c/politics · by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world · 15d

Education Department Seriously Posts Video Comparing Trump to Hitler

https://newrepublic.com/post/214800/education-department-video-trump-hitler

Idiots who have no critical thinking skills in charge of education folks.

346 points · 50 comments · view on lemmy.world

50 Comments

zloubida@sh.itjust.works · 93 pts · 15d (6 replies)

Three possibilities :

the DOE staff is Nazi;
the DOE is uneducated, which is kind of ironic;
both.

None of these possibilities looks good.

kylie_kraft@lemmy.world · 77 pts · 15d (2 replies)

OK so I'm probably borrowing from the Alt-Right Playbook here, but it's been long enough that I don't remember which ones. The wink-wink, nudge-nudge references to nazi catchphrases and imagery are deliberate. They serve three key purposes:

They let the nazis know that they are seen and valued by the administration. This is critical, because Trump's success has depended upon keeping extremists happy rather than appealing directly to neoconservatives.
The neocons like the message but will usually miss the references. They will get angry when the nazi undertones are exposed, because they feel they are being called nazis for agreeing with what they see as standard conservatism.
It "triggers the libs," which everyone still seems to think is hilarious.

All of which is irrelevant, because there is no useful distinction between nazis and people who participate in nazism because it advances their agenda.

daannii@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 15d (1 reply)

Im white and Ive been around other whites who will casually drop the n word. To see how I react. Or will say something blatantly racist even without the nword.

For example I was viewing a rental property and the landlord said something like "you don't have to worry about the darkies , there ain't any around here except a few blocks over and they don't bother nobody".

At first I didn't know wtf he was talking about. Warlocks?

I also was only half listening as I had noticed how shitty the place was and already decided no.

Racist landlord was just cherry on top.

Anywho.

I swear it's a way for them to find each other.

They also seem to assume that since I'm white I'm with them on being racist. Or at the very least don't mind that kind of talk.

I've only had a few of these encounters in my life. It's not something I experience often. So it always catches me off guard.

But my buddy who is a mechanic, white, interacts with the public a lot more. He says it happens to him a lot more. Like they assume they are in the company of similar minds.

Nope.

My point being that. Yes I agree. It's advertising to find similar types of people. To tell them they are welcome. And to promote it as normal.

It's done on a big scale but happens a lot on an individual level too.

harmbugler@piefed.social · 6 pts · 15d

Agree, it's a secret handshake. Then you know you can put the MyPillowCase with eyeholes over your head.

yakko@feddit.uk · 17 pts · 15d

I think both is the default assumption with Trump appointees.

Soulphite@reddthat.com · 8 pts · 15d

You gotta understand that the Party wants the change history. Every day they try to rewrite it to match their ever changing narrative. When Big Brother trump writes on his (Ministry of) Truth social account, he really tries to spread the propaganda and be the world ruler.

SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 14d

They are fascist. Fascists share common traits, so they think in similar ways as Nazis. They didn't realize in the movie clip Churchill was frustrated that people thought they should negotiate with a bully (Hitler), they assumed the bully he was talking about must be some awesome guy because bullies are awesome. They not only missed the context that it was Hitler he was talking about, they also missed the fact that Churchill was arguing against negotiating with Hitler and that they should fight him instead. And also there the fact that Hitler ultimately lost.

So understanding the context, the message was "don't negotiate with Trump, fight against instead, he will eventually lose if you fight him." I actually agree with that message.

BTW, DOE is Department of Energy. Education Department is usually abbreviated with ED.

ryper@lemmy.ca · 42 pts · 15d (7 replies)

The video was a clip from the 2017 film Darkest Hour about Winston Churchill during World War II, and has Gary Oldman playing Churchill shouting, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!” Oldman’s character was talking about Hitler in the scene, but the department’s clip followed the line with techno music over a montage of President Trump, implying that he’s the tiger. The post carried the tagline, “No one does it like us,” followed by a tiger emoji.

They'll say they were comparing Trump to the tiger, not to who the tiger represented.

inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 15d

I'm not sure they're smart enough to even make that excuse.

Nasan@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 15d (3 replies)

techno music

we're back in the 90s and any song that uses synthesized instruments is "techno"

edit: formatting

wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 15d (1 reply)

You mean it wasn't Sandstorm?

I didn't watch it, but that's what I imagined him doing his double-jerk-off dance to when I read that part...

Nasan@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 15d

Wasn't even Daft Punk. It's some mainstream hip hop song and the whole thing I guess is a rip off of a Tiger Woods tiktok meme.

CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 13d

Holy shit, I hated that tendency even back in the 90s.

Me: "I'm really liking this [happy hardcore | jungle | house | trance]"

Other person: "Oh you mean this techno?"

Sometimes, this conversation worked out and actually was techno....I didn't want to be the WELPAXTUALLLEEE guy on it, but on the other hand, it's not like we label every style of music that has electric guitar in it "rock and roll".

SaltSong@startrek.website · 2 pts · 15d

Even if we accept that, it does little to make him look better. It's claiming that he can force people to do what he wants, rather than negotiating with them to mutual benefit.

ALSO, Trump can't seem to handle Iran. What makes him think we can handle Canada?

wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 15d

And yet their fans will still say "yOu CaN't JuSt CaLl ThEm NaZiS!1!!1!1!1"

Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 28 pts · 15d (2 replies)

Well I'm not clicking on it, but anyone seeing similarities between Trump and Hitler is not wrong about that.

lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 14d (1 reply)

Yeah, similarities abound. I don’t know what everyone else is talking about.

In a single year, Trump attacked Venezuela and Iran (among others), starved people in Cuba, and threatened longtime allies with invasion. His military is murdering people in the caribbean for the crime of looking suspicious. His paramilitary is rounding up people on the basis of race and putting them in concentration camps deliberately designed for cruelty (remember him gloating about alligator auschwitz?). He uses vile and dehumanizing language to describe anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow gender binary. He threatens reporters and uses his thugs to deplatform critics of his regime. He has overseen the erasure of any accomplishment achieved by people of colour from american history.

It’s like Trump is absolutely dominating an “Act Like Hitler” contest and stupid americans fall over themselves to say “you can’t compare him to Hitler” because it’s 1939, not 1945 yet.

Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 14d

Plenty of us still can't believe such big swaths of our country would rather have a fascist rapist grifter than a woman in charge.

some_designer_dude@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 15d (6 replies)

Wait, comparing in a good way?

PattyMcB@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 15d (1 reply)

In their shriveled little minds, yes

mrmisses@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 15d

Oh wtf

Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 15d (1 reply)

Wait what is the good way? Are there redeeming characteristics I've missed? Art was quite shit.

100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it · 2 pts · 14d

Say what you want about Hitler, but he's the one who killed Hitler.

100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it · 2 pts · 14d

As long as he poisons Melania and shoots himself in the head in the end.

Malyca@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 15d

Yeah

hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 22 pts · 15d

The hopelessly propagandized can’t be reasoned with.

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words…

The anti-Semites…like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

— Jean-Paul Satre

quick_snail@feddit.nl · 22 pts · 14d (13 replies)

Why are we being critical of this?

Seems like the job of the education department should be telling people about the history of fascism, and warning us when our country is currently headed down a fascist path .

Edit: oh, it's not a documentary or an essay. It was a very short video meme on X with a very short quote from Churchill taken out of context, and it seems they didn't know that it was about Hitler. Then they deleted it when people told them they were comparing Trump to Hitler.

I would certainly approve of the department of education funding a full length documentary video that analyzed all the ways that Trump's policies resemble Hitler's. Consider, for example, the "warning signs of fascism" posted at the end of the Holocaust museum. I think the majority of the boxes have been ticked by Trump.

SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 14d (12 replies)

Yeah he's ticking all of the boxes, but he's doing it in crayon. That makes people think it's not a big deal, but it really is.

Americans have gotten used to fascism and they mostly like it. This has opened the door for someone more competent to step in and do things even more horrible things than Trump has done.

FluorideMind@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 14d (3 replies)

Lmao. More hate for the American people. Tbh it's really demoralizing how no one can separate governments from the people. Trump, like Hitler is a grifter who weaponizes ignorance and fear. He has fooled many Americans yes, but that doesn't mean we support fascism. Some do, obviously, but nowhere near "most"

Waffelmeister@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 13d (1 reply)

When we say American, we don't mean every single American. We speak of overall societal tendencies. And yes, you live in a society. You are part of it. I'm sure you know, but the first step to overcoming a problem is to identify it.

Americans are like fish who don't know what water is.

FluorideMind@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12d

You say, while the person I originally replied to claimed most Americans want fascism.

SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 12d

Trump is the symptom, not the cause of the problems in American culture. You just point to Trump and say "I don't support that guy" and think when he's gone everything will be fine. You're not dealing with your society becoming fascist because you refuse to even think about it.

When the next fascist demagogue comes along you will support him if he hates the same people you hate.

quick_snail@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 14d (7 replies)

Nah most Americans hate Trump.

And most US Americans hate Trump too.

He's literally never had the majority of either population behind him.

SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 14d (6 replies)

Two thirds of American voters either voted for or Trump or didn't bother to vote at all. So about a third of the population wants fascism, and another third of the population is fine with it happening.

You're thinking it's all about Trump, but another more competent fascist could take his place and tell people that he didn't like some of the things Trump did, but he hates the same scapegoats Trump hated (and maybe add a few more to the list) and easily win an election.

It's really the Democrats most Americans hate. You now have Democrats having to say that they hate Democrats too to try to get people to vote for them. Americans have been trained to hate the political opposition to fascism, look at all the "Chuck Schumer only writes letters WTF" memes. it's not just the elderly that have been duped, most young people are in some radical anti-liberal group or another.

quick_snail@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 14d (5 replies)

The US isn't a democracy.

You can't blame voters when they're being disenfranchised and there's no progressive candidate on the ballot.

SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 12d (4 replies)

You're excuses for not doing what you can to oppose fascism. Nobody cares about the rationalizations of the people that do nothing when facing fascism.

When it's all said and done, social media will be considered just a tool fascists used to promote complacency to the stupid. Whatever you post on social media will just be put into that bucket, no one will think you were being bold because you posted some lame excuses on social media.

quick_snail@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 12d (3 replies)

Wut. There's loads of people in the US who have died or been imprisoned fighting against fascism.

How many people have tried to kill Trump at this point?

The struggle is ongoing.

SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 11d

Attempting to kill Trump or Charlie Kirk or whoever are violent acts which strengthen fascism in the US, it does not weaken it.

When I say you're in a fascist society I mean y'all spend your time promoting violence and hatred. All you need to do is vote for the political opposition to fascism (the Democrats) but you've been propagandized into thinking that's a bad thing to do. Had Kamala Harris won the election, it would've been the end of fascism in the US for more than a generation. But you don't really want it to end, you want hate and violence.

Pro-violence leftism is in a symbiotic relationship with fascism. Most of the pro-violence left will join the fascists as soon as the fascists start targeting the people the "leftists" hate. We already see a lot of movement towards the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 15d

Even ignoring the nazi bit (we shouldn't), unwillingness to be reasoned with is traditionally supposed to be a flaw

grue@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 15d (8 replies)

Anybody got a mirror?

Cheebus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 15d (7 replies)

The referenced video is in the article.

Here is another article in case the one above doesn’t work:

grue@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 15d (6 replies)

That's not a mirror; that's just a second article also hotlinking to it on the nazi platform. I'm asking to know where it's available actually somewhere else before Musk memory-holes it.