There Is No Hiding It Now, Trump Is A Nazi
Let's hope everyone likes the smell of burning books.
Like many, I have been reticent to call Trump a Nazi over the years. Sometimes, even when that label is correct, it is counterproductive to actually use. So, instead, I have referred to Trump and his cronies, like Musk, as being fascistic — which is basically the same label but without such severe connotations. However, Trump’s actions over the past few days are practically and ideologically identical to those undertaken by Hitler. So, it’s time we called it as it is. Trump is a Nazi, and we should treat him as such.
So, what has Trump done that is egregious enough to change my mind? You may have heard what’s been happening at the CDC.
I cannot underestimate the importance of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Without it, many of the people reading this article wouldn’t be alive or would be severely injured or disabled. Therefore, it came as a huge shock when the CDC asked its staff to withdraw any scientific papers currently under consideration for internal or external publication that contain the words gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, and biologically female. This is explicitly to conform to Trump’s executive order demanding that there are only two genders.
Why does this matter? Well, to begin with, it’s the painfully obvious hypocrisy of Trump attempting to infringe on scientific free speech. It’s demonstrably anti-scientific. And to top it off, it will be extremely detrimental to the health of millions of people around the world. It’s a near-perfect modern facsimile of the Nazi book burnings. Let me explain.
Let’s start with the actual science behind gender and sex because the high school chromosome description of sex and gender is far too simplistic and reductive.
It isn’t just the XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomes that dictate sex; there are variations of those chromosomes, as well as hormone and hormone sensitivity levels that dictate your sex. For example, there are people with XX chromosomes who also carry a gene called SRY that go on to develop male genitals. Chromosomally, they are female, but their physical biology is male. Another gene called WNT4 can find its way onto the Y chromosome, causing those with male chromosomes to develop a rudimentary uterus and fallopian tubes as well as male genitals. Another gene called RSPO1 can cause those with XX chromosomes to develop both male and female gonads. Then there is androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), which causes someone with XY chromosomes to be insensitive to the male genital development hormones, causing them to outwardly present as female, except that they don’t have a uterus or ovaries.
So, while yes, most people will be at the polar ends of this spectrum, sex is undeniably a spectrum. Around 0.5% of people are diagnosed with being intersex and exist in this middle ground. In fact, it is estimated that at least 1.7% of people are intersex. In other words, there are around 5.6 million Americans who are likely intersex. This is why sex is a spectrum, but gender is a construct, as gender is what you use to present to the world.
Intersex people have different medical needs. Medicines will act differently for them; they have different risk profiles, they have different mental health needs, and their engagement with certain medical practices will differ. This is why, for decades now, medical science has used the spectrum of sex for differentiation and not the presentation of gender. It enables medical understanding of how to care for intersex people to grow while also ensuring that medical understanding for other groups, like those able to get pregnant, isn’t accidentally skewed.
Not only this, but the same is true for LGBTQ and transgender people. If the ’80s and ’90s weren’t clear enough, gay people have their own unique health needs that can be crucial in helping to save their lives. Likewise, the science is crystal clear that sexual dysmorphia and being transgender have specific and crucial mental and physical health needs. Preventing scientific papers from using these categories not only horrifically stifles the care for these vulnerable people but also worsens the quality of care for everyone else, as their data, needs, and results can’t be differentiated from other groups.
So, make no mistake, if you are anything but a straight male, Trump’s actions here will diminish your access to appropriate health care.
And we have been here before. Trump silencing the scientific medical community in this manner is just a modern version of Hitler’s first book burnings. It stinks of “racial hygiene” nonsense.
Hitler wanted science to follow Nazi dogmatic rhetoric and not the actual scientific method. As such, on May 6, 1933, Nazi demonstrators raided the libraries of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which roughly translates to the Institute of Sexology. This was a private research institute on human sexuality, which had made considerable advances in understanding the spectrum of human sexuality and the needs of those along it. The 20,000 books in its library were a result of scientific curiosity and rigorous use of the scientific method, and they were crucial to the well-being of Berlin’s thriving LGBTQ+ community prior to Nazi rule. But, on that fateful day, Hitler’s goons burned every last one of those books, silencing the scientific community.
Why did they do this? Well, they pushed dogmatic eugenic policies. They wanted to not just preserve the “purity” of German blood but better it. As such, anyone seen as genetically inferior or incapable of adding to the German population through reproduction was killed, sterilised, subjugated, or marginalised to the point of non-existence. So, the Nazis actively undermined the medical science for the disabled and LGBTQ+ communities with a view to actively purge them from the population.
Just in case it needs clarification, modern science has shown that genetics don’t work like this, and “race purity” and eugenics are a wholly detrimental pseudoscientific notion that doesn’t work. Read more here if you need to.
But Trump isn’t doing the same here, is he? He is just pushing his own nonsense rhetoric.
Well, sadly, he is, in fact, ‘pulling a Hitler.’ Trump has openly talked about immigrants poisoning US blood several times. Not only that, but many of his closest advisors, such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, all fund and vocally support neo-eugenics movements that have no scientific basis. Musk, in particular, has called for racial purity in multiple countries numerous times in recent years. Indeed, all of them have rallied against LGBTQ+ people as something to destroy in order for races to “outbreed” migrants. With this as context, Trump’s actions at the CDC stop being rhetoric and become an attack on the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
In modern times, we don’t have physical libraries of scientific study. We have online journals, and the CDC’s is one of the largest and most influential. Consequently, Trump’s actions here directly reflect Hitler’s dogmatic and eugenic actions.
That’s right, Trump just enacted a modern-day public book burning before our very eyes!
I wish I could end it there, but I can’t. Trump is also reopening Guantanamo Bay as a 30,000-capacity detention centre/concentration camp for undocumented migrants. Why? Well, because Gitmo is not on US soil, prisoners there have no human rights and can be treated as viciously as possible with no legal repercussions for the US. Trump essentially wants to torture and maybe even kill migrants. Not only that, but under Trump’s new legislation, people can be sent to this facility for simply being accused of being undocumented, even if they aren’t! It’s a straight-up concentration camp developed under the exact same excuse used by Hitler. Hasan Abi has a great video on that topic here.
Then there is the fact Musk recently bullied Congress into cancelling funding for child cancer research! This research was a tiny fraction of their budget and would make no tangible difference to their overall expenditure. With his past eugenics remarks as context, it sure looks like Musk thinks children with cancer should die and not reproduce…
So, it’s time to call it as it is. Trump and his goons are Nazis in both rhetoric and action. It’s time we break the cycle. Call a Nazi a Nazi and realise that it is a broken ideology that only leads to death, destruction, and failure. We beat Nazis before; we can do it again. But the first step is recognising we have a Nazi infestation.
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Sources: Vouge, FB, Reuters, CBC, Holocaust Museum, NHS, PubMed, SA, The Guardian, Washington Post, Futurism, Will Lockett