This parade is so Nazi-coded
A lot has happened in the last two days: Israel “preemptively” striking Iran to drag the US into war and, today, the assassination of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the shooting of a second MN state rep. and his wife. In an hour or so, President Donald Trump will enjoy a costly government-funded Nazi homage for a birthday celebration.
While thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of active duty marines assemble to violently put down a popular anti-mass deportation protest in Los Angeles, a migrant “sanctuary city,” thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks, howitzers, and army vehicles will march in Washington DC for a military parade celebrating President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday—not-so-subtly echoing Adolf Hitler’s military parade for his 50th birthday.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vice-President JD Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016, before he went full-on MAGA. “How’s that for discouraging?”
As mainstream media as parroted, a military parade birthday is indeed a dictatorial move—numerous despots and tyrants use militarized strongman gestures to project their power. But few authoritarian leaders have ever held a military parade for their birthday, including Hitler.
In recent years, the Republican Party has ramped up its flirtation with Nazi aesthetics, symbols, and gestures, from several Hitler salutes to hidden Nordic runes to Madison Square Garden rallies and now this birthday military parade.
Media literacy teaches us to read between the lines, especially for politicians and the far-right. Pay attention to their actions, not just their messages. The symbolic meaning of their actions may say more than their words ever would.
Corporate media has repeated the official narrative that Trump got the idea for a military parade in 2017 after attending Bastille Day in France and has wanted one ever since. Totally not a Nazi parade to trigger the libs. But militarized mass deportations targeting the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, as well as immigrants with permanent residence or other legal statuses, including pro-Palestine students who are considered terrorists, all the while adopting “Remigration” policy from the Nazi-esque Alternative for Germany (AfD) by opening an Office of Remigration—all adds up to a Nazi-adjacent agenda of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.
Nationalism isn’t just aggressive patriotism or the simple unity of national identity. It comes from the European desire to organize the countries of the world by “race” or “nation,” which rose widely in the mid-19th and 20th century when race was thought of as biologically inherent and hierarchical. After Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, popularizing the theory of “survival of the fittest,” it didn’t take long to apply that same idea to the people and races of the world. Some races were more civilized and fit (Western) and others were more primitive and unfit (everyone else).
The white nations need to protect their race, culture, and civilizations safe from “mass migration,” in today’s parlance. Nations (races) need to be “homogenous,” separate, “undiluted.” This is why Trump and Elon Musk are punishing post-Apartheid South Africa for its “white genocide” policies, remediating unfair land distribution from their decades under white rule.
It’s only in recent decades when “multiculturalism” or “diversity” was considered a positive trait, while nationalism has long kept its tradition of exclusionary ideas, practices, and policies. People of color, LGBTQ, and women didn’t get far in national acceptance or equality without a quick backlash to reverse course.
This is where nationalism originates and where it’s headed today in Trump’s America and Western Europe. And for the most part, Trump’s agenda has gone according to plan.
Now, rolling tanks and hundreds of soldiers are rumbling down Pennsylvania Avenue to pay homage to the great leader. He helped Israel launch a war with Iran. The now-besieged West Bank and decimated Gaza are once again out of the mainstream media coverage while millions of Palestinians are starving, fleeing for their lives while reaching the little aid they are given. And democrats are more fearful than before because of Christian nationalist violence after the political assassination of a MN state rep by alleged shooter Vance Boelter.
What a Big Beautiful Birthday it’s been.
Share this post