Ilse Koch loved to dress up in odd, fancy costumes while she pranced through the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald, Poland., in the early 1940s
As the wife of the Kommandant, she reportedly loved walking bare-breasted between lines of male inmates, ordering the death of any who might look at her in a way that displeased her. It was further said she loved fancy tattoos, and would kill those whose decorations she liked so she could strip their skins to use as lampshades and book covers.
Such stories have been widely questioned. But American Col. Richard Denson described this “Witch of Buchenwald” at one of her trials---where she was sentenced to life in prison---as "no woman in the usual sense but a creature from some other tortured world."[3]
Some MAGAs today deny the obvious parallels between Trump and the Nazis.
But when Vice President JD Vance called Donald “America’s Hitler” he may have meant it as wishful thinking.
Presidential advisor Stephen Miller’s “might makes right” justification for conquests of Venezuela and Greenland mimicked Nazi justifications for the 1939 blitzkreig against Poland that opened World War 2.
Meanwhile from Minnesota to Oregon to North Carolina and beyond, ICE has clearly become the new Gestapo. Trump mimicks the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer” (one people, one regime, one dictator). His first wife said he kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand and practiced giving them in front of a mirror
MAGA favorite Nick Fuentes, lovingly hosted by Tucker Carlson, flouts his love for the fallen Fuhrer. Following mega-rich Nazi industrialists like Alfred Speer, US billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, the father-son Ellisons continue to bankroll Trump’s putsch. Without their limitless flood of blood money to buy media, elections, politicians, the Trump dictatorship---like Hitler’s before it---could not exist.
Likewise, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s insufferable costume changes, sadistic rhetoric and abject cruelty evoke Ilse Koch & the Nazi Holocaust.
The original “Witch of Buchenwald” was convicted of a wide range of war-related crimes. She hung herself in a German prison in 1967.
She was there in part because courts in Nuremberg and elsewhere ruled that even following explicit military orders could not excuse the perpetration of “crimes against humanity.”
Today the Trump Regime persecutes American heroes, including US Senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly, for warning our military not to follow illegal orders. It perpetrates Gestapo-style raids on the homes of journalists and judges while “investigating” those refusing to bow to Trump’s petulant whims.
With personal investments in fusion energy, Trump means to destroy wind, solar, geothermal and battery competitors. He’s also stripped our 94 licensed nukes of credible safeguards or insurance.
Amidst all this, the MAGA mentality---like that of the NAZI movement---remains a core enigma
As with Hitler’s fascist cult, MAGA followers seem willing to excuse any and all of their “divinely ordained” leader’s obvious faults.
Like Trump, Hitler was stained with sexual abuse, having lived under dubious circumstances with his underaged niece, leading to her suicide. In 1923 Hitler led a failed coup based in Munich, resulting in eight deaths. (Unfortunately, Adolph merely dislocated his shoulder).
Hitler made his money with MEIN KAMPF, written with Rudoph Hess through his time in prison after the failed Munich putsch. As dictator, der Fuhrer grifted a personal fortune by passing out countless copies at public expense.
While concocting an “Aryan” ideal of tall powerful blonde men, neither the dumpy Adolph (like Reichmarshall Greg Bovino now being exiled from Minnesota) nor any of his physically wretched innermost circle came anywhere close.
Hitler’s satanic cult ruled through the myth of a non-existent past when the Hitler Cult once ruled with an absolute power now somehow “lost.”
For Hitler’s PR machine, lost German status came with the WWI debacle… caused by “Jewish betrayal”.)
Like Adolph, Trump requires no tangible proof of even the wildest evil fantasies, only that he says it.
Germany’s defeat in that “Great War” came from its idiot Kaiser. Jews at the time constituted barely 1% of the German population (500,000 of 50m) and had no power to have affected Germany’s loss to the British, French, Russians and Americans. But blame them Hitler did, even to the extent of mass-murdering them well after it was clear his Second War was also lost.
Today Trump has seized on “immigrants” as the pretext for fascism. His mother, grandparents, two of his three wives etc have all been immigrants. Mostly, immigration has hugely enriched our nation.
But to the MAGA/NAZI cult, immigrants, citizens of color and racial/ gender/sexual diversity have caused a collective loss of status like the one Germany couldn’t handle when WWI proved their lack of super-human divinity.
There remains, of course, the eternal sinkhole of anti-semitism.
To MAGA---like the Nazis--- the endlessly diverse universe of cultural, racial and ethnic diversities, gender variations, sexual orientations…represent everything in the human rainbow that constricted, contradicted “Christian nationalists” can’t handle.
The unfathomable cruelty and greed of the Trump movement evokes the image of a categorically distinct species…of which Kristi Noem has become a face.
Rampant all around us seems a movement that hates empathy and compassion… “Christian Nationalists” who conjure the name of Christ but abhor every ounce of peace, love and charity that Jesus preached. Face-to-face today, the Holy Messiah would be nothing to these folks but a “sucker” and a “loser.” If he shows up at a MAGA rally, they’ll crucify the Holy Savior all over again.
Thus the NAZI/MAGA species ---which needs its own name---rules through just two things: cruelty and greed.
Among its poster children, alongside Trump, has been Secretary Noem.
The visual lunacy of Noem’s “Witch of ‘Buchenwald” costume pageant has become unsustainable for the Orange PR machine. As this doddering madman plunges into senility, the Trump Show’s margin for public error is rapidly shrinking.
Thus Minnesota’s monumental resistance has raised to Earth-saving levels the public power that can beat Trump’s fascist assault.
Amidst it all, Noem’s “witch of Buchenwald” image has made her expendable.
Soon she’ll be gone. With her will go the likes of Miller and Katherine Leavett, Cash Patel and Suzy Wild, JD Vance and Bari Weiss.
But don’t see any of that as a major victory.
The Hitler/Trump MAGA cult spews from a persistent mutant strain, a humanoid genetic disaster at forever war with the vital attributes that make human civilization possible at all. Creatures like Ilse Koch and Kristi Noem still do seem to flow “from some other tortured world.” We need to find out where that is and neutralize the toxins that poison it.
Currently fueled by the mega-money of ghastly monsters like Speer and Porsche, Musk and Thiel, Bezos and Zuckerberg, Trump ‘s cultists are still infinitely complex. As ever more turn on him, we need to help them find their place. When the natural tipping point hits, he will disintegrate.
Trump’s human / ecological / economic costs are already gargantuan.
So will be the learning curve needed to deal.
It will take two, three, many Minnesotas to move beyond.
But thanks to the likes of Renee Good and Alex Pretty just now…and so many more already gone…and soon to go…we have a chance.
We must not be diverted. The transition from fossil/nuke fuels to 100% green/battery-backed energy much be complete, a transcendence Trump is fighting with every dictatorial fiat he can conjure.
We need to appreciate fully what we have had all these years. We need to finish the vital transition to 100% Solartopia and social justice. We must also be able to rightfully tell our progeny that we all did our part.
Because when we finally do get there, we gotta be ready to guarantee that nothing like this ever happens again.
Harvey “Sunny” Wasserman wrote The People’s Spiral of US History of the US and Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. Most Mondays 5-7pm ET he co-convenes the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition zoom via https://grassrootsep.org/upcoming-zooms/ .