American Fascism: Then (1939) and Now (2025)

Get the Point!

Historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds in a recent article that there was a time in American history when the Nazi Party, while still somewhat on the fringe, enjoyed a level of "normalization" in the run up to the start of World War II in 1939 that bears eery resemblance to the modern push for fascist extremism in the United States.

Lest we forget that in the early 20th Century that the fake scientific principal of "eugenics" was all the rage in much of Europe in the United States; eugenics held that white people were mentally and physically superior to the "darker" races in Africa and Asia! This virulently racist principle not only formed the basis of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf manifesto that served as the blueprint for the rise of the Nazi Party and the eventual Holocaust, but it also was the underpinning for the Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States, one which allowed practically unlimited access to paler Northern European whites, quotas for darker Southern European whites, and practically zero entry for darker Sub-Saharan Africans.

Popular American figures like Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company, Joseph Kennedy—patriarch of the Kennedy Clan—and aviator Charles Lindbergh were drawn like moths to flames to eugenics and, eventually, to different aspects of Nazi ideology. Ditto for Edward VIII, the King of Great Britain, a pal of Hitler's who later abdicated his throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson!

Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler posing with British King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson circa 1937 in Germany…

Indeed, Nazism, albeit fringe, was so normal in the United States that to commemorate George Washington's birthday on February 20, 1939, the Bund (American Nazis) staged a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City that drew over 20,000 fanatics celebrating what they called "True Americanism." Reminding that a picture is worth a thousand words, a giant picture of George Washington in his general's uniform was flanked by American flags and the German Nazi swastika, as shown below, to hammer home the fascist revolutionary point!

Rally goers on that Washington Day in ‘39 wore the same swastika armbands that were popular in Germany at the time; they held posters that exclaimed "Stop the Jewish Domination of Christian America," and brandished other posters which warned that Jewish refugees—many fleeing to America to escape Nazi persecution in Germany—were "taking American jobs."

Sound familiar?

As a historian, it is important for me to ALWAYS remind that history tends to repeat itself mainly because the worst instincts of mankind never fully ameliorate or abate! To that end, please remember that by February of 1939, Adolf Hitler had broken ALL of the major tenets of the Versailles Peace Treaty that formally ended World War I, including his reformation of the German military—and by seizing the Rhineland, Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia while annexing Austria. As these events unfolded in Europe, there were a vocal minority in America, including the American Nazis, who cried "America First" while cautioning against the United States getting involved in a second European war.

Sound familiar?

But alas, the United States did eventually get involved, first by lending and leasing armaments to Great Britain after Germany blitzed through France in 1940, and finally by entering the war against Germany, Italy, and Japan after the latter bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. That attack, and America's entry into World War II, quelled most of the "America First" chatter and led to the silencing of American Nazism in quick order.

Hitler then—Musk now…

When I look at recent events, from Donald Trump seeking to expand the powers of the presidency into more authoritarian times by hijacking Congress's power of the purse per the Constitution, to Trump's financier and de facto co-president, Elon Musk, waving a Nazi salute (above) while trolling with authoritarian drivel on social media; from Vice President J.D. Vance meeting with the Neo-Nazi sympathizing ADF party last week in Germany, to Trump's bold face lies that Ukraine's elected president, Volodomyr Zelensky is a "dictator" who "started the war with Russia in 2022," it is crystal clear to me that the difference between 1939 and 2025 is that the ideological descendants of the eugenics believing American Nazis are now running the Executive Branch of the American government—and intimidating the Legislative and Judicial Branches to bend to their will!

Italy's Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler then, Donald Trump and Elon Musk now…

In 1939, the majority of American white voters may have shared some of the same racist ideas as the German Nazis, but few were willing to bend the knee to Hitler or bow down to authoritarian rule. Today, many American MAGAs not only share the same disdain for "others," be it race, religion, or sexual orientation/identity, but they are more than willing to relinquish their constitutional rights to the Musk-Trump administration so long as the not so dynamic duo continue to demonize or deport the "parasites," "vermin," and "retards"—just to list a few of the Hitlerian slurs that Trump and Musk are fond of using on social media.

A relinquishing, I remind, that will only grow more pronounced as Musk-Trump continue to exert powers that so far, Congressional Republicans and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, have seemed unwilling to check during the first 30 days of America's neo-Fascist takeover.

Stay tuned...