When equating Donald Trump with the worst leaders in world history, the comparison invariably refers to Adolph Hitler. “Hitler did this too” and “Hitler did that as well” are the fallback responses to any action coming out of the White House today. It’s like the Godwin’s Law–that every on-line argument eventually turns to a comparison to Nazis–has broken containment and become our go-to reaction for anything political.
But I have to ask: Why are other horrible leaders of the past getting a free pass on their Trump-like actions? There are several other comparisons that could be made to “Trumpian” actions beyond those of just Nazi Germany.
When it comes to deportations, Trump and Hitler had nothing (yet) on Joseph Stalin–the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952–who deported an estimated six-million people. Not only did Stalin kick out people he didn’t want in the country (like capitalists, those who believed in democracy, and anyone that dared to criticize his authority), he forced people living OUTSIDE of Russia to move INTO the country (usually to remote areas like Siberia to serve as near-slave laborers). China’s first Communist leader–Mao Zedong–worked from 1949 to the late 1960’s to purge his country of any and all foreigners in order to “purify” Chinese culture. It should be noted that none of those deportees were granted “due process”. It was pretty much “grab your things, you are leaving now”. And yet, Trump’s actions in that realm today are compared only to Hitler’s deportation of Jews, Poles, and gypsies to concentration camps across Europe.
When it comes to “re-writing history”, Trump’s demands that the Smithsonian pretend that slavery never existed are nothing compared to the gaslighting performed by Stalin. Big Joe literally had people “erased”–meaning all records of their births, careers, achievements, and deaths were removed from all public archives. Early Bolshevik leaders that became Stalin’s perceived enemies were airbrushed out of state photographs–leaving strange gaps in group pictures. Stalin even had his image inserted into photos and newsreel films of historic Soviet events where he wasn’t present, to make it look like he was a major part of everything, right alongside Lenin. It was those actions that inspired George Orwell to coin the term “Unperson” in his dystopian novel 1984.
Yes, Hitler renamed a number of places and states in some Nazi-occupied territories–drawing comparisons to Trump’s attempt to make it the “Gulf of America” and returning Denali in Alaska to “Mount McKinley”. But Stalin demanded that an entire city–Volgograd–be renamed after himself–Stalingrad–while he was still alive (mainly because there was a Leningrad, and Stalin thought he deserved his own city as well). It became famous as one of the bloodiest battles in World War II as Hitler went out of his way to try and destroy the city just because of the name–not because it held any real strategic value. The German defeat there turned out to be the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front. Mao too ordered the renaming of anything in China with a “foreign name”. Cities, provinces, streets, and natural landmarks were all given new names almost overnight to build “cultural unity”.
When Trump scapegoats and cuts ties with allies that he believes “fail him” whenever something he has promoted goes horribly wrong, it gets compared to Hitler turning on the SA–the “Brownshirts” that helped him rise to power–but were then imprisoned or killed during the “Night of the Long Knives”. But Stalin sent far more of his “supporters” to the gulags or to their deaths –usually just for carrying out his failed orders and demands. One of the reasons that the Soviet Union was so ill-prepared for war against Germany was Stalin firing or killing the majority of his generals because he thought they were plotting against him. Many of the hard-core Communists that help Mao win the Chinese Revolution in 1949, and then strictly-enforced his edicts across the country, found themselves on the receiving end of torture and punishment when Mao turned the next generation of the Red Guard against them in the 1960’s–claiming they were “still influenced by the West” and needed to be “re-educated”.
As Trump attempts to end the war in Ukraine by giving Russia and Vladimir Putin the land it has seized by force, it is compared to ill-conceived pacification of Hitler by Western European leaders in 1938 when he annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. But you know who ceded the most land (that also wasn’t his to give up)? Stalin–who through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939–gave Hitler permission to invade Poland and the rest of Czechoslovakia–so long as the Soviets could invade the same areas from the other direction up to predetermined points.
We all know that Trump loves his “border wall” keeping illegal immigrants from crossing into the country through Mexico. The only instance of Hitler’s “wall building” I can find is the barriers used to keep the Jews inside the Warsaw Ghetto until they could all be removed and killed. But Stalin was the first to propose walling off West Berlin during the early years of the Cold War. Eventually Nikita Krushchev finished the job in 1961. And yet, I never hear critics of “The Big Beautiful Wall” compare it to Berlin.
So why don’t pundits and historians compare Trump to Stalin or Mao? Doesn’t it seem a bit lazy to just keep going back to Hitler time and again when there is such rich source material to use with the other two?
Obviously, Trump=Hitler is the easiest for people to understand. Eighty years after his death, Hitler is still held up not just as one of the worst leaders in world history, but also as one of the most evil people, period. His life, influence, and actions are taught as part of American history classes (or at least I hope they still are) because of World War II. An entire cable network–The History Channel–was built on documentaries about Hitler and the Nazis (until it became another “reality show” outlet with shows about gold hunting and looking for proof of aliens on Earth). Unless you take more advanced courses focusing on European or Asian history, you don’t learn nearly as much about Stalin and Mao. Since the Soviet Union was our ally–albeit untrusting–in WWII, Stalin must not have been that bad a guy, right? And the Chinese Communist Party bots are hard at work 24/7/365 to purge any negative information about their founding father from staying on the internet.
I think the real reason Trump will never be compared to those two is because they are “left wing” autocrats. Both Stalin and Mao came to power through revolution, promising what all Socialists promise: Power to the workers, redistribution of wealth, social justice, equity, and security through the state. To paint them as evil and “Trumpian” would undermine the modern Socialist revival widely embraced in both academia and the news media. It might cause students, viewers, and listeners to learn more about Stalin and Mao–where they would discover both only delivered what Socialism is actually about: Control, economic misery, cronyism, death, and denial.
