did a walking tour of "Hitler's Vienna" this weekend

Fun fact: Kurt Schuschnigg, who was the de facto dictator of Austria under the Fatherland Front party from '34 to '38, and was interned at various concentration camps by the Nazis, actually survived, made it to the U.S., and became a professor of political science at St. Louis University for about 20 years. Our tour guide had a guest last week who was a student of his. Said he was a tough grader.

Anyway, while walking around it was hard to avoid modern comparisons amidst stories of industrial oligarchs, racist populism, economic hardship, secret police, propaganda, faulty nostalgia, fake news, anschlusses, and war. In my reading and travels and European history classes at ND it was easy to think that was then, this is now, but then is now, too.

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It's in the Judenplatz, designed by English sculptor Rachel Whiteread. It's one of the more haunting works I've seen, dedicated to the 65,000 Austrian Jews who perished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenplatz_Holocaust_Memorial

When you first turn the corner into the square, it looks like a large tomb or mausoleum. The names of various extermination camps are inscribed on the dais.

As you get closer, you realize the stone walls are actually made of books -- but with their spines turned inward, so you cannot read the titles. Thousands of stories, unable to be read.

[image]

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All the trigger buttons you can push to seize power are always the same. Some people are better at it than others.

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I can't wait for the future when Ramzan Kadyrov is a Poli Sci professor at Duke after his inevitable falling out with Putin.

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The morons destroy it.

Trump is every bit as intelligent as Hitler.

--
Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

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person is smarter ...

They both push their country's leadership to bring out the WORST of their populations:

Do we really want slash funding for STEM/ NASA and instead implement a 4x increase for [s]concentration camps[/s] "detention centers"? I dont really like the idea of the US setting up new slavery system where prison labor gets paid $1 for working a full day, while private prisons make billions and FUND THE MAGA overthrowing of the US govt.

"Is it true that the current big beautiful bill proposal massively increases funding for private prisons?

Yes, it is true that the current "Big Beautiful Bill" proposal would massively increase funding for private prisons, primarily through a dramatic expansion of funding for immigrant detention centers.

Key details include:

- The bill allocates $45 billion for new and expanded immigrant detention centers through September 2029, nearly quadrupling ICE’s detention budget on an annualized basis[6]. This is a substantial increase compared to previous funding levels.
- Much of this detention infrastructure is operated by private prison companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic, who are poised to benefit from the surge in contracts and funding[1][4][5].
- The bill is designed to support President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, with provisions for hiring more ICE agents and expanding detention space, which directly translates to more business for private prison operators[4][5][6].
- Reports indicate that private prison companies are already investing heavily in anticipation of the bill’s passage and the resulting influx of government contracts[1].

In summary, the "Big Beautiful Bill" would indeed result in a massive increase in funding for private prisons, primarily by expanding the federal government’s capacity to detain immigrants, with private prison companies expected to be major beneficiaries[1][5][6].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/private-prisons-count-on-big-beautiful-bill-for-imm...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text
[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/capitol-hill-touts-benefits-of-the-one-big-...
[4] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/3/silky_shah
[5] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-tax-bill-biggest-boondogg...
[6] https://www.epi.org/blog/house-republican-budget-bill-gives-trump-185-billion-to-carry-...
[7] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61486
[8] https://www.crfb.org/blogs/breaking-down-one-big-beautiful-bill

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plus Hilter had a lot of advantages. He had a population that was in the worst of the worst of economic depressions. He had an identifiable and insular boogeyman in the Jews. He had a vastly less stable political system.

Trump also doesn't have the huevos or the ability to launch a ground war. It's one thing to fly a few planes and declare victory. It's entirely another to overrun another country. And if he tries to order the military to take Canada or Mexico they're going to rebuff him.

I'm not saying that there aren't parallels and I'm not Pollyanna. But he can't replicate what Hitler or Putin or Xi or Castro did.

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I think that's the biggest difference between real dictators and Trump and the reason we don't have a full blown autocracy as of yet. His ego can't suffer taking responsibility for bad consequences, so he won't put his hands on anything that could blow back on him.

Look at even his most daring acts - he waits until Israel has all but nullified Iran's air defense before deciding to bomb. And then he rages when his self-declared cease fire doesn't pan out. But he won't actually do anything in response - he'll just scapegoat - because he's a coward.

As a result, as much as he'd love soldiers to shoot protesters in the legs or to put alligators in moats at the border, he wants someone else to make that call as he's too afraid. Thankfully.

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Comparing personality traits between the two men isn't meaningful, in my opinion.

But looking more broadly at the current slide to autocracy alongside historical examples is visceral to me in a way it hasn't been before. I never really thought "it could happen here" until very recently, at least, say, in the last few years and definitely ramping up this year. The bypassing of courts and ineptness of the legislature harkens back to the sidelining and dissolution of such bodies in previous autocratic regimes. And the gestapo-like ICE gangs and deployment of troops domestically have their obvious antecedents. We should all be on high alert.

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but Trump vs. X autocrat, is useful, I think, in terms of handicapping the likelihood that we end up in an autocratic state/dictatorship (and whether to panic, for example).

In sum, he's not the guy. He's interested in getting rich and leveraging the power and position to keep himself rich and he's interested in bullying people in a sadistic manner - especially if they slight him - but he doesn't seem interested in running a dictatorship in the manner of these other figures - whether its Putin, Xi, Kim Jong On, Hitler, Mussolini or otherwise. Stephen Miller, OTOH, would gladly do so if provided the opportunity.

I now think it could happen here - it just won't with Trump (but he's doing a great job showing how it could be done).

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the Polo Grounds

did a walking tour of "Hitler's Vienna" this weekend

the tour ended at the Holocaust memorial sculpture

That's pretty cool

It's depressing that we can't break these cycles.

it's all just a little bit of history repeating

First as tragedy then as farce

Trump is more Springtime for Hitler than he is Hitler

Smart people exploit a system.

Regardless of which horrible

No he's not --

He's also a terrific coward

Trump v Hitler, mano y mano -- not super useful

Maybe not...