Donald Trump’s bid for presidency has caused controversies, with the Huffington Post reporting that he is using racism and xenophobic rhetoric’s to appeal to the worst fears American’s hold in order to gain support.
Although this tactic has won the support of white supremacist groups, some are using his rhetoric to draw similarities between him and German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Recently Mr. Trump, current Republican presidential front runner, released a statement calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”.
These comments have been met with extreme backlash from Democrats, Republicans and political leaders around the world.
The Daily Telegraph reports that a spokesperson for the Council on America-Islamic Relations has compared his attitude to Nazi rhetoric from the 1930s saying, “sounds more like a leader of a lynch mob than a great nation like ours”
Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey Republican Governor, has compared Mr. Trump’s comments to those of Hitler’s in the lead up to World War II, during an interview with CNN.
“If you read your history in the lead-up to the Second World War this is the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward” she said.
Furthermore, Michael Nutter, Mayor of Philadelphia, accused Mr. Trump of taking “a page from the play book of Hitler.” The Telegraph reports that he said Trumps comments “engenders a level of fear mongering that we have not seen literally since the 1930s and 1940s.”
American comedian Bill Maher has also made a scary comparison between presidential hopeful Donald Trump and German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Huffington Post reports that Maher learned Mr. Trump may keep a volume of Adolf Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, and has made these comparisons on his show “Real Time with Bill Maher”.
He added subtitles over one of Hitler’s speeches with a Trump-like sound.
“Thank you, thank you. We are going to make Germany great again, that I can tell you, believe me,” the subtitles read. “Germany doesn’t win anymore. England, France America — they’re laughing at us,” the subtitles read.
However, Independent reports that some have disputed the comparison saying that his behaviour does not meet the dictionary definition of fascism. Dov Wilker, the Director of the American Jewish Committee in Atlanta said, “There is no way to justify what he said, but to compare the two, I think minimises what the Nazi regime did and I think provides Donald Trump with another avenue for his remarks.”
Robert Paxton, History professor of Columbia University, told CNN that he could understand why some might point out similarities of the two but ultimately Mr. Trump is not a fascist.
“He’s good at making astonishing speeches that make people sit up and take notice,” he said “Hitler and Mussolini – no one had ever seen public rallies like the meetings they’d have”.
Here is the comedic clip from Bill Maher’s show, “Real Time with Bill Maher”: