By Don Terry & Ben Emos | Thursday, May 22, 2025 | 7 min read
When Mein Kampf hit Germany’s bestseller list for the first time in decades, it wasn’t just a historical footnote—it was a warning. It made us stop and ask: what does it say about our present that the words of a long-dead dictator are finding new life? And it pushed us to look more closely at the shadows cast by today’s political figures.
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. But if you’re searching for a modern leader whose methods carry an eerie resemblance to those used by one of history’s darkest figures, Trump stands out—not because of identical ideology, but because of the familiar tools he wields: fear, scapegoating, and the dangerous belief that truth is whatever serves him best.
It’s not about drawing lazy comparisons. It’s about recognizing patterns—and asking how close we’re willing to get to the edge before we admit we’ve seen this before.
Start with the tone. Hitler didn’t rise to power on competence—he rose on grievance. So did Trump. Hitler blamed the world for Germany’s decline, painting his country as a victim of international humiliation. Trump, born into wealth and privilege, did the same—claiming America had been “ripped off” by global elites, foreign countries, and immigrants. He slapped tariffs on allies, attacked international institutions, and stoked economic fear, all while the U.S. economy was, by most standards, stable when he took office.
It wasn’t about fixing things. It was about breaking things loudly—then blaming the wreckage on someone else.
Like Hitler before him, Donald Trump has always known how to tap into the rage of a disillusioned crowd. Both men mastered the dark art of turning public confusion into unwavering loyalty. Hitler did it through thunderous speeches that tore at the seams of an already fragile democracy. Trump did it through endless rallies, unfiltered broadcasts, and a digital echo chamber he built for himself—Truth Social—where lies were repeated until they felt like truth.
When facts got in the way, both men had a tactic ready: discredit them. For Hitler, it was propaganda. For Trump, it was a relentless campaign against the “fake news” media. Truth wasn’t something to be respected—it was something to be rewritten.
And just as Hitler saw chaos as a chance to rewrite his own destiny—transforming from an outcast to a nationalist messiah—Trump saw the January 6th insurrection as an opening to reclaim what he believed had been stolen from him. Hitler had Odeonsplatz in Munich, where he stood electrified among a sea of German flags, eyes lit with ambition and revenge. Trump had the Capitol steps, where he sent his followers with the promise of a “fight like hell.”
Both moments—separated by nearly a century—were fueled by the same delusion: that power, once lost, could be seized again through spectacle, loyalty, and force. And in both cases, the consequences fell hardest not on the men who incited the crowds, but on the democratic systems they left fractured in their wake.
But the scariest parallels are in what Trump did with power. Hitler stacked courts, muzzled the press, and legalized brutality. Trump didn’t get that far, but he tried. He flooded the judiciary with loyalists, called the press the “enemy of the people,” and encouraged violence against protesters and opponents. He pardoned insurrectionists—those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6—not just as a reward, but to keep them ready, like a modern militia with legal immunity.
Trump even toyed with ideas that echoed Hitler’s old playbook of conquest—floating bizarre proposals to “buy” Greenland, musing about annexing Canada, and hinting at control over Panama like it was still the Cold War. To most, these ideas sounded absurd. But beneath the surface was something darker: the normalization of expansionist thinking, repackaged in Trump’s transactional language. Just like Hitler framed his invasions as rightful reclamations, Trump wrapped his ambitions in nationalism and nostalgia—treating sovereign nations as bargaining chips, not allies. It wasn’t policy—it was fantasy with dangerous undertones. And when fantasies like that go unchecked, history has shown us how quickly they can turn real.
And then there’s the part most Americans still flinch from confronting: under Trump, people weren’t just deported—they were rounded up, detained, and, in some cases, shipped to foreign prisons under murky, legally dubious arrangements. This wasn’t immigration policy. It was intimidation strategy—targeting those deemed outsiders, those who didn’t “belong.” The scale may not rival history’s darkest regimes, but the echoes are unmistakable. Hitler left behind a political testament; Trump has his own version—Project 2025. Where Hitler sought to purify Germany for the so-called Aryan race, Trump isn’t content to leave white nationalism in the past. One little-noticed executive order quietly opened U.S. borders to white South Africans under the false pretense of racial persecution. The message was clear: whiteness is the passport, and America is for some—never all.
So, could Trump have had a copy of Mein Kampf? Maybe not literally. But he didn’t need to. The echoes are there—loud, raw, and undeniable. The obsession with loyalty. The demonization of outsiders. The relentless thirst for control. And a public just distracted enough not to notice how close we came.
Trump wasn’t an accident. He was a mirror—showing us how fragile democracy really is when fear becomes fuel. And like any fire, it spreads faster the second time around.
Turning Conviction into a Movement: How Trump Echoes Hitler’s Dark Genius for Reinvention
It’s often said that history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. And when it comes to the way both Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump weaponized their own criminality, the rhyme is unmistakable.
Hitler was jailed in 1923 after his failed coup attempt—the infamous Beer Hall Putsch. Instead of fading into political obscurity, he used that moment to launch a new mythology. From his prison cell, he wrote Mein Kampf, a manifesto of grievance, nationalism, and vengeance. He didn’t deny the crime—he reframed it. To his followers, he wasn’t a criminal. He was a martyr. A man who dared to challenge a corrupt system.
Sound familiar?
Donald Trump, now convicted of multiple crimes, has done exactly the same. He doesn’t hide from the charges—he thrives on them. Each indictment is spun into proof that he’s a victim of a “deep state.” Each courtroom appearance becomes a campaign rally in disguise. Like Hitler, Trump has turned his legal troubles into political currency, transforming guilt into glory in the eyes of his base.
And just like Hitler, Trump didn’t do it alone.
Both men grifted money from their followers. In the midst of economic hardship, Hitler asked his base to sacrifice while living lavishly off party funds and elite connections. Trump, a self-declared billionaire, begged small donors to fund his legal defense—even as he funneled donations into super PACs and luxury events. Both movements became cash machines, selling outrage and fear like subscriptions to a dystopian gospel.
What’s more disturbing is the support they received from elites. German industrialists saw Hitler as useful—a strongman who could suppress labor unrest and protect their wealth. American billionaires and corporate moguls have done much the same with Trump, quietly funding his rise while shielding themselves from the wreckage he leaves behind.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen before: an unstable strongman courts the mob, survives a reckoning, and emerges stronger—because the system that’s supposed to hold him accountable either flinches or profits.
So when people ask, Did Trump read Hitler’s book?—they’re asking the wrong question. He didn’t have to. The tactics don’t require a manual. When someone is driven purely by the hunger for power—and sees truth as a disposable tool rather than a principle—history has a way of repeating itself. The playbook writes itself.
The real question is whether we are paying attention. Are we willing to confront how dangerously familiar this all feels? Are lawmakers, judges—even the Supreme Court—willing to look beyond the surface and recognize the deeper pattern? Maybe they should read Mein Kampf—not out of curiosity, but as a warning. A mirror. Because taking Trump’s rhetoric at face value, brushing off his attacks on democracy as just bluster, is how democracies sleepwalk into disaster.
We’ve been here before. The signs aren’t subtle anymore. The real danger isn’t that Trump learned from Hitler—it’s that too many of us haven’t.
Copyright 2025 FN, NewsRoom.
