme poverty situations from which they came.

Indeed, America has succumbed to the prejudice and discrimination of an elitist and empty-headed “wanabe king” who continues to ignore the founding principles of our nation!

 And the message of our Statue of Liberty has been desecrated by Trump!

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

                         (From The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus … also known as the

                          Statue of Liberty poem)

Also essential to dictators is the determination to control the free  press.  Hitler targeted German newspapers which attempted to investigate and expose him.  Hitler’s Nazis popularized Lügenpresse (“the lying press”) in condemning all news media opposition to his regime.

Likewise, since becoming president, Trump has ranted and raved about the legitimate news media, using the term “fake news” to demean freedom of information. Trump has termed (The NYTimes, NBC News, ABC, CBS, and CNN the enemies of the American People. And  PBS and NPR are on Trump’s vindictive chopping block.

Finally, Hitler’s power was solidified when the Reichstag (the German legislature) granted him “emergency” powers, enabling him to act without the consent of parliament or the German Constitution.

Today, here in the USA,  the  Republican dominated Congress has given Trump free reign on his unilateral actions without any legislative deliberation.  And the Supreme Court, the supposed watchdog for our democracy,  is dominated by Trump’s selected lemmings controlled by the president’s  puppet strings.

Meanwhile a convicted felon President who orchestrated a seditious attack on the capitol in 2020 now proclaims himself to be a patriot, distracting the pubic from his misdeeds with a military parade in his honor.  Fascism  prevails!!!!

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Joseph Batory is the author of three books and  300+ published articles.  His primary topics are education, history, and politics.

This article was rejected by The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.