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Spot The Differences For A Free Stay!
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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I find it really annoying how Americans are so ignorant of history that they literally cannot make any historical comparisons outside of Nazi Germany. This is the only historical point of reference in American discourse. All historical comparisons default back to it because Americans don't know anything else, not even their own history... like the Japanese Interment camps. Recorded human history is around 10,000 years old and it has everything, but somehow people in this country think there are no historical events or time periods to draw parallels from outside of what happened in central Europe during Hitler's reign.
I mean it's fine to make comparisons if they're valid, but Nazi Germany comparisons are literally the only comparisons that I see. I never see these camps being compared to the Russian Gulags or MAGA being compared to the Know Nothings from the 1850s or Trump being compared to Andrew Jackson, and so on. These comparisons are also accurate and valid, and I would argue that they add an element of depth that our discourse severely lacks.
If you had to compare what's going on AND our trajectory to a horrible historical event, which would it be and why?
The most relevant and accurate historical comparison to Trump is Andrew Jackson. Tell me if any of this about Jackson sounds familiar to you:
Andrew Jackson was the first US president to not be one of the founding fathers. He aggressively campaigned as an anti-establishment candidate who would fight for the "common man" and against the corrupt elites... even though he was wealthy himself (though unlike Trump, Jackson was actually self made and came from humble beginnings).
He ran for president in 1824 and lost to John Quincy Adams. Instead of accepting his loss, he insisted that the election was rigged and he only lost because of the "corrupt bargain" where Jackson and his supporters believed that the think that congress conspired against them to give Adams the election.
He was a very thin skinned man who was known for his volatility and anger. He would often snap and throw temper tantrums when someone says or does something he doesn't like. He's notoriously famous for having hundreds of duels during his life time. He's also known for demonizing any political opponent that crosses him as unpatriotic, corrupt, elitist, unholy, and anti-American.
He was extremely loyal to his allies and friends, and rewarded a lot of them with influence and political access. During his presidency he had a scandal that fractured his official cabinet, he started relying heavily on a group of informal advisers, most of whom were his friends or political loyalists. It was so bad that his opponents literally coined the term “Kitchen Cabinet" to criticize the outsized influence his friends and allies held despite lacking official positions.
Jackson was extremely patriotic and he fiercely fought for and imposed his version of patriotism, and he often framed things in us vs them mentality. For example, in the 1828 election, he famously said "this election is a contest between an honest patriotism on the on the one side, and an unholy, selfish ambition, on the other".
He was extremely racist. He explicitly hated native Americans as he saw them as savages who obstructed progress (expansion). He also viewed African Americans inferiors, and he was pretty big supporter of slavery. In fact he was a slave owner himself and never questioned the morality of it like his predecessors. To him, this country was for white European settlers and it was to be ruled by exclusively by white men. However, he did support expanding suffrage for all white men instead of just land owning ones, so I guess there's that.
He had a habit of ignoring Supreme Court rulings and doing what he wanted anyway. Famously, he ignored the ruling of the Worcester vs Georgia case in which the Supreme Court determined that the state of Georgia could not impose its laws on the Cherokee nation as it was seen as an independent country. This essentially prohibited settlers from encroaching on their lands. However, Jackson ignored this and not only encroached on their lands, but took it over and deported the entire nation to Oklahoma in an event that became known as the trail of tears.
He had a habit of being very hostile to the press when they're critical of him and very supportive when they praise him. He would often call the editors and journalists against him as corrupt and tools of the political elite who were out to slander him. At the same time, he rewarded very loyal editors and journalists with government contracts and exclusive access.
He very famously hated the national bank. He saw the bank as unconstitutional and undemocratic because he thought it favored the rich and was nothing more than a tool for the corrupt elite, and that this power should be devolved down to the states. He also personally hated the idea of paper of money and preferred hard money (like gold and silver) and had a grudge against the president of the national bank at the time because he thought he helped fund his opponents against him. Regardless, he made it's destruction a populist crusade and he succeeded in dismantling it. When the Federal Reserve was established, they intentionally added Jackson on the $20 bill as a giant fuck you to him and his legacy.
By destroying the national bank and drying up federal funds, he directly contributed to the panic of 1837, which was one of the worst economic crises of the time.
Do you see the similarities? You should because Trump saw Jackson as an inspiration and he even hanged his picture in the Oval Office. I don't know about you, but this seems like a much more relevant, accurate, and insightful comparison to Trump than Hitler. Hitler and Trump have very little in common as individuals and as leaders. This is why I find it annoying that our discourse has no other point of reference outside of Nazi Germany.
Very good list in my opinion and definitely matches my memory from learning about Andrew Jackson in the past.
I agree that Trump is no Hitler. While by some magic the crowds at his events like him he absolutely isn't the orator Hitler was among a lot of other differences.
However I still say the overall party/political movement he is head of is extremely fascist and incorporating a lot of Nazi elements. The flip to that is that the Nazis got a lot of stuff from the USA and the Nazis loved our racist policies in the 30s and our history of doing things like the westward expansion and what that did to the native people.
Essentially all history education in the US is heavily politicized except for WW2, the only thing Americans could agree on about the last 200 years is that Nazis were bad, and even that is now becoming 'controversial', with some schools like in Florida wanting to teach more about "both sides" of the holocaust. There's a reason my mom really loved the quote "Don't let school get in the way of your education."
The average knowledge of the things you mentioned would be "isn't Jackson the guy on the $20?" "Weren't gulags in Siberia or something? What even is a gulag exactly?" And "'Know Nothings'?? Yeah I literally 'know nothing' about that."
It's up to individuals and families to teach their kids actual history, and most parents both work and have little time to teach their kids anything that the schools don't teach them. And now I see kids leaning history from youtubers, it's a pretty depressing situation.
While I agree with your point that parents should take an active role in teaching their kids history, I also think a lot of adults need to actually spend time educating themselves because they lack basic historical knowledge themselves. A lot of grown adults don't know why Jackson is on the $20 bill or what the gulags even are. We can't possibly educate the next generation when the current generation is ignorant. We need to have some sort of shift in our society to emphasize the importance history and historical accuracy because our national discourse is severely lacking in nuance and depth.
Definitely, we have been trending further toward anti-intellectualism for a while, not just history but people of all ages need to recognize that learning is a lifelong process, you can't just graduate high school and be done with it. Things learned in school even ten years ago or less can be outdated, society as a whole is learning more about the past all the time.
To be fair, all we should need to say is "It's kind of fucked up to do " and people should agree and it should stop. Instead, so much of the media and so many propagandized conservatives are just denying it all and making up excuses. Historically, Nazi's have been universally seen as unequivocally evil so it's the only comparison that we think might get through.
Now though... Musk can fucking salute Hitler twice in a row at the presidential inauguration and calling it out is contentious. We're frankly out of ideas.
Unfortunately, the history taught here (at least where I grew up, but I believe it is like this in most parts of the country) is so US-centric and pre-WWII topical that we didn't learn anything else. I don't think I learned about the Japanese internment camps until law school and I was in "advanced classes" throughout my pre-university years.
Of course people would educate themselves outside of class, but there's a variety of reasons that doesn't really happen. It's quite sad and unfortunate we don't learn about the other atrocities (even those directly caused by the US). I wish it were different.
Slightly off-topic, but we're not even taught the realities of our own history that we're supposedly taught about. Example: the civil war. If you ask many people in certain southern states (and surely some more northern ones too), the reasons they give for the war do not match reality. Or at least they do not come close to telling the whole story. The stranglehold on our education system is bonkers
Well they're not just gonna tell you it was capitalism.
ignorant, is understatement, i think some areas arnt even teaching history from ww2 and on
A lot of American schools are now basically only teaching the civil rights movement and a very water downed version of the cold war after teaching about WWII, and very rarely, some schools might dabble into 9/11 and the war on terror if they have time at the end of the year. There is no emphasis at all on international history.