Democracy to Dictatorship in 28 Days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ33H6cCTK0&t=2s

After democratic elections, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. On February 27, just six days before parliamentary elections, the Reichstag – the parliament – burned down. The next day, Hitler issued a decree to imprison his political opponents in concentration camps, announcing that the fire was just the first terrorist act in a planned civil war.

The Nazis declared that they could arrest and hold anyone without charge, enter any private home, open mail and listen into phone calls, curb free speech, prevent public assembly and end freedom of association. These rules lasted until the surrender of the German Reich twelve years later.

Hitler’s minions had to scramble to create a legal justification for their unprecedented take-over. Former president Trump has told us he will use the existing Sedition Act to imprison his critics.

Hitler unleashed his stormtroopers on the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938. More than 600 Jews were murdered and 30,000 were sent to concentration camps. Trump has expressed his anti-Semitism, saying the Jews will be to blame if he is not elected. He will release his own stormtroopers – the Insurrectionists – from prison and can gather other right-wing sympathisers for a ‘day of violence.’ He has called American politicians the ‘enemy within’ and said he’ll use the US military against them.

Trump has confirmed every one of these statements. They are not jests and they are not metaphors: he insists that he means what he says.

Trump has promised dictatorship on ‘day one.’ He has promised retribution against his critics with internment and a day of violence. How quickly could the United States descend into a national socialist reich? It only took Germany 28 days.