That statement kind of elides the whole electoral and legislative structure of the Weimar Republic at the time, though. It was a parliamentary system (whose legislative body was - and was again, after the fall of the Third Reich - the Reichstag). So in point of fact, though the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) received a plurality of the votes in the WR’s last three elections, nobody “voted for Hitler”. So the analogy of political tribalism being leveraged by a fascist party with a fascist cult-of-personality head actually holds up a good bit better than the numbers you present here might lead one to assume.
It’s fair to point out that the NSDAP sort of formed around Hitler, where as the GOP (“Weimar” Republicans? Might have to start using that as a sneaky jab in conversation, hah) was subsumed by Trumpism, but all he really did was to turn the quiet parts of their platform up to 11 and emphasize populist and tribal (not as in “First Nation”) sentiments. However, I’d argue that that makes the GOP/Trump combination a good bit more insidious than the NSDAP - especially considering how much the GOP loves to lean on the technically-true-but-deeply-misleading line of “we’re the party that ended slavery”, since it utterly ignores the ideological shift of the party over the intervening 160 or so years.
Note: absolutely none of this should be construed in any way as Nazi apologia. It is simply a technical clarification on the system of government and the electoral and leadership-selection mechanics that existed in the Weimar Republic at the time, and my thoughts as to how that matches up with some parts of our current situation, in terms of the political analogies.
Absolutely correct, as a German it just irks me that the popular belief about Hitler Germany was that all Germans were in favour of it. Many very much weren’t, at least at the beginning before all media was turned into a pure propaganda apparatus.
That statement kind of elides the whole electoral and legislative structure of the Weimar Republic at the time, though. It was a parliamentary system (whose legislative body was - and was again, after the fall of the Third Reich - the Reichstag). So in point of fact, though the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) received a plurality of the votes in the WR’s last three elections, nobody “voted for Hitler”. So the analogy of political tribalism being leveraged by a fascist party with a fascist cult-of-personality head actually holds up a good bit better than the numbers you present here might lead one to assume.
It’s fair to point out that the NSDAP sort of formed around Hitler, where as the GOP (“Weimar” Republicans? Might have to start using that as a sneaky jab in conversation, hah) was subsumed by Trumpism, but all he really did was to turn the quiet parts of their platform up to 11 and emphasize populist and tribal (not as in “First Nation”) sentiments. However, I’d argue that that makes the GOP/Trump combination a good bit more insidious than the NSDAP - especially considering how much the GOP loves to lean on the technically-true-but-deeply-misleading line of “we’re the party that ended slavery”, since it utterly ignores the ideological shift of the party over the intervening 160 or so years.
Note: absolutely none of this should be construed in any way as Nazi apologia. It is simply a technical clarification on the system of government and the electoral and leadership-selection mechanics that existed in the Weimar Republic at the time, and my thoughts as to how that matches up with some parts of our current situation, in terms of the political analogies.
Absolutely correct, as a German it just irks me that the popular belief about Hitler Germany was that all Germans were in favour of it. Many very much weren’t, at least at the beginning before all media was turned into a pure propaganda apparatus.
France is a bit more analogous. The left had the most votes and Macron just appointed the conservatives to be Prime Minister.