One connection I see between the United States right now and Weimar Germany is the economic state. The failure of the economic system in Germany, “Acted as a trigger, occasioning the abandonment of a political system that had already lost its legitimacy.” More and more, Americans are seeing the political system as illegitimate. The Great Recession began in 2007. It seems to me the economy never recovered. Even more recently, the world and country still haven’t recovered from the economic losses of the 2020 Pandemic. And now, inflation is very high, people can’t afford groceries, they can’t afford to pay for gas, and they can’t afford childcare. The current economic state of the country, and the world, has contributed greatly, in my opinion, to the influx of far-right policy and candidates globally.

This economic downturn triggered a wave of discontent, especially politically. This is something I’ve noticed for as long as I’ve been alive. The way the US will naturally flip back and forth between a Democrat and a Republican president, to me, is a sign of discontent. Citizens are unhappy with W. Bush, a Republican? The following president was Obama. People were discontent with the economic downturn Obama presided over, so the next president was a Republican.

My argument is that discontent and unhappiness can lead to party shifts. People believe that, if unhappy under a Democrat they must be happy under a Republican. But even further, I’m arguing that extreme discontent can lead to a political system losing its legitimacy. The current state of the economy led people to be so discontent, that they were content to elect someone who openly would not accept the results of a free and fair election.

I will argue even further, that these tariffs currently being threatened to be imposed on the international community, will turn people back against Trump. Trump has claimed he will fix the economy and reduce inflation. These tariffs will not do this. What they will do is increase prices for Americans, hurting their wallets even more than before. I hope that Trump’s supporters will see the harmful effects his presidency has been having.

Another connection I’ve been seeing to Nazi Germany is the targeting of gender and sexual minorities in the United States. In Germany, they were also some of the first groups targeted. While the book burnings are often taught about in schools, what many neglect to teach is that much of what was burned was scientific research on transgender and queer people. The Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Research was sacked in the early days of the book burnings. They were specifically targeted by Nazis for the same reason the Trump administration is targeting us now: they see us as a fundamental threat to their beliefs and ideologies. They are rogues: they break rules that seem fundamental to close-minded traditionalists. In current events, the Trump administration recently celebrated “Detransition Awareness Day”, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the “harms” of gender-affirming care and encouraging transgender people to return to living as their birth gender. We are being used as scapegoats. We are being used to distract people from the real issues and distract from the failing economy.