France 24 is a state-owned, taxpayer-funded TV news station that broadcasts French propaganda. That’s its explicit, intended purpose: In the leadup to its 2006 launch, then-President Jacques Chirac proclaimed, “We must have the ambition of a big, round-the-clock news channel in French, equal to the BBC or CNN for the English-speaking world. It is essential for the influence of our country.”
Which means, it’s not like a Fox News, an ABC News, or an MSNBC — i.e. a privately-held news organization that expresses the opinions (and promotes the causes) of its corporate owners. France 24 is a subsidiary of the French government. Its opinions and causes are reflective of France.
Or, more specifically, the French political leadership.
That’s an important point to keep in mind, because three days ago, a méchant news story appeared on France 24: What parallels do historians see between the Trump administration and the Nazi regime?
The story began with one of the mainstream media’s favorite tricks: They repeat a lie over and over again, and then they do a story about it because “everyone’s talking about it.” You know the dealio:
Since the start of Trump’s second term as US president, comparisons between his administration and the Nazi regime are back in the spotlight.
Yeah, that’s sort of true… because you’re repeating it!
White House adviser Elon Musk's raised right-arm gesture at Trump's inaugural parade prompted many historians to call it a Nazi salute. “How could you not?", says Peter Hayes, professor emeritus at Northwestern University in Illinois and author of numerous studies on the Nazi party.
Musk’s salute was not as blatant "as Steve Bannon’s gesture” at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Hayes adds, referring to Trump's former adviser, who made a Nazi salute at the conservative meeting in February.
This is on the heels of the disastrous White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky. Very clearly, the France 24 story is the fallout: France is twisting the knife in Uncle Sam’s back.
Because, I absolutely guarantee you, if Trump’s meeting with Zelensky had gone swimmingly — and Ukraine left with a big, fat bag of money — this France 24 story would NEVER have seen the light of day! This is the payback.
Still, Hayes was delighted to offer his scholarly, erudite take, and he’s armed with more than just hand gestures: Want ironclad PROOF Trump is Hitler? Well, what about Greenland, hmm?!
For Hayes, this desire to seize the autonomous Danish territory can be compared with Lebensraum, or "living space", one of the founding concepts of Nazi ideology. “The motivation behind hungering after Greenland and hungering after Ukraine and the Caucasus (in Hitler’s case) is the same: obtaining essential resources. For Trump, it’s minerals; for Hitler, it was grain and oil. Control of these things appears to both men as vital to victory in the dog-eat-dog struggle of world politics,” says Hayes.
Of course! Greenland! Anyone who wants Greenland is obviously a Nazi. (Never realized Erik the Red and Ragnar Lothbrok were such bigots. For shame! We should probably boycott the Minnesota Vikings until they change their name to the Minnesota Commanders.)
[Christopher] Browning [the professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina] does, however, note some “uncanny resemblances” between the two men, drawing parallels between the storming of Congress on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters and the Nazi leader's Munich Putsch in November 1923:
“Hitler launched a failed coup, faced a judicial system that would not or could not hold him accountable, and was not expelled to Austria as an unwanted felon” (which would have ended his German political career). He then “revived his political career with support of the traditional conservatives on the right, and obtained power legally, ready then to carry out a ‘legal revolution’ from within,’” Browning notes.
Uncanny? That’s not uncanny. That’s totally… canny. (What’s the opposite of “uncanny” anyway?) All roads don’t lead to Munich, you know.
Paul Lerner, professor of history at the University of Southern California, also observes a series of parallels between Trumpism and the authoritarian rulers of the 1930s and 1940s. One in particular concerns the type of language used by the US president.
“Especially in the way that Trump uses innuendo – the way he encourages violence, his coy attitude, reminds me of Mussolini. The language also parallels fascist anti-intellectualism, contempt for expert knowledge, nuance," Lerner says.
Lerner also says that the American media have been brought to heel since Trump's return to power, something that is “very much standard operating procedure for dictators”.
“Trump already has his ministry of propaganda and he is edging out the mainstream media which has failed to hold him accountable for ten years already. Journalists get stories by keeping access to the White House and if writing critical pieces means you lose your access, eventually only the friendly press will have access.” [emphasis added]
Alrighty, boys and girls. If you ever wanted a picture-perfect definition of chutzpah, here it is: The state-owned, government-controlled, taxpayer-funded France 24 “news” station is accusing Trump of having a "ministry of propaganda."
Anne Berg, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that “these attacks on the press are horrendous,” but according to her, their implications are far greater today than under Nazi Germany.
“Germans after all could listen to enemy radio,” she says, even though it was “forbidden and during the war, severely punished”.
“Nazi Germany didn’t change the nature of information. What is happening now is much more insidious and much more consequential, globally. We are living in a post-truth environment,” where online information ecosystems “are transformed by AI-generated content. There no longer is a Feindsender" (the Nazi regime’s term for enemy radio stations).
“The whole world is on X” (formerly known as Twitter), she says. [emphasis added]
Ah, I see. Because Elon Musk owns X, America is worse than Nazi Germany because… REASONS. (Which is another reasonable, educated perspective.)
“There’s no doubt that US democracy is in acute danger,” Berg says. “In fact, at this moment we no longer live in a functioning democratic society. The system hasn’t been fully transformed or dismantled, but we are literally watching the making of a dictatorship in real time, even if the precise contours of such dictatorship are still ill-defined. The question is how much time do we have until the window for effective resistance closes.”
Her fellow historians are equally pessimistic. “We are six weeks in” to Trump’s second term “and democracy is severely imperilled”, Lerner says. “I don’t know if it will be restored in my lifetime, which is very depressing.”
“Trump has strengthened his control on the police powers (the FBI, the Justice Department) and the military,” says Hayes. “Trump is vainglorious, solipsistic, and a bully preoccupied with demonstrating his strength. When things begin to unravel and opposition mounts, he and his backers will instinctively resort to violence.”
Even by (lofty) liberal standards, this level of manic hysteria solicits more eyerolls than righteous indignation. We’re just six weeks in — and we no longer have a functioning democratic society? Really?
How come we only live in a legitimate democracy when liberals win?
C'est la vie.
We’ll leave the last word to Homer Simpson:
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