>> 80 years ago today, stalin’s red army walked through the gates of auschwitz and uncovered the true inhumanity and evil of the Nazi regime. Millions of men, women and children murdered, thousands more starved, beaten, humiliated and robbed of their dignity. The extermination of Jewish people, poles, roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people and others was no secret. It happened in broad daylight. But how did Hitler do it? Well, with the support of millions of ordinary Germans who just wanted Germany to be great again, and business leaders who initially thought they could control him, plus a cadre of devout political allies willing to do whatever he said for the sake of power. A new piece by the Atlantic lays out how Hitler ended a German democracy and installed a dictatorship with blinding speed and entirely constitutional measures. In that period, Hitler emerged, emboldened after being imprisoned for staging a coup. His rage and xenophobia gained followers after the financial ruin of world war one and the Great Depression, and helped get him selected as chancellor. Once in power, he moved with shock and awe, imprisoning his liberal opposition, abolishing states rights and imposing bans on left-wing newspapers. He fueled German public outrage by blaming European Jews for Germany’s problems. Notably, he and his minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, Joseph goebbels, launched a massive propaganda campaign that labeled Jews as carriers of deadly diseases and violent terrorists, defeating the Jews of Europe, who they viewed as subhuman, was a question of good, conquering evil, which conditioned millions of Germans to celebrate Hitler and turn a blind eye to his brutality. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is similar similarities to what happened in Germany, and what’s happening now in America are just undeniable. History may not repeat verbatim, but it sure does rhyme. Trump and Stephen Miller, his former director of speechwriting, depict nonwhite immigrants as carriers of deadly diseases who are violent terrorists. Trump was returned to the presidency after staging a coup, and has exerted control of media or social media in order to parrot anti-immigrant vitriol and openly hateful anti-LGBTQ language, which is what Meta just did. And then there are the business leaders who pay him, fund him, and think they can control him. And then there was this startling image of Trump’s biggest paymaster, Elon Musk, that many likened to a Nazi salute.