he's a right wing populist demagogue, of which there have been countless examples. almost none of them were hitler or anything comparable, and while i am not looking forward to the next 4-8 years, it's not like he published a manifesto on the proclivities of the jew or proposed annexing mexico. quite the opposite on both counts, in fact.

Trump has repeatedly promoted using nuclear weapons against adversaries without any nuclear deterrent [0] and refers to people he doesn't like as animals [1]. What do you call that? Sounds like the pretext for genocide to me.

[0] https://thinkprogress.org/9-terrifying-things-donald-trump-h... [1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/78778261363320832...

i don't know what to tell you dude, he says stupid shit constantly and i think you should pay more attention to actual policy proposals and implementations than his idiotic tweets and context-free clickbait articles with the most hyperbolic statements that could be extracted from the record for your own sanity. if you're worried about a "pretext for genocide" i'd be way more worried about someone like duterte.

Trump has voiced support for Duterte and his policies, by the way.

Is he even right-wing? He's in favour of universal health care and was a major contributor ($300k) to Hillary's previous campaign.

Populist and (wannabe) demagogue I'll give you.

There's no comparison. How many right wing populists have had an organization like the NSA at their disposal? While he's clearly got some work to do in bringing the military and intelligence communities to heel, the potential danger if he's successful is extreme.

The reason the comparison is downplayed is because Hitler committed genocide and attempted to exterminate an entire race. Not only did he do these things, he talked about them before he had gained political power.

Now I am no Trump fan, and frankly think he's one of the worst president's we've ever had. But that doesn't make him Hitler; because as far as I am aware he's never said anything about wanting to commit genocide.

Bannon has, though. He thinks the correct solutions are the ones presented in Camp of the Saints.

in what way is Camp of the Saints an endorsement of genocide?

Come on. The main idea of that book is that not massacring all the arriving brown people is a mistake.

Of course, seeing as your username has an 88 in it, I really doubt your comment was sincere.

Passages from the book: http://emptylighthouse.com/camp-saints-most-hideous-passages...

Analysis: http://theweek.com/articles/611274/dystopian-antiimmigration...

"Exterminate an entire race" - if your referring to Jews, then it is sad that you adopt Hitler's position that Jews are a separate and distinct race. That position is the start of a slippery slope that ends with them being sub-human and "other" than "us".

I've been on the internet since the mid 90s and this is the first time I've been compared to Hitler. Not sure if I should be proud (of the fact that this is the first time) or sad.

I'm sure that you were unaware that you were repeating a viewpoint of his on that particular point of race.

It's difficult to see much similarity between what the Trumpets have done and what the Nazis had done by the time they won their election. Moreover, we rarely appreciate how vile the politics of the western world was in those days.

On the one hand it was the age of Organisational Man, who worked for big companies, or states more centralised than any in history. Indeed, with colonialism still not dead, a realist thinker might imagine that iron-fisted empires were the way of the future.

On the other hand, racism was still acceptable, not just among right-wing thugs like Hitler, but also on the left from the progressive eugenics movement, genocidal communist fantasists like H.G. Wells and plain-old to American bigots like Woodrow Wilson.

In those days it was fashionable for intellectuals to think that liberal-democracy was a has-been that could not organise well enough to Do What Needs To Be Done (and what "needed" to be done, was of often genocide).

It was in this cultural milieu that the Nazis and Bolsheviks rose and did what they did. Conditions like that don't exist in the West any more. I can see trends that might lead back to similar conditions -- but it will take a good 50 years for them to mature.

The problem is that we're never going to see conditions like the ones that led to Nazism or Bolshevism again. It's not that easy. It's like trying to identify the next Facebook by looking for companies who are copying Facebook--the next Facebook will be something completely different, just like the next infamous totalitarian dictator will be completely different.

If we're going to sit around waiting for the guy to commit genocide and start a world war before we take the threat seriously, it will be far too late to do anything about it. We need to look for leading indicators.

But what do you mean by not "sitting around"?

The tendency to treat Trump as inherently illegitimate and to ignore the voters behind him is just the kind of condition that might lead to future horrors. You might argue (though I wouldn't) that Trump's silliness is also such a leading indicator.

But so what? In a democracy both sides get their chance to push pull.

He's illegitimate to the extent that he attacks the democratic order itself. Even if Trump had actually won more votes, it wouldn't give him the right to ignore the constitution--by, for example, violating the Emoluments clause or interfering with congressional investigations. This isn't the normal ebb and flow of popular support, it's an attempt to fundamentally change our system of government.

While I agree, it's also way too late to start brandishing the Constitution about. A cynical observation: neither Democrats or Republicans give one fig for the Constitution, until The Other is in power.

Case(s) in point: the FCC, FDA, minimum wage laws, Federal involvement in education.

None of those is Constitutional without some laughable legal gymnastics around inter-State commerce, and yet very few people have been complaining about their existence over the years.

As a non-American observer, the whole system seems reminiscent of ancient Rome at the point where it had become an Empire but was still pretending it was a Republic.

While I completely agree that the constitution has been trampled on for a long time, I think there's still an important difference between those who pay lip service and those who brazenly defy it. Past administrations have at least felt the need to justify themselves, even if their justifications stretch logic to the point of absurdity. When the argument is instead "we don't need to justify our actions" I think that represents a stark and dangerous shift away from the rule of law.

Personally I think a feigned respect for the rule of law is actually more dangerous, as it allows people to rationalise their support of politicians and parties with little actual respect for same.

You may be right. Hopefully the silver lining of all this mess will be an awakened populace that holds even the less obviously tyrannical to account.

Or even the enablers of tyranny.

Take Obamacare as an example. Leaving aside the issue of whether socialised healthcare is a good idea, Obama had to circumvent the law by instructing the IRS to collect revenues via an executive order.

Is that really a precedent that should have been set? Even socialists should have been a little uneasy at the disregard for the Constitution there, but instead, the ends won out over the means, and it went ahead.